Non declinavit ad dextram sive ad sinistram.
Although Jacobin was set up as a venue to critique the failures and mediocrity of the New Left, it is interesting to note how often Jacobin and its supporters fall into bourgeois platitudes. Thus, in commenting on the recent tragedy of the Charlie Hebdo case, Jacobin is reduced to platitudes such as:
Dubium: Does your interpretation of Dignitatis Humanæ imply that the state cannot, even as the arm of the Church, limit the public profession of non-Catholic religions if the professors are unbaptized (apart, of course, from the considerations of public order)? Put differently, has the church never allowed that exercise to the state?
Responsum: Affirmative. The state cannot, even as arm of the Church, limit the profession of false religions by the unbaptized, except insofar as they disturb public order.
For the most part, the Church has been very careful of the distinction between the baptized and the un-baptized. Even anti-Catholic authors have remarked on this. For example, Thomas Hobbes:
From hence it is, that in all Dominions where the Popes Ecclesiasticall power is entirely received, Jewes, Turkes, and Gentiles, are in the Roman Church tolerated in their Religion, as farre forth, as in the exercise and profession thereof they offend not against the civill power: whereas in a Christian, though a stranger, not to be of the Roman religion, is Capitall; because the Pope pretendeth that all Christians are his Subjects. For otherwise it were as much against the law of Nations to persecute a Christian stranger, for professing the Religion of his owne country, as an Infidell… (Leviathan, ch. 44, Of Spirituall Darknesse from Misinterpretation of Scripture; cf. Thomas Pink, “Suarez and Bellarmine on the Church as Coercive Lawgiver,” p. 188).
The fire and zeal of my fellow contributor to The Josias, Joseph, should be commended. Reflecting on the recent dustup over First Things editor R.R. Reno’s joining the call for Catholic priests (and all Christian ministers) to “get out of the [civil] marriage business” (the so-called “Marriage Pledge”), Joseph shows deep concern that Catholics may be tacitly, if not explicitly, accepting the secular dogma of separation between Church and State which has been routinely condemned by the Church’s social magisterium. The crux of Joseph’s reflection appears to be found in the following paragraph:
Continue reading “Can Catholics Accept the “Marriage Pledge”? – A Reply”
First Things editor Rusty Reno has caused something of a stir this week with “A Time to Rend,” an article and pledge calling for Christian disengagement from the celebration of civil marriage. Reno’s argument is that decades of civil attacks on the nature of marriage have perverted the civil meaning of marriage to the point that our duty to God demands a complete rejection of American civil marriage. To sign a “marriage license” whose essence points to a reality fundamentally opposed to faith and morals gives scandal, so priests must cease to be ministers of “civil marriage”.
Continue reading “Can Catholics Accept the “Marriage Pledge”?”
It is tempting in a liberal world, in democratic societies, to fall into the quietism which limits prayer to private piety and the hidden life. But in the same way that we ought to bring the truths of faith to bear in all our external dealings, we should bring the troubles of temporal affairs into our prayer. Prayer is not merely a private act, but a public one. The liturgies offered by the Church are public acts of service—service to God, on behalf of the people. And just as the individual good is inseparable from the common good, our prayer ought always to involve supplication for the good of the community and concern for the preservation and perfection of the secular order.
Today in the United States is the highest feast day in the political calendar. We ask you, dear readers, in the spirit of St. Pius V, to pray Psalm 73 (74) and offer a rosary for the conversion our rulers and the restoration of Christ’s social reign among us.
