B
Badaliyyah
Guest
there are NO Catholic lands. there are no Catholic states. the freedoms you are proclaiming as “ours” are directly counter the documents of the Catholic Church. But you ought, according to those same documents, to be working to make the state and society Catholic. It wasn’t that long ago, though, that there were Catholic nations in Europe: Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal. Both of which were trying to put the directives of Leo, et al., into practice both politically and economically. Both of which were exceedingly authoritarian, and both of which enjoyed a great deal of support and intimacy with the Vatican. (and if one just likes trotting out the reality of the human propensity for violence…even more recently, one can think of the close ties that the Vatican had with, and the support that the hierarchy gave to, very brutal South American dictatorships, such as those in Brazil and Chile, etc., because they were Catholic and anti-Communist; JP2 was advocating for Pinochet right up until Pinochet’s death).
According to Catholic teaching, what ought to be granted those of other religions according is that they have the rights that accord with the formality of human dignity. With regards to freedom of religion, this means the ability to gather together for worship and to educate one’s children. It does not guarantee you that the state will not be actively supporting another religion (in fact, the documents make clear that ideally the state should be promoting one religion…Catholicism). If you want to see what this looks like, just look at the Papal States under Leo XIII. This was not theory for Leo, he was writing as a real king, ruling real people. If you want to know what the Catholic attitude is toward liberal freedoms from the French Revolution forward, you have the Papal States as a model.
Officially, the position of the Catholic Church is that its members should be trying for the very things you are complaining about. My point, and I don’t know how you could miss it, is that the official position of the Catholic Church is almost exactly the one you are outlining as so horrible (because it is an Islamic state instead of a Catholic one). The State should be religious, its citizens ought to adhere to the religion, but there is no compulsion in religion, thus certain freedoms are still accorded, because the act of faith must be free. of course all the lands belong to God and the political and social order ought to reflect that by being Catholic; when they don’t, Catholics should be acting to make them so.
I have lived in Saudi, and am very familiar with other parts of the Middle East, esp. Egypt and Jordan. I am very well aware of the situation. (It is true that the Copts do not have an easy situation in Egypt for instance, but it is there is no barrier to Catholic worship in Egypt and you can go to liturgy without fear while you are there; moreover, children receive the education that is appropriate to their religion in Egypt…so the two basics that are outlined as “freedom of religion” in Vatican2: Egypt fulfills them; the obvious issue in Egypt is changing one’s status from one religion to another, which is very difficult; but there are several cases in the Egyptian courts right now that may (or not) change that).
But this has nothing to do with your topic, which was the claim that the lands belong to God and the fact that by extension this means that the lands ought to be Muslim. This is a fairly obvious and self-evident claim. People ought to worship God rightly and this should be reflected not merely in some sort of “private” religion, but in the way they organize themselves politically as well. This is exactly what Catholicism teaches.
salaam.
