Source; https://wethepeopleusa.ning.com/forum/topics/weekend-reflection-on-secular-liberalism
“Evil sometimes poses as a force for good while destroying the moral foundations of society….It is imperative that the entire Catholic community come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.”---Pope Benedict XVI
“Secular liberalism, which in the last analysis is individualistic selfishness...”---Rodger Charels SJ
Modern secularism’s ideology downplays or eliminates the idea of the personal God found in Western civilization’s Judeo-Christianity. Otherwise it behaves just like a religion and faithfully reproduces the most important parts of the Judeo-Christian paradigm. Like their perceived nemesis, these modern anti-Judeo/Christians also have moral values. They too believe them universally valid and, akin to Marx and Lenin, therefore justify their efforts to establish them globally through a social and political struggle, believing through such processes their truth will be gradually discovered.
They believe its own ideology is inevitable and once known becomes an infallible method for creating an earthly utopia. And, despite modern secularism’s continued and often horrendous failings, like the passage found in the Bible’s New Testament, modern secularism believes its faith in itself “…is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That belief allows it to justify or ignore the results of its war against Judeo-Christianity’s God. A worldwide assault whose various versions (socialism, communism, fascism, etc.) killed a record 150 million people (mostly their own citizens, the very same they claimed as the justification of their harsh rule), while creating nationwide gulags, in the 20th century alone, all in the quest for modern secularism’s belief in its definition of obtainable perfect justice and freedom.
"From 1941 to 1965, in America, the marriage rate soared, the average age of those first marriages fell, the divorce rate declined, births per family climbed, measures of income inequality shrank, home ownership and family-centered suburbs rose. And during that time non-liberalized Catholicism displayed extraordinary vitality; parishes grew and the education edifice, still largely orthodox in teaching and governance, showed impressive gains"---Allan C. Carlson
"A largely uneducated public has instantiated an anti-Christian, socialist regime at the federal level in America."--Jude P. Dougherty
“The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement of religion does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm.”— Justice Anthony Kennedy
“If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”—Ronald Reagan
“I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.”-- William F. Buckley Jr.
Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, western civilization is doomed. Far from being rivals are enemies, religion— discovered by reason in the moral sense—and law are twin sisters, friends, mutual assistants. Freedom is a function of man’s moral state. The enumeration of rights, even on paper, is meaningless unless the moral and social preconditions for those rights are firmly in place. Otherwise, freedom will devolve into anarchy and devour all around it and eventually itself.
Having established that religion is the foundation of morality and that both are essential to “good government and happiness of mankind,” our Founders writings speak generally of 5 basic fundamental religious tenets (found in basic Christianity), expressed or implied(1). They built the constitution’s framework on top of them. The sanctity of civil rights and property rights, as well as the obligation of citizens to support the constitution in protecting their unalienable rights, were all based on these religious precepts, that they wanted taught in the public schools.
They then set about to exclude the creeds and biases or dissensions of individual denominations so as to make the teaching of religion a unifying cultural adhesive rather than a divisive apparatus. They wanted a separation of church and state but not the separation of state and religion. In other words, the Founders design intended that religion was to be encouraged in order to promote the moral fiber and religious tone of the people. This of course would be impossible if there was an impenetrable wall between state and religion.
What the Supreme Court found, in 1984, is that the Constitution affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance of religion, and forbids hostility toward any.
“Christianity is at once a philosophy, a political power, and a religious rite.”—Cardinal Newman
“Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.”-- William F. Buckley Jr.
“The liberal Catholic is indiscriminately enamored of the spirit of our age, and advocates an adaption of the church to this spirit.”— Dietrich von Hildebrand
“Here is a Church that no longer has the mission of restoring the universal kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, because it wants to make its contribution to the creation on this earth of a better world that is freer, more egalitarian and more eco-responsible — and all this with purely human means. This humanist mission that the men of the Church have given themselves must necessarily be matched by a liturgy that is equally humanist and emptied of any notion of sacredness."-- Don Davide Pagliarani
“A man can no more possess a private religion than he can a private sun, or moon. A universal religion is not constructed to fit a man, it is constructed to fit a universe.”—G. K. Chesterton
It seems the Church as of late has unwittingly conceded that the objective efficacy of the sacraments is not worth fighting for. The results of the struggle between belief and unbelief will depend to a great deal on the use that each of the opposing fronts will make of Sunday. We need a deep and solid knowledge of the Catholic faith, of its truths, mysteries and divine force.
St. Thomas suggests that Catholicism is not cafeteria style, that its sacred tradition is normative for Catholics. “It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel” as Arch Bishop George Niederauer stated.
Christ’s teaching was transmitted to the Apostles, handed down through the Church, is explained, systematized and made more definite by subsequent teachings of the Church’s Magisterium. These are definitely not up for grabs by each new generation. Development of doctrine, that is salvific and not abstractions that have no role in everyday life, is a legitimate theological process but does not mean that what was formerly true now becomes false, or vice versa. It simply means that our understanding of a doctrine is deepened, though the doctrine still retains its original meaning, its original revelation.
Many may retort that it does not make any difference what we believe or do, God will “save” us no matter what, if only we are sincere.
Those who believe that want God to orient himself to them, they allow no one, not even God, to correct them. Unfortunately, such a view only serves to make man, his limited and imperfect faculties and life, mostly meaningless. If we use relativism to overturn the universal moral truths the Church teaches, then any church teaching can be overturned. If nothing man believes or does makes a difference, why should God make a difference.
The question then is whether or not we understand what the church teaches and then whether or not we will conform to that teaching. Since its beginning subjective morality and personal opinion have replaced teach, preach and affirm the faith. But a Catholic whose values are corrupted will doubt them. The best way to corrupt the Catholic is to make him go with the theological flow of the times, a kind of apostatizing in place. In due course, the believer ipso facto will become a non-believer. As Nicholas Gomez-Davila wryly commented about resisting the lure to grab unto the fashions of the day: “Swimming against the tide is no folly if the waters flow towards a waterfall.”
Nobody is forcing anyone to be Catholic. If one cannot abide what the church teaches, then he can either make a resolution to do all he can to understand it so that he can accept it, or he can leave the church. The church is not a democracy. Catholic teaching is based on biblical principle and the teaching authority of the church, founded by Christ. Catholic institutions do not exist for their own sake but in order to spread the Gospel and nourish the faith of the church’s members.
“…it is much worse when those who in reality have lost their faith remain within the Church and try to undermine Christian faith with their claim that they are giving to Christian revelation the interpretation that suits modern man.”---Dietrich von Hildebrand
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”---attributed to St. Augustine
“Neutrality is a chimera because we cannot help but import certain philosophical premises about men, nature, and morality into political and legal decisions.”—Patrick Deneen
Josef Pieper argued that we humans possess not only individual rights but also obligations, which are active by definition. And those obligations are especial acute when the regime aims to harm citizens. Obligations in active participation in the res publica therefore includes not only voting for candidates who to promote the good but, also, protesting unjust, immoral laws and state-sanctioned ideology as well as taking part in various other forms of non-violent civic engagement. Absent from those places cedes ground to the harmful forces and leaves us vulnerable to ideas and activities that very well may destroy us.
The largest demographic in the United States that vocally seeks to uphold those obligations through the norms of familia respectability and personal responsibility, respect for law and order, professionalism and a diligent work ethic, neutrality before the law and free enterprise is the politically conservative Catholic. That Catholic influence, with whatever residue it leaves, like Judaism for most Jews in America today, is often more cultural than truly religious.
This Catholic integralism(2) is not a program for political action, but simply a means for Catholics to learn to think with the teachings of the Church, with a God that is more than just a prop. And the Catholic principle of Subsidiary holds that higher levels of social order should be careful not to interfere with lower orders, helping only when necessary and doing so in a way that is temporary and supportive. It is respectful of the authentic social relationships and local knowledge that people have of one another. It is personalistic. It requires the state to refrain from anything that would de facto restrict the just initiative, freedom and responsibility of the person(3).
Subsidiary compliments the classical doctrine of economics, that the optimum adjustment between the appetites of man, which are limitless, and the resources of nature, which are not, requires private property, production for profit by private ownership, and regulation by a free competitive economy brings not only maximum possible prosperity but also maximum possible freedom. Even more, the free enterprise system is where one finds, as a result, the automatic support for the weak because no one can bring sustained prosperity to himself without bringing it to others.
However, Subsidiary tells us also that to live solely only for others is not only impractical but an insult to the God given free will of the average human being and his need and capacity for self-reliance. That people should obtain and then enjoy the fruits of their labor is supported by incontrovertible empirical evidence that no other adjustment in the history of the world has brought so much to so many. “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has no works?... Can his faith save him? Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." —James 2:14 - 26
Subsidiary opposes all forms of collectivism, sets limits for state intervention, aims at harmonizing the relationship between individuals and society, and tends towards the establishment of true inter-national order always with a view toward the common good (Catechism #1883 and #1885) through the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience while safe-guarding privacy along with rightful freedom in matters of religion. (#1907).
Communities and nations define themselves by what they hold sacred, and when nothing is sacred, they lose their reason for being. As Augustine noted, nations fail because peoples fail, and peoples fail because they love the wrong things. The best-designed nation will flounder upon a deficient civil society. States that suppress the individual on behalf of some expression of the collective will fail. Communism has proven that. It is not only anti-Christian but also anti-democratic to take away from someone the compensation that other people in the first instance decide to give to one. When the people who, in the role as ultimate employers, pay someone for what they want of what another has produced and the government promptly turns around and redistributes that, directly or indirectly, who is thwarting the most directly expressed will not only of the people but, of the will of God expressed? Who is destroying not just democracy and its freedom but also the word of God?
1. Bernard Shaw expressed years later, a common faith is a necessity for any society that wants eternal peace and distant government. However, revolutionary religion emphasizies politics not morality and utlimately thus must lead to atheistic secularism. And since the 3 characteristics of revolution are irrationality, violence, and atheism, with the rebels predominantly guided by emotion, making the mistake of hating others instead of hating any wrong they supposedly did, things will end worse than when it started. For example, when promoters of atheism seized control and turned the French, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian revolutions into a shocking bloodbath and violence, way beyond any comparison to any religious turmoil and strife.
2. Intergalism is essentially nothing but adherence to the teachings of the Catholic Church and faith and morals. And since religion is not merely a private matter discourse about God, good and evil, and the ultimate purpose of human life needs to take place at the level of society itself. That the form government takes is of no concern to the church so long as it is governed on behalf of the common good and recognizes God’s law. It Does not constitute a sweeping theological state as it is portrayed by its opposition. It definitely does not mean plotting a coup d’état or even dreaming of one; It is simply a means for Catholics to learn to think with the church and to reject the ideological fallacies that have long dominated the western world and confuse Catholics.
3. The institutional existence of the Catholic Church as a spiritual rival to the temporal power of the state, created the possibility of limited authority and hence the emergence of rights and liberties. A phenomenon unique to the history of the free and prosperous Judeo-Christian West.
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Replies
Amen... well said and true. Thank you for posting this important thesis on the church and liberalism.
You are most Welcome Sir.