Yesterday we
began a series on tradition, faith, and reason in government and organized
religion. We decided to focus on
organized religion, specifically the Catholic Church, since the issue seems
more clear cut there than in most institutions.
Today we’ll look at the liberal Catholic position.
The liberal Catholic
position puts the State at the center, with the Church (or any other organized
religion, for that matter; we’re not picking on Catholics) viewed as something
of a second-rate government agency. In
the liberal view, given that meeting people’s material wants and needs in
response to current social conditions is paramount, the Church must change and
adapt not only human practices, but absolutes of both the natural and
supernatural law.
From a religious
point of view, this shifts the basis of the natural law from God’s Nature,
self-realized in His Intellect, and therefore discernible by human reason by
its own natural force and light as a result of observations and conclusions
drawn from human nature (a reflection of God’s Nature), to a personal
interpretation of God’s Will, accepted by faith.
Faith and reason,
instead of being complementary, are put in opposition to each other. Whoever has the strongest faith (meaning the
biggest club) imposes that faith on others.
Might makes right.
This “Triumph of
the Will,” being against nature, must be imposed by force. As the Roman poet Horace said, “You can chase
Nature out with a pitchfork, but she always comes back.”
Imposing anything against nature
requires a vast increase in State power.
This is because the State has a monopoly over the instruments of
coercion. Because the State then
provides the material wants and needs that liberals tend to view as the
exclusive mission of the Church (cf. Ecclesia
in America, § 67), organized religion becomes redundant, and is subsumed
into the State.
#30#
