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To: Unam Sanctam
Good luck in your program of a Christian monarchy. Given that there is not a chance of a snowball in heck that such a thing would be voted in peacefully in these United States, I guess you would have to destroy democracy by force

You are right about that, the US will have to complete their journey to totalitarianism before they will again be willing to embrace true liberty. With the exception of Franco's Spain monarchies cannot be established by force, they are organic systems - the natural order of society without idealogically driven constitutions and revolutions.

Are you going to get a bunch of brownshirts together and have an antidemocratic putsch?

Thanks for bringing up the brownshirts - too bad you have no idea what you are talking about. Hitler was a "man of the people" and they dearly loved him.

The Catholic Church can thrive under a regime of true freedom of religion, and has done so in the past, even here in the United States, whose constitutional structure you so despise

Have you ever read anthing written prior to 1965? It can function in religiously pluralistic states, although the evidence is ancedotal considering those types of states have been the exception not the rule. However this is nowhere near the ideal for the Church, as for rejecting the authority of the Pope - how about this pope?

14. This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say.[21] When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit"[22] is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

Mirari Vos

Gregory XVI

Or this one?

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.

Longinqua

The Church, indeed, deems it unlawful to place the various forms of divine worship on the same footing as the true religion,

Immortale Dei

Leo XIII

Or this one?

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error."[1]

VEHEMENTER NOS St. Pius X

56 posted on 12/12/2004 5:40:25 PM PST by kjvail (Judica me Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta)
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To: kjvail

As a theoretical ideal, a confessional state in which the state truly did not interfere with the doctrine of the faith and in which the rights of individuals not to be coerced on matters of conscience would be best. Such a thing is not practical under modern conditions, given the left-wing currents of thought widespread in society, I would not trust any government to leave the Church alone. In modern conditions, I think a regime of true religious freedom is best.


73 posted on 12/12/2004 5:59:26 PM PST by Unam Sanctam
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