Posted on 05/06/2005 1:07:06 PM PDT by Caleb1411
Spain used to be one of the most culturally conservative, devoutly Roman Catholic countries in Europe. Now Spain is about to pass a law legalizing homosexual marriage and adoption.
When equally Catholic Belgium legalized gay marriage and adoptions, the Vatican, under Pope John Paul II, opposed the action with words. But Pope Benedict XVI, in the first policy test of his papacy, is going much further.
A Vatican official told Spaniards that if the measure passes, they must defy it. Officials should refuse to marry same-sex couples or even process the paperwork if they try to adopt a child. Bureaucrats and others who find themselves complicit in gay marriage or adoption should refuse to obey the law, even if it means losing their jobs.
"A law as deeply inequitable as this one is not an obligation," said Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo of Colombia, the head of the Pontifical Council on the Family. "One cannot say that a law is right simply because it is a law." To tell citizens that they should not obey the laws of their country is a very unusual and aggressive action. Said a history professor at a Spanish university, "I had never heard of such a direct call to civil disobedience."
American evangelicals, for all of their political activism, have not gone so far as to tell file clerks in Massachusetts to misplace the marriage records of gay couples, or a worker in an adoption agency to lose the application of homosexuals. And it is not clear that they should. It is a tough call on where to draw the line between Romans 13 ("be subject to the governing authorities") and Acts 5 ("we must obey God rather than men"). It may be easier under Roman Catholicism, with its ancient—and unbiblical—teaching that the church has temporal authority over the state.
Still, if the new pope is going to be this assertive on cultural issues, evangelicals should pay attention. Evangelicals and Catholics have huge—and important—theological differences, but when it comes to pro-life issues, sexual morality, and resistance to militant secularism, they find themselves on the same side of the culture wars.
Some critics say that a hard line from the pope will only increase the secularization of Europe. Eighty percent of Spaniards are Catholic, but only a third of them go to church and follow its teachings. Won't threatening the file clerks just drive them away? If the file clerks disobey and process the marriage licenses and adoption forms despite what the pope tells them to do, will the church excommunicate them? Whether the hard line makes the nominal Catholics quit or if the church expels them, either way the result will be fewer Catholics.
But this brings up the other part of the pope's strategy, one that is even more radical. Before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger argued that the church needs to get smaller so that it can become purer.
Some observers are interpreting this in institutional forms. "If it's true Pope Benedict XVI prefers a leaner, smaller, purer church as he has spoken of before," said Notre Dame professor R. Scott Appleby, "we could see a withering of certain Catholic institutions because they're not considered fully Catholic. This might include Catholic colleges, hospitals, and other Catholic institutions."
But surely it is precisely the nominal Catholics—those who claim membership but hardly ever go to church and ignore its teachings—that the new pope would be glad to be rid of.
The problem of secularism is not just with the outside culture thinking it can do without God. The deeper problem is that the church itself has become secularized. A smaller but purer church may well have more impact than the diffuse cultural Christianity that has lost its saltiness and its savor.
This is a challenge that evangelicals need to consider. With our megachurch, church-growth mindset, we often assume that bigger is better, and a church with lots of members is a strong church. Is this always true? In our efforts to reach the secular culture, is the secular culture instead sometimes reaching us?
The ideal would be to have both size and purity. But might there come a time when American evangelicalism too will need to be winnowed? —•
Yes I agree that is a very big difference, though frankly I can see Islamists using democracy to achieve the same goals, the smart Islamists......
"I had never heard of such a direct call to civil disobedience."
Well, that is because humanisim will ALWAYS go too far. It is currently in the process of crossing 'too far'.
Is there ultimately a difference, though? Simplistically: you cannot morally take an oath to commit a sin. If upholding a particular law is sinful, your oath cannot bind you. What you do about that situation when it arises is a different question.
Or, in the case of the duties of all citizens, one must accept the secular consequences of placing religious conscience ahead of those duties. That was the idea of civil disobedience: that if you break the law, you accept the punishment. After all, it's a cheap conscience that is not willing to accept adversity as the price of following it.
Depends on what you mean by "one must accept". Punishment for disobeying an unjust law is itself unjust, and ought to be identified and deplored as such. There's nothing wrong with escaping from it, if you can. If you can't, you can't.
The further difficulty with your argument, and indeed with trying to have a discussion with you, is that people of good conscience may well, and do, disagree on what constitutes natural law or the truth.
The knowability or wide acceptance of a particular proposition of the moral law is not very relevant to the discussion. Most of us would agree that herding innocent people into gas chambers to kill them is immoral; people nevertheless had to decide whether to obey the state and cooperate with that, or to disobey and risk consequences.
So why should some clerk lose their job for acknowledging that , under Spanish law (but not Catholic law), two men be married.
To begin with, the Nazi government did achieve initial power legitimately in 1933. At that point, duties to the NSDAP led government were no different than those to to the preceeding government. It was over a period of years and with sometimes little by little steps that ordinary Germans became enmeshed in the regime and the regime became illegitimate. The point at which any individual's duty to the German state was abrogated by the illegitimacy of the states demands and/or orders of an individual's superior is hardly crystal clear, and is probably different for different people in different situations. Having studied this period at great length, I don't think there's much better an answer in brief.
Long, strong life to Benedict XVI.
Dear CatoRenasci,
"Duties to the Nazi government is hardly simple, or cut and dried, one answer fits all question."
In the main, I agree.
"To begin with, the Nazi government did achieve initial power legitimately in 1933."
More or less.
"It was over a period of years and with sometimes little by little steps that ordinary Germans became enmeshed in the regime and the regime became illegitimate."
I agree.
"The point at which any individual's duty to the German state was abrogated by the illegitimacy of the states demands and/or orders of an individual's superior is hardly crystal clear, and is probably different for different people in different situations."
In the main, I agree, but with a reservation. Regarding specific Nazi governmental actions, it became pretty clear that obedience could not be given.
Anyway, thank you for making my point.
Although it came to power in a mostly legitimate fashion, at some point, Germans no longer owed a duty to obey at least certain Nazi laws and governmental commands.
That is all that is being said, here. Catholics owe no duty to obey, to enforce intrinsically evil laws. In fact, no one owes such a duty, but Pope Benedict is only trying to give moral guidance to Catholics, in this case.
sitetest
I fully understand I am out of my league, Campion is a philosopher king, my Philosophy 101 is coming back, those same arguments haunted me then, LOL
but what is God's law isn't exactly interpreted the same by all the religions so by agreeing to a secular law you take the chaos out of the process,
because a Christian may think stoning an adulterer to death is unjustifiable murder [although I believe this was the punishment prescribed in the Old Testament and the Torah though if I recall, there was some good old adultery going in the Old Testament that was not punished, in that way] but I think Jesus nixed that one
and a Muslim says no it is God's just punishment
(and that is arguable too even from an Islamic standpoint)
in a multi cultural, multi religious society, secular law is the only way to protect the rights of all....
Because it's giving state approbation to an objectively immoral situation, and making it equal in the eyes of the state to a covenant ordained by God and nature.
The Catholic Church doesn't recognize civil marriage anyway. In the Catholic Church's eyes, if you ain't married according to Catholic rite, you ain't married.
Untrue in general. It's true that a Catholic who marries in a non-Catholic rite without a Church dispensation is contracting a marriage which is invalid in the eyes of the Church. Non-Catholics are not required to do so, however, and if they are baptized Christians, their marriages are considered to be just as sacramental and binding as a Catholic marriage. If they aren't Christians, their marriage is considered to be a "natural marriage", which is not indissoluble, but not invalid either.
We ultimately disagree on your second point: if you break the law because of conscience, it detracts from the stand of conscience to attempt to evade the consequences. Attempt to persuade people of its unjustness? Surely. Evade? No.
The knowability or wide acceptance of a particular proposition of the moral law, as you put it, is precisely the nub of difficulty in the real world. There may well be cases that are easy, such as herding people into gas chambers, but once you get away from such cases the matter becomes remarkably diffuse. To the extent agreement is not readily reached, the secular state model is the only one which provides liberty of conscience for all viewpoints, not just those with which we may agree.
May I very respectively do a teeny edit? ;o)
No, the result will be MORE Catholics." Get 'er done, Pope Benedict!
LOL. Actually, I'm a computer programmer illicitly goofing off at work. (Hey, it's Friday.) Bad boy, Campion (slaps wrist).
(If I'm a philosopher king, can I tell my wife she's a philosopher queen? ;-))
Excellent!
What troubles me about using the Nazis as an example is that one did not have the option under the Nazi state of stating the point of conscience and resigning. In Spain, and here for that matter, it's the simplest thing in the world to resign on a point of conscience. No on will shoot you or turn you over to the secret police. My point earlier is that if you can't take the oath in good conscience, don't. And, if having taken it, you can no longer fulfill it, then resign. And don't complain when your fellow citizens do not elect you because they don't want you to put your religious views ahead of your oath of office.
"If you can no longer uphold an oath of office, one must resign."
If the OATH means anything and subsequent to the OATH the STATE choose to make evil a LAW, then the honorable course is to REFUSE that PARTICULAR evil and obey the OATH in every other regard. At least imho.
The jury is still out on that. "Secular states" have been spectacularly oppressive, far worse than religious ones ever were. Democratic ones haven't been, but it remains to be seen whether aggressive secularism and representative democracy can coexist on a long-term basis. So far, I don't see it happening.
"Liberty of conscience for all viewpoints" is not a summum bonum anyway, or even possible. Not all viewpoints are equally valid, helpful, true, virtuous or anything else, and we harm ourselves when we pretend otherwise.
Those who argue for "liberty of conscience for all viewpoints" generally end by announcing that those who believe in objective, knowable truth ought to keep their ideas to themselves, you know: liberty of conscience for all viewpoints, except that one.
Dear CatoRenasci,
"What troubles me about using the Nazis as an example is that one did not have the option under the Nazi state of stating the point of conscience and resigning."
What troubles me is that in your view, then, as the laws of a regime become increasingly immoral, if the regime permits devout Catholics to abjure political or civil service, then the end result is that Catholics must voluntarily leave the political or civil service.
I disagree.
If we are forced out, then so be it. If folks don't want to elect us, so be it. If the West fully reverts to paganism, and by force of arms and numbers, persecutes us, so be it.
But we should not close in on ourselves, becoming modern Amish, refusing to participate in the governance of the society. We should not voluntarily leave the public square because we wish to change it, to at least partly redeem the laws and governments under which we live, that they may better reflect the law of love.
sitetest
"To take religion out of it: A soldier is told he MUST obey ALL orders PROVIDED they are legal...."
Exactly. Nor may a soldier just 'resign'. He either obeys or not, if not he faces justice. If the order is illegal, he is OK.
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