Catholicism, Politics and Activism

[Christopher68]

It seems to me that any law is a enforcement of a belief. And there has been no government in human history that did not at least in minor way impose belief even unintentionally.

The problem lies when those laws violate basic human rights in the governments to actively enforce belief upon the constituency. I don’t think anyone in this conversation disagrees that where the country is going is in the wrong direction when it comes to government trying to enforce it’s own beliefs upon the masses.

However, I think that where we most obviously disagree is the whole concept of the victimless crime scenario (which you might want to more fully spell out for us so we are on the same page). Every crime has a victim. So I guess my question is, are the crimes you mention as being victimless simply a case of merely breaking the law (say like getting a ticket for going 56 mph in a 55 mph zone)? Or is it more an example of smoking marijuana, where the addict will claim that he is not hurting anyone?

It seems we are in agreement over the general direction of government. However, I disagree that ‘every crime has a victim’. There are many things that are more appropriately identified as ‘bad behavior’ than as crimes - primarily because there is in fact no victim involved - even if, as Catholics, we morally disagree with the actions.

Here is a very recent article that speaks to the very ideas I’ve tried to touch on in this thread regarding the danger of asking too much of government. The writers explains himself far better than I have!

We may still disagree, but at least you’ll know where I’m coming from on this topic.

mises.org/story/3467

 

[ahollars]

It seems we are in agreement over the general direction of government. However, I disagree that ‘every crime has a victim’. There are many things that are more appropriately identified as ‘bad behavior’ than as crimes - primarily because there is in fact no victim involved - even if, as Catholics, we morally disagree with the actions.

Here is a very recent article that speaks to the very ideas I’ve tried to touch on in this thread regarding the danger of asking too much of government. The writers explains himself far better than I have!

We may still disagree, but at least you’ll know where I’m coming from on this topic.

mises.org/story/3467

Every crime does have a victim. That fact that you cannot see or hear one is no justification for believing there is no victim. Please drop that line, because you will convince no one of that. All it does is lead people to believe that Libertarian = Indifferent.

And we force beliefs on others all the time. This country is not a democracy, it is a republic. There is a major difference.

The only thing necessary for evil to succeed in this world is for good men to do nothing. It takes more than prayer, because we should be praying anyways. Prayer is good only as long as you are not a man who has 1,000 talents buried in the sand somewhere.

Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, but by whose sword? Do you think that we as a faithful people will never have to shed our blood for the salvation of ignorant pro-choicers? A loathe for warfare is no reason to avoid it at all cost. Our lives are not our own, and if God calls us to serve as a sacrifice for the sake of our fellow men, no matter how unjustified it may be in our eyes.

It took a civil war the last time this country was divided. We are not immune from having another one.

Final note: any reason you can think of to allow abortion, take out the word “abortion” and replace it with “slavery”, and realize how foolish it sounds.

 

[Christopher68]

Every crime does have a victim. That fact that you cannot see or hear one is no justification for believing there is no victim. Please drop that line, because you will convince no one of that. All it does is lead people to believe that Libertarian = Indifferent.

And we force beliefs on others all the time. This country is not a democracy, it is a republic. There is a major difference.

The only thing necessary for evil to succeed in this world is for good men to do nothing. It takes more than prayer, because we should be praying anyways. Prayer is good only as long as you are not a man who has 1,000 talents buried in the sand somewhere.

Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, but by whose sword? Do you think that we as a faithful people will never have to shed our blood for the salvation of ignorant pro-choicers? A loathe for warfare is no reason to avoid it at all cost. Our lives are not our own, and if God calls us to serve as a sacrifice for the sake of our fellow men, no matter how unjustified it may be in our eyes.

It took a civil war the last time this country was divided. We are not immune from having another one.

Final note: any reason you can think of to allow abortion, take out the word “abortion” and replace it with “slavery”, and realize how foolish it sounds.

Your first paragraph is incorrect. Many libertarian and libertarian-leaning people believe this instinctively. I don’t necessarily need to convince anyone else of this concept, because it is readily accepted by those who believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and freedom from government.

Obviously I haven’t changed your mind, and you certainly haven’t changed mine. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.

 

[JimG]

And we force beliefs on others all the time. This country is not a democracy, it is a republic. There is a major difference.

To a certain extent, it is true that in passing laws, we force our beliefs on others. However, it is really a standard of conduct that we are enforcing.

It used to be, for example that both adultery and fornication were contrary to civil law, and could be prosecuted. Those laws were passed because people generally believed those things to be detrimental to good order. We have since gone a different route, or courts have forced us into a different route by forcing upon us their belief that such things are purely private matters. (Mrs. Sanford, for one, might disagree.) I am not sure that society is better off as a result.

As to the matter at hand, seven justices on the supreme court in 1973 forced their beliefs on all the rest of us, who had passed laws regulating the practice of abortion to one extent or another. That too, was considered to be a private matter, even though a new human being is killed in the process. But their belief was that it is a private matter, and so fifty state laws were vitiated.

 

[michael_john_ch]

Roe vs Wade. If both Houses were GOP they cannot change the the Law because the Supreme Court made it the LAW OF THE LAND. President Bush had Father Richard Neuhause as an advisor and had two (2) Catholics and I mean two real Catholics, not part time Catholics in the Supreme Court; Roe vs Wade is still the law of the land. Then part time Catholics voted for a President that wants the HOLOCAUST of Roe vs Wade to continue. Catholics WAKE UP and that includes me. I pray every day for the HOLOCAUST to end. PRAY. GOD will hear us if we all pray

 

[JenDeMarie]

I just came back to report that the e-mail alerts from Father Pavone’s Priests for Life are fantastic and just what I was looking for when I found myself stunned at the direction the discussion here has taken. So, just for the sake of clarity:

I am, by no means, anything remotely resembling a libertarian, though I do see a benefit in smaller and more local forms of government. Having said that, the kind of “activism” I was referring to is not necessarily political, but essentially amounts to continuously and consistently applying counter-pressure to those forces which are attempting to use legislation to legitimize anti-christian views and behaviors, for instance by legislating changes to the legal definition of marriage, easing the laws which regulate divorce, or crafting language in bills and statutes which effectively normalizes homosexuality. And by “applying counter-pressure” I mean regularly phoning and/or e-mailing my legislative representatives.

I think that by definition, a person who is pro-life is going to see abortion as a crime with a victim. After all, that’s what the life in pro-life stands for, does it not? We’re for life and against those things which destroy life, especially abortion.

And if a crime with a victim is one that is worthy of legislation, then, by those terms, pro-life issues are legislative issues. When the rights of one individual cancel the rights of another, liberty meets the destruction of liberty and the law sees fit to intervene. So, for instance, if your history of reckless driving finally kills someone, our community should have the right to revoke your driving license, because I don’t want my grandmother to be your next victim!

Having said that, democratic legislation, at least in theory, should be approved and carried by the majority of the people. That’s what separates it from dictatorial legislation (at least in theory, bear with me here – I know our government isn’t perfect). In this sense, any kind of meaningful legislative change needs to happen in tandem with the change of hearts and minds. But then, I do not think that either can exist without the other. These things go hand in hand.

More than anything I believe in the power of God and I believe that prayer is more important than any kind of activism. After all, if God is all-powerful then everything that is happening now is within His control and happening because He allows it. Our responsibility, then, lies in responding as appropriately as possible to the events going on around us as good disciples of Christ, for the greater glory of God. One of the responsibilities of our discipleship is to allow our light to shine forth before men, as a city on a hill – and one of the ways that we can extend our witness is by continuously reminding our representatives that we uphold a longstanding moral tradition, which they were elected to represent.

 

[St_Francis]

It seems we are in agreement over the general direction of government. However, I disagree that ‘every crime has a victim’. There are many things that are more appropriately identified as ‘bad behavior’ than as crimes - primarily because there is in fact no victim involved - even if, as Catholics, we morally disagree with the actions.

Here is a very recent article that speaks to the very ideas I’ve tried to touch on in this thread regarding the danger of asking too much of government. The writers explains himself far better than I have!

We may still disagree, but at least you’ll know where I’m coming from on this topic.

mises.org/story/3467

From the blog entry you linked to: If I give a government the power to force you to accept my values, I also give them the power to force me to accept your values at some point in the future. Another way of saying this is that any government with the power to take an atheist’s money and give it to my church is also a government with the power to take my money and give it to Planned Parenthood.

In this country, the federal government cannot take anyone’s money and give it to a church, but the government can and does take my money and give it to Planned Parenthood.

What protects us from the first is the Constitution, which states that the federal government shall not establish a religion–what this means is that the federal government was not permitted to recognize one denomination as the state’s religion as was the custom back in those days.

Some “crimes” are “victimless”–driving on an empty straight road on the wrong side, for example. But these are conventions embodied in law for the purpose of making sure we’re all on the same page (all driving on the same sides of the road). There is nothing *inherently *wrong with driving on the left–I do not think that all the people in England are going to Hell for doing it–but there is a very dangerous *problem *if people start choosing willy-nilly which side of the road they will drive on.

I do believe in protective laws, and I do believe that laws which forbid abortion in any circumstances are as necessary to the good order of society as laws against murder, rape, etc. *Abortion is not a victimless crime. *The point of abortion is to take a human life, and that is wrong and ought to be illegal. Our protections ought to be there for everyone, not just those select few who happen already to be born.

 

[Nino]

I’m a recent convert to Catholicism – I just joined the church this Easter – and in all honesty, I went through a pretty rapid transition from extremely progressive liberal to fairly conservative Catholic (in about a year).

Initially, there were some newsletters and e-mail subscriptions that I procrastinated about canceling, during my year of conversion (because signing up for more e-mail alerts and newsletters than I need and keeping on top of my clutter are both things I struggle with). But as time went on and I found myself with some contrasting e-mail subscriptions I started noticing differences between, say, the pro-abortion lists that I had neglected to cancel and the pro-life lists that I had just recently joined.

Planned Parenthood, most of all, has a very organized, efficient, effective networking machine in place to put constant pressure on the government – both on the federal and local levels – and I’m not seeing anything remotely similiar in the opposite camp.

The thing that got me fired up today is that I just watched a massive Planned Parenthood campaign turn over the long-standing abstinence-only sex ed program for my state – and I saw no resistence to it from anyone except for one small online Protestent fundamentalist group. There were no e-mails from my diocese, no one else seemed to know about it – and almost overnight we went from having schools that proclaimed the significance of marriage to schools that automatically enroll children in progressive sex-ed in which they begin learning about birth control, various sexual lifestyle choices and abortion at the age of 12.

I believe the Susan B. Anthony list is the biggest pro-life organization I’m currently signed up with. Is there a more effective list that I’ve simply neglected to join or is there a different way of organizing in the pro-life movement or is this just a big hole in the pro-life, family values tent that needs to be filled?

Terms: we have to be careful on using words …what is a progressive liberal anyway…the left is hardly progressive since it wants to return to the days of Hitler,Stalin etc which is a handful of goons controlling the thoughts,actions etc of the majority of its people! Conservative,in the dictionary means…for the status quo…and since the US of A is almost totally left now…re: a land controlled by wealthy elitists who hate we commoners…to be a ‘conservative’ is not on the right but left…I call myself a ‘classical liberal’…in France to the kings right sat the conservatives…dukes,counts etc…the establishment…to his left a small group of liberals…for the common man etc…so a ‘’‘progressive liberal’ is an oxymoron at best…the word ‘square’ as in square deal was changed so as to smear Teddy Roosevelt…and what once meant fair and honest was changed to mean…outdated and naive!!!..To permit the temporary mom to murder her developing baby the word ‘person’ in the constitution had to be changed …on and on it goes…now marriage and love is being changed to mean just what pray tell…o who cares…I want to be popular and will just sit on my couch munching tators…