The road to good intentions this way.
Posted on 04/13/2008 8:54:51 AM PDT by don-o
Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI's election in 2005, President Bush met with a small circle of advisers in the Oval Office. As some mentioned their own religious backgrounds, the president remarked that he had read one of the new pontiff's books about faith and culture in Western Europe.
snip
Bush attends an Episcopal church in Washington and belongs to a Methodist church in Texas, and his political base is solidly evangelical. Yet this Protestant president has surrounded himself with Roman Catholic intellectuals, speechwriters, professors, priests, bishops and politicians. These Catholics -- and thus Catholic social teaching -- have for the past eight years been shaping Bush's speeches, policies and legacy to a degree perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Hmmmm. Sounds like the Confederate States of America; which, unfortunately was conquered after the invasion of the centralizers and levellers, and that principle was lost as far as the American Experiment.
In terms of ecclesiology, absolutely.
The CSA denied natural rights to 40% of its population at a local, state and national level.
Even if the CSA practiced political subsidiarity, it was a racial political subsidiarity.
And, of course, even this theoretical political subsidiarity among whites was soon scrapped in practice.
Authentic Catholic teaching in this country has been largely replaced by Bernardinism.
One the one hand, Lincoln himself said his main object was to preserve the Union, and he wasn't going to free the slaves unless that was necessary in order to beat the South and preserve the Union. In that, I think Lincoln was, frankly, wrong.
On the other hand, the war progressed, and by the time he got to Gettysburg and the Second Inaugural, Lincoln saw it as a kind of divine justice that such a massive evil (slavery) would have such a massive conclusion (catastrophic, fratricidal war.)
The vast consolidation of centralized power in Washington DC afterwards, would be a separate issue (in theory) but well-nigh impossible to separate (in practice.)
And its ruinous consequences are with us today.
Too much for my limited comprehension.
That was what the Missouri Compromise was all about, when the South first blackmailed the federal government with secession threats.
That was what the 1850 Compromise was all about, when the South also blackmailed the federal government with secession threats.
That was what the Kansas-Nebraska Acts were all about, when the South continued to blackmail the federal government with secession threats.
In the 1860s the North basically got sick and tired of continually trying to placate the South and voted in a slate of candidates who promised to hold firm on the matter of the territories.
Then the South attacked Fort Sumter and war began.
McClellan wanted to fight a limited war to a negotiated surrender - and Lincoln would have accepted that if successful - but he was completely out-generalled.
Faced with Lee's effectiveness, Lincoln and his Cabinet came to the conclusion that the only solution was total, not limited, war.
Jefferson Davis had already come to that conclusion and had begun putting the entire Confederacy on a war footing - the North started later, but was more efficient at this process.
Neither the Confederacy nor the Union had a Jeffersonian government when it was over.
I would point out that even if the Union had fully accepted secession and pulled all Federal soldiers, sailors and marines from every federal military facility in the slave states, it wouldn't have mattered.
Secession was about expanding slavery to the federal territories - the South would not have allowed the Union to take control of all the remaining federal territory.
The whole reason for leaving was the Union's refusal to let slavery expand in federal territory: there was no point in secession if the South were to just remain within its 1860 borders. They could have just stayed in the Union, then.
To #46.
They're always seething with anger ... it's all they have, and it eats away at their souls.
I pray for their conversion.
I do not care to go into the arguments that are made about the secession. I want to take the question back to what the Catholic teaching has to say.
Of course, one must first settle the question about the nature of the Union that was created - voluntary and dissoluble; or permanent and inviolable. So, I guess we would still have to argue.
Let me try it this way:
If it were the former, then should the Southern states been allowed to leave peacefully?
If it were the latter, then is the North justified in waging war?
And, in both scenarios, is the action in line with Catholic teaching?
To the extent that the Civil War was fought to crush the Constitutional states' rights political base (which would include the right to form and dissolve the bonds of federal union), the Civil War was unjust. (And that's why Lincoln said the war was initially pursued: not to free the slaves, but to impose federal Union by force.)
But to the extent that the Civil War was fought to abolish slavery, an argument can be made that the upholding of fundamental human rights (life and liberty) does not come under "subsidiarity": it is the immediate direct duty of every level of government from top to bottom.
I don't want to re-fight this war. I think the answer has to somehow encompass "Subsidiarity yes, Slavery no." And the Civil War somehow managed to (largely) abolish both.
A tragic view.
And the contract we are discussing - the US Constitution - was voluntary and permanent.
In other words, the original contracting parties had the free choice to enter into the contract or not.
However, once the contract was entered upon, each party was obliged to fulfill their agreement thereunder.
And the US Constitution clearly states that, in ratifying the Constitution, each state recognizes that the US Constitution is now the law of the land.
The US Constitution further provides that any dispute between two states or between the states and the federal government will be adjudicated by the federal judiciary.
In the case of the Southern Confederacy, this obligation to appeal to the federal courts (which, given the favorable-to-the-South Dred Scott ruling by a Southern majority Supreme Court just a few years before, was clearly not a unjustly stacked court) was ignored.
So the Southern Confederacy immediately moved to act illegally - without even attempting to fulfill the minimum terms of their obligation to the federal government and their fellow states under the Constitution.
If it were the latter, then is the North justified in waging war?
Absolutely. The Constitution which each state ratified acknowledged the authority of the federal government to use force against domestic insurrection.
Again, according to Catholic social teaching, this is just.
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I thank you for that.
Exactly right! The left tries to divest themselves of any personal responsibilty for a preference for the poor by thrusting the obligation unto the government...other folks in other words. Conservatives that I know have the same preference for the poor but they exercise that in many cases by personal financial support and voluntary charitable acts.
You'vemade a very important point and you stated it perfectly.
Actually, although the intention is probably malevolent, there’s some truth in it.
Ronald Reagan also had some extremely useful Catholic tutoring. Among other things, as is well known, Reagan worked closely with JP II to bring down the Soviet Union.
Look up Paul Kengor’s book “The Judge” at Ignatius Press.
Kengor has written several other books, including one on Bush and religion.
The road to good intentions this way.
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