I have known for quite a while that the hierarchy of Roman Catholic Church in England has decided that it no longer wishes the Church to be a force for moral suasion but would rather simply act as a political lobby, seeking to use the force of the state to compel behaviour it approves of rather than allow moral choices to remain in hands of thier parishioners (or anyone else for that matter). It is good to see articles in the mainstream press saying much the same thing and holding them up to a spotlight.
I would hope that Roman Catholics who view the political secularisation of their church do not just meekly sit in their pews and listen to the advocacy of coercive statism without a murmur. If the Church wants to act like a political organisation, people should have no compunction treating them like nothing more than that… and there are few ways better to get an institution’s undivided attention than starving it of funds.
If the leaders of the Church in England want the state to take your money regardless of how you feel about that, rather than bending their efforts to urging you to give it to charitable works of you own free will, then might I suggest to Church-goers that they remember that when the collection plate comes around during mass… but do not just decline to part with your funds, tell your priest that you will not do so and why.
Religion always had been political. Theology notwithstanding, the emphasis on private conscience is a very recent thing, and largely exists because the churches haven’t the cultural leverage to press their cause.
It’s interesting the catholics have been doing other political stuff recently; reports are that Mr Bush discussed gay marriage and abortion bans with the Pope, and tried to stike a deal to get convenient proclamations timed to help his re-election.
The injunction, I recall, was ‘sell all thou hast and give to the poor’, not ‘take from the less poor and redistribute’
The notion the organization Vatican plc has ever been unworldly and apolitical I find a bit, umm, naive. Say rather irrelevant in this island due to a little upset in 1688 and in my view encouraged out of the woodwork by the ghastly inhabitants of that nice house in Downing Street. See the National Secular Society site for the doings of Father O’Bleah.(Link)
and much that is pleasantly nauseating on the Christian Socialist Movement site (Link)
Voltaire: Dictionnaire philosophique, my translation, first draft:
BOLDMIND: So you’re a sergeant with the Domincans. That’s a rotten job.
MEDROSO: True, but I’d rather be their servant than their victim and I chose the trauma of burning my neighbour to that of being cooked myself.
BOLDMIND: What a dreadful choice! You’d be a hundred times better off under the dominion of the Moors, who’d leave you free to wallow in your superstitions and who, conquerors though they are, do not have the presumption to chain up minds.
MEDROSO: What do you expect? We’re not allowed to write, to speak, or even to think. If we speak, they find it easy to twist our words and our writings even more so. Finally, since no-on can burn us for our private thoughts, we are threatened with burning for eternity at the command of God himself if we don’t think like the Dominicans. The Government has been convinced that common sense would make the State go up in flames and the country become the most misterable on earth.
BOLDMIND: Do you think that we English are so wretched, we who cover the seas with our ships and who have won battles for you the length of Europe. Does it seem to you that the Dutch, who taken over practically all your possessions in the Indies, and who today count among your protectors, are cursed by God because they have given complete freedom to the press, and trade in ideas. Was the Roman Empire less powerful because Cicero wrote in freedom?
MEDROSO: Who’s he? I have never heard the holy Hermandad pronounce that name.
BOLDMIND: He was a product of the University of Rome who wrote what he thought, like Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Titus Lucretius Carus, Plinius, Seneca and other scholars.
MEDROSO: Never heard of these guys. [Translator’s note. Sorry…] I have been told that the Catholic religion is finished if people start to think.
BOLDMND: You don’t have to believe it You’re sure that your religion is divine and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. If that is the case, nothing will be able to destroy it.
MEDROSO:. No, but it can be reduced to a trifle and it’s because of thinking that Sweden, Denmark, the whole of your island, half of Germany groan under the terrible misery of no longer being subjects of the pope. People even say that if men continue to along their false paths they will soon come to simple worship of God and virtue. If the gates of hell prevail thus far, what would become of the Holy Office?
Relish also
Religion, of its essence, is wonderfully helpful to the State. For, since it derives the prime origin of all power directly from God Himself, with grave authority it charges rulers to be mindful of their duty, to govern without injustice or severity, to rule their people kindly and with almost paternal charity; it admonishes subjects to be obedient to lawful authority, as to the ministers of God; and it binds them to their rulers, not merely by obedience, but by reverence and affection, forbidding all seditious and venturesome enterprises calculated to disturb public order and tranquillity,
Encyclical of Leo XIII, 1888
(Link)
Yes, I know this is too damned long.
The injunction, I recall, was ‘sell all thou hast and give to the poor’, not ‘take from the less poor and redistribute’
The notion the organization Vatican plc has ever been unworldly and apolitical I find a bit, umm, naive. Say rather irrelevant in this island due to a little upset in 1688 and in my view encouraged out of the woodwork by the ghastly inhabitants of that nice house in Downing Street. See the National Secular Society site for the doings of Father O’Bleah.(Link)
and much that is pleasantly nauseating on the Christian Socialist Movement site (Link)
Voltaire: Dictionnaire philosophique, my translation, first draft:
BOLDMIND: So you’re a sergeant with the Domincans. That’s a rotten job.
MEDROSO: True, but I’d rather be their servant than their victim and I chose the trauma of burning my neighbour to that of being cooked myself.
BOLDMIND: What a dreadful choice! You’d be a hundred times better off under the dominion of the Moors, who’d leave you free to wallow in your superstitions and who, conquerors though they are, do not have the presumption to chain up minds.
MEDROSO: What do you expect? We’re not allowed to write, to speak, or even to think. If we speak, they find it easy to twist our words and our writings even more so. Finally, since no-on can burn us for our private thoughts, we are threatened with burning for eternity at the command of God himself if we don’t think like the Dominicans. The Government has been convinced that common sense would make the State go up in flames and the country become the most misterable on earth.
BOLDMIND: Do you think that we English are so wretched, we who cover the seas with our ships and who have won battles for you the length of Europe. Does it seem to you that the Dutch, who taken over practically all your possessions in the Indies, and who today count among your protectors, are cursed by God because they have given complete freedom to the press, and trade in ideas. Was the Roman Empire less powerful because Cicero wrote in freedom?
MEDROSO: Who’s he? I have never heard the holy Hermandad pronounce that name.
BOLDMIND: He was a product of the University of Rome who wrote what he thought, like Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Titus Lucretius Carus, Plinius, Seneca and other scholars.
MEDROSO: Never heard of these guys. [Translator’s note. Sorry…] I have been told that the Catholic religion is finished if people start to think.
BOLDMND: You don’t have to believe it You’re sure that your religion is divine and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. If that is the case, nothing will be able to destroy it.
MEDROSO:. No, but it can be reduced to a trifle and it’s because of thinking that Sweden, Denmark, the whole of your island, half of Germany groan under the terrible misery of no longer being subjects of the pope. People even say that if men continue to along their false paths they will soon come to simple worship of God and virtue. If the gates of hell prevail thus far, what would become of the Holy Office?
Relish also
Religion, of its essence, is wonderfully helpful to the State. For, since it derives the prime origin of all power directly from God Himself, with grave authority it charges rulers to be mindful of their duty, to govern without injustice or severity, to rule their people kindly and with almost paternal charity; it admonishes subjects to be obedient to lawful authority, as to the ministers of God; and it binds them to their rulers, not merely by obedience, but by reverence and affection, forbidding all seditious and venturesome enterprises calculated to disturb public order and tranquillity,
Encyclical of Leo XIII, 1888
(Link)
Yes, I know this is too damned long.
Hm, quoting Voltaire to describe what’s wrong with the Catholic Church is like resorting to the Soviets’ foam-at-the-mouth anti-fascist ravings when trying to demonstrate just how horrible fascism is.
In short, not very conducive to rational discourse and understanding…
The Catholic Church’s doctrines on free will are well known and make a nonsense of most (but not all) political actions by the Church. Pointing that out is neither naive nor new… people have been doing that for centuries.
Organisations like Christian Socialist are like an association of vegetarian carnivores… a group which seeks to use force to remove moral choice whilst purporting to be moral.
As a Catholic myself, I need not look to her enemies like Voltaire to concur in this critique. The current generation of Catholic leaders on both sides of the Atlantic are products of a sentimental leftist milieu which has abandoned hard thinking about what will actually work for the poor to improve their lot. They are similar to the professoriate in the non-quantitative academic fields, an insulated community trapped in a bubble of group-think, where it is always the Sixties. Hence, they are impervious to evidence, possess no knowledge of the most basic elements of economic theory and know little or nothing about how wealth they want to “share” is generated in the first place.
Since the Church is governed by lifetime appointments, we will only see change as the current crop of bishops leave the scene by natural attrition. I am hopeful, based on my own observations, that the “rising generation” will be more tough-minded and rational rather than emotional and vapid about many, many things.
Lex –
Not likely. Killing the goose is so much fun.