Thanks Alexandria!

Speaking of our library, we are having the rosary tonight for Delores Mazurik the past librarian there, and tomorrow will be her funeral.  Please keep her in your prayers.

Catholicism and the State
by Thomas A. Droleskey
[This treatise was written in late-November of 2002. It was published in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in early 2003. The Daily Catholic website published it sequentially in May of 2003. Slightly revised from its original publication, the treatise is being posted on this website on July 4 to provide some food for thought as most Catholic citizens of the United States celebrate uncritically the founding of this nation as being completely compatible with the true Faith, which it is not. Indeed, the United States of America was founded on a specific and categorical rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by Holy Mother Church. As Pope Leo XIII noted Immortale Dei, the exclusion of the Church founded by God Himself from the business of making laws and from directing social life is a grave and fatal error. No matter the intentions of those who believed that they could form a nation without referencing Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, good intentions can never redeem false premises. And the United States of America was founded on the false premises of religious indifferentism and man's ability to pursue and maintain "civic virtue" without having belief in, access to and cooperation with sanctifying grace. Our current problems are all the result of the false premises upon which all modern states, including the United States of America, were founded in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ.

[This piece is not light reading. It will be included as part of an anthology of my articles on this subject to be published after my G.I.R.M. Warfare, which is in the final stages of pre-publication preparation, is published next month. Without further ado, here is "Catholicism and the State."]

The modern state has become a sort of secular church replete with its own creedal beliefs and possessing an insatiably voracious appetite to exercise a near total control over its citizens, who are subjected to a level of slavery by means of confiscatory tax powers. However, the modern state is a corruption of the true nature of the state, which is not the same thing as a particular form of government that happens to constitute its civil authority, which must be founded on right principles in order for it to work properly in the pursuit of the common good here on Earth and to aid the true Church in the promotion of a cultural environment in which its citizens can best save their souls.

Apart from the great papal encyclical letters of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, from which extensive excerpts will be included below, there are two very important works, both of them noted for their balanced consideration of the nature of the State and the areas in which Catholics can disagree legitimately, that are important to read. One is Father Denis Fahey’s The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World and Father E. Cahill’s The Framework of the Christian State. Both authors discuss that fact that man must live in the framework of three societies: the Church, the family, and the State. Both authors understand that all States must subordinate themselves to the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as exercised by his true Church. However, both authors also recognize that there is a wide degree of latitude in which Catholic scholars may argue concerning the specific organization and operation of the Christian State. The Church has eternal, universal principles to offer man concerning the true nature of the State. She does not, however have, any specific models for men to adopt, leaving this matter to the reasoned judgment of men who find themselves living in specific circuмstances at specific times in specific places.

What is inarguable, though, is the fact that there must be an entity called the State. Consider Father E. Cahill’s summary of the matter at the beginning of Chapter XXIII in The Framework of the Christian State:

“We use the term State as meaning not merely the governing power, but the whole civic community organised with a view to the temporal good of its members.

“The State is in practice made up of three elements–its members, a certain territory, and the mutual rights and duties which unite the members into one whole. It is distinguished from other societies belonging to the temporal order by its greater extent and higher aims. It comprises, and within certain limits its central authority governs families, municipalities and townships, and all kinds of lesser institutions within it, such as professional and educational organisations, industrial and trading societies, social unions, and the literary and artistic associations.

“The object of the State is to secure and promote the temporal well-being or the common good of its members. We have already said that it is, like the Church, a perfect or supreme society in the sense that it is sovereign in its own sphere and does not depend in any way upon a superstate or any other higher power than God alone, although it has relations of inter-dependence with the Church and with other states. These relations are regulated by the divine law and the natural laws of Justice and Charity.”

Father Cahill lists three essential types of states, admitting, obviously, that few nations fall neatly into one category or the other. The three types he identifies are the Pagan State, the Liberal State, the Socialist State, and the Christian State. I would lump the Liberal and the Socialist State into one category: the Modern State. However, Father Cahill’s distinctions, made in the 1930s, are quite valid and prove to illustrate the fact that it is the post-Christian State that has corrupted the notion of the word “State” so much that it has become inexorably linked to systematic murder, theft, perversion, and all other manner of corruption.

Herewith are Father Cahill’s distinctions:

“The Pagan State. In the ancient Pagan State, the element of religion in public life, albeit the religion was a false one, and the dependence of the State upon the Deity were recognised. Indeed, the fundamental laws of the old Roman Republic were regarded as gifts or deposits from the gods. Hence they were divine, and no human authority could change them. Later on under the Roman Empire, while the same principle still remained in theory, it was in practice disregarded; for the Emperor’s authority was absolute and not limited even by the fundamental laws of the old Roman Constitution. Since it was clear, however, even to the ancient pagans that a human authority which recognises no limitations to its competence, not even those set by a natural or a divine law, cannot logically be reconciled with the recognition of a Supreme Being distinct from that authority, the ancient Romans met the difficulty by the crude expedient of deifying the Emperor who was regarded as the sole source of all law, and who, therefore, was honoured as a god. Another consequence of the supposed all-competence of the governing power was that the essential dignity and rights of human personality were totally disregarded. Again, in the Pagan State, the privileges and rights of citizenship were a monopoly of a small ruling caste, the rest of the people being regarded almost as chattels.”

We can see rather clearly that there are elements of the pagan state to be found in what I call the Modern State, especially here in the United States. Positivists view the United States Constitution, for example, as a source of law unto itself, rendering the plain meaning of the words contained therein so much child’s play for their endless deconstructionist exercises. The government, therefore, becomes equivalent to the State, and all its pronouncements must be obeyed without dissent as more and more of legitimate human liberty, as that term is defined properly according the patrimony of the Church (which is the explicator of the natural law), is eliminated by the brute force of the coercive power of the government. The citizen has thus become the slave of the unjust exercise of government power, which is used almost exclusively to keep the ruling class of professional politicians in power. Pronouncements of non-elected judges and bureaucrats must be obeyed as though they had been delivered by Delphic Oracles. Thus, there are many similarities between the pagan state and the modern state.

Father Cahill himself notes this in The Framework of the Christian State:

“The Pagan State gradually disappeared under the influence of Christianity. Most of its objectionable characteristics, however, have reappeared in modern times under the influence of materialistic, pantheistic and rationalistic philosophy. Thus the teachings of Hegel, according to which man is identified with the Deity, and civil society, the highest and most perfect manifestation of the divinity, leads to the deification of the State and the denial of essential personal rights, as well as the rights and authority of a divinely constituted Church independent of the State. Again, the principle that the ‘King can do no wrong’ implying, as it does that the existing civil law is the norm of morality and is always essentially valid and binding, even when it clashes with divine law or essential personal rights is founded on the same pagan ideal of the deification of the ruler.”

The deification of man, though having antecedent roots in the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ during the so-called Enlightenment, was given expression par excellence in the French Revolution, the father, if you will, of all modern revolutions. Indeed, President Woodrow Wilson lionized the French Revolution in an attempt to explain why his administration would not intervene to help the Catholics who were being martyred by the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico in 1915:

“I have no doubt but that the terrible things you mention have happened during the Mexican revolution. But terrible things happened also during the French Revolution, perhaps more terrible things than have happened in Mexico. Nevertheless, out of that French Revolution came the liberal ideas that have dominated in so many countries, including our own. I hope that out of the bloodletting in Mexico some such good yet may come.”

Father Cahill explained the Liberal State as follows:

“The Christian type of State prevailed over all Europe in medieval times, and down to the Protestant Revolt in the 16th century. As a result of the Revolt most of the governments of Europe gradually fell under the influence of Liberalism. Religion and everything supernatural were eliminated little by little from public life. The ‘Rights of Man’ were substituted for the rights of God. All social rights and duties were regarded as of purely human institution; and a materialistic individualism and egoism prevailed more and more in every section of the social organism.

“In the theory of the Liberal State, personal human rights are acknowledge, and indeed exaggerated, for they are regarded as paramount, the rights of God and the limitations set by the divine law being disregarded. In actual practice, however, all individual rights are merged in or made subservient to the power of the majority, by which the actual government of the State is set up. Hence the governing authority again becomes omni-competent, although the omni-competence is upheld in virtue of a title different from the title of a deified emperor or a civil body identified with the deity.

“Again, although in the Liberal theory of civil organisation, all the members of the social body have civic rights, these rights not being regarded as of divine institution may be over-ridden by a majority. Furthermore, seeing that the powerful frequently are able to secure in their own favour the decision of the majority, through the operation of finance and of the press, personal rights have in practice little more security in the Liberal State than under the old pagan regime. Thus arise the personal exploitation of the poor and the tyranny of the monied interest.”

Some Catholics have tried to accommodate the traditional teaching of the Church concerning the nature of the State with modernity. Father John Courtney Murray, for example, provided what was considered to be the intellectual “muscle” that was used to hijack that traditional teaching at the Second Vatican Council by the drafting and issuance of Dignitatis Humanae in 1965. This has generated a good deal of debate even in orthodox Catholic intellectual circles. Some Catholic scholars contend that there has been a legitimate “development of doctrine” regarding the State. Others, however, such as Michael Davies, have demonstrated that a legitimate development of doctrine cannot contradict the tradition of the Church, as the late John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out himself. Dignitatis Humanae, which makes an accommodation with the modern state, is a dramatically different docuмent than either Quas Primas, issued just forty years before by Pope Pius XI, and Immortale Dei, issued in 1885 by Pope Leo XIII. Even the scholars who are more sanguine to the conciliar and postconciliar theories than those of us who hold to the tradition of the Church expressed by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI recognize, however, that there must be an entity called the State. The fact that the modern State, founded as it is in the rejection of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as exercised by his true Church, has given rise to such nightmares is no accident. It is the natural result of its false premises.

The Liberal State identified by Father Cahill gives rise of its nature to the Socialist State. The inevitable failure of Lockean liberalism to effect authentic social reform by the use of structures created by and with the consent of the majority led of its nature to socialism. Why fool around with piecemeal solutions when one can have secular salvation in one fell swoop?

Thus, Father Cahill’s definition of the Socialist State:

“The Socialist type of State, which has arisen in modern times, is akin to the Liberal State in its repudiation of Divine authority; and to the Pagan State in its claim to subordinate personal and family rights to the unlimited authority of the governing power. In this latter particular it goes further even than the Pagan States; for it denies to its members the natural right to acquire or hold the ownership or productive property, “which lies at the root of real liberty and individual responsibility
.
“Hence, in the Socialist State the omni-competence of the civil power is recognised in its most complete and tyrannical form. For the governing authority holding all the productive property, as well as the executive machinery under its control, can exercise an absolute despotism over the members who depend upon the government for the very necessaries of life. Moreover, in the Socialist State neither personal nor family rights, nor the rights of the Church, are recognised. Even the children belong to the State, which also claims the power to arrange the education and to regulate the work of each member, and to control everything connected with his spiritual as well as his material well-being.”

As I have demonstrated in a number of protracted articles in the past few years (especially “Of Marx and Lenin, “To Mine for True Riches,” “From Luther to Clinton to Gore,” “The Fruits of Evolutionism,” and “So Wrong for So Long”), both major political parties in the United States of America believe that we exist to enable them to rob us of our private property in order to make us utterly dependent upon them for what we could provide for ourselves if we would not held up by the coercive power they exercise as our agents in the government. We have a socialist government in fact if not in name, a government so concerned with political correctness and the exigencies of political expedience that it cannot even provide for the legitimate national security of its citizens, preferring to wage a needless war on a despot who poses no real threat to this nation while making our national borders a sieve through which passes hundreds of thousands of people intent on using the freedom found in this country to destroy her very existence.

A few years after Father Cahill wrote his book, Pope Pius XI issued a definitive examination of all forms of socialism, including Communism, in Divini Redemptoris, issued on the Feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 1937. It is a pithy summary of how liberalism always leads to some form of communism. He had dealt with the issue as early as his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano, issued in 1922:

“In view of this organized common effort towards peaceful living, Catholic doctrine vindicates to the State the dignity and authority of a vigilant defender of those divine and human rights on which the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church insist so often. It is not true that all have equal rights in civil society. It is not true that there exists no lawful social hierarchy. Let it suffice to refer to the Encyclicals of Leo XIII, already cited, especially to that on State power, and to the other on the Christian Constitution of States. In these docuмents the Catholic will find the principles of reason and the Faith clearly explained and these principles will enable him to defend himself against the errors and perils of a communist conception of the State. The enslavement of man despoiled of his rights, the denial of the transcendent origin of the State and its authority, the horrible abuse of public power in the service of a collective terrorism, are the very contrary of all that corresponds with natural ethics and the will of the Creator, Who has mutually ordained them one to the other. Hence neither can be exempted from their correlative obligations, nor deny or diminish each other’s rights. The Creator Himself has regulated this mutual relationship in its fundamental lines, and it is by an unjust usurpation that communism arrogates to itself the right to enforce, in place of the divine law based on the immutable principles of truth and charity, a partisan political program which derives from the arbitrary human will and is replete with haste.”

Pope Pius XI discussed the matter again in the aforementioned Divini Redemptoris, issued just two years before his death.

“In teaching this enlightening doctrine, the Church has no other intention than to realize the glad tidings sung by the Angels above the cave of Bethlehem at the Redeemer’s birth: ‘Glory to God and peace to men of good will.’ True peace and true happiness, even here below as far as it is possible, in preparation for the happiness of heaven–but to men of good will. This doctrine is equally removed from all extremes of error. It maintains a constant equilibrium of truth and justice, which it vindicates in theory and applies and promotes in practice, bringing into harmony the rights and duties of all parties. Thus authority is reconciled with liberty, the dignity of the individual with that of the State, the human personality of the subject with the divine delegation of the superior; and in this way a balance is struck between the due dependence and well-ordered love of a man for himself, his family and country, and his love of other families and other peoples, founded on the love of God, the Father of all, their first principle and last end. The Church does not separate a proper regard for temporal welfare from the solicitude for the eternal. If she subordinates the former to the latter according to the words of her divine Founder, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you,’ she is nevertheless so far from being unconcerned with human affairs, so far from hindering civil progress and material advancement, that she actually fosters and promotes them even in the most sensible and efficacious manner. Thus even in the sphere of socio-economics, although the Church has never proposed a definite technical system, since this is not her field, she has nevertheless clearly outlined the guiding principles which, while susceptible of varied concrete applications according to the diversified conditions of times and places and peoples, indicate the safe way of securing the happy progress of society.”

Pope John Paul II himself, not noted for the use of traditional papal bluntness in his critique of the modern State on the grounds of its antipathy to the Faith, nevertheless was scathing in his denunciation of the modern welfare State in Centesimus Annus in 1991:

“In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of state, the so-called ‘Welfare State.’ This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoke very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the ‘Social Assistance State.’ Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending, In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them who act as neighbors to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need.”

Although a far cry from the overt Catholicity of his predecessors, Pope John Paul II’s words above illustrate the fact that even a man who is very much a philosophical liberal sees problems with the socialist state, especially as its is violative of the natural law principle of subsidiarity.

Father Cahill described briefly the Christian concept of the State, a concept that will be elaborated on at some length below.

“In marked contrast with non-Christian theories and avoiding the extremes of each, stands the Christian teaching on the origin, nature and purpose of civil society. Christians agree with Pagans, Liberals and Socialists in asserting that the immediate purpose of the State is to promote the temporal good and happiness of the people. But in Christian philosophy in contrast with most non-Christian schools man’s temporal good is taken to include his moral and intellectual interests as well as his material well-being; and is regarded as subordinate to the eternal happiness which is man’s ultimate end.

“Again, according to the Christian concept of the State, the members come before the State itself, which can never override man’s inalienable rights, nor limit any of their natural rights, except for a sufficient cause connected with the public good. For the State as a corporate body comes into being solely with a view to the good of the members, and has no interests or rights of its own which are not founded upon the rights and interests of the families and individuals that compose it. Hence all the activities and laws of the ruling authority must be directed solely to promote the public good of the citizens. In so far as they clash with that, they are unlawful and invalid. . . .

“Again, the State is not something apart from its members as the ancient pagans implied: nor is it a conventional society as the Liberals assert; neither is it the result of blind physical evolution, as the Socialists teach; but it is a union of families and individuals held together by reciprocal rights and duties. It is ordained by the natural law, which has determined its structures, its functions, and the extent and limitations of its powers. Its purpose is to supplement not to override, personal endeavor and the helps of family life.

“The State includes the whole organised nation with all the living forces that compose it. The central authority is only one element in it (albeit the most important one), and must not absorb the activities of other lesser forces or organisations, but should foster private initiative whether individual or collective, while directing it along lines conducive to the public good.

“Again, the State is subject to the same moral law as the individual person: and the government of the State in dealing with its own members as well as with other corporate bodies or individuals is bound by the laws of justice, charity and religion. The actual government or central authority in the State is usually also bound by positive laws–the fundamental laws of the constitution–which it cannot change without the clear consent of the people.

“Finally, the State cannot interfere with the legitimate action of the Church to which God has committed the duty of guiding and assisting men in the pursuit of their eternal happiness. The State might conceivably have been so constituted as to satisfy completely all that is required to supplement individual and domestic activities; and thus might have been the only type of a perfect and supreme society. But as a matter of fact, God has instituted the Church, another society equally perfect and supreme, and committed to it the care of man’s eternal interests, which are thus withdrawn from the control of the State.

“Hence, although it is the natural function of the State to promote men’s good and happiness, there are whole spheres of activity–religious, personal and domestic–reserved from its control, but even in these, the State is bound to afford protection and assistance where required.”

Most of the rest of this monograph will be spent elaborating on the nature of the Christian concept of the State, elucidated as it has been by the authoritative teaching of Holy Mother Church. Again, while debate takes place among orthodox Catholic scholars concerning the application of received teaching in concrete circuмstances (and sometimes revolves around the abandonment of the patrimony of the past in the postconciliar era), no orthodox Catholic scholar contends that the State is unnatural to man and that human social life can be organized successfully without a State that at least minimally recognizes the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law, to say nothing of an absolute subordination to the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as exercised by Holy Mother Church.

Some commentators, however, have come to the conclusion that the state itself is bound to become tyrannical, prompting them to believe that anarchy is the only solution to protect the individual’s life, liberty, and property from the whims of professional, careerist politicians and power-hungry social-engineers in the bureaucracy, to say nothing of autocratic, positivist judges who use linguistic deconstructionism to justify statism (and every moral aberration imaginable). These commentators are wrong. They have come to a conclusion based on a false premise, namely, that the state itself is unjust and destined to become corrupt over the course of time. Their conclusions are logical if you accept the false premise. However, the falsity of the premise must be examined with care.

Many of these commentators have relied cited secular writers to come to their conclusions about the harmful nature of the State. A reliance on secular writers, however, is precisely what leads to the embrace of false premises, which results always and inevitably in bad consequences. A Catholic is supposed to understand that everything in the world is to be seen through the eyes of the true. Everything, including the nature and construct of the State and the civil government formed to exercise its authority in the temporal realm. There is no more cogent summary of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which binds the consciences of all Catholics in all circuмstances for all times, than that found in Father Denis Fahey’s Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, which contains a brilliant summary of the encyclical letters of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI on the State.

A Catholic Understanding of the History of the State and Its Corruption

Father Fahey begins his book with an overview of how a Catholic is supposed to view and to study history:

“History is concerned with individual and contingent facts. In order to discern the supreme causes and laws of the events which historians narrate, we must stand out from, and place ourselves above these events. To do this with certainty one should, of course, be enlightened by Him Who holds all things in the hollow of His hand. Unaided human reason cannot even attempt to give an account of the supreme interests at stake in the world, for the world, as it is historically, these interests are supernatural.”

That is, unaided human reason cannot explain anything about the world as it does not take into account man’s supernatural origin and his eternal destiny. We are not living in the world of ancient Greece or ancient Rome, a time when philosophers had to grope their way to an understanding of things solely by human reason. The Incarnation has taken place. Our Lord has offered Himself up to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross, thereby redeeming sinful mankind. He has established His true Church to be the means by which the fruits of that Redemptive Act are administered to the souls of individual men until the end of time and to be the repository in which is safeguarded the Deposit of Faith, which is essential for the right ordering of souls and of human societies. Anyone who overlooks or denies the importance of these truths to men as they live together in nations will fail to explain adequately why problems exist and how they can be ameliorated over the course of time.

Father Fahey went on to explain:

“Human reason strengthened by faith, that is, by the acceptance of the information God has given us about the world through His Son and through the Society founded by Him, can attempt to give this account, though with a lively consciousness of its limitations. It is only when we shall be in possession of the Beatific Vision that the full beauty of the Divine Plan which is being worked out in the world will be visible to us. Until then, we can only make an imperfect attempt at what be, not the philosophy, but the theology of history. The theologian who has the Catholic Faith is in touch with the full reality of the world, and can therefore undertake to show, however feebly and imperfectly, the interplay of the supreme realities of life.”

Father Fahey’s words resonate with truth. Only a believing Catholic can come to understand how the events of the world fit together, albeit imperfectly. A Catholic understands that man suffers from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin, and that he needs sanctifying grace to enlighten the intellect and to strengthen the will in order to save his soul. Moreover, though, a Catholic understands that he has been baptized into a visible, hierarchical society, namely, the Mystical Body of Christ that is the Church, and that he has the obligation to learn what the God-Man has entrusted to her. A Catholic has to remember at all times that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became Man in Our Lady’s virginal and immaculate womb to place Himself under the authority of His own creatures in Nazareth. This was to teach us that we are to live under authority–in the family, in the Church, in the State–at all times and that we are to obey all legitimate authority, properly exercised, in all things that do not pertain to sin. Although Our Lord’s Hidden Years are not recorded for the most part in Sacred Scripture, His Hidden Years teach us the importance of recognizing that authority is from God and it is a wicked thing to seek to liberate one’s self from the very concept of authority in this vale of tears.

Father Fahey continues to explain the utter futility of the secularist and naturalistic ways of examining the world:

“The philosopher, as such, knows nothing about the reality of the divine life of Grace, which we lost by the Fall of our First Parents, and nothing of the Mystical Body of Christ through which we receive back that life. The philosophy of history, if it is to be true philosophy, that is, knowledge by supreme causes, must therefore be rather the theology of history. Yet how few, even among those who have the Catholic Faith, think of turning to the instructions and warnings issued by the representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, when they wish to ascertain the root causes of the present chaotic condition of the world!”

The fact that some Catholic commentators speak in glowing terms of the “insights” offered by secularists without making public advertence to those instructions and warnings, even though they say they had read the encyclical letters, makes Father Fahey’s prophetic wisdom more pertinent now than when it was offered seventy years ago. A fallacious view of the State both in theory and in practice is bound to arise if we ignore and/or reject the prophetic wisdom of Pope Leo XIII, contained in such encyclical letters as Humanum Genus, Immortale Dei, Sapientiae Christianae, Libertas Praestimissimus, Mirare Caritatis, and Testem Benevolentiae (an apostolical letter) to discover how the libertarians and anarchists and conservatives base their approach to government and the State on thoroughly false premises. Additionally, a reading of Pope Pius XI’s Ubi Arcano, Quas Primas, Divini Illius Magistri, Casti Connubii, and Divini Redemptoris to understand how the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as exercised by His true Church constitutes the only protection against the corruption of the State by a one-person tyrant or by the mobocracy of the modern democratic ethos. This is to say nothing of the insights found in Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno about the obligations of the State to base economic life on principles that reflect the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law, starting with the principle of subsidiarity. No secularist has one blessed thing to offer us to understand man and society.

Father Fahey went on to write:

“The supreme law, illustrated in the actual historical world, is that it is well or ill with it, simply and absolutely (simplicter), in proportion as it accepts or rejects God’s plan for the restoration of our Real Life, the Life of Grace, lost by original sin. The events of our age, as of every age, are in the last analysis, the results of man’s acceptance or rejection of the Divine Plan for ordered human life. They are, therefore, the consequences of the application to action of the ideas of what is order and what is disorder, which have been held by different minds. Accordingly, the appreciation of these events and of their consequences for the future must be based on what we Catholics know by faith about the order of the world, and we must turn, first all, to the docuмents in which the Vicar of Christ have outlined for us what is in accordance with the Divine Plan and what is opposed to it. The theology of history must therefore never lose sight of Papal pronouncements on the tendencies of an age or its spirit. Now, one such outstanding pronounce with regard to the political order of our day is the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, and it is my intention to lay particular stress on it. The study is rendered more attractive by the fact that the enemies of the Catholic Church attack this Papal docuмent continually. For example, the French Masonic review, L’Acacia (November 1930), published the Syllabus with an introduction, of which a portion runs as follows:

‘We have considered it well to publish again the text of the famous Syllabus, which has become almost impossible to find. As the Church does not wish the Syllabus to be subjected to the judgments and criticisms of the Catholics of the present day, she has systematically bought up and burned the copies in the vernacular which were being offered for sale.’

“These statements are needless to say, foul calumnies of the Catholic Church in the usual Masonic style. The Church is only too anxious that the Syllabus should be well known to Catholics. Pope Leo XIII, the successor of Pope Pius IX, alludes to it in the following terms: ‘. . . Pius IX branded publicly many false opinions which were gaining ground and afterwards ordered them to be considered in summary form, in order that, in this sea of error, Catholics might have a light that they might safely follow.’ (Encyclical Letter, Immortale Dei, 1885.)”

Sadly, the French Masons were ahead of their time. The contemporary Church of the postconciliar era has consigned the Syllabus to the dustbin of history. This is the case in no small measure because of the infiltration of the highest ranks of Holy Mother Church by Masons. However, it remains the case that the teaching of the Church is what it is, even though contemporary revisionists and positivists from within her ranks seek to flush the past down the Orwellian memory hole. As Christopher Ferrara and Thomas Woods point out in The Great Facade, no pronouncement of the Church can be termed a “development of doctrine” if it indeed contradicts Tradition. That is why Catholics have the obligation to study the docuмents of the past, as an honest reading of them will reveal just how prophetic the popes of the past were concerning our own situation today.

Father Fahey states:

“Papal docuмents, treating of the Mystical Body in relation to Politics and Economics, as well as those which deal with the influence of the saints, the truly great men of the world, on their times, are of paramount importance for the study of the theology of history. The Syllabus and the various condemnations of Liberalism by the Sovereign Pontiffs aimed at fixing certain truths firmly in the minds of Catholics. The return to sane thinking about social organization demanded as a prerequisite the purification of thought and the elimination of error.”

Once again, therefore, it is essential to know the social teaching of the Catholic Church in order to understand why the modern State has become a church unto itself. It is the rejection of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ that has tainted the State, thereby causing the problems of the modern world exhibited by the secularist ethos in which modern state has degenerated so completely.

Father Fahey:

“We can thus easily see that the entrance of Christianity into the world has meant two things. Primarily and principally, it has meant the constitution of a supernatural society, the Mystical Body of Christ, absolutely transcending every natural development of culture and civilization. Secondly, it has had for result that this supernatural society, the Catholic Church, began to exercise a profound influence on culture and civilization and modified in far-reaching fashion the existing temporal or natural social order.”

As Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei (and as Pope Pius XI noted in Divini Illius Magistri), it was the Church that civilized the pagan and barbaric peoples of Europe in the First Millennium. Gradually, over the course of time, civil rulers began to understand that they were as bound in their capacities as rulers by the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law as they were in their own individual lives privately. Moreover, these rulers understood that it was the right of the Catholic Church to interpose herself in instances where they had done things–or had proposed to do things–contrary to the those binding precepts and therefore injurious to the salvation of souls. What is injurious to the salvation of souls is injurious to the common good of states, as both popes point out in their respective encyclical letters noted above. This led to tension between Church and State at times, to be sure. However, it produced, albeit never perfectly, a period of time, Christendom, in human history when the tendencies toward absolutism were checked by the exercise of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ upon civil rulers. It is the overthrow of that Social Kingship, dating from the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, that has produced the horrors of the modern state, from which so many people rightly recoil without, however, knowing true history and the right principles of the State.

Father Fahey:

“The indirect power of the Church over temporal affairs, whenever the interests of the Divine Life of souls are involved, presupposes, of course, a clear distinction of nature between the ecclesiastical authority, charged with the care of divine things, and the civil authority, whose mission is concerned with purely temporal matters.”

In other words, Church and State are both from God. The State had to be subordinated to the Church in matters of faith and morals and in matters of fundamental justice as the Middle Ages progressed, just as the family itself had to be subordinated to the reality of the Mystical Body of Christ following the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles and Our Lady on Pentecost Sunday in the same Upper Room in Jerusalem where Our Lord had instituted the Holy Priesthood and the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper. To assert that we can live without the State because of the abuses of its modern exemplars is as absurd as to claim that children can live without parents because of widespread instances of physical and emotional abuse of children by parents (which abuses are themselves the result of the rejection of the Deposit of Faith entrusted to the true Church and of the rejection of the necessity of sanctifying grace to see the world clearly and to act in conformity with what is true and just).

Father Fahey:

“In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual Kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of States came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more fully under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in Three Divine Persons.

“Accordingly, Catholic Social Order, viewed as a whole, is not primarily the political and social organization of society. It is primarily the supernatural social organism of the Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. If instead of Catholic Social Order we use the wider but more convenient expression of Kingdom of God, we may say that the Kingdom of God on earth is in its essence the Church, but, in its integrity, comprises the Church and the temporal social order which the influence of the Church upon the world is every striving to bring into existence. Needless to say, while the general principles of social order remain always the same, social structures will present great differences at different epochs. No particular temporal social order will ever realize all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. The theology of history must include, then, primarily, the study of the foundation and development of the Church, and secondarily, the examination of the ebb and flow of the world’s acceptance of the Church’s supernatural mission.”

Social life must be developed with a view to man’s Last End. However, as the Church as taught consistently, she has no specific models of civil governance to offer man. Men are free to debate which particular form of government they consider best suited to their own purposes. What the Church does insist upon, however, is that whatever form of government is considered best suited for the purposes of a particular nature must recognize that there are limits that exist in the nature of things beyond which it may not go legitimately, and that the Church has the God-given right to intervene in case those limits are threatened or actually transgressed. There has never been a period of perfection since the Fall of Adam and Even from Grace in the Garden of Eden. The Middle Ages was not perfect, although certain epochs within it, particularly the Thirteen Century, came about as close as man can come to realizing a world where the temporal realm was properly subordinated to man’s Last End.

Father Fahey:

“Politics is the science which as for object the organization of the State in view of the complete common good of the citizens in the natural order, and the means that conduce to it. As the final end of man is, however, not merely natural, the State, charged with the temporal social order, must ever act so as not only not to hinder but also to favour the attaining of man’s supreme end, the Vision of God in Three Divine Persons. Political thought and political action, therefore, in an ordered State, will respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, the divinely-instituted guardian of the moral order, remember that what is morally wrong cannot be politically good. Thus the natural or temporal common good of the State will be always aimed at, in the way best calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ. The civil power will then have a purer and higher notion of its proper end, acquired in the full light of Catholic truth, and political action, both in rulers and ruled, will come fully under the influence of supernatural life.”

Our Lord told us to render unto God what is God’s and to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. We do not need an endless army of Protestant exegetes to explain this passage to us. It is explained so cogently in the paragraph from Father Fahey quoted immediately above. A Catholic is supposed to understand that there are, as has been noted before, limits in the nature of things beyond which no one, either ruler or subject, may transgress legitimately. What belongs to God, therefore, is a strict observance of His Commandments and a strenuous effort to cooperate with sanctifying grace to grow in sanctity and to amend one’s life if he should fall from grace. The civil state has the obligation to do nothing to hinder what belongs to God, and it is a firm obligation to root out from every aspect of its cultural life those things that are injurious to man’s last end. This does not mean, however, that the things of God have no place in the realm of Caesar. Not at all.

As the paragraph from Father Fahey quoted immediately above illustrates, civil rulers must be mindful of their Particular Judgments as they administer their duties in the temporal realm. That is, they are called to be honest and just. While, as Pope Pius XI noted consistently, a government might have to provide assistance for a short while to those unable to support themselves, government must be as limited as possible, not using its coercive taxing powers to deprive citizens of their private property and to make them virtual slaves of career politicians. To this end, those who serve in civil government must administer justly fairly according to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. They must perform all of their duties well for the honor and glory of God and for the sanctification of their own souls.

If, for example, a decision is made to build a road or a bridge, that decision must be based on actual need rather than a desire to cater to the interests of a campaign contributor. If a decision to build a road or a bridge is deemed necessary, then it is important to build the best road or bridge that can be built, one that will be safe to traverse and will not collapse in a matter of years. If the workers of ancient Rome could build highways and aqueducts for the honor and glory of Rome that lasted the test of centuries, then how much more is it important for Catholic officials in public life to make sure that all of what they do in government is just in the sight of the Blessed Trinity and therefore truly in the interests of the common good of all citizens. It is the specific rejection of this understanding, however, that leads men to be slothful, greedy and arrogant in their exercise of power, caring little if citizens are inconvenienced by their bad decisions (while they, the elected officials, feed at the public trough quite merrily). The only antidote to this is the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.

After providing a review of economics as “the science which studies primarily the personal relations which constitute the family, the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, masters and servants, and then, secondarily, the relations of these persons to external goods (the right of property and the use and acquisition of wealth),” Father Fahey discusses just role of political action and legislation in economic matters:

“Political action and legislation, especially in economic matters, must ever seek to strengthen family life, and accordingly, must not only not admit divorce, but must always aim at benefitting the citizens through their families as much as possible. It will be difficult at the present epoch when so many efforts are made to loosen family ties and when riches are worshiped, to restore to the word economy its original meaning. Catholics, however, should not forget that when, following Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, they are demanding a family wage or aiming at setting up guilds or corporations as auxiliaries of family life, their efforts are directed to the task of restoring the family to its true place in the centre of the economic order. It is worthy of note that the English Poor Laws, which began with Protestantism, introduced the separation of husband and wife in the poorhouses established under them. The Catholic organization of the preceding centuries had respected family life. The importance of the family as the nucleus of the State should be remembered in connection with such questions as that of State-provided meals for school children.”

The nature of contemporary life is founded on a rejection of the spirit of Christendom which prevailed in the Middle Ages. Everything has been corrupted as a result, including such words as the State and the economy. There are legitimate roles for the State in the support of the family, something that many conservatives and libertarians reject out-of-hand. A Catholic who accepts the totality of the Church’s social teaching fits neatly into no category associated with secular political philosophy.

Consider, for example, the wisdom of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Immortale Dei in 1885, concerning the nature of the State and the family in the Middle Ages, a wisdom that must be taken into account before one bases a rejection of the State on secularist “thinkers:”

“It is not difficult to determine what would be the form and character of the State were it governed according to the principles of Christian philosophy. Man’s natural instinct moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if he dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties. Hence it is divinely ordained that he should lead his life–be it family, social, or civil–with his fellow-men, amongst whom alone his several wants can be adequately supplied. But as no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good; every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author. Hence it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve Him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern, holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the Sovereign Ruler of all. There is no power but from God.

“The right to rule is not necessarily, however, bound up with any special mode of government. It may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature to insure the general welfare. But whatever be the nature of the government, rulers must ever bear in mind that God is the paramount ruler of the world, and must set Him before themselves as their exemplar and law in the administration of the State. For, in things visible, God has fashioned secondary causes, in which His divine action can in some wise be discerned, leading up to the end to which the course of the world is ever tending. In like manner in civil society, God has always willed that there should be a ruling authority, and that they who are invested with it should reflect the divine power and providence in some measure over the human race.”

One cannot dismiss the necessity of a ruling authority without addressing himself directly to Pope Leo XII’s words here: “In like manner in civil society, God has always willed that there should be a ruling authority. . . .” This is not a mere opinion offered after a brainstorming session. This is the patrimony of Catholic social thought from which no Catholic may legitimately dissent. It is what exists in the nature of things. As has been mentioned earlier (and will be elaborated upon at great length later), the State in the Middle Ages was founded on a recognition of the authority of the true Church to interpose herself when civil rulers proposed to do things (or had actually done things) that were contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law, hence creating conditions deleterious to the salvation of immortal souls, about which a State cannot be neutral.

A beautiful expression of this recognition can be found in a letter written to his son by Saint Louis IX, found in both the breviary of Tradition and the newer breviary:

“My dearest son, my first instruction is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your strength. Without this there is no salvation. Keep yourself, my son, from everything that you know displeases God, that is to say, from every mortal sin. You should permit yourself to be tormented by every kind of martyrdom before you would allow yourself to commit a mortal sin.”

That is, one entrusted with the rule over others has an obligation to be especially vigilant about the state of his immortal soul. Mortal sin kills the life of sanctifying grace in the soul, thereby darkening the intellect (which is thus more ready to deny the truth or be slower to accept it) and weakening the will, inclining the sinner more and more to a disordered love of self and to an indulgence in his uncontrolled appetites. A soul in a state of mortal sin is more apt to act contrary to truth and to do so arbitrarily, leading a life of contradiction and confusion that is ultimately reflected in his relations with others. As even Plato himself understood, disorder in the soul leads to disorder in society. Well, disorder in the soul is caused principally by unrepentant mortal sin. If one wants to know one of the chief reasons why the modern State has been corrupted, one should start by looking at the glorification of mortal sin in every aspect of our culture (which is found among those libertarians who believe that the State has no role to play in such issues as contraception or abortion or sodomy, that these are all matters of personal liberty).

Saint Louis went on to explain to his son that he must bear his crosses with patience and be ever grateful for the blessings he receives from God, making sure to avoid become conceited because of the privilege he will be given to serve as a ruler over his subjects. A ruler still must observe the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law, and the standard of his own Particular Judgment is actually higher than any of his subjects because he has been entrusted with the administration of objective justice founded in the splendor of Truth Incarnate.

The great leader of France concluded his letter by writing:

“Be devout and obedience to our mother the Church of Rome and the Supreme Pontiff as your spiritual father. Work to remove all sin from your land, particularly blasphemies and heresies.”

There is no more cogent summary of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. Saint Louis was telling his son that he, although destined to be a king, was subordinate to the Church founded by Our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. All States, no matter the construct of their civil governments, must be so subordinate.

Importantly, Saint Louis admonished his son to “work to remove all sin from your land, particularly blasphemies and heresies.” The State has the obligation to work to remove those conditions that breed sin in the midst of its cultural life. Yes, sin there will always be. True. However, the State, which the Church teaches has the obligation to help foster those conditions in civil society in which citizens can better save their souls, must not tolerate grave evils (such as blasphemy or willful murder) under cover of law. Saint Thomas Aquinas understood that some evils may have to be tolerated in society. Graver evils, however, undermine the common good and put into jeopardy the pursuit of man’s last end, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Sapientiae Christianae in 1890.

Why, though, should the State seek to banish blasphemy and heresies, going so far as to punish blasphemers and heretics? It is quite simple. Those who can violate the Second Commandment in order to do violence against the Holy Name can just as easily do violence against their fellow-men. Those who put into question the received teaching of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man are worse criminals than those who commit physical crimes against persons and property. Why? Because those who can place into question the truths of Our Blessed Lord and Savior make it more possible for people to reject the necessity of the Faith in their own lives and that of their nations, giving rise to the very statist crimes that are of such justifiable concern to those in the libertarian and/or anarchist camps.

The nature of this sort of fatherly concern for things sacred and temporal that existed in the Middle Ages among many, although certainly not all, rulers was noted by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei:

“They, therefore, who rule should rule with even-handed justice, not as masters, but rather as fathers, for the rule of God over man is most just, and is tempered always with a father’s kindness. Government should, moreover, be administered for the well-being of the citizens because they who govern others possess authority solely for the welfare of the State. Furthermore, the civil power must not be subservient to the advantage of any one individual or if some few persons, inasmuch as it was established for the common good of all. But if those who are in authority rule unjustly, if they govern overbearingly or arrogantly, and if their measures prove hurtful to the people, they must remember that the Almighty will one day bring them to account, the more strictly in proportion to the sacredness of their office and pre-eminence of their dignity. The mighty should be mightily tormented. Then truly will the majesty of the law meet with the dutiful and willing homage of the people, when they are convinced that their rulers hold authority from God, and feel that it is a matter of justice and duty to obey them, and to show them reverence and fealty, united to a love not unlike that which children show their parents. Let every soul be subject to higher powers. To despise legitimate authority, in whomsoever vested, is unlawful, as a rebellion against the divine will, and whoever resists that, rushes wilfully to destruction. He that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation. To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite to revolt, is therefore treason, not against man only, but against God.”

These are strong words. Yes, as both Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Robert Bellarmine noted in their respective works, there are grave circuмstances in which it might be necessary for a well-organized collection of citizens to rebel against the unjust exercise of power by civil rulers. Such a rebellion must meet the conditions outlined in the Just War Theory. Of particular importance in a consideration as to whether the conditions justifying such a rebellion have been met is the principle of proportionality.

Nevertheless, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, the Catholics of the Middle Ages understood full well that an unjust ruler would meet with an unhappy end if he did not repent of his injustice. Subjects, though, continued to pray for their rulers at all times, trusting in the power of the graces won for us by the shedding of Our Lord’s Most Precious Blood on Calvary to be applied to even the most hardened of sinners, including those vested with civil rule.

Indeed, it was the Faith itself that served as the check upon renegade rulers and curbed the tendency to absolutism in the State. Pope Leo XIII makes this clear in Immortale Dei (as does Father Fahey, whose work I shall refer to again shortly):

“As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound up to act to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, not less than individuals, owes gratitude to God, who gave it being and maintains it, and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice–not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only true religion–it is a public crime to act as though there no God. So, too, is it a sin in the State not to have care for religion, as something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of the many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, should hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon, this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man to God.”

Pope Leo is setting out a line of argument that proceeds quite logically, quite Thomistically (it was he, after all, who required the study of Saint Thomas in universities). The State becomes a monster if

A Revelation for America and for Our Times

Solange S. Hertz

Book-review on Stories and Miracles of Our Lady of Good Success
by Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.



Click to purchase
 
A second opusculum about Our Lady of Quito, Ecuador has happily materialized from the pen of Dr. Marian Horvat under the title of Stories and Miracles of Our Lady of Good Success. Intended to flesh out the circuмstances surrounding the prophecies given by Our Lady for our time to the Conceptionist nun Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres back in the seventeenth century, which form the bulk of the first volume, it tells in greater detail about the miraculous statue which Our Lady commanded to be made of herself and the Divine Infant under her personal supervision and how the work, begun by a local sculptor, was brought to completion by St. Francis with the help of the archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael.

There are also accounts of a spectacular vision of the Child Jesus on the nearby Pichincha Mountain, a miraculous reconciliation of two feuding families and other blessings conferred by Our Lady as a consequence of her appearances at the convent in Quito. The text is illustrated and culminates in a chronology of occurrences pertinent to the subject. Let him who reads learn and enjoy.

Dr. Horvat is to be heartily thanked for continuing to publicize this major series of Marian apparitions which are regrettably so little known today, despite the fact that many of the spectacular events they foretold, notably the rise of the Masonic secular state, the definition of Papal Infallibility and the terrible apostasy within the Church, have by now actually come to pass. Her two little books should be required reading for every American Catholic schoolchild, for they help to restore a proper perspective on Our Lady’s interventions in the American Continent, whose significance unfortunately became so overshadowed by the later Marian apparitions in Europe as to be almost obliterated.

We tend to forget that the Marian Age opened in America. Our Lady first proclaimed her Immaculate Conception, not at Lourdes, but over three centuries earlier in Central America, on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico. The catastrophic apostasy which began breaking over the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century and engulfing it in the twentieth, was likewise first prophesied by Our Lady in South America at Quito, over two hundred years before she did so at La Salette, and three hundred before Fatima. And it was not at these places, but at Quito that Our Lady, under the title of “Good Success,” first foretold the eventual triumph of the Faith and the glorious restoration of the Church that would in due time succeed the great crisis.

It was in America that she first warned us:
“The small number of souls who, hidden, will preserve the treasure of the Faith and virtues will suffer a cruel, unspeakable and prolonged martyrdom. Many of them will succuмb to death from the violence of their sufferings, and those who sacrifice themselves for the Church and their country will be counted as martyrs …. Those whom the merciful love of my Most Holy Son has designated to effect the restoration will need great strength of will, constancy, valor and confidence in God. To test this faith and confidence of the just, there will be occasions when all will seem lost and paralyzed. This, then, will be the happy beginning of the complete restoration.”
Are we ready?


Solange Hertz is an author and journalist.
This book-review was first published in The Remnant, March 31, 2002
 

good points-what I was trying to tell a fellow I know, he states because LeoXIII made some nice coments about America, he was not negative about it, keeps waving same encyclical or 2 in my face--oddly, he ignores this one above you post and the 2000 yrs of teaching against heresy, indifferentism, the occult, Masonry,etc.......

To Myrna, re: In Amplissimo:

From Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (can be found at Papal Encyclicals Online) --

"From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some "Americanism."  [Emphasis added.]  But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.  [Emphasis added.]

"But the true church is one, as by unity of doctrine, so by unity of government, and she is catholic also. Since God has placed the center and foundation of unity in the chair of Blessed Peter, she is rightly called the Roman Church, for "where Peter is, there is the church." Wherefore, if anybody wishes to be considered a real Catholic, he ought to be able to say from his heart the selfsame words which Jerome addressed to Pope Damasus: "I, acknowledging no other leader than Christ, am bound in fellowship with Your Holiness; that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that the church was built upon him as its rock, and that whosoever gathereth not with you, scattereth."

"We having thought it fitting, beloved son, in view of your high office, that this letter should be addressed specially to you. It will also be our care to see that copies are sent to the bishops of the United States, testifying again that love by which we embrace your whole country, a country which in past times has done so much for the cause of religion, and which will by the Divine assistance continue to do still greater things. To you, and to all the faithful of America, we grant most lovingly, as a pledge of Divine assistance, our apostolic benediction.

Given at Rome, from St. Peter's, the 22nd day of January, 1899, and the twenty-first of our pontificate.

Leo XIII"

Thank you so very much, I am trying to collect whatever the popes have said regarding the United States, after all in this world of confusion, their words are at least to me, becomming most valuable.  
It grieves me to know that during my entire life time the Faith has always been  a little watered down because of American culture, and Americans had to be warned by our popes.  Yet I haven't found any pope that says we must hate America.  

"Give unto Ceasear", I just hope here in America the Masons will not crush us out entirely.  We are all in this boat together.  Pray and believe and know  the Bible tells us where there is the most sin, grace abounds even more so.  Which is very consoling.  

Another book for me to purchase:

http://www.angelusonline.org/print.php?sid=719

And a more in depth discussion. I do miss Seattle Catholic



A Journal of Catholic News and Views2 Feb 2004Separation and Its Discontents
by Matthew M. Anger

 

 

The Myth of American Church-State Relations
Craycraft’s argument... places him far afield of mainstream American Catholic thought. Radical as it is... his book is in many ways a rather scholarly, serious, and cogently argued exposition. It expresses an outlook that has rarely been heard in America but was once widely trumpeted in Europe, and not all that long ago. - Jeremy Rabkin, Policy Review (August & September 1999)

Though it has been in print for a few years now, Kenneth Craycraft’s American Myth of Religious Freedom (Spence Publishing, 1999) is worth another look as a remarkable study on the subject of American Church-State separation. Not only is the American Myth a long overdue Catholic appraisal, it also represents a paradigm shift among conservative thinkers outside those traditionalist circles that have hitherto been most vocal on the subject. Craycraft was the first to break ranks and enunciate a thorough and appropriately merciless, critique of the whole notion of "religious liberty." The concluding remarks of the book leave little room for second-guessing:

There is no such thing as religious freedom, and the reason that such an assertion sounds so shocking is that we have been completely formed by the American myth.

This position was arrived at by Craycraft as part of a reassessment, in the 1980s and early ‘90s, of the writings of John Courtney Murray, S.J. Best known for his treatise, We Hold These Truths, Fr. Murray was the prime architect of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae). Given the now "mainstream" status of indifferentism in church-state relations it is not surprising that Craycraft’s forthright discussion provoked heated controversy within the neo-conservative Catholic camp. This group comprises men like George Weigel, Michael Novak and Richard John Neuhaus. Their passionate reaction to Craycraft merely proves how wedded the dominant Catholic bloc is to an ideology which seeks to reconcile the irreconcilables of Americanist dogma and Church doctrine.

Synopsis of the Work
The American Myth presents a closely reasoned treatise of under 200 pages, which negates decades of sentimental cant about a supposedly Christian understanding of the "religious liberty" precept of the First Amendment. Craycraft’s analysis runs the gamut of recent political studies, precedent setting court decisions, and the question of the Founders’ intent, and includes discussion of Jefferson, Madison and the formative ideas of English secularist philosopher, John Locke.

The sections of the book that stand out most for their clarity and vigor are those directly treating the problem of secular American politics and ideology. Ironically, the sections which prove difficult are those which attempt an orthodox interpretation of the current Vatican response to religious liberty. Given the intellectual power of the work and its potentially pivotal role in genuine conservative thought, one almost hesitates to criticize The American Myth, yet the difficulties of the book cannot be conveniently shuffled aside. Nevertheless, the murky ambiguities of Vatican II are far from the most interesting or momentous aspects of Craycraft's book.

Secularization in Practice
Craycraft has a keen sense of what priorities will most impress the reader. He starts with important court decisions and well-publicized controversies over issues of traditional religion and the doctrine of "tolerance." The author notes the baneful fruits of religious liberty. Then, having made clear the overwhelming juridical and mainstream ethical bias against orthodox belief, he traces these fruits to the source which begat them.

Among the many court cases under consideration, the most striking is the Alabama school prayer case of Wallace v. Jaffre (1985). Justice John Paul Stevens made explicit the otherwise implicit opposition of the secularist state to revealed religion. It is worth citing at length, since Craycraft deems it of tremendous importance:

The individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. The Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. This conclusion derives support not only from the interest in respecting the individual's freedom of conscience, but also from the conviction that religious beliefs worthy of respect are the product of a free and voluntary choice of the faithful [author's emphasis].

Craycraft says this is the key to deciphering the myth of religious liberty. Only "voluntary" creeds are "worthy." It is the underlying raison d'être of Americanist religious thinking.

Adapting the terminology of Michael Sandel, who has studied national judicial activity in some detail, Craycraft explains that according to the Americanist concept of religious pluralism, individual rights stand paramount to any religious system. Liberalism not only rejects, but cannot even begin to contemplate, the idea that a person receives his religious and moral convictions from some outside agency (which, of course, would include God's direct action by means of supernatural grace). Thus liberalism speaks of people in a free society as "unencuмbered selves." In order for a religious experience to be "authentic" it must completely free and subjective. By contrast, "encuмbered" selves (orthodox believers) can have no proper standing under the law, both as originally conceived in the First Amendment and as enacted in everyday court decisions. That is because the Catholic, for example, takes his moral guidance from a transcendent authority—a source which the secularist state does not acknowledge.

If the state does grant concessions (which it does), these are only exceptions to the rule. They are pragmatic means of avoiding tension and maintaining the peace, and nothing else. One example is the exceptional ruling in favor of an Amish farmer in Wisconsin who violated that state’s law on mandatory schooling for children up to the age of fifteen (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972). The sensible deduction from this case, and others like it, is that the state can permit exemptions to an essentially non-threatening sect like the Amish which does not challenge the federal policy of religious neutralization. As the late Allan Bloom observed, the majority of Americans who practice a form of nominal Protestantism have essentially "ceased to be Christian." Bloom believes, with good reason, that "most Americans who think that they are Christians truly are something else, intensely religious but devout in the American Religion."

In truth, Americans practice a religion that has little resemblance to historical Christianity and instead embodies Gnosticism, radical personal autonomy, and salvation unmediated by the Church. The result is that the majority pose no significant threat to the doctrine of the "unencuмbered self," while traditional religious groups, both Catholic and non-Catholic, are marginalized. Though Craycraft does not say so, this marginalization of native Catholicism is presently carried out through neo-modernist clerics and lay leaders who have effectively turned the faith into a "voluntary creed," though the faith being what it is, tensions are not completely eradicated, nor will they ever be. Hence, Craycraft notes the furor which erupted over Cardinal O’Connor’s 1990 declaration in favor of excommunicating public figures who supported abortion. The media, representing the broad political consensus, charged that the Church was meddling in politics by pressuring Catholic politicians to adopt a stance in line with its teaching. Hence O’Connor was placing the Church above the democratic process and thereby acting in an unAmerican manner. These charges are no different in essence from the violent anti-Catholic Know-Nothingism of the 19th century. It is further proof of Craycraft’s thesis. Revealed doctrine cannot be reconciled to a liberal theory which, on the one hand, claims religious freedom yet sets the standards for which religions are deserving of that freedom. Absolute and universal tolerance does not exist.

The Meaning of Myth
Perhaps no greater service can be done today than to warn Catholics against adopting the cultural constructs and language of their opponents. Sadly, it is something they have done for many generations, and most especially since the 1960s. Such intellectual compromise is a surer means of defeat than the most violent assault by external enemies. Craycraft is merely echoing the admonition of Dr. John Rao’s brilliant essay "Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves." According to both men, conservatives are doomed to defeat when they try to "out-liberal" the liberals. The real coup takes place when the secularist forces his enemy to embrace the superficial definition of a word such as "tolerance," which has different definitions according to the object towards which it is applied. Conservatives feel compelled to be lenient towards liberal error even as liberals suppress traditional beliefs. The former accept pluralism at face value, as if it were really possible to achieve a sublime mediocrity in which everyone practices different creeds yet agrees on some set of "common values" which allows them to live in peace. Of course, the inherent contradictions of such a middle-of-the road position are obvious. One can no more take a stand on a vague secular ethical consensus than one can take a stand in mid air.

Despite the manifold evidence such as Craycraft provides, people will claim that daily hostility to organized religion on the part of judicial and legislative officials is actuall a betrayal of the Founders’ original intention. They say that "separation of Church and State" means "liberty for religion," not "from religion." It is, supposedly, the true genius of the pluralistic philosophy. Before proceeding to demonstrate that active secularization was the foundational intent, Craycraft discusses the point which is really at the heart of the decades-long debate over church-state relations—the pluralist myth which makes misperception on the part of conservatives possible.

A myth, says Craycraft, can be understood in two ways. First, as the ancient idea of mythos which is a set of rites, symbols and institutions that sustain a particular community. These things may not be absolutely true in themselves but do point to some greater underlying truth about a society. The other definition of myth is something false and deliberately deceptive. For Craycraft the American experiment in religious liberty is a myth in both senses.

It is a myth insofar as, despite its claims, the liberal idea of religious liberty as canalized in the First Amendment is a particular and exclusive understanding of religion, a particular story of what we Americans think—or ought to think—about religion and society. And it is a myth in the more popular sense that, insofar as it claims to protect religious freedom in its full and authentic sense, it is simply not true. Rather than protect authentic freedom of religious thought and practice... the American myth has given rise to a set of symbols, rites, and institutions which always subject religion to itself, and often positively hinder religious practice.... The American attempt to overcome political religious myth-making has not succeeded because it cannot succeed.

Based on this conclusion, the author categorically denies each of the following propositions: 1) the founding of the United States was essentially religious, and guided by Christian principles; 2) that even if strongly secular, the state affords an equal degree of security to religious and non-religious people alike; 3) that religious liberty is an obtainable arrangement in any society; and 4) that religious believers are best off in a regime which propagates religious indifference, or that such a regime is itself merely an enlightened product of Christianity. On the contrary:

The only definition of religious liberty in American political discourse is one that marginalizes, if not eradicates as a significant presence, orthodox religious belief. The American story is not interested in explicitly persecuting Christianity. Toleration is a much more effective means, especially if the liberal regime is successful in enlisting the support of Christians.

Founders' Intent
Craycraft tells us that the drive to invalidate orthodox faith ("encuмbered self") and the gradual co-option and neutralization of religion are not new developments. The two men credited for creating and nurturing this doctrine in its American context are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Their mentor was the English rationalist philosopher, John Locke.

Madison's role, though consequential, is not as well known. As for Jefferson, it astonishing how any conservative can contend that the man was "religious" (in the Christian understanding of the word). Devout Protestants of the day cursed the Unitarian statesman as an "atheist." Jefferson reciprocated by damning all forms of revealed religion as obscurantism. Of the Catholic Church in particular he spoke of meddling priests and "monkish ignorance." Suffice it to say, the lasting accomplishment of the Virginia Deist in American politics, and the one he most wished to be remembered for, was the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty. This law was the prototype for the First Amendment.

James Madison's influence was at least as decisive as Jefferson's. He not only supported the secularist ethos which underlies religious liberty but, more importantly, he used his mastery of the language to foist religious neutralization on a people which, Craycraft believes, still regarded themselves as essentially Christian. Madison advanced the secularist position in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance of 1785 (which opposed Patrick Henry's proposal of tax-funded religious institutions) and in the columns of the influential Federalist Papers. In 1819 he wrote that civil government "functions with complete success... by the total separation of the Church from the State."

Craycraft notes Madison's deliberate irony on religious matters. In this he was following the lead of John Locke (whose notions of widespread "religious tolerance" included no clemency for the suffering English Catholics of his time). The making of the Americanist myth is fully at work in Madison’s career. He knew that the proposition must not be too bluntly stated lest it rouse the latent opposition of the mass of practicing and nominal Protestants. Therefore he phrased the idea in such a way that it would settle comfortably in his listeners’ ears while still achieving his ultimate aim. In the end, explains Craycraft, Madison's delicacy and patience won out over the short-lived opposition of his more religious-minded compatriots.

Some have stubbornly maintained that what Madison and others were aiming at was not a negation of Christianity but simply "articles of peace" which would provide religious neutrality and avoid the sort of bloody conflicts which had so long ravaged Europe. Yet, as regards the Virginia politician's intent, there can be no doubt. If his well-known writings are not clear enough, we have access to his unpublished "Detached Memoranda" (made public in 1946). According to Craycraft, these "betray Madison's explicit hostility to institutional Christianity, and further reveal the theological and religious presuppositions behind his public docuмents." In his private writings he admits that he does not simply wish to "disestablish religion," but to actively curb and monitor it by taxing religious bodies so as to limit property-ownership to a bare minimum. By such means liberalism would truly equalize religious opinions, physically as well as legally. For all of the fine distinctions between American and French liberals, it was a scheme worthy of Robespierre.

Not Liberty But Neutralization
Madison’s ideas dovetailed nicely with Jefferson's belief that the ideal moral framework is one in which there is a vast proliferation of inconsequential denominations and independent churches, each competing with the next. "Freedom," Madison said, "arises from a multiplicity of sects." That is because no one body can attempt to impose orthodoxy upon another. Jefferson similarly opined that the best way "to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them." It is further proof that the First Amendment achieves the gentle but certain neutralization of serious religious activity. Attentive study of the Founders' actions and beliefs makes clear that "freedom of religion" did indeed mean "freedom from religion," since the predominant views of the eighteenth century held that the only moral system entitled to respect was one entirely "rational" and voluntary. Revealed religion does not make the mark.

As for the Christian influence of men like Charles Carroll, the Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, it may well be that Carroll sincerely viewed the First Amendment as "terms of peace," alleviating decades-long oppression of his co-religionists and permitting the faith to develop unhindered by political considerations. This, Craycraft points out, was the perception of many ordinary Americans, but not that of key figures who shaped and implemented national policy. The actual course of American history, of which the current phase of obscene neo-paganism is an inextricable part, is indebted to the original plan to transform America into a deistic state. At best, sincere Christians have fought a rear-guard action in a battle they were meant to lose.

Locke and the Doctrine of Toleration
It is important to say something about the originator of the "religious liberty" within the English-speaking world, if only because some feel that there was an indirect orthodox influence on the Constitution via John Locke. The rather maddening claim is that the liberal philosopher perpetuated the traditional natural law tradition, albeit under a non-Catholic and rationalistic guise. This is a clear misreading of Locke, since his idea of "natural law" is merely a reiteration of the Hobbesian "law of nature." This latter holds that man, in a "state of nature," is inherently alienated and individualistic. Civil society (and by extension, religious association) are artificial constructs developed to maintain peace and foster social utility. Locke's idea involves a categorical denial of the classical theory of morality and politics as handed down by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. So much for the crypto-Scholasticism of John Locke.

The clear basis for the Jefferson-Madison neutralization of Christianity resides in Locke’s Letter Concerning Religious Toleration (1685). Cutting through the baroque idiom of the period, Craycraft offers a summary:

...Locke understood that orthodox Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism) is a natural enemy of the liberal regime. But since it was not possible to eliminate the political effects of such religion by force, Locke set out to do it by reason—by reducing "authentic" religion to a set of opinions whose adherents need not (indeed, must not) consider to be exclusively true. The exclusive truth that members of this regime must hold is that no religion possesses exclusive truth, or, perhaps, any truth at all. Any person or church which rejects this "truth" is a menace to the regime, and cannot reasonably expect unqualified toleration.

That is why Locke’s public opposition to freedom of worship for Catholics in 1667 is not a contradiction of, but totally in keeping with, the liberal dogma of religious liberty. Because "papists" were intolerant (they practiced an exclusive creed) they could not be tolerated. They advanced a belief, contrary to liberal-Whig position, of "encuмbered selves" who would have an ethical commitment prior to the state.

Noting the impossibility of unqualified tolerance in any society, Craycraft goes on to assert that liberalism and Catholicism are actually alike in one key respect—both make claims to absolute truth. Unfortunately many believers today feel uncomfortable with such contentions, partly out of ignorance and partly out of indifference. It is nicer to maintain that the two creeds can affect a modus vivendi, even if one condemns the increasingly "elitist" and "intolerant" stance of politically correct secularism. One likes to deny that the Church itself has always been "elitist" and "intolerant." Such terms, of course, stick in one's craw. That is because liberals provide double-think definitions to serve their own agenda, in which "anti-elitism" really means totalitarian control and "free speech" equals social and economic censorship of undesirable views. Indicative of the real intentions of liberal doctrine, Craycraft cites two recent exponents of Lockean "tolerance"—Francis Fukiyama (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992) and Stephen Carter (The Culture of Disbelief, 1993). Both men envision a humanist republic in which "religion" plays an active role, but only so long as it is subsumed under the monistic order in which traditional beliefs, particularly orthodox Roman Catholicism, are eliminated (Fukiyama says so openly, while Carter broadly hints at it in his condemnations of Pat Buchanan).

The Murray Dilemma
For all the concentrated force of Craycraft's study, its impact is lessened by a protracted deflection into the neo-modernism of John Courtney Murray. To his credit, Craycraft’s approval of Murray is far from unqualified. He criticizes the liberal priest’s reading of the First Amendment as "articles of peace." It is not, says Craycraft, that Murray believed the Founders intended it to act as such, but the cleric felt that Catholics could nevertheless appropriate the language to their own ends and make use of religious freedom as if it did mean exactly that. According to The American Myth, such an optimistic theory must be held dubious at best. Unaccountably, Craycraft maintains that Murray's reasoning was essentially sound, even though the brief remainder of the priest's career (he died in 1967) reveals an increasing radicalization of his teaching which ended in proposing dialogue with Marxists and asserting that civil society, not the Church, was ultimate arbiter of contemporary ethical norms.

It is true that preliminary to the Council, Fr. Murray advanced orthodox arguments in favor of the Church's prior claim to religious liberty ("freedom for the Church") and the obligation of individuals to respond to its call to conservation and salvation. But that merely clouds the issue. He makes assertions that, if not in open contradiction to, nevertheless tend towards a liberal humanist rendering of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. It is the kernel of the modernist falsehood—a theory containing both truth and error, and thus advancing error in a more subtle and unimpeded manner than would blatant heresy. To say that Murray was "conservative" relative to the liberation theologians of the 1970s is meaningless.

As noted above, Craycraft tells us that the First Amendment cannot be treated as a fundamental dictate with reference only to itself. It must be judged by an unchanging and objective standard as established by true religion. Unfortunately, Craycraft appears guilty of the very mindset he condemns when he adopts a rationale towards Murray's writing and the Council as if these things were primary sources of authority, carrying with them doctrinal status. One would have preferred that he had drawn the logical comparison between Dignitatis Humanae and the writings of Madison, in which radical ends are advanced in moderate and vague terminology.

Opportunism Rebounds
The crux of the Murrayite thesis (as contained in We Hold These Truths) can be summed up not so much as a formal rejection of the Church as repository of truth but as a pragmatic or utilitarian compromise in the face of the reality of the pluralist society. Religious freedom "is not a per se good for Murray; it is an exigent one."

It would have made Craycraft's job far easier, and his analysis less tangential, had he simply placed Murray within the greater context of the Americanist error. Other questions, such as prudential implementation of Church policy, non-coercion (in matters of religious conversion), and natural law considerations, are extremely interesting and Craycraft does a good job handling them. Nevertheless, they are secondary to the main point of the magisterial view on church-state relations.

Prior to Vatican II, the proper role of these relations had been explicitly enunciated in the ex cathedra statements of Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos), followed by Pius IX (Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors). These pronouncements, quite unlike the tortuous language of the Council, were entirely consistent with themselves and with Catholic teaching as a whole. They commanded without exception that the state has the duty to recognize and protect true religion. Further, no society can say that man has an inherent right to be indifferent to the Church's claims. But the problem in this country was not one of theory but implementation. So, rather than implement it, however gradually, the theory was ignored.

The American hierarchy, which had made concessions to the First Amendment from the outset, largely committed itself to a "neutralist" position. In other words, they advanced Murray's expedient of pragmatism long before Murray. Compromise was a matter of convenience. This tactic sought to put off, if not completely obviate, the unavoidable conflict between pluralism and the Catholic faith. Thus, by the time Fr. Murray deliberated upon the matter in the 1950s, there was an underlying tension which had never been resolved and had never gone away.

Murray was honest enough to see that it could not be suppressed indefinitely and demanded a clear settlement. The old tactic of sublime apathy could not endure. The logical answer was that American thought had to be brought in line with the Magisterium. Yet Murray ingenuously sought a "third option," neither ignoring nor conforming to Catholic doctrine.  He went about restating the Magisterium in a manner that appeared to justify Americanism and religious liberty. Only in this way can we begin to understand what went on, first in Murray's mind, and then in the minds of the leading modernists at the Council.

On a superficial level the clerical progressives, including Murray, said they acknowledged the legitimacy of the confessional state. Yet whether advancing the confessional state or the indifferentist one, the criterion of value offered was that of historical conditions, not a moral absolute. In other words, if a Catholic state already exists, that is fine, but if a non-Catholic state exists, that is also acceptable. No longer would the Vatican encourage every nation to become a Catholic state. It is, of course, merely a type of relativism which says, as Murray did indeed say, that while certain principles may be true in principle they cannot be realized in fact. Look where Murray's "pragmatism" has lead us.  

All so-called practical approaches ultimately serve some ideal, even if that ideal is purely shallow and materialistic. Murray's pragmatism does serve some principal. But it is a principal other than that of the Church, which is to "Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15). Murrayism is the handmaid of pluralism, not evangelization.

Relevancy Made Irrelevant
The almost instantaneous fall-out from the Vatican's outward abandonment of the magisterial teaching on the duties of state to religion hardly needs elaboration. Under the aegis of Dignitatis Humanae the majority of bishops have handed the initiative to the prevailing naturalist regime and washed their hands of Catholic social teaching. Many pundits, from George Neumayr to Pat Buchanan, have observed that "relevancy" renders Catholicism completely irrelevant in the eyes of the world. The sad reality has been noted not only by traditionalists, but a growing number of conservative Catholic writers like James Fitzpatrick of Catholic Exchange.

It is interesting that Craycraft's acceptance of Dignitatis Humanae is diffident. There is an unacknowledged disharmony between an integral understanding of religious liberty, which he so fearlessly articulates, and the "official" contemporary stance of the Church. The upshot is a pessimistic notion of church-state relations that verges on a form of quietism, in which the Church must abandon its political involvement and concern itself solely with influencing society through spiritual means. Craycraft asserts that the alternative—official recognition of our religion by the state, starting with the supposedly ill-fated sanction of Christianity by Constantine in 313 A.D.—must entail widespread corruption and diminution of the Church’s role of spreading the faith. Such a view seems born more of reactive, if understandable, cynicism than sober historical consideration.

Even if the perfect church-state relationship is never to be obtained, at least the effort to do so achieved a very high standard in centuries past. After all, the Spanish Catholic monarchy of the 16th century set about colonizing the New World with conversion of souls as its stated primary intention. Whatever baser motives might have been in the minds of some Conquistadors, the fact is that millions of indigenous peoples were baptized just at the very moment when much of northern Europe was apostatizing (and, by the way, overthrowing the social and political authority of Catholicism). Today, in compliance with the new pragmatist dictate, which accepts the pluralist state as the norm, those areas won to the Church at such great cost are falling away completely.

Final Assessment
The answers to the Conciliar dilemma, and its unique non-dogmatic status, have been ably dealt with by writers like Michael Davies and Romano Amerio and need not be detailed here. Nevertheless, one feels that that Mr. Craycraft could have spared himself a great deal of grief if, instead of relying on John Courtney Murray as an authority on American religious liberty, he had turned to that unsung hero of anti-modernism, Msgr. Joseph Fenton.

Fr. Fenton was a determined opponent of the Murrayite view, who engaged in a running debate with the liberals in the years leading up to the Council. In a last ditch attempt to forestall the Americanist triumph, Fr. Fenton insisted that Church teaching

bears not the slightest resemblance to the explanation in We Hold These Truths [by Murray]. It is not a matter of Catholic politic or of Catholic tactic, but a matter of Christian doctrine, that in itself and objectively the state or civil society is obligated to give public and corporate worship to God, to pay to God the debt of acknowledgement due to Him because of His supreme excellence and because of our complete dependence upon Him. Under certain circuмstances the payment of this debt may be impossible, but in any event it is definitely not a good or desirable thing to have any state withhold from God the payment of the debt of religion which is due to God.

The flaws noted in this review by no means negate the power of Craycraft's groundbreaking work. It is the most honest assessment of the church-state issue to be published, outside of traditional circles, since the articles of Msgr. Fenton. The mere fact it has seen the light of day establishes an important and precedent-setting step. Such a step, once made, cannot easily be retracted.

Despite its ambiguity on the question of Murray and the Council, The American Myth inclines more to the orthodox viewpoint than the prevailing neo-modernist one, while the chapters discussing American political and cultural concerns are irreproachable. One is inclined to agree with the critic from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute who said that the upshot of his analysis must necessarily be "a return to the old pre-Conciliar view."


***
Matthew Anger is a freelance Catholic journalist who writes on historical and literary subjects. He lives with his wife and seven children in the Richmond, Virginia area.


SOURCES:
1 Craycraft, Kenneth R. Jr., The American Myth of Religious Freedom. Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 1999.
2 D'Elia, Donald J., The Spirits of '76, A Catholic Inquiry. Christendom Publications, 1983.
3 Fenton, Msgr. Joseph, "Doctrine and Tactic in Catholic Pronouncements on Church and State," American Ecclesiastical Review, October 1961.
4 Murray, John Courtney, "Religious Freedom," Freedom and Man. New York: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1965.
5 Murray, John Courtney, We Hold These Truths, Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960.
6 Rao, Dr. John C., Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States and "Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves". William Marra, 1995.
 

 :shocked: :shocked: :shocked:

Of Course I do, have read him for years. How many history books do yo have that have a imprimatur? Dr. D. does have anything to do with the Faith approved by Bishops.
What have you read on Americanism, and if you have not read any of this how can you tell us we do not know that of which we speak?