Q&A May AD 2010
Our Lady of the Rosary
Parish BulletinDefense, a "collective" right?
Why are so many prelates socialists?
Defense, a "collective" right?Question: On vacation I went to the Novus Ordo. The priest at Saint X's church gave a sermon that disagreed with what you wrote in the February Q&A.[1] He said that the right to keep and bear arms is a “collective right” rather than an individual right—that governments, as collections of individuals, have the right to organize police, militias, and armies—but non members of these bodies do not have the right to arm themselves. He said that the reference to “a well regulated militia” in the second amendment proved that the founders of the United States agreed with him.?
Answer: The Novus Ordo is more than a religious aberration, it is a philosophical and political quagmire as well. Like all “progressives,” the Modernist clergy believe that rights are granted by government instead of by God. Perhaps purposefully they ignore the reality that no governments exist until individuals get together to form them. If there is such a thing as a “collective right,” it exists only because individuals have decided to come together in an organization to protect their individual God-given rights. The governments formed by men are legitimate insofar as they correspond to the tenets of the natural moral law. The situation in which the government exercises authority not granted to it is totalitarianism—the rule of force, rather than the rule of law in conformity with the natural law. Since the time of Lincoln, Americans have become used to a central state in which bureaucrats make laws according to their own self interests.
A bit of history may help to clarify the meaning of the second amendment. In England and in the colonies there was a strong distrust of “standing armies.” An unscrupulous king could use a standing army as his own private force to take whatever he wanted from the people. This is reflected in the US Constitution Article I, section 8, which enumerates the powers of Congress, including the following:
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;[2]
War can only be declared by the Congress. Although the President becomes the commander in chief of the army once it is raised by Congress, the damage he is capable of doing with that army is limited by the expiration of its funding in a maximum of two years.
The more or less “standing” land forces are the state militias, controlled by the authorities of the several states, under officers commissioned by the states, and called into federal service only for three specific reasons. The militia is a volunteer force consisting of the able bodied males of military service age. The Catholic social principle of “subsidiarity” (see below) is reflected in the militia in that individual men voluntarily commit their efforts to the defense of their, and their families’, lives and property. Part time citizen-soldiers are far less likely to usurp the Constitution or the natural moral law than a standing army.
The Militia Act of 1903 made the members of state militias a part of a National Guard in the Army Reserve. Their function under the law remained “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” No mention was made of using the Guard to invade other nations.
The Modernist's existentialist philosophy denies that there is a permanent human nature created by God. He views man as being fashioned by his own actions, and the actions of those around him. Mankind is in a constant state of evolution; a dialectic process. Evolving mankind is the measure of Modernist reality, rather than individually procreated men and women, each with a God given soul. Thus, the wellbeing of the collective is always more important than the rights of individuals. The collective is also understood as the means by which its members are sustained—the collective supplies “each according to his need” whether it be food, clothing, shelter, or personal protection. The taking of individual responsibility is seen as anti-social.
This denial of individual responsibility flatly denies the Catholic social teaching of “subsidiarity.” Articulated first by Pope Leo XIII it was developed by Pope Pius XI in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno:
79. As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.
Protecting one’s and one’s family’s God-given rights to life and property is a prime example of something done best at the lowest level. Even with cell phones and two-way radio, the police are often nothing more than historians—writing out a report of what happed at the crime scene sometime after the crime has been committed. Calling 911 is no substitute for being able to put an immediate stop to rape, robbery, or murder. Even when they arrive very quickly, many jurisdictions make “officer safety” paramount—the police officer is not required to risk his life to protect you or your property.
The right to bear arms is enunciated in the second amendment, but it is nothing other than the immemorial right of people to defend their lives and property against hostile aggression. It is a right of individual people, and not a right of the “collective.”
Socialist Hierarchy?Question: Didn’t the Catholic Church condemn communism and socialism? How can it be that prominent Catholics in the Church and in the government keep approving left wing ideas like socialized medicine, gun control, a global fiat currency, man-made global warming, redistribution of income, amnesty for illegals, and the various machinations of United Nations? (P.L. Sun City Center, FL)
Answer: Both socialism and communism are condemned:
Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist. ~Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, No. 120.[3]
This Apostolic See, above all, has not refrained from raising its voice, for it knows that its proper and social mission is to defend truth, justice and all those eternal values which Communism ignores or attacks.... With reference to Communism, Our Venerable Predecessor, Pius IX, of holy memory, as early as 1846 pronounced a solemn condemnation, which he confirmed in the words of the Syllabus directed against "that infamous doctrine of so-called Communism which is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, property and possessions of all men, and even society itself." Later on, another of Our predecessors, the immortal Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris, defined Communism as “the fatal plague which insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin.” ... During Our Pontificate We too have frequently and with urgent insistence denounced the current trend to atheism which is alarmingly on the increase. In 1924 when Our relief-mission returned from the Soviet Union We condemned Communism in a special Allocution which We addressed to the whole world. ~Pope Pius Divini Redemptoris, Nos. 4,5[4]
Yes, both socialism and communism are condemned, yet modern churchmen and politicians seem to run to embrace them. Don’t ignore the work of the devil in such men, and in the public and secret societies that have worked for many centuries against the Catholic Church and western civilization. It is difficult to know who belongs to one of the secret societies, but outward actions are far more important. The bloodlust of twentieth century socialism is inconceivable without the influence of the Evil One. Catholics must dedicate themselves to prayer and reparation if they want to see the restoration of the Church and Christendom. Yet, one must not fail to understand a number of natural factors that also promote one form or another of socialism (communism being just one of its many forms).
● Crony capitalism. One might expect businessmen to be opponents of a state run economy. In fact, many of them find the government to be a useful ally in reducing competition, if not in direct funding of their enterprises. Since the mid-1800s government has directly financed previously private enterprises like canals, highways, and railroads. Government regulation benefits those businessmen who are able to influence the making of those regulations—some, like the late Ken Lay of Enron, are extremely well connected.[5]
● Crony charity. Taking a page from crony capitalism, religious leaders have found that it is possible to fund their charitable missions at a much higher level by taking government grants. Crony charity extends through everything from the financing of homeless shelters and hospitals, to the bail out of bankrupt countries with inflationary funny money from the IMF.[6] What ought to be the voluntary charity of believers is turned into the involuntary charity of taxpayers and victims of inflation.
Back in August we wrote about Archbishop Gerhard Müller, then newly appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a proponent of “liberation” theology. (Archbishop Müller favors IMF bailouts as well.) Whether or not “liberation” theology is truly “theology from the barrel of a gun,” it certainly encourages the class struggle championed by Karl Marx.[7]
The theory of dependdence will take the wrong path and lead to deception if the analysis is not put within the framework of the worldwide class struggle. ~Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation
Crony charity also plays a role in the push to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. Illegals, it is hoped, will take the place of some of those who have fled the Conciliar Church, and most can be trusted to vote Democrat.
● Erroneous economics. Since the Great Depression, almost any economics course one can take in public or private schools is based on the erroneous theories of John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics holds that the economy is made to grow by taking money from the productive sector and spending it on government and social welfare programs. The Keynesian “gross domestic [or national] product” actually includes such expenditures as though they were a measure of productivity. Keynesians advocate monetary control by a central bank and vast expenditures by the government to control “bubbles” in the business cycle—actually, they cause the “bubbles”—but this is largely ignored by bankers, government, and the media. Those who believe in Keynesian economics advocate a strong government role in the economy. Catholics are not immune.
● False philosophy. Since the so-called “Enlightenment,” philosophy has tended away from recognizing objective reality and toward accepting mutually contradictory ideas.[8] Reality is made more subjective, placing emphasis on the differences between observers of things, while deemphasizing or denying the objective essences of things. “Vice” and “virtue,” “good” and “evil” are nothing but labels to describe human feelings about things. Indeed, all abstractions—words like “mankind” and “human nature” even the “nature of a cat or a dog”—are merely labels used in speech to group the phenomena observed by the senses. Conceptions of God, spirit, miracle, and grace are nothing more than the sentiments of individuals. Contradictions are said to be resolved through “dialogue,” much like the dialectic of Hegel and Marx. This false philosophy is naturally destructive of religion, morality, and all of the human sciences. The objective evils of socialism are reduced to being the mere opinions of its moral opponents.
● Pseudo-science. The media, government, and educational bureaucracy—each with an interest in big government—have made people believe theories like evolution and man-made global warming, even though these have little or no scientific basis. If man is a soul-less being who just evolved from the chemical elements, he cannot be said to possess the “unalienable rights” granted him by “nature’s God.” At best he is capable of cooperation with the State in seeking the “common good” (as defined by the State). Since man-made global warming “proves” that there are too many people, using too many of the Earth’s resources, man needs to stop using more than his “fair” share among the other species on the planet. Such a cutback can be achieved only through massive government restriction, regulation, and taxation. The “need” to reduce the planetary population will also give cover to the inability of socialism to feed all the people and to provide medical care for them. In spite of clerical cries about “religious freedom,” abortion, contraception, and euthanasia are natural developments of socialism.
● Communist infiltration. Is it even possible that this did not happen?
EEx-Communist and celebrated convert Douglas Hyde revealed long ago that in the 1930s the Communist leadership issued a worldwide directive about infiltrating the Catholic Church. While in the early 1950s, Mrs Bella Dodd was also providing detailed explanations of the Communist subversion of the Church. Speaking as a former high ranking official of the American Communist Party, Mrs Dodd said: "In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within." The idea was for these men to be ordained and progress to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops.[9] A dozen years before Vatican II she stated that: "Right now they are in the highest places in the Church" - where they were working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church's effectiveness against Communism. She also said that these changes would be so drastic that "you will not recognise the Catholic Church."
This conspiracy has been confirmed time and again by Soviet defectors. Ex-KGB officer Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected in 1961 and in 1984 forecast with 94% accuracy all the astonishing developments in the Communist Bloc since that time, confirmed several years ago that this "penetration of the Catholic and other churches" is part of the Party's "general line [i.e. unchanged policy] in the struggle against religion." Hundreds of files secreted to the West by former KGB archivist Vassili Mitrokhin and published in 1999 tell a similar tale, about the KGB cultivating the closest possible relationships with 'progressive' Catholics and financing their activities. One of the leftist organs identified was the small Italian Catholic press agency Adista, which for decades has promoted every imaginable postconciliar cause or "reform" and whose Director was named in The Mitrokhin Archive as a paid KGB agent. [10]
● Homosexuals and feminists. The conciliar church has a significant number of homosexual clergy (perhaps insinuated by the communists as a disruptive influence) and feminist nuns. Such people are more likely to support left-wing organizations promoting things like “safe sex,” and “gay” and women’s rights. Perhaps even same-sex-“marriage.”[11]
The homosexual prelate who does not want to be known as such is a tempting target for blackmail. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is said to have paid $450,000 for the silence of a former lover of former Archbishop Rembert Weakland.[12] While the money is significant, one has to ask about how the Archbishop might have been controlled and forced to act in ways damaging to the Church. This certainly might explain some bishops’ failure to deal with sexually abusive priests.
NOTES:
[2] http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec8.html [Emphasis supplied]
[4] http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html
[6] See the December 2012 Parish Bulletin http://www.rosarychurch.net/answers/qa122012.html#neo
[8] See Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici gregis http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm
Murray N. Rothbard, “The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics,” http://mises.org/daily/2337and[9] Audio Recording-Bella Dodd’s own words in her own voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgpBzKr1M0k http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p2qcq6i4ei4
[10] Christian Order, Editorial, November AD 2000
http://www.christianorder.com/editorials/editorials_2000/editorials_nov00.html
