Separation of Church and State: Good or Bad?

[AngryAtheist8]

You can say that again; 57 votes thus far in favor of secular government on a Catholic discussion forum where there ought not to be a single one. Atheists needn’t worry that there will ever be a Catholic government in America - most Catholics won’t let it happen

Hopefully you are right.

Because the kind of Catholic government you advocate would be more oppressive than the Ottoman Empire was.

 

[Cat_Herder]

You can say that again; 57 votes thus far in favor of secular government on a Catholic discussion forum where there ought not to be a single one.

Not everyone who is here is Catholic (unfortunately). And there are a lot of ways to define “separation of church and state;” do you mean no caesaropapism or no freedom of religion?

 

[AngryAtheist8]

I am from Ireland and I agree with your analysis. The Irish Campaign to Seperate Church and State made a similar point.

And child abuse is neither uniquely Irish nor Catholic. Ireland in fact has one of the lowest child abuse rates in the world (much lower than the UK - where there is less than a 5% conviction rate for paedophiles):

unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard5e.pdf

Corruption within the Irish Catholic Church and abuses of power by the Catholic Church in Ireland have nothing to do with the Catholic Church

How does that make any sense?

 

[Cat_Herder]

Corruption within the Irish Catholic Church and abuses of power by the Catholic Church in Ireland have nothing to do with the Catholic Church

How does that make any sense?

Are you going to tell us that abuses of power by atheists in the [Soviet Union](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet Union) have nothing to do with atheism in general?

… Okay, I’ve mentioned Soviet Russia so many times with atheists that I just can’t resist the easy joke anymore.

In America, you herd cats. In Soviet Russia, cat herds YOU!

 

[AcolyteLector]

A ‘great’ civilization?

In Catholic medieval Europe most people were illiterate peasants (just one or two steps above slaves), and warfare was constant. Kings and nobles could abuse the common folk with impunity. Moreover famine and disease (such as the Black Death) were constant dangers.

How is that great?

Civilizations can be measured in relative terms. Compare your hilarious Monty Python-ized parody of what you think Medieval Europe was with cultures contemporary to it. It was great–even measured against the dubious parallel of the caliphates and Chinese.

Compare it even to Modern culture. You can read this surprising fact for yourself from the following tidbit which is far more eloquent than I could ever hope to put it:

Hilaire Belloc’s preface to Hoffman Nickerson’s The Inquisition

“Had you presented to the early thirteenth century the spectacle of the whole male population medically examined, registered, and forcibly drafted into a life where a chance error might be punished immediately by death or some other terrible punishment; had you shown him men, doubtful in their loyalty to the nation, condemned to years of perpetual silence, secluded from their fellow beings after being made a spectacle of public dishonour in the Courts; had you even sketched for him the universal spy system whereby a strong modern central Government holds down all its subjects as no Government of antiquity, however tyrannical, ever held them down–could you have shown a man of the thirteenth century all this, he would have felt the same repulsion and horror which most modern men felt on reading of the Inquisition, its objects and its methods.”

This, by the way, is only describing the proto-technocratic bureaucracies of c. ~1911. Not even raising the spectre of WWII and its concomitant evils.

The (1) Shoa/Holocaust, (2) the momentary incineration of Japanese civilians, and the thousands who suffered radiation poisoning for the rest of their lives, (3) the cannibalism and death marches of the Pacific theater, (4) clouds of poison gas, (5) and the clumps of German flesh and blood turned to bacon during the fire bombing of Dresden… and–of course–the despicable slaughter that they committed to earn this treatment. Let’s not even mention the Third World inflamed by this single world (i.e., European) war, and the innumerable struggles for sovereignty through guerrilla warfare, rape, and coups.

You also mention that disease (you give the example of the Black Death) was omnipresent. No, sorry, that’s not true. The great plagues came in waves. We, on the other hand, actually have truly endemic diseases (to translate epidemiological terms into plain English: ‘diseases that pretty much never go away, and remain prevalent in a certain population’): AIDS, cancer, obesity, and atheism.

[In your defense, a better argument would have been the little sicknesses: that a common cold possessed a potential killer. The high infant mortality rate would also be a more compelling example] If you did take the great plagues as an indication of a civilization’s ‘weakness’–our pandemics have been far more deadly. Some statistics show as much as a third of the world’s population having been infected by Spanish Flu (1918 outbreak), and 3% of the world’s population dying.

People will undoubtedly look back on this modern, 20th century as the most evil, barbarous era in human history. Man finally develops enough efficiency to achieve material comfort–and the story of Cain and Abel is replayed on the world stage.

I’ll take the Middle Ages any day, thank you very much. An iPod and a Constitution that can be changed whenever the ACLU gets bored are not worth it.

 

[AcolyteLector]

.

The Catholic Church is not and never has been power hungry.

The Papal States engaged in wars of conquest, your statement is an obvious falsehood.

The extent to which the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church–whose heart is beating throughout the world–and the ‘Papal States’–who no one remembers except when they need facts to calumniate the former–can be identified as one coherent institution is debatable.

And my use of ‘debatable’ here is as a polite stand-in for ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ or ‘ill-advised, lest you desire to make yourself look like a total fool’.

 

[AcolyteLector]

What WONDROUS results?

The rulers were challenged by an international army of philosophers, theologians, hermits, preachers, and cleric-administrators who advocated a single, beautiful message.

Think about a unified, convincing ‘UN’… now if the UN actually did anything it said it was going to do or had any influence.

Since you’re such a fan of the Modern era, I think it would be funny to try to find a time when a Medieval College of Cardinals was more antisemitic than some of the modern UN advisory boards and panels.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Did you know that it was religion that got slavery abolished in this country?

It was Protestant religion (assuming that by ‘this country’ you mean the U.S.).

Moreover the primary force behind ending the international slave trade was the officially Protestant British Empire.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Great points; we most certainly can be reasonable - in fact, we are the only reasonable ones. .

Really?

You see yourself as reasonable?

Well, I suppose no one is a villain in their own mind. Though you appear to be abusing the word.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

What we have now. Do you really like it? Would it not be better to live where there was a small tip of the hat to the Creator? We are sick to death from not having it!

A theocracy (which seems to be what most of the anti-Separation of Church and State crowd here are advocating) is generally far more than a ‘tip of the hat.’ In practice its more like requiring everyone to kneel all the time to the state approved deities (or else).

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Child labor was not cruel, but was and is a real part of life. We judge from afar societies that have child labor, given poor technology and limited economic growth. It is not necessarily evil, just a fact of life prior to technological advancement.

Peasants had many rights of property, fair trial, all the rights of citizens in common Roman and local law. Of course, this often varied from region to region, and we certainly have more “rights” than anyone did then, but it is ridiculous to impose the expectations of the present to the values of that society.

If it would be wrong now, it was wrong then.

Otherwise you are engaging in a morality of relativism.

 

[Windfish]

If it would be wrong now, it was wrong then.

Otherwise you are engaging in a morality of relativism.

Why would you have a problem with that? You are an atheist, after all.

 

[AcolyteLector]

In places where Sharia law holds sway (such as Iran and Saudi Arabia) rape is severely under reported because women who are raped are legitimately afraid that if they go to the authorities to report what happened to them, they will be executed for adultery (and their male attackers will face little to no punishment). This is a legitimate fear because it frequently happens in areas where Sharia law is practiced.

** I’m no fan of the Mohammadans, but you’re wrong on this one.

The social/cultural problems you’re citing here are actually less an issue of ‘Shari’a law holding sway’, and the way Shari’a law is INTERPRETED in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Think about it this way [there is a wonderful John Allen article at the NCR that could help someone who knows next to nothing about Islam–look it up]: the Sunnis are more like Protestants, and the Shi’ites are more like Catholics. The Sunnis are more congregationalist, open-interpretation. In the Sunni world, there are several schools of jurisprudence with varying interpretations of Shari’a–you are bound to whichever school you subscribe to. None of them can really be called ‘liberal’–but they can’t really be called 'conservative either… its a ‘by-the-issue’ sort of thing, and it really depends on a coincidental way that an issue has been interpreted, and happens to match modern standards.

The anomaly that Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia presents is that there is only one school of interpretation: Wahhabism. So, lacking the plurality of INTERPRETATIONS of Shari’a, Saudi Arabia’s ‘problem’ is that it has pragmatically (research the nation’s history) accepted a single interpretation of Shari’a that happens to be toxic.

The Shi’ites, on the other hand, can be called ‘more like’ Catholics, because of their clerical hierarchy, their devotion to Muhammad’s household and immediate descendants (who can loosely be called ‘saints’), and there is ONE interpretation of Shari’a in Shi’ite Islam–kinda sorta similar to the unity of the RCC’s beliefs, right? The situation in Iran is that the highest clerical official is a radical Islamist (Khomeini). The INTERPRETATION of Shari’a that flows from this cleric shapes what virtually every other cleric in the Shi’ite world says about the issue. **

In Afghanistan and rural Pakistan, girls have had acid thrown in their faces (or simply been murdered) for just trying to go to school. That is what Sharia law means in places like that.

**In Afghanistan, the situation is slightly similar. It is not simply the fact that Shari’a law is ‘the law of the land’, but the fact that radical Islamists… largely Wahhabis, largely from Saudi Arabia… took advantage of the destabilization of this country, and were celebrated as heroes when they came to their aid during their many wars.

Therefore, the issue is not SHARI’A, but which INTERPRETATION of Shari’a is being followed. In many countries, the introduction of secular civil and criminal codes were founded on existing Shari’a courts and their experience with Shari’a. In many cases, legal syncretism evolved–with encouraging success. You’ll be surprised by this, but a great deal of the corruption in many of the less Islamist Muhammadan countries (ex: Egypt, Morocco, Libya, &c.) comes from trying to adopt an unsupportable secular code–oftentimes prematurely. **

I honestly don’t see how anyone who genuinely cares about the welfare of women, can find common cause with such merciless misogynists (who clearly attach little value to the lives of women).

**I think the OP only gave these governments very measured, partial support. Her language was extremely cautious. In policy making–this might shock you–you HAVE to find common cause with people you disagree with.

Yes, even Muslims.

As an example of this, you’ll see that America is bending over backwards trying to encourage relationships with questionable characters like China, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Our State Department would consider it a diplomatic VICTORY to make common cause with the Islamic Republic of Iran. [Yes, those are their real names] **

 

[AngryAtheist8]

It was almost perfect and utterly spiritual; even secular scholars tend to refer to the Medieval age as the “Age of Faith” (Morris Bishop for one) - that is no accident. As for Fascism, do you know that aside from Nazi Germany and the Lapua Movement in Finland, all other Fascist movements of the 20th century were Catholic? I suggest you do a little research into Engelbert Dolfuss of Austria, Francisco Franco of Spain, and Antonio de Oliveria Salazar of Portugal; Mussolini’s Catholicism can be considered nominal at best but the bulk of the Italian state’s government and policy were pro-Catholic. I am willing to bet that you didn’t know that the Fascist Italian government helped form the modern papal states in a successful effort to end the strife between the Vatican and the Italian crown (and nearly obliterated the Mafia in Sicily), that Dolfuss and Salazar were meticulous in their attempts to implement the teachings of *Rerum Novarum *and Quadragesimo Anno into public life, and were it not for Franco’s defense of the clergy, the Marxists would have destroyed the Church in Spain. Truth is stranger than fiction; name a single secular government that has done a fraction as much in defense and support of the Church and its teachings.

“Fascism” is not a pejorative to me.

So you are a proud Fascist then.

Much like the bloodthirsty Franco and his buddy Hitler?

 

[AcolyteLector]

It was Protestant religion (assuming that by ‘this country’ you mean the U.S.).

Moreover the primary force behind ending the international slave trade was the officially Protestant British Empire.

According to whom? Roman Catholics–in their capacity as Roman Catholics–have fought for the abolition and mitigation of the evil that is human bondage for (1) far longer, and (2) with far more gusto and expense.

If your first response is to scream at me about the hacienda system, by the way, there are innumerable arguments against this.

**

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Lycorth wrote, “the truth of the Medieval era as a time of faith, a time when foul customs were done away with, as a time when Western culture was preserved after the Empire’s fall and beautified under the Faith as has never been done before or since”

and how true it is! Here is how Undset writes of it, from her background in Norwegian anthropology:

…at the time when the ‘Reformation’ broke out, the Church had succeeded in instilling into the consciousness of Christendom a kind of latent demand that the doctrines of Christinaity should be taken as the pattern of life, and that the temporal power should in some way or other help and support people who wished to live as Christians–should make an end of conditions and institutions which were a downright temptation to breaches of Christianity, and legislate in such a way that in abiding by the laws of their country the people would also be practising Christianity. This in reality is the triumph of the Catholic Church.

Thus Undset wrote, in Stages on the Road, “Letter to a Parish Priest.” But the Church gave it away (at Vatican II and the new teachings on the secular state) in favor of the emasculated new “religious freedom” teaching, in favor of a self-perfecting humanity that didn’t need such “help and support” anymore. That’s how we lost a very good deal. Less if you were rich–the poor lost far more. In fact, the fall of the religious state made the world ready for capitalism, which would throw the poor off their land, end their independence as owners of their small capital, and reduce them to wage slavery.

And here the Catholics on this thread would perhaps split yet again. A new thread could well begin, Capitalism: Good or Bad? But, do you know, it’s the same question, and the Catholics for a secular state would be likely to support capitalism and the Republican party (I’m betting the religious state side has no party!) . The Religious State takes far better care of its flock than the secular state and its economics of capitalism does, using a diffferent economics–broad distribution of ownership, little concentration of capital, state/Church intervention allowed. Any history text will tell you the poor weren’t thrown under the bus in medieval times–the texts will argue, if anything, that this was the situation that had to change, and did change with the Reformation, for the world to “progress.” But none of the experts deny that with about the same life-span as today, with a little gold and a little land, many complicated laws that protected their property, reasonably-priced access to medical care, education if desired, and over a hundred ‘feast days’ a year (all festivities paid for by the wealthy and the guilds), it could sensibly be argued that life was as sweet as it gets in these precincts for the ordinary joe. (Source: Stripping the Altars, your library will have it.) We should be so lucky. But you know, I think we could truly go back to the future in space, when things might operate like a frontier, if we don’t let land speculate.

Do you have any proof at all for any of these grand claims?

 

[Fledgling]

I would not like the Government implementing Islam, Paganism or any other Heathen religion into law.

I’m sure folks of other faiths wouldn’t like Government implementing doctrine of Christianity in to law either.

There is no way to make everybody from all walks of life and all faiths happy without “Separation of Church and State”.

In a perfect world it would be different but unfortunately ,while the Earth is perfect in Creation, we are far from perfect inhabitants.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Um, no pope ever directly participated in government, except as moral shepherd and chastiser. Again, I wish you would actually study the Middle Ages before attempting to comment on them.

Wrong.

The Popes ruled the Papal States in what is now Italy.

 

[AcolyteLector]

It was almost perfect and utterly spiritual; even secular scholars tend to refer to the Medieval age as the “Age of Faith” (Morris Bishop for one) - that is no accident. As for Fascism, do you know that aside from Nazi Germany and the Lapua Movement in Finland, all other Fascist movements of the 20th century were Catholic? I suggest you do a little research into Engelbert Dolfuss of Austria, Francisco Franco of Spain, and Antonio de Oliveria Salazar of Portugal; Mussolini’s Catholicism can be considered nominal at best but the bulk of the Italian state’s government and policy were pro-Catholic. I am willing to bet that you didn’t know that the Fascist Italian government helped form the modern papal states in a successful effort to end the strife between the Vatican and the Italian crown (and nearly obliterated the Mafia in Sicily), that Dolfuss and Salazar were meticulous in their attempts to implement the teachings of *Rerum Novarum *and Quadragesimo Anno into public life, and were it not for Franco’s defense of the clergy, the Marxists would have destroyed the Church in Spain. Truth is stranger than fiction; name a single secular government that has done a fraction as much in defense and support of the Church and its teachings.

“Fascism” is not a pejorative to me.

So you are a proud Fascist then.

Much like the bloodthirsty Franco and his buddy Hitler?

Fascism is an unworkable term in political science.

Its a toxic pejorative that people on both the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ throw at each other. Umberto Ecco… a famous semiotician (a person who studies meaning and symbols)… took up a study of what ‘fascism’ really means, in the same way that the sculptor Gutzon Borglom undertook carving Mt. Rushmore: it was a terribly difficult project, and a test of his skill.

The ‘fascist’ influence in Franco’s regime came from largely from populist parties like the Falange–at the same time, center-right technocrats, monarchists, and ultra-traditionalists (ex: the Carlists) balanced this ‘fascist’ influence. Franco and Franco’s regime cannot be called strictly fascist, for this reason. Despotic, perhaps. Misogynistic, by some. Bloody, of course. But not specifically fascist.

As for OP. His paragraph is so riddled with errors, I’m not sure what to say. Dolfuss is not on the same plane as Mussolini and Hitler. De Salazar is not a ‘Portuguese Franco’–as tempting a parallel this might be to construct.

The issue with the Law of Guarantee and the Lateran Treaty (1929) was NOT, as OP said, a riff between the Crown/House of Savoy and the Vatican. It was a dispute between the nation-state of Italy, now thoroughly republican, and the Vatican. The Law of Guarantee–which the Vatican turned down, around 60 years prior–was actually much more favorable to the Vatican’s interests.

It must be kept in mind that this was a very painful, confused time for Europe, and the popular ideologies reflect this distress. However, if fascism means anything it means the state and its interests above every other concern. It is thoroughly inimical to the spiritual influence of the Roman Catholic Church, even though it cynically co-opts it whenever it can be useful.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

The Church never had temporal authority - what it had was temporal influence; popes from the earliest times knew they could not handle the burdens of temporal government. That is why they chose merely to invest temporal rulers with their crowns rather than assume all their duties. .

Wrong.

The Catholic Church ruled the Papal States directly.