Wasn’t it Pope John Paul II who said something to the effect that freedom results when men have the opportunity to do what is right, rather than to do what they want?
Furthermore, if you want to have a grasp on what we should do “if you ran this country…” I would recommend reading some of the Encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII, namely
Immortale Dei. You can find many Papal documents on
www.papalencyclicals.net
The State’s legitimate authority exists to protect the Catholic social order in the temporal world-that is the only true and perfect government. Granted, we are not and will not be perfect in the temporal world but the more the State is in discord with the Church, the worse off we are all. The closer we orient the dictates of the State to those of the Church, the better off we all are.
Thus, to play along with the first stated question, I’d make myself Emperor (hey, it is if “I ran the country”…
) then I’d go about making everything contrary to Catholic teaching illegal. No porn, no abortion, no euthanasia etc.
When it comes to matters of free will, I would make certain allowances. I’d allow people to be members of heretical and/or schismatic sects, infidel and pagan religions as well as agnostic or atheistic philosophies in a private manner. However, publically, no one could teach or try to win converts over to their errors without incuring secular penalties. Disimination of all such errors by means of print, electronic means of all types (radio, TV, internet etc.) would be illegal.
All things Catholic would be given precedence, free will would be preserved however error would not be fostered or allowed to spread freely like it is today. Eventually, the Catholic Faith would be the Status Quo and all manners of error would be seen as degeneracy and not tolerated.
The most wonderful thing is that we would have full and unbridled use of all the electronic means we have today that we didn’t have at the times of the Great Schism or Protestant “Reformation” and with this greater speed of communication, the Church and State would be well aware of any troublemakers well before they begin to foster any sizable followings. Any such outbursts would be small and could be dealt with quickly and effectively. Without being held back by the secularists or heretics, we could bring the full brunt on Truth against all false claims and be unfettered by the lying leftist media or “intelligensia”. Imagine the posibility of not having to wage a constant uphill battle against misquotation, misinterpretation, purposeful misrepresentation, outright lying, and all the other tricks some people use to try to chip away at the Church! If it were the other way around, wow!
Granted, this is all just a pipe dream and I know full well that it won’t come true (don’t worry, I’m not dillusional :whacky: ) but in my opinion, that is what as perfect as theoretically possible (but highly improbable) Catholic State would look like. I think the main obstacle against it would be…sin. Even back in the day when Church and State weren’t shoehorned into this false notion of “separation of Church and State” it wasn’t “perfect”.
Another argument against this is one I frequently come up against, “You don’t really believe in this ‘authoritarian’ style of government, do you? What if a Baptist or a Mormon or a Muslim took over? Would you like religious authoritarianism then?”
Well, the obvious answer is that I don’t support “relgious authoritarianism”, I support a Catholic social order. Only the Truth can bring about Order. If you substitute for Catholicism you will fail.
Just look at the Communist system. They radically abandoned God and they radically failed. The Communist system once ruled somewhere around half of the world, seemed like it was getting more and more powerful and then fell flat on its face. Today it exists only in the guise of tin red stars and other little knickknacks that the Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, and N. Korean governent uses to play Communist. What they call “Communism” has little to do with the philosophy of Marx, Engels or Lenin. Error always begets failure.
