Tea Party Catholics? “Virtuous Republic”? Repent! And support the Monarchy!
By: Walter Adams (CatholicMonarchy.com)
I read the following today entitled, “Cardinal George and the Denethor Option” which stated the following:
For these men, as for George, what they took were the political truths that inspired the founding of a deeply virtuous Republic, the United States of America, where the Church could live and thrive under much more wholesome conditions, with fewer degrading temptations, than under the so-called Christian monarchies that trammeled the Church with favors, which she too often was tempted to accept in place of her freedom. Here on these shores we were offered no mess of pottage, and so we could keep our birthright. That is now what we’ll have to fight for.
The link above, “deeply virtuous
Republic,” by the way, goes to a site promoting “Tea Party Catholics,” a
phrase that makes me as a Catholic shiver with cognitive dissonance. I
might as well be reading the title, “Revolutionary Catholics.” Oxymoron.
One issue I have with the position above is that it compares the worst
of Monarchical, historical reality (and reality always falls short of
principle) against the highest ideals of the “virtuous Republic” (which
Republic might just be falling short of principle itself in case you
have not noticed). I would suggest that we meditate on the reality of
the existing secular/atheistic/anti-God/anti-Church Republic versus the
realties of these (e-hem, so-called) Christian Monarchies of old. Are we
still sure that the “virtuous Republic” is better?
Well, of course, one might say, “But this
is not the Republic we had; it has been usurped. We are fighting for
the restoration of the noble ‘virtuous’ Republic!”
Well, okay. However, this misses an
important point. Our current situation in the Republic is, in fact, the
natural evolution of the revolutionary Republic. This is where the
revolutionary Republic was always headed. Our current situation is
moving us toward “revolutionary equilibrium” whereby God is removed from
society and Satan reigns. To “fight for” the revolutionary Republic is
to fight for the same, broken model whereby “The People” decide what is
right from wrong rather than God. The revolutionary Republic is the
republic of the French Revolution (which was inspired by the American
Revolution – the American Revolution is merely a slow-burning French
Revolution), a society that hates God and despises the old Christian
Monarchical order with the Divine Order that it represents (albeit very
imperfectly at times). It is a society grounded in the “Enlightenment”
rather than in the Gospel. So, what is it, exactly, Tea Party Catholics
that “we’ll have to fight for?” Are we fighting for Jefferson or Jesus?
Note that I qualified the above with the phrase, “revolutionary Republic.” As Pope St. Leo XIII pointed out, not all Republics are revolutionary:
When speaking of the various forms of government, Leo XIII made it quite clear that “each of them is good, as long as it moves honestly toward its end, namely, the common good, for which social authority is constituted.
The reason Monarchy is the best form of
government is that it is inherently, and by principle, the most
counterrevolutionary form of government, one that is most likely to
facilitate the Divine Order and to resemble the Kingdom of God “on earth
as it is in Heaven.” However, in the aftermath of the bloody French
Revolution, Pope St. Leo XIII wisely sought to mitigate the tendency
toward civil war by offering an olive branch to republicanism, as long
as…
It is that “as long as…” that is the key
to identifying the revolutionary Republic from any other. We can smell
the sulphuric odor of the revolutionary as follows (from Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in the same link above):
We do label as revolutionary the hostility professed against monarchy and aristocracy on the principle that they are essentially incompatible with human dignity and the normal order of things. This error was condemned by Saint Pius X in the apostolic letter Notre charge apostolique, of August 25, 1910.
Thus, we do have an acid test at our
disposal. If people support the “virtuous Republic” out of animosity
toward legitimate aristocracy and Monarchy, we know them to be infected
with the revolutionary virus. They seek the opposite of the Divine
Order. They seek “the will of the People” in all matters, including
those that have to do with the “tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil,”
over the will of God.
No good Catholic could ever support this
revolutionary attitude. So, Republican Catholics must somehow convince
themselves, and the rest of us, that the American Republic is not
revolutionary. I leave the reader to think that through for themselves.
However, as you do, keep in mind that one of the most cherished ideals
of this Republic is that of “Separation of Church and State,” which is
implicitly fawned over in the original article mentioned at the top. Separation
of Church and State was condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem fidei as
re-emphasized by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi (paragraph 24):
But it is not with its own members alone that the Church must come to an amicable arrangement – besides its relations with those within, it has others outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by itself; there are other societies in the world, with which it must necessarily have contact and relations. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by its own nature as it has been already described. The rules to be applied in this matter are those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question is one of objects while here we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are strangers to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, allowing to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophy and history. The State must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders – nay, even in spite of its reprimands. To trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of conduct, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of ecclesiastical authority, against which one is bound to act with all one’s might. The principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by our predecessor Pius VI. in his Constitution Auctorem fidei.
It is this very separation that Tea Party
Catholics, and Republican Catholics in general, tout as necessary for
religious freedom. Yet, how did this notion of religious freedom ever
gain traction in the first place as a new Catholic/Americanism dogma
(though not a true Church dogma)? It came from no less than the American
Bishops who, at Vatican II, promoted the revolutionary ideals of the
American Republic for the Church as a whole! This is proudly advocated by the influential Catholic republican George Weigel:
The most significant contribution to the universal Church of pre-conciliar liberal Catholicism in America was the development of a Catholic theory of religious freedom—which led, in due course, to Vatican II’s epic Declaration on Religious Freedom.
We see today that the Republic has taken
the ideals promoted by the American prelates and turned them back on the
Church herself. American-istic religious freedom is the very hammer
used in the Republic today to break down the Church. Religious freedom
came full circle to bite the prelates and the Church as a whole. The
anti-Gods used religious freedom to claim “moral equality” through moral
relativism and “individual freedom to do whatever” to then fight toe to
toe with the Church for political and cultural power. They now have the
power, and are silencing the Church. Rather than the dominance of the
Gospel and the Social Kingship of Christ through the Catholic Monarchies
of old (however imperfectly implemented), we have now the atheistic
dictatorship of the “the People” through the Republic of today (being
implemented rather perfectly if I do say so myself!). Well played
pagans! Sounds like the work of an inherently revolutionary Republic,
not an inherently virtuous one.
So, we can add the above to our acid test
for revolutionaries. Keep in mind that I think the apparent disconnect
between Pope St. Pius X’s words in Pascendi and the position of the
American prelates with regard to Religious Freedom is not necessarily
black and white. Even in ancient Christendom, we find much more
religious freedom than many might think. However, it is not hard for the
general population of Catholics in America to take Weigel’s (and the
Tea Party Catholic’s) position and run with it in revolutionary form.
The American Catholic Hierarchy certainly seems uninterested in
preventing it.
So, let us ask the “virtuous Republicans”
to be forthcoming. Do you support Monarchy and the aristocracy as valid
political models that truly form society to God’s ideals, to His
“Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven”? Or do you openly, or secretly,
despise the aristocratic model and see it as something
counter-productive to human dignity and progress? Do you see “separation
of Church and State” as the ideal, the optimal operating principle for a
free people (as opposed to Papal teaching), or do you demand, properly,
even in your Republic, a sense of legitimate moral authority based on
the moral authority of the Church (and if so, how do you propose to do
that with “separation”)?
Thinking through these issues will help
the Catholic Republican understand if he or she is pursuing a truly
“virtuous” Republic or is, perhaps unwittingly, pursuing the
revolutionary republic.
My sense is that if one finds that he or
she is truly pursuing a “virtuous” Republic, as permitted by Pope St.
Leo XIII, one will, at some point, come to Pope Pius VI’s (and 1,500
years of Christian history’s) worldview and realize that they might just
as well truly progress forward and support the finest governmental form
of all: the Catholic Monarchy.
A closing question we might ask ourselves
is: With our country and the world in such a state, why are we talking
about “giving the government back to the people” instead of talking
about the “Social Kingship of Christ”? Who do you trust more – the
People, or Christ?
Vive le Roi.
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