Same-Sex “Marriage” Sweeps the Land

May 21, 2014

PENNSYLVANIA Gov. Tom Corbett today said he would decline to appeal a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling striking down a state marriage law. With this decision, and a similar ruling last week by a judge in Oregon, an estimated 44 percent of Americans live in states where the absurdity known as “same-sex marriage,” which has no parallels in the history of human civilization prior to a couple of decades ago, is now legal, or soon-to-be legal. An innovation that was unimaginable 50 years ago now encompasses almost half the population.

No amount of legal maneuvering or appeals to the Constitution could have prevented this.

America was founded on principles of individual liberty that assume man is a creature entirely of this world. The U.S. Constitution left this nation incapable of protecting over the long term the values most Americans once held, and even those most Americans still hold. A social order founded on liberty as the highest good cannot help but devour and destroy the rights of God and lead to social chaos. These judicial decisions will bring enormous and almost unimaginable conflict in their wake. No legal strategy or “conservative” politician will be able to mend those tears in the social fabric.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

It’s simply untrue that America was founded on principles that considers man to be this-worldly only. Why do you think that at the time of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution virtually every State Constitution included a pronouncement of faith in the God of the Bible (God the Father) and Jesus Christ as a condition to full citizenship including the right to serve at any level of government? As one of many examples I could cite.

Moreover, the U.S. Constitution left that arrangement exactly as it found it; that is to say originally it said absolutely nothing about the issue, but later was amended to guarantee that the federal government could in no way interfere with the rights of States to, to paraphrase Jefferson, govern their own citizens morally. The addition of the first amendment was a mistake in my opinion, but it still doesn’t make your accusation against the founders anymore true.

The principle of the “autonomous superman” is alien to the founding generation and became the new founding principle later on, so I think your statement, while technically true, is unfair to the founding generation.

Laura writes:

Too bad you weren’t around during and after the Civil War when a national movement of Protestant leading lights, organized under the banner of the National Reform Association, protested the secular nature of the American government, arguing that it was God-less and anti-Christian in its core principles. Perhaps you could have convinced them otherwise. In a sermon quoted at the NRA’s 1874 convention, the Rev. Horace Bushnell’s said:

It is a remarkable, but very serious fact … that our grand Revolutionary fathers left us the legacy of tho war in the ambiguities of thoughts and principle which they suffered in respect of the foundations of government itself … [T]hey organized a government, such as we, at least, have understood to be without moral or religious ideas; in one view merely a man-made compact…

Proximately our whole difficulty is an issue forced by slavery; but if we go back to the deepest root of the trouble, we shall find that it comes by trying to maintain a government without moral ideas, and concentrate a loyal feeling around institutions that, as many reason, are only human compacts … [Quoted in Liberty: The God that Failed, Christopher Ferrara, Angelico Press, pp. 509-510]

The U.S. Constitution required no one in the new federal government, which by its very nature would eventually overcome the sovereignty of the states and which was in fact a usurpation of the rights of the people, a tiny fraction of whom ratified the Constitution, to conduct himself as a Christian; submit to any recognized, clearly defined Divine Rights; or acknowledge the authority of any religious body. The established churches of the colonies and states rapidly dissolved.

In the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams on June 10, 1797, the reality is openly acknowledged in Article XI:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Mussulmen … it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

In a resolution calling for a “Christian Amendment to the Constitution, the NRA proclaimed:

Resolved that … it is a striking and solemn fact that our present National Constitution is so devoid of any distinctive Christian feature, that one of our Chief Magistrates [Jefferson] once refused to appoint a day of fasting and prayer in an hour of public calamity, because the nation, in its Constitution, recognized no God; and another [John Adams], in contracting a treaty with a Mohammedan power, hesitated not to declare that “the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. It has in itself no character of enmity against the laws and religion of the Mussulmens.”

The NRA added:

The people of the United States are awakening to the fact that the National Constitution is destitute of any explicit acknowledgement of God or the Christian religion. Although it is the fundamental law of a great Christian people, its want of a distinct Christian character has led even such men as Dr. Woolsey, ex-president of Yale College, to state that it would need no change to adapt it to a Mohammedan nation.”

The Founders invented the secular modern nation state which would by the very inner logic of its principles progressively deny human personality in favor of a dehumanizing individualism; submit to the power of money over all things; and impose greater and greater restrictions upon true freedom. As Ferrara writes:

[The Founders] knew they were attempting something never before attempted: the creation of a non-monarchical representative democracy that would profess no religion and be tied to no Church. They knew that they had proceeded by means of “a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society,” as James Madison put it in Federalist No. 14. It was revolution that, as Madison boasted, had established a form of government for which “an exact model did not represent itself” anywhere “on the face of the globe” or in human history, but which, thanks to the courage and vision of the Founders (including himself), had spared America from the fate of “laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind.” But, “Happily for America, we trust, for the whole human race,” the Founders had “pursued a new and more noble course.”

Terry Morris writes:

You’re taking the word of a bunch of post-Civil War, hyper-religious Protestant heretics? :-)

I guess that by “America” you and I form two distinct conceptions. What you say is unmistakably true of the central government and its areligious foundations as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. But “America,” as I conceive it, doesn’t reduce to the federal government and its defunct constitution.

We differ in that whereas I agree with the Founders that the experiment was a worthy one, you disagree and pin the blame for our current woes squarely on their shoulders. I simply don’t buy that since each generation is responsible for its own misdeeds.

We agree, or so I think, that the old question of whether societies of men can, in fact, establish good government by reflection and choice, or of whether they are forever given over to accident and force (See Hamilton, Federalist no. I), has been answered. The experiment has failed, and miserably so, in our generations. But why is that the fault of the Founders? Are we not responsible to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling? Did our Founders not warn us that ours was a form of government intended only for a moral and a religious people?

Laura writes:

You’re taking the word of a bunch of post-Civil War, hyper-religious Protestant heretics? :-)

There, you see. I’m not such a bigot after all. : – )

This entry was about governmental decisions and so it was entirely appropriate for me to address the foundations of our government. Nevertheless, I would say the vast majority of Americans subscribe to the idea of complete separation of Church and State. In this, they are grossly untutored, having been propagandized most of their lives to believe all that “We the People” stuff and that the American government is the embodiment of freedom. Many conservatives sincerely believe we can somehow rationally persuade the people to embrace traditional morality and thus bring about a cultural revolution. That’s not possible as long as the government is secular. We are social creatures. The State, especially the modern nation state which operates under the camouflage of representative democracy, directs many facets of our lives.

No, I don’t put the blame entirely on the shoulders of the Founders. They inherited the cause and were influenced by the prominent thinkers of their time. While they could have rejected it, they were products of a certain culture too. And, yes, each generation is responsible for its misdeeds and the American people could have revolted against the new order. But, again, we are social creatures. And in any event, they didn’t reject it. They didn’t reject it, partly because they truly thought it was possible to have secular freedom and partly because while they thought God was important they didn’t think he was important enough to have recognized rights over society.

Did our Founders not warn us that ours was a form of government intended only for a moral and a religious people?

They did indeed acknowledge that it was intended for a “moral and religious people.” Those “moral and religious people” included Anglicans, Puritans, Protestants of numerous other differing sects, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and now Buddhists, Hindus, and everything else. Given that all these “moral and religious people” believe in different gods and differ about the most elementary aspects of Divine Order, the only way a country can represent and affirm them all (as opposed to tolerating them all while at the same time affirming one established creed and one teaching authority in religious matters) is by not serving God at all. Or by paying him very lovely lip service now and then while denying him any real recognition in practical affairs.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

It seems to me that the difference between Terry Morris and yourself boils down to what it means to say that America is “a Christian nation.” In my view you have the better of the argument.

Morris objects that the first generation of American citizens held to a deeply Christian civic culture, and cites one example, of which he says many more could be cited. In fact one could cite a practically limitless number of examples, for the simple reason that the generation of 1776 was possessed of much greater Christian conviction than later generations. As recently as seventy years ago, what we call “the Christian consensus” carried far greater force in society, generally speaking, than it does today, and one could find innumerable demonstrations of this fact in public documents, public ceremony, and so forth.

But in saying all of this, Mr. Morris gets absolutely not one whit closer to establishing that America was founded on “Christian principles,” whatever that may mean. To establish that fact one would have to read the U.S. Constitution itself, which as you point out, and which even contemporary observers of the day noticed, was intentionally devoid of any reference to transcendent authority. No subsequent attempt to clarify or remedy this defect has had the slightest chance of success.

Now, there is of course a nearly undeniable case to be made that the U.S. Constitution and the republican form of government in general would have been inconceivable in any context outside Western Christendom. It is to this general truth that people usually refer when they say that America must have been “founded on Christian principles.” We may have in mind such things as the basic separation of secular and religious spheres of authority. But this misses the more important point that the Founders, to stick with the present example, pursued more than a mere distinction between religious and secular law, going as far to establish a government that was literally godless and did not acknowledge any transcendent authority whatever. There is nothing “Christian” in this principle, except in the same sense that there was something “Christian” about the Gnostics.

The promise of a “government of laws, not men” is utterly hollow in such a context, where the government declares itself utterly unconstrained by any higher law than that which men might devise. Moreover, it’s worth noting that our vaunted commitment to freedom from religious persecution by the federal government had to be inserted into the Constitution by amendment, and that the original scheme devised by Madison contained no explicit protection for Christians freely to practice their faith whatsoever. Whatever one may say of the political feasibility of this or that, the very same amendment process could nullify overnight what the Supreme Court, with its remarkably broad-based and open-ended writ to interpret the law, has mercilessly gutted over the course of a few short decades.

In reality, there is nothing in the American Founding or in the text of the U.S. Constitution itself that could have prevented this and, as your citations make plain, the Founders themselves knew it very well. It is true that the early Americans were still a Christian people, and this was reflected in their customs, but the fact is that the Founding itself was an act of world-historical hubris: it sought to constrain the evil of men’s hearts through the genius of a man-made scheme, i.e., the delicate separation of powers. This scheme reflected in some distant way the patrimony of Christendom, but it nevertheless did represent a revolt against divine authority.

Laura writes:

I will only add to Mr. McLaughlin’s excellent points that the institution of marriage and patriarchal authority were both strongly at risk from the very onset of the Revolutionary process because of the ideals the Founders embraced. It is no accident that, according to Gordon Wood, author of the The Radicalism of the American Revolution, all but one of the states liberalized their divorce laws shortly after the Revolution. It is no accident that America has led the world in marital divorce. Estate laws were also subsequently liberalized to erode paternal authority.

John Locke, whose ideas are universally recognized as influential upon the American Founding, wrote approvingly not only of divorce, but of polygamy. His writings, in their laissez faire approach to morality, are a veritable manifesto for innovations such as same-sex “marriage.” “For Liberty is to be free from restraints and violence from others,” he wrote. And freedom means that every man may “dispose and order, as he lists, his Person, Actions, Possessions and his whole Property.” [Both quotes from Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.]

We are indeed witnessing the unfolding of the ideas inherent in the Founding.

Laura adds:

Before anybody writes to me to tell me I am anti-American (as someone always does when one dares to criticize the Founders, who are considered demi-gods), I will preemptively say that I categorically reject the charge and ask that you prove that what I have said is false. If I hated America, I would care less what has become of it.

Mr. Morris writes:

Your last reply to me is very well said, and all your points very well taken. Thank you! I agree fully with your expanded assessment.

Shlomo Maistre writes:

You make a number of excellent points. I’d like to offer a few suitably contentious (one can hope!) thoughts on the matters discussed.

The founding of the United States was a thoroughly Protestant endeavor. That the founders sought to permanently enshrine in a written document the rights, laws, processes of the government far more ably demonstrates the Protestant ethos of America’s founding than does the simple fact that but a single Catholic signed the Declaration of Independence. An elaboration is in order.

Human history shows us that laws are only ever written to defend the ends towards which they serve. Where symmetrical understanding is mutually recognized, writing is superfluous and wisely omitted. Where trust is breached, writing is necessary and wisely obliged but limited so much as possible. Writing is always and everywhere both the symptom and effect of disorder. Given man’s fallen nature, writing is eventually inevitable in a broad sense, but in considering any single human institution the proliferation of written documents – containing laws or plans, agreements or opinions – is a telltale sign of its decline.

Oh, how many laws modern America has! Our tax code alone should make Thomas Jefferson spin in his grave!

A written law, properly defined, has never existed* and never will. While written law that is overtly religious in nature may, in however impure terms, constitute the semblance of real law, most written law is mere human ordinance – to be constructed, deconstructed, obeyed, and remade at will. This aspect of reality is not only ignored by Protestantism (at its peril) but even is Protestantism – at its core.

The U.S. Constitution is written in the precise, exact language an engineer might dictate the dimensions of an engine to be constructed – as if, were a single word misplaced, the whole edifice of governance might collapse. Such an approach to governance betrays a naiveté dwarfed by few rebellions against hierarchy – and, yes, the American Revolution was a rebellion against rightful and just authority.

Only the naive and misguided actually think a piece of paper rules, for the whole of human history betrays not a single exception to this universal law: only men govern men.

Paper is nothing.

* As Joseph de Maistre stated beautifully and accurately:

To this general rule, that no constitution can be made or written, à priori, we know of but one single exception; that is, the legislation of Moses. This alone was cast, so to speak, like a statue, and written out, even to its minutest details, by a wonderful man, who said, Fiat! without his work ever having need of being corrected, improved, or in any way modified, by himself or others. This, alone, has set time at defiance, because it owed nothing to time, and expected nothing from it; this alone has lived fifteen hundred years; and even after eighteen new centuries have passed over it, since the great anathema which smote it on the fated day, we see it, enjoying, if I may say so, a second life, binding still, by I know not what mysterious bond, which has no human name, the different families of a people, which remain dispersed without being disunited. So that, like attraction, and by the same power, it acts at a distance, and makes one whole, of many parts widely separated from each other. Thus, this legislation lies evidently, for every intelligent conscience, beyond the circle traced around human power; and this magnificent exception to a general law, which has only yielded once, and yielded only to its Author, alone demonstrates the Divine mission of the great Hebrew Lawgiver….

Laura writes:

Thank you.

I would disagree that the American founding was thoroughly a Protestant endeavor. It spelled out the ultimate end of Protestantism as the reigning ethic of America. It was also largely a product of Enlightenment and Masonic thinking.

You write:

That’s well said. No human laws can entirely represent Divine Law. That’t why we need the teaching authority of a divine, supernatural society, which is the Church.

Buck writes:

I’m not understanding a good bit of this, beginning with “A social order founded on liberty…devour and destroy the rights of God…”. Rights are moral or legal or birthright entitlements that are conferred or are recognized and assumed as natural or God given, either negative or postive, and only to man. Who or what confers or denies rights to God? To God?

Nothing rises to the level of God, not the highest of churches or faiths or ideas. No church and no form of government can properly govern men. My sense is that the Founders knew that as well as the collective wisdom of man had so far determined. What is the best arrangement demonstrated and proven to date? Throne and alter? A perfect king?

Human weakness failed our founding, not the attempted new reordering scheme. What exactly is the perfect form of government? I don’t think that man can ever properly govern himself. So, what now?

It seems to me that, since God is perfect, that it is in “the law” that we must find the perfection that we seek as men. How? Within the law all the conflicts and contradictions of men come to life, so perfecting it is the solution. It must be ruthless, just and compassionate at the same time. How do we get to perfect law? It already exists, doesn’t it? It must. If man is to ever govern himself properly, he has to discover it. Is that really in the cards? Wouldn’t we all have to be gods?

Laura writes:

Human society will always be imperfect, just as human beings are always imperfect. Nothing will ever change that. But just as Divine Law is the principle of order in the soul, it is the principle of order in society too. Just as there is a big difference in the lives of those who try to love and obey God as he is, there is a big difference in societies that recognize the one true God and the teaching authority of the Church.

Bill R. writes:

I could not agree with Buck more when he writes, “Nothing rises to the level of God, not the highest of churches or faiths or ideas. No church and no form of government can properly govern men. My sense is that the Founders knew that as well as the collective wisdom of man had so far determined.”

Indeed, I believe they did. Laura wrote earlier in this thread that, “The U.S. Constitution left this nation incapable of protecting over the long term the values most Americans once held, and even those most Americans still hold.” The point she is missing is that that is precisely the kind of constitution the Founders intended. The Founders self-consciously eschewed the notion of government attempting to play such a role because they believed such a role would lead to tyranny, and even at the price of accepting tyranny, they still knew that no government can protect those values if they have vanished from the hearts and souls of the people themselves. To speak of a political constitution that protects the people’s values is to stand the notion on its head; it is to suggest that our values should proceed from our constitution rather than the other way around.

Our values have not been assaulted from without but from within ourselves. To protect them in this case is, therefore, to ask an outside force to protect us from ourselves. Protecting those values is for the people themselves to do from the same place from which they have been lost, from within, for that is where they exist. They don’t exist in our outward culture, in our public buildings, our monuments, libraries, museums, or in our history, even our churches; those are cherished reminders and symbols of the values that live within us, but they are not the values themselves. Surely there are social institutions that encourage people to cherish and guard those values and their cultural reminders and symbols; but no government can force those values to remain in the hearts of the people if the people have chosen to let them go. And the Founders knew their history, too; they knew about other civilizations that disintegrated from inward decay, like Rome. But they also knew that if such were to happen to their people, then or in generations hence, no piece of paper, nor the various enforcement arms of government acting in its name, would be able to reign the people in nor return to them the moral compass they had lost.

The Founders had a much more limited concept of government, and as Buck hinted, it came from a well of deep and hard-earned collective human wisdom. Since they determined that no constitution, nor any government it is founded on, can protect the people’s values from the people themselves, they sought to construct a government that would essentially stay out of the way of the people as much as possible in order to let them work out their own salvation yet still provide them with a focus for their sense of nationhood and a blueprint for social order and cooperation and a sense of civilizational continuity from generation to generation. If the people chose, however, not to work out their own salvation within such a virtuously modest political framework, or to even work against their own salvation, again, no constitution, they knew, could protect them from that. Such a thing, they felt, was far beyond the design limits of any tolerable government. And I believe they were right. They weren’t right about everything, but they were right about that.

Laura further writes, “[b]ut just as Divine Law is the principle of order in the soul, it is the principle of order in society too.” That may well be true, but until the day when God himself decides to govern man directly, all such government by “Divine Law” must inevitably mean government not by Divine Law at all, but rather by various of our fellow men interpreting Divine Law for the rest of us. That means human law, not Divine Law. This is where the problem arises, because the only question that’s left then is, what kind of human law and what humans are going to write it? Therefore, until such time as God himself governs, or at least until such time as all men can agree on the same interpretation of Divine Law, governments will do best accepting a more limited role in human affairs, the smallest that is practicable, in fact.

In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe wrote, “Intolerance does not arise when I think that I have found the truth. Rather it comes about only when I think that, because I have found it, everyone else should agree with me.” I would add that what also arises from that thought is the belief that government should pursue the role of collective conscience of the people, and also the temptation to look to government to somehow save the people from themselves and protect their values for them after they have elected not to do so any longer themselves. But to the temptations for such a government I would repeat another reply once given to a similar temptation; “Get thee hence, Satan.” For what Satan had essentially done in that third and final temptation was to offer Jesus the chance to be Caesar — a king of all the kingdoms of the world; a Hitler, let us say, who won the world war; in other words, a collective conscience for all mankind. But Christ rejected the notion of such enforced love for that love of him, instead, that was freely chosen. And it was that Christian theme — love freely chosen — that, I believe, inspired our Founders in their quest to establish a government that was also freely chosen.

You cannot solve the problem of decadence and moral decay by collectivizing conscience. The truth and beauty of conscience is that it is an entity special to the individual human being, and his most prized possession; with life itself, God’s greatest gift. This is the whole point of the unmediated individual relationship with God; God put that conscience in each individual human soul for a reason, with the expectation that that hallowed instrument would be the method of communication with the Divine. But that means that the connection between God and man is established through each individual separately. The link between this notion and that of a government respecting the dignity of the individual human being above all should be obvious.

Collectivizing conscience is what the Nazis and the Bolsheviks tried to do. Oh yes, I know, they had the wrong concept of the good. Indeed they did. But that wasn’t their only mistake, nor was it the only bad thing about them. Equally bad if not worse than the concept they had was the notion that the good of the concept itself justified imposing it on their fellow man by any means necessary. If it was the highest good — and they thought is was — then why would not any means necessary to bring it about be justified?

In the words of historian Paul Johnson, “The individual conscience is the most precious gift humanity possesses. A political creed which respects it — whatever evil it may otherwise do or stand for — is inherently healthy, for it contains within it a self-correcting mechanism. But in a system where conscience is collectivised, there is no dependable barrier along the highway which ultimately may lead to Auschwitz and Gulag. I do not intend to travel even one miserable inch along that fearful road.”

I submit that one cannot have such a politic creed and also look to political constitutions or governments to “protect” the people’s values from the people themselves. That is not only to invite tyranny but futility as well.

Laura writes:

You are misrepresenting my words.

I never said the Church should be the government. I spoke of government recognizing the eternal laws of which the Church – the true Catholic Church as represented in its indefectible dogmas — is the guardian in ever changing circumstances. The idea that “nothing rises to the level of God” is an outright rejection of Christian theology. Prayer rises to God. Worship and adoration rise to God. The Eucharist is God manifesting himself in nature. The sacraments rise to God, conferring sanctifying grace and illumination so that men are guided and their intellects are enlightened, however incompletely, by God. What do these activities have to do with government? All these activities that are part of a human relation with the supernatural preserve the Church’s wisdom so that it remains the eminent guardian of eternal law established by Christ himself.

You say, “no church and no form of government can properly govern men (emphasis mine).” Really? Well, then whatever the Founders were doing, it certainly wasn’t proper if no form of government can properly govern men.

Perhaps you mean no form of government can perfectly govern men. I said the same thing.

Indeed, I believe they [the Founders] did.

Ah, so in other words, you believe there can be a proper form of government.

Laura wrote earlier in this thread that, “The U.S. Constitution left this nation incapable of protecting over the long term the values most Americans once held, and even those most Americans still hold.” The point she is missing is that that is precisely the kind of constitution the Founders intended. The Founders self-consciously eschewed the notion of government attempting to play such a role because they believed such a role would lead to tyranny, and even at the price of accepting tyranny, they still knew that no government can protect those values if they have vanished from the hearts and souls of the people themselves.

A government that does not recognize immutable justice and the good necessarily leads to tyranny. A government that does not recognize that all authority ultimately derives from God cannot foster true freedom. True freedom consists in conforming one’s actions to order and reality.

Please don’t misunderstand what it means to say that all authority derives from God. It does not mean that those in authority are God. It does not mean that those in political authority should be clerics. It does not mean that those in authority are infallible. It means that those in positions of civil authority could not possess any authority whatsoever without the sanction of God, who is the ruler of the universe and at any moment in time can influence the course of political affairs.

When Jesus came before Pilate, he stated very simply this evident fact that all authority comes from above, not below. “Thou shouldst not have any power against me unless it were given Thee from above.”

As far as no government being able to protect values if they vanish from the hearts and souls of the people, that is absolutely true, and does not contradict anything I have said, but it is also true that no government can preserve justice and morality by simply relying on the individual hearts and minds of men because human beings have a social existence and derive many of their ideas and habits from the social institutions that govern them.

To speak of a political constitution that protects the people’s values is to stand the notion on its head; it is to suggest that our values should proceed from our constitution rather than the other way around.

You did not read what I wrote. I did not say all moral values should be spelled out in the Constitution. I said values should be protected by the teaching authority of the Church, and governments are obligated to recognize this authority because it comes from God.

The idea that we are not formed by our institutions is just so plainly ridiculous, I don’t believe you even believe it because you wouldn’t be a reader of this website if you believed it. Virtually every single day, I post something that shows how people are formed by institutions. Certainly, we are not completely formed by social institutions, but we are partly and significantly formed by them. If people are not formed by institutions, then can you please tell me how it just happens to be that millions of people today embrace common values and ways of life. Did they all just simultaneously happen, in their individual hearts and souls, to come upon the exact same ideas? Wow, that’s one heck of a coincidence. And why in the past, was the common mentality so different from today? You mean those people just all individually came to believe, for instance, that racial and cultural differences were real?

And the Founders knew their history, too; they knew about other civilizations that disintegrated from inward decay, like Rome. But they also knew that if such were to happen to their people, then or in generations hence, no piece of paper, nor the various enforcement arms of government acting in its name, would be able to reign the people in nor return to them the moral compass they had lost.

So you’re saying that if the government could not supersede the moral authority of the Church and could not institutionalize things such as abortion, divorce (as opposed to marital separation in serious cases of conflict), contraception, affirmative action, welfare for unwed mothers, socialized medicine, lenience for criminals, things would be no different. Well, I entirely disagree. I believe Americans would never have accepted the transformation of their nation by mass immigration from dissimilar cultures if they really had sizeable families to provide for and were not living a largely hedonistic lifestyle leading to demographic oblivion.

The Founders had a much more limited concept of government, and as Buck hinted, it came from a well of deep and hard-earned collective human wisdom.

I’m not sure what you mean by “The Founders had a much more limited concept of government.” I wasn’t talking about bigger government. I was talking about the premises of government and the recognition of supernatural authority. But now that you brought it up, the Founders did not believe in limited government. No, sir-ee, they did not. The idea that they did is just pure mythology. After all, when they came together supposedly to modify the Articles of Confederation they created a whole new government that no one had foreseen and that had the authority to tax the entire country, borrow and spend, pay debts, mint money, regulate all interstate and foreign commerce, raise an army and navy, declare and wage war, conduct foreign affairs, enter into nationally-binding treaties with foreign powers, form a federal judiciary, establish state militias to put down rebellions and doing anything that it deems will “promote the general welfare.” Limited government, my foot. As Ferrara, who mentions all this, added, “in case the Framers had missed something, Congress was further authorized to pass any laws deemed ‘necessary and proper’ to execute the powers granted by the Constitution, with all of this legislation constituting the ‘supreme law of the land’ overriding state states, judicial decisions and constitutions.”

And all this is done with no guidance from the one institution in the world that derives its authority from God, not human beings. It’s all subject to human caprice.

Since they determined that no constitution, nor any government it is founded on, can protect the people’s values from the people themselves, they sought to construct a government that would essentially stay out of the way of the people as much as possible in order to let them work out their own salvation yet still provide them with a focus for their sense of nationhood and a blueprint for social order and cooperation and a sense of civilizational continuity from generation to generation.

“Stay out of the way?” As has already been noted, they created a government that would control many aspects of every single American’s life.

I already answered this point but I will say it again. I was not talking about the abolition of human law, but the limits of human lawmakers. The affairs of the government, whatever form it takes (and the form created by the Founders did have definite virtues), are the temporal matters of man and government should inhabit its own proper sphere. But these temporal affairs are often related to moral issues and are every bit as subject to Divine Law as the most intimate matters of private life.

But to the temptations for such a government I would repeat another reply once given to a similar temptation; “Get thee hence, Satan.” For what Satan had essentially done in that third and final temptation was to offer Jesus the chance to be Caesar — a king of all the kingdoms of the world; a Hitler, let us say, who won the world war; in other words, a collective conscience for all mankind. But Christ rejected the notion of such enforced love for that love of him, instead, that was freely chosen. And it was that Christian theme — love freely chosen — that, I believe, inspired our Founders in their quest to establish a government that was also freely chosen.

So in other words, you believe the Christian kingdoms of the past, where order and civilization existed at a vastly superior level to what we have now, (I am not by the way advocating monarchy or any specific form of government) were Satanic. I don’t agree. Also, I’m afraid Christ did not accept the idea that the law and prophets could simply be ignored and disobeyed. He made it quite clear that there are eternal ramifications to disobedience.

As for “collectivizing conscience,” I am afraid it has already been done. Don’t you live in modern-day America? Also, you seem to believe I am talking about forcing people to worship. I never made the slightest suggestion of such a thing. I’m not talking about the individual’s interior relation to God or his religious practices. I am talking about the basis of civil authority.

Now here you are truly stepping into the realm of the outrageous. Could you please find parallels in Christian civilization with Nazi and Bolshevik mass atrocities? In fact, what we find is that as civilization has moved farther from the concept of the supernatural basis of authority, humanity has experienced previously unimaginable tyranny and cruelty.

Again, you are jumping to conclusions that were not in my words. I never said the slightest thing about forcing private individuals to believe anything or banning variety in worship. And the idea that if the Church’s indirect authority was recognized we would see more Auschwitz’s and Gulag is just outrageous.

Here’s the bottom line: our government already operates upon theological premises. Every government does. I am insisting on recognizing this truth and replacing the pantheistic deification of man with the rights of God because only these rights can bring about optimal, not utopian, freedom for human beings.

Mr. Morris writes:

To Buck’s objection I would simply say that God has/possesses a divine right to govern the affairs of His creatures. No one “confers” that right on Him, it it his by virtue of his Sovereignty.

Societies of men either do or don’t acknowledge God’s divine authority over them, and Laura has simply said that the founders did not (formally) acknowledge divine authority in forming the United States, whereas they did formally acknowledge the authority of “The People” as the highest authority recognized by the U.S. Constitution. That being the case it was inevitable that we’d ultimately wind up where we are today. I am persuaded to agree.

Also, I note that in Mr. McLaughlin’s excellent commentary on the subject I am said to be arguing that America was “founded on Christian principles.” In fact this is not the case. Now, not so awful long ago he would have been right, I would have made that argument. But I wouldn’t make it today and wasn’t making it when I presented my original objection, which was merely that Laura had misrepresented the facts as to whether or not the Founders established America on a purely “this-wordly” only basis or principle with man as the highest authority and “liberty” as the highest good. I recant that objection.

As to the charge of “anti-Americanism” that always gets leveled whenever one criticizes the Founders. I for one own that I am “anti-American” in the sense that the Nancy Pelosi’s of the world would have it. Firebrand Ann Barnhardt often refers to the current United States as the “iniquitous gutter-republic,” which I find to be quite accurate. It is this very feature of America that the iniquitous gutter-representative, Ms. Pelosi, et al, finds so appealing about America. If the new definition of “anti-American(ism)” means that we’re not allowed to look for causes (particularly when we find them in the founding generation) for the evil that has swept the nation in modern times, then it shames me not to admit that I am anti-American in the fullest sense of the term.

Laura writes:

Well said. I don’t see how anyone, looking at the magnitude of the problems we face, could not suspect a systemic failure. Again, that is not to say there weren’t great virtues in the American framework. There were, and there still are.

Rusty writes:

A couple of items. First, if the United States were founded on Christian principles, would it really have prevented the rot we see all around us today? The Church was founded on Christianity itself and yet it is highly corrupted.

A second, related, point is that liberalism will undoubtedly produce ill effects on any society. However, what we have seen in the West, especially in the U.S., since the 1960’s is a condition where radical changes have been forcefully and consistently pushed onto the population by a tiny indefatigable and implacable minority. These changes happened much too fast to have been caused by liberalism alone; there had to have been a prime mover behind all of these movements. That group used liberalism as a weapon to destroy the West.

Laura writes:

Just to clarify, we’re not talking about a republic founded on Christian principles, but about one that recognizes the supranational authority of the Church and its role in indirectly influencing civil affairs through changing circumstances and fostering the development of distinctive nations, in the way it fosters the development of separate human personalities. The Church itself is incorruptible; the human beings within it are not. The body of faith, its truths and dogmas, is indefectible. Anyone who rejects the faith is not of the Church. No, I don’t think we would have seen anything like the rot we see today. Also, the apostasy of the Western nations and the forces which have encouraged this apostasy arguably play a major role in the prevalent Vatican II heresies.

Yes, the opposition is organized, well-funded, stealthy and committed to destroying every vestige of Christian government. It also has a supernatural dimension. It’s pretty unrealistic to think it could be defeated by disparate, individualistic sects that come to gather to form some vaguely “Christian” polity.

May 29, 2014

Bill R. writes:

[Note: This comment came in a few days ago, but I didn’t have the time to read it in its entirety.]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply and the obvious time and care you took composing it.

You write, “The idea that ‘nothing rises to the level of God’ is an outright rejection of Christian theology.” No it isn’t. Buck is absolutely right. Only God rises to the level of God, period. Prayer may reach God, but that is not the same as rising to his level. But I don’t want to get tangled up in theological semantics. I didn’t parse Buck’s words. I took his point to mean essentially that we must always bear in mind the imperfect nature of human affairs and undertakings as opposed to the Divine, and the danger that is often encountered when human interpretation of the Divine is taken for the Divine itself.

You write, “So in other words, you believe the Christian kingdoms of the past, where order and civilization existed at a vastly superior level to what we have now, (I am not by the way advocating monarchy or any specific form of government) were Satanic.” You have completely missed my point. What I was trying to say was simply that none of us are immune to the temptations of power. Even Christ himself wasn’t. That is a lesson in Christian humility for us all, for Christ successfully resisted that temptation, but that was Christ. Can the rest of us be sure we will be as strong? And the danger of the temptation to power is not always because it’s somebody who lusts for power; the success of the seduction may reside in convincing us that we are assuming this power for good. At the end of that paragraph you write, “He made it quite clear that there are eternal ramifications to disobedience.” Indeed. “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” If you don’t choose him, you cannot come unto the Father. Nevertheless, you are free to choose.

You write, “The idea that we are not formed by our institutions is just so plainly ridiculous, I don’t believe you even believe it because you wouldn’t be a reader of this website if you believed it.” I never said anything like that. I would suggest you reread the paragraph. Formed? I never even used the word. I said our values don’t exist in those institutions. I didn’t say we weren’t formed, in part, by them. However, I don’t think we are formed much by them. Rather, it is much, much more the case that the formation that is already there is effected and reinforced by our institutions. I think most of our formation, especially our values, comes from our parents and our peers and our social interactions as we’re growing up, and some would say directly from God. Our values don’t exist in those institution, but of course they are effected and influenced by them, enormously. Actually, that’s not altogether correct either. I don’t think, for example, that your values, Laura, are effected at all by our institutions and what’s been happening to them. Your values are rock solid. You are effected by our institutions and their corruption, of course, as are we all, but your values are not, let alone have they been formed by them. Some people’s values, however, are clearly effected by the corruption of our institutions. I think culture, when it’s healthy, along with its institutions, functions mainly to reinforce and validate the values of the people that are already there. I think that’s how culture gets created in the first place. Like art, it’s an expression, or manifestation, of something that already exists and has already been formed. But it’s the artist that creates or forms the art (institutions) from what already exists within him. The art does not form the artist.

You write, “Virtually every single day, I post something that shows how people are formed by institutions.” That’s not why I visit your site. I visit it to read how we are effected by our institutions, particularly how we are effected by the corruption of those institutions (such as marriage), and how the traditional morality we cherish is assaulted by such corruption.

You write, “And all this is done with no guidance from the one institution in the world that derives its authority from God, not human beings.” You mean the one that’s currently headed by the guy you routinely call a fraud? If that is what you mean, if you mean the Roman Catholic Church, I categorically reject the outrageous notion that that institution is the one institution in the world that derives its authority from God. And, yes, of course that notion is outrageous to me, Laura, as it must be; I’m a Protestant. And I’m a Protestant in a country full of Protestants. I don’t know how you imagine such an “indirect authority of the Church” working. Perhaps you imagine the disenfranchisement of the entire non-Catholic population of America. (Then those left who can vote can elect Catholics like Ted Kennedy who led the charge in 1965 to open our borders to unrestricted Third World immigration and remained to his dying day a champion of infanticide on demand.) Or perhaps you imagine allowing no one, Catholic, Protestant, or other, the right to vote on issues that have already been decided by church authority and remain under its purview.

In reply to my comment beginning “Collectivizing conscience is what the Nazis and the Bolsheviks tried to do,” you write, “Now here you are truly stepping into the realm of the outrageous. Could you please find parallels in Christian civilization with Nazi and Bolshevik mass atrocities? In fact, what we find is that as civilization has moved farther from the concept of the supernatural basis of authority, humanity has experienced previously unimaginable tyranny and cruelty.” Am I really stepping into the realm of the outrageous? That very statement of yours suggests a sense of immunity from evil (I don’t mean you personally) that in itself enhances the very danger I’m talking about. The more immune one thinks one is from evil (oh, we could never be like the pagan Nazis or the atheist Bolsheviks because we believe in God!), the more vulnerable to temptation one is.

There are a couple of further points I’d like to make in response to this. First of all, Cortes and the Spanish Catholics did a pretty good job of genocide on the Caribbean basin a few centuries back. It was so bad, in fact, they were condemned even by one of their own. On page 204 of his book Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson writes, “The great critic of Spanish imperialism in the New World, Dominican friar Bartoleme de Las Casas, railed against the ‘forty years’ (1502-42) in which a handful of his countrymen, through military conquest, disease, and economic exploitation, had wiped out the population of the Caribbean basin.” Wiped out the population of the Caribbean basin. Then, let’s see, there were all the heretics burned at the stake — ad majorem gloriam Dei, of course! (Wasn’t it always?) Then there were isolated atrocities such as the one immortalized by that great English Puritan, John Milton, in his sonnet “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” in which an estimated 2,000 Waldensians were murdered in 1655 for refusing to convert to Catholicism and included looting, rape, and torture. Not a large number, perhaps, but one wonders with some incredulity if there had been more to begin with, would the count of the dead have ended where it did?

Secondly, when you speak of a “supernatural basis of authority,” I cannot come back to this point often enough: Since God does not govern directly, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — that can be done on the level of human law and government (which is what we’re talking about) that is not a non-supernatural, human interpretation of the supernatural. And no, I am not a relativist. I have no doubt that some of those interpretations are correct and true and speak accurately of Divine wishes and intentions. And others I believe are not. Many are a mix, having some things right and some not. (Obviously, the bigger the moral issue, such as “murder is wrong,” the more the various interpretations will agree.) And that is the problem in human governance; achieving a consensus that people who live under the same political jurisdiction can accept. And I have to make a decision as to how far I would be willing to go, if I had the power, and based on my conviction that I am in possession of the truth, in compelling my fellow citizens to abide by and obey the interpretation I believe is the correct one. (I have to also ask myself, by the way, is it necessary for the maintenance of peaceful social order, the main role of government, that my fellow citizens agree with my interpretation of supernatural authority?) And my answer is, I am not willing to go any distance along that way at all because I believe it is neither necessary nor wise for government to attempt to represent and enforce a specific interpretation of supernatural authority or Divine Law. I believe it is enough if government provides, as I said earlier, “a focus for [the people’s] sense of nationhood and a blueprint for social order and cooperation and a sense of civilizational continuity from generation to generation.”

You write, “you seem to believe I am talking about forcing people to worship.” Laura, the problem has been and remains that I really don’t know what you have in mind when it comes to the kind of government you would prefer or advocate. One simply doesn’t know. But I will say this much. You have said enough (or not enough, I should say), here and elsewhere, to leave one seriously wondering whether or not that’s what you have in mind, and what, for example, a Laura Wood’s America would have in store for “unrepentant” Protestants like me unwilling to convert to the “one true faith.” I don’t think that’s what you have in mind, but I don’t know. (Or at least I didn’t; you have clarified a little along those lines in this latest reply.) I haven’t thought that’s what you had in mind because those would be brutal measures and I know you are not a brutal human being. But, the problem is, when people believe they are in possession of the “one true religion,” they sincerely may not regard such measures, even tyranny itself, as brutal. If one honestly believes that such measures are actually saving the person’s very soul, which, then, becomes the more brutal act; taking such measures or not taking them?

You write, “‘Stay out of the way?’ As has already been noted, they created a government that would control many aspects of every single American’s life.” Well, you’re entitled to think the Founders created a Hobbesian Leviathan when our constitution was ratified. I disagree. I don’t think they got everything right by any means, but their accomplishment was, on the whole, great and admirable. I think they had a difficult task; human government always has been, especially when men are moral and feel constrained and limited by that morality. The Founders attempted to strike a balance between the disunity inherent in no central government at all and the great risk of tyranny in one that was too strong, and which, indeed, I agree, did become too strong in the decades immediately following the end of the War for Southern Independence (improperly known otherwise as the Civil War).

You write, “I already answered this point but I will say it again. I was not talking about the abolition of human law, but the limits of human lawmakers.” That’s not enough. With all due respect, I don’t believe that is answering the point. It’s easy to take pot shots at somebody else’s creation; so let’s hear how — exactly how — you would do it. The nuts and bolts of it. You’ve been picking away at the rusty nuts and bolts, as it were, in our Founders’ edifice; it’s time to have a look at the ones you would use.

And, by the way, when it comes to nuts and bolts, phrases like “the Church’s indirect authority,” “the limits of human lawmakers,” “Divine Law… is the principle of order in society,” just don’t do it. Those are vague generalities. They obscure more than they reveal. What we need to know is how things would operate down here at street level, in the day-to-day comings and goings of ourselves and our fellow citizens. The problem with phrases like “the Church’s indirect authority” is also that most people can agree with them and, therefore, rightly suspect that that’s not the whole story, because it can’t be. They know that the devil is going to be in details and they have a very healthy desire to know what this devil looks like before they decide to join up.

(Just as an aside, what do you think most people would say when confronted with words like, “if the Church’s indirect authority was recognized…?” My guess is, the first thing they’re going to ask is, whose church? There, indeed, will the devil be in details, for some people’s churches are other people’s devils. And, yes, for some people that devil is the Roman Catholic church. I don’t feel that way about the Catholic church, but some, and I mean Christians, regard it as the very presence on earth of the antichrist.)

Now, I understand one has the right to criticize something (such as Darwinism, for example) without it being incumbent upon that person to offer something else in its place. I’ve done so myself on many occasions. But you have already done more than just criticize. You have offered (or at least suggested) something in place of the political edifice our Founders erected, you’ve just offered it with little or no specifics. For that reason, one doesn’t really know what you’re advocating. Therefore, when one appears to guess at it, they run the risk of “misunderstanding you.” Actually I wasn’t even guessing at it because you have provided too few specifics to even do that. What I have done, however, is to begin with one of your vague generalizations (like the comment about “Divine Law”) and then attempted to extrapolate from that to a general principle of government that other people have had in mind when they’ve used such phrases and then, from there, to criticize that principle. This immediately generates from you the charge that I have “misunderstood” or “misrepresented” you. If I have misunderstood or misrepresenting or poorly articulated anything, it is the principle I’ve extrapolated from some of your phrases. So let me offer this disclaimer once and for all; until more specifics on the kind of government you’re advocating are forthcoming, what I say should not be construed as a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of you but of forms of government others have advocated. I confess in all humility, I have absolutely no idea what kind of government you’re advocating. Therefore I cannot be misrepresenting you, since there is as yet nothing substantive on this topic from you to misrepresent.

You write, “As for ‘collectivizing conscience,’ I am afraid it has already been done.” Now, on that, we are in absolutely agreement. My goodness, surely nothing that I said could have fairly been construed as an endorsement of the present regime!

You write, “And the idea that if the Church’s indirect authority was recognized we would see more Auschwitz’s and Gulag is just outrageous.” Well, if it is ever recognized, let’s hope you’re right. As I suggested earlier, it would come down to exactly what form this “indirect authority” would take, and you have as yet left that unrevealed. But I’ll say this much. There is already a suspicious smell to the phrase “indirect authority.” The phrase is almost self-contradictory, in fact. Think about it; just how “indirect” can a power be and still exercise real authority? The more indirect it is, the less authority; the more authority, the less indirect it can be. So how do these two competing concepts balance out for you? Again, what are things going to be like at street level (at least as you envision them; not, mind you, that that’s necessarily how it would really end up)? We just don’t know. At least not yet.

Laura writes:

Let me rephrase a few, not all, of your points for brevity’s sake, and respond as briefly as I can:

1. All human power is corruptible and therefore any effort to establish a supernatural basis to human authority is hubris.

I thought I covered this point adequately above but I will restate what I tried to say. I am essentially talking about the effects of sanctifying grace on human judgment and behavior. A human being who accepts in his personal life God’s rights as defined by the Church will surely not be a perfect person, but he will be a better person than he would have been without any submission to God. Similarly, when a society acknowledges Divine authority as the basis of human authority, it opens itself to the workings of sanctifying grace.

The essence of modern liberalism is to deny that man has a social existence and to leave all essential matters and rules of life up to individual judgment. Of course, it is obvious that human beings cannot figure things out on their own. They always look to others for guidance. So this denial of our social existence has meant the banishment of much of the moral law from public life. This is practical atheism. It creates a dualism that denies the unity that exists among the separate spheres of life. Man is supposed to worship God privately, if he will, but not let this submission to God permeate social institutions. Essentially, this clears the way for atheism and the pursuit of power to permeate all social institutions. A good example of this is the doctrine of free trade and laissez-faire competition, which insists that absolutely free economic competition is somehow by its very nature good and that no interference is permissible. Thus the Christian view of the economy — that its true purpose lies in enabling families to obtain a sufficiency to live virtuously and comfortably — is replaced by the glorification of money and greed. We see the plundering of the American economy now as the inevitable result.

2. You haven’t really defined what you are talking about so the charge that I have misunderstood you is unfair.

This entry was about the inadequacies of the government established by the Founders. I argued the Founding was faulty because it deified human judgment. I then went on to say all governments are obligated to recognize the rights of God and the teaching authority of the Church. I tried to explain why this is so, but obviously I only touched the surface of the issue. I mentioned a few times that all governments are required to recognize the teaching authority of the Church and its moral laws. I did not advocate any specific form of government because this relationship between Church and State can take place in different forms of government, in constitutional democracies as well as monarchies. It would give the Church the right of intervention when the State is violating moral laws, which are indeed clearly defined. Thus no society could become embroiled in endless conflict over, say, the issue of legal abortion. It simply wouldn’t be possible because the State would recognize that, while it has independence when it comes to purely temporal matters, which are its proper sphere, it does not have the authority to violate the moral law recognized by the Church. No government could condone high rates of usury, which have long been condemned as immoral and oppressive by the Church. Socialism has long been condemned by the Church and its true popes. Similarly, there would be not endless political conflict, as is happening now, over assisted suicide. It wouldn’t be possible. The civil government also would not have the authority to institute marital divorce, though it would have the freedom to establish civil guidelines for marital separation. These are just a few examples of areas in which the moral law affects governmental affairs.

3. I couldn’t possibly agree with what you say because I am Protestant.

I understand that, and I wouldn’t expect you to. But Protestantism, aside from being logically untenable, philosophically bankrupt and spiritually dangerous (I realize you take strong exception to this), cannot possibly be a governing force of society because it is by its very nature divisive. Protestant churches when they have shared a part in government have tended historically to become arms of the national government. Protestantism tends toward state absolutism. (Luther expounded a radical doctrine of separation between the Christian and the ruler.) In any event, there is no chance of any Protestant church becoming an established church. By the way, no individual Protestant denomination in America has as many professed members as the Catholic Church. To say America is a Protestant country is misleading because Protestantism encompasses a wide variety of views. I am not suggesting, however, that America is a Catholic country and I fully realize it is not about to become a Catholic country anytime soon. But that doesn’t matter. The Catholic Church is the only true Church, and thus it is the only force that offers a true alternative to chaos. However, I am not advocating it primarily for its practical benefits. It is a spiritual institution and the only path to salvation. (I realize you strongly disagree. I’m not expecting to convince you. In any event, you must admit, we’re in quite a pickle and it is extremely unlikely we will emerge from it through the current theocratic order. Muslim rule, anyone?)

4. Many people hate the Catholic Church.

So what? Christ was hated too. Pagans in Rome hated the Church. Didn’t stop it.

5. Where would “unrepentant Protestants” fit in to this social order?

They would be able to practice their religion safely. As would Jews.

6. You have said the Pope is a fraud so obviously the Catholic Church is in no great shakes.

I have said “Pope” Francis cannot, by virtue of his heresies, be a true pope. This is opinion, but all Catholics who embrace the Church’s dogmas are in agreement that he is either a heretic pope or a heretic non-pope. The Counterfeit Church of Vatican II heresies is very much a creature of modern liberalism and the Church has clearly defined doctrines. Satan does not waste much time with backwater sects. He saves his greatest assaults for the bastion of truth. The Church has emerged triumphant from periods of pervasive heresy before.

7. I categorically reject the idea that the Catholic Church is the one institution that derives its authority from God.

All authority comes from God, but the Catholic Church as an institution was established by God. You say that is an outrageous notion, but it was not outrageous to Christ when he handed the keys of his earthly kingdom to Peter and his Apostolic successors. In fact, it makes a lot of sense that he would prefer a monarchical institution to protect revelation. Why would He have left all unprotected? It is God’s idea and it was once widely recognized by Western civilization.

8. Catholics have murdered many people.

I am going to leave your points about Cortes and the Waldensians for now.

Mary writes:

A quick response to Bill R.’s comments about atrocities committed in the name of Catholicism. He chose a popular target often used in Protestant apologetics, Hernan Cortez (the other one being the Inquisition), the actions of whom he apparently finds comparable to the 20^th century events of WWII and the Bolshevik Revolution (interestingly, there was no real edifice known as Protestantism when the conquest of Mexico started in 1518, just one year after Luther published his 95 theses). Deeper examination would reveal the Aztecs to be not as they are taught in public school – peaceful artisans plundered by evil conquistadors – but as terrorists and enslavers of all neighboring tribes, given to human sacrifice at a rate some historians put at tens of thousands per year. Contemporary journals describe high priests with mad eyes sacrificing men, women and children to the gods day and night during feasts, reeking of blood which was caked in their hair and over their robes; cutting open and literally tearing the hearts out of living victims, one after another. Cortez’s response to this cannot be viewed through a modern lens, nor is it on any level comparable with Nazi treatment of the Jews.

The topic of atrocities brings to mind the War in the Vendee, which occurred in France during the French Revolution, and during which some tens of thousands of Catholic men, women and children (some estimates are much higher) were slaughtered for their Catholic Faith. I won’t record here the unspeakable, diabolical cruelty that took place during this massacre, especially to priests and nuns, but will add that it started in 1793, a mere 16 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One wonders what Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, Francophiles and influenced as they were by Enlightenment thinkers, thought of this atrocity.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

Returning to the main subject at hand, here is an excellent excerpt from Edmund Joseph O’Reilly’s The Relations of the Church to Society:

There are those, not only among Protestants but among Catholics, who would readily applaud and adopt the assertion that the Church has no business to meddle with politics. The grounds of this statement are: that the Church—if Divinely established at all, which many Protestants would deny, at least in our meaning of Church, and of its Divine establishment—that the Church, I say, has been established for the spiritual and not for the temporal government of men; that the Church has one sphere of action, and the State another; that even if, in a case of collision on common or disputed territory, the Church should be allowed the prerogative of deciding, she has no power in avowedly civil and temporal matters. Further, the great motive of merely political action is expediency, either as regards a particular nation or as regards international interests. Whatever is found to suit men best is the best to be done. Now, in all this there is nothing supernatural, nothing spiritual. It is a kind of matter, too, which the Church and its prelates are not bound to understand, and do not understand. There may, perchance, be individual churchmen who are good politicians as there may be individual laymen who are good theologians, but when this happens it is perchance. Men of the world, as a rule, know much better what are their own temporal rights, and what turns most to their account as citizens, than bishops and priests. Besides, the very rights themselves, which are to be exercised or controlled, are the creation of men viewed in their civil capacity; they are, so to speak, the property of citizens as such. The intervention, therefore, of the Church in these things is an aggression on a domain which does not belong to her.

These are the notions, plausible at least in part, which prevail in the minds of many who do not altogether deny the Divine institution of the Church, or who even zealously maintain that institution. These notions are thoroughly inaccurate, though not without some admixture of truth, but truth distorted and made subservient to error. Let us try to unravel the system and discover its flaws. In the first place, I freely admit that the Church is not charged with the temporal government of men. This has been placed by the Almighty primarily in the hands of the human community and its different sections throughout the world; secondarily, but really, in the hands of those to whom the people have entrusted it, with the modifications and reservations wherewith they—the people—have affected it. The authority of all kings and rulers of whatever kind is derivatively Divine. It has come to them through the people. In every supposition, even that of the immediate Divine right of kings, which I do not maintain, the people do not cease to have rights. The nature, and qualities, and limits of these rights depend on natural principles and on circumstances; not that the principles are created or altered by circumstances, but that their application is varied according to the moral condition of things, as is that of particular physical laws by the physical condition of things. All this is independent of the Church, as to its existence and force, but is cognisable by the Church as to its truth and the obligations which arise from it, in the same way that the natural precepts binding to the observance of ordinary contracts, and forbidding murder, theft, &c., are quite beyond the Church’s control, but belong to the matter of her teaching, and can be insisted on by her under pain of ecclesiastical censures. Again, the mere expediency of political arrangements, that is to say, their convenience and worldly advantages are not even within the cognizance of the Church. She has nothing to do with them. So long as the arrangements are not morally due on the one hand, and not morally wrong on the other, they are outside the bounds of ecclesiastical authority. But the doctrine that all right is resolvable into expediency is an impious doctrine, which the Church cannot accept, and is warranted and compelled to condemn. Expediency has its own place, and the place it legitimately occupies is not small. There is a wide field for satisfying its demands, but those demands must not be opposed to Divine Law.

The summary of the doctrine which fixes the Church’s position towards human politics may be given in a few words. Political measures may be, in many cases, commanded, and in many more forbidden, by Natural Law. They have a moral as well as a political bearing. This moral bearing belongs to what is called Morals, for Christians to Christian morals. Of Christian morals the Church has from God the charge, not as their framer, but as their exponent and guardian. It belongs to the Church in this capacity to teach authoritatively the truth regarding political maxims and doctrines, and to require, so far as she can, conformity and adhesion to her teaching in this, as in other matters which fall within her competence. Whatever appertains to faith or morals appertains to the Church as their depositary and their vindicator. As to ecclesiastics being conversant or not with politics; in the first place, they are professionally conversant with morals, and, wherever morals enter, ecclesiastical science enters. With the other aspects of politics, it is not the special business of ecclesiastics to concern themselves. Yet, there is no reason why they may not be acquainted with these too as well as, and better than, the mass of those who are freely allowed to take a part in political discussion and action.

B.E. writes:

Bill R. brought up the Roman Catholic genocide in the Caribbean Basin; Mary countered with what Roman Catholic Spaniards did to eradicate the evil of the Aztecs and their hideous “religion.” This is irrelevant, as the Aztec Empire did not encompass the Caribbean.

Similarly, Bill R. mentioned the Roman Catholic massacre of the Waldensians; Mary countered with the war in Vendee. This is even less relevant, as the Republicans in France were secular anti-royalists. Finally, what could possibly be relevant about the conquest of Mexico starting before there was any “real edifice known as Protestantism”?

Mary’s comment is a string of non sequiturs.

On a different but related note, it seems to me that the Roman Catholicism in Spain suffered in many ways from the eight-century-long occupation and subjugation of the Iberian Peninsula and its people by the Moslems (I am not the first to have noticed this). Outside of the Spanish- speaking areas, people do not name their sons “Jesus”; this Hispanic practice seems to be in keeping with the Moslem practice of naming sons after their “perfect” man, Mohamed. Similarly, perhaps the torture, etc., practiced during the Spanish Inquisition came about due to the influence of the Islamic tradition of torture and murder of unbelievers. However, as evidenced by the rape, torture, and murder of the Waldensians, non-Hispanic Roman Catholics were also capable of atrocities.

Laura writes:

This is truly pathetic.

B.E. and Bill R. believe that Catholicism is a violent and evil religion. They believe the religion established by Christ, which gave them their Bible, their rituals, their holy days, and most of their theology, is a violent and evil religion.

I have nothing to say in response to this ludicrous argument except that the gross exaggerations associated with the name of Cortes, the Inquisition and the largely political conflict that existed between the Waldensians and French Catholics are simply lazy rhetorical evasions.

B.E. writes:

Laura writes: “B.E. and Bill R. believe that Catholicism is a violent and evil religion.” I can’t speak for Bill R., but for myself, no. This is a mischaracterization, but I acknowledge that the incompleteness of my comments are partly responsible. I also apologize for the offense I have given through my poor writing.

I do not believe that any true expression of Christianity is violent or evil. I also believe that people of any religious persuasion can engage in violence and evil, but when they do so, they are not being truly Christian.

In contrast to your statement, I recognize and applaud the many charitable works conducted by Roman Catholics throughout the ages. I acknowledge that the good achieved by Roman Catholicism far outweighs its mistakes, and that the shortcomings of its practitioners have human (or perhaps diabolic) origins and not divine ones.

However, I also agree with Luther and Calvin: the Roman Church is in need of reform. Since the Roman Church did not rid itself of the superfluous accretions of the ages, it was necessary for a Reformed, Biblical church to be established. I wouldn’t be a Protestant if I didn’t think so, and you wouldn’t be a Roman Catholic if you didn’t disagree. On that issue, you have often written something like what you wrote here, that Protestants reject the Church that gave us the Bible and much of our theology. I would say that we reject the non-Biblical additions of Roman Catholicism (i.e., the Magisterium and the Sacred Tradition) while holding fast to that which comes from God: His holy word as revealed through Scripture, which “is breathed out by God” (Timothy 3:16). Neither of us is likely to convince the other of the error of his ways, so dialogue on this point is fruitless.

Thank you for hosting so many interesting discussions, and please accept my apologies.

Laura writes:

You’re welcome, and I apologize if I read too much into your statement.

One of the core doctrines of the Catholic Church is Original Sin. Every human being is inclined toward sin. Given that Catholics believe so strongly in this dogma, it is simply not reasonable to argue that any Catholic social order would be considered by Catholics to be capable of perfection or not in need of constant vigilance and the workings of grace.

I assume you consider the papacy a “non-Biblical addition.” I agree, dialogue is fruitless. I will only say that the greatest problem with the denial of the papacy is that it is non-Biblical. There are just too many references to Peter and his authority in the Bible. Peter is mentioned more than 100 times in the New Testament. The closest to that among the apostles is John, who is mentioned only 29 times. And he is personally told to care for Christ’s flock:

15 When therefore they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. 16 He saith to him again: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him: yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. 17 He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep. [emphases added]

Now why didn’t Christ give this command to all of the apostles?

It’s a rhetorical question. I know we’re not going to dialogue on this, but I thought I’d slip that in. : – )

Laura writes:

Could I slip in one other eensy-weensy point on that subject?

If the Bible is subject to individual judgment, isn’t the entire biblical revelation subject to individual judgment too? In other words, if one can reject part of the Magisterium under the plea of rational liberty, cannot one reject the whole (including the Bible itself) under the same premise?

Ephrem writes:

I find some of the Protestant comments here to be absolutely ridiculous. Do they seriously contend that Protestants did not themselves engage in the mass torture and execution of Catholics during their Protestant Revolution? What about the Novus Ordo Seclorum’s genocide of Native Americans? What about black slaves fleeing the “empire of liberty” for Spanish Florida? Let’s not forget all the other wonderful fruits Anglo-American Protestant culture brought and continues to bring around the world in the form of tradition destroying liberalism. American-Protestants sanctimonious outrage is risible.

This comment thread is also illustrative in that it shows the essential flaws of Protestant-based politics to which the Protestant commentators openly admit and endorse. De Maistre once put it:

“In monarchies Protestants agitate for republicanism, in republics they agitate for anarchism.”

Mary writes:

I would like to respond to B.E.’s comments about my post.

Bill R. was challenged to “find parallels in Christian civilization with Nazi and Bolshevik mass atrocities.” In response he mentioned Cortes specifically; a short clarification was in order as Cortes’ actions are routinely used as an argument against Catholicism and this canard is tiresome.

Laura wrote: “In fact, what we find is that as civilization has moved farther from the concept of the supernatural basis of authority, humanity has experienced previously unimaginable tyranny and cruelty.”

B.E. wrote (in regards to the War in the Vendee): “This is even less relevant, as the Republicans in France were secular anti-royalists.” [my emphases]

Exactly. B.E. helps illustrate Laura’s point, of which the War in the Vendee is a supreme example. As the Church’s eldest daughter moved away from “the concept of the supernatural basis of authority”, France was able to engage in diabolical acts against the Catholic people of the Vendee, who fought for their Faith and as a result were outright slaughtered through a literal scorched earth policy: farms, houses, villages burned and leveled, fields destroyed, women raped, children not spared (and much worse – very creative methods of extermination). 50,000+ deaths, with many calling it a genocide. That it is little known doesn’t diminish the real horror but merely illustrates once again the truism that history is written by the victors (and history books by Protestants). Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers had considerable influence in France leading up to the revolution and in turn heavily influenced Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams et al. This peasant’s war is quite relevant to this discussion, which as Laura stated earlier is really about the inadequacies of the government established by the Founders.

B.E. wrote: “Finally, what could possibly be relevant about the conquest of Mexico starting before there was any “real edifice known as Protestantism”?

I find it fascinating that current-day Protestants/Christians have no understanding that for 15 centuries they were Catholic, too.

B.E. writes:

I can give numerous verses to support the Protestant position that Peter, while central in spreading the early church among the Jews, was not therefore the central authority, and that the entire concept of the papacy is non-Biblical. However, as this is another unchallengeable axiom, there’s no point in it.

You often bring up the idea that if interpretation of the Bible is up to individuals, it is therefore possible to reject it all. You then use this an argument that necessitates the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to interpret the Bible. I’ve always thought this was a misrepresentation of the Protestant position; even Luther himself acknowledged the authority of the church in such matters. However, I have been hard pressed to phrase those thoughts adequately. Recently, I found a site that expressed it better than I, and I would like to quote a couple of paragraphs that rebut your argument:

“…there is no infallible interpreter of Scripture, nor is there a need for one. There is no infallible denomination or church. Even after receiving Christ as Savior, we are all still tainted by sin. We all make mistakes. No denomination/church has absolutely perfect doctrine on every issue. The key is this ; all the essentials of the faith are abundantly clear in God’s Word. We do not need an infallible interpreter or 2,000 years of church tradition to determine that there is one God who exists in three Persons, that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead, that Jesus is the one and only way of salvation, that salvation is received by grace through faith, that there is an eternal heaven awaiting those who trust in Christ and an eternal hell for those who reject Him.

“The core truths that a person needs to know and understand are absolutely and abundantly clear in Scripture. Even on the non-essentials, if Sola Scriptura were consistently applied, there would be unanimity. The problem is that it is very difficult to perfectly and fully apply Sola Scriptura, as our own biases, faults, preferences, and traditions often get in the way. The fact that there are many different denominations is not an argument against Sola Scriptura. Rather, it is evidence that we all fail at truly allowing God’s Word to fully shape our beliefs, practices, and traditions.”

So we do have an answer to your argument, but I am certain you find it unconvincing. Thank you for allowing me to present it nonetheless.

Laura writes:

If I can come up with numerous citations that support the papacy and you can come up with numerous ones which do not, that means the Bible is not so easy to interpret. Most people have never even read the whole New Testament, let alone studied it. It is a quite difficult text despite the simplicity of some of it. I don’t see how anyone could argue that it is not. Most people rely on others to interpret it, those whom they have chosen or who are closest at hand.

The quote you mention does call for an infallible interpreter of Scripture — the individual believer. In other words, any person who has sincere faith can infallibly interpret the abstruse texts of the New Testament and apply them to changing morality and issues such as contraception, artificial reproduction, the defense of nations, etc., whereas those who have spent decades in theological reflection and prayer cannot be reliable guides. (The existence of antipopes does not change the principle of the papacy.)

We do not need an infallible interpreter or 2,000 years of church tradition to determine that there is one God who exists in three Persons, that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead, that Jesus is the one and only way of salvation, that salvation is received by grace through faith, that there is an eternal heaven awaiting those who trust in Christ and an eternal hell for those who reject Him.

If that is all the Bible is then it is quite consistent with developments such as same-sex “marriage,” which is the original topic of this entry. There is nothing in any of those “core truths” that negate it. There is no way to give these “core truths” any kind of practical application to society if each individual must figure out their ramifications on their own. In other words, Christianity is denied any social existence and society is entirely cut off and separate from theology.

The fountainhead of liberalism is this belief in the autonomy of the individual.

Even on the non-essentials, if Sola Scriptura were consistently applied, there would be unanimity.

But how can anyone know when it is being “consistently applied?” Who determines that? Anyway, the point of all this is not to convince you that Catholicism is the one, true religion, but to argue that there is a vacuum of authority on spiritual and moral matters in civil affairs.

Mary writes:

I am happy Protestants appreciate Bartolome de las Casas. It’s wonderful to learn about a Dominican priest who, in a day when slavery was rampant worldwide, had the foresight to fiercely oppose it and wrote a treatise which helped spur Pope Paul III write “Sublimus Dei,” which stated that the Indians were rational beings and should be brought peacefully to the faith as such. Which brings to mind other wonderful Catholic missionaries, including the Jesuit North American Martyrs, who in the mid-17^th century came over from France to bring Christ to the American Indians. St. Isaac Jogues took a short break and went home after, among other things, having several of his fingers chewed off by his captors; he returned shortly afterward to continue his work and was beheaded by tomahawk. Eventually all were martyred and all are saints. One wonders what all these holy men would have made of America’s Presidents keeping slaves and her government virtually “wiping out” America’s native people (two centuries after Cortes). I mention these things not for one-upmanship but only to put in perspective the facile and ubiquitous criticisms that Catholics are often struck dumb by in discussions about faith.

As for that other facile and ubiquitous criticism, the Spanish Inquisition, sound byte conclusions won’t do if one is interested in gaining real understanding of a given subject (hence the great need for TTH!). Here’s a good place to start on this topic. The article does a great job of presenting the medieval world in which it took place, the political situation of the day in contrast to the Church, and in describing a world in which one’s faith was so deeply woven into to fabric of life as to be inseparable, in a way we can no longer understand, especially at home here in our “melting pot.”

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Posted by Laura Wood in Uncategorized

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