Vatican proposes EU as example of Social Doctrine

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Ah but the EU have failed to unconditionally surrender to the whims of the UK Government which is most unfair.
 
Whatever happened to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s?

Comparisons to the Fourth Reich are not as far off the mark as one might think from an economic point of view. The euro has been far better for Germany than remaining on their own deutchmark. The exchange rate of the euro is dependent on how all the eurozone countries are doing and let’s be frank about it, some of those eurozone countries (e.g., the PIIGS countries) have long dragged the euro lower which just so happens to work to the benefit of the Germans. If the deutchmark was still active, it would be far stronger than the euro vs major world currencies due to the perception of Germany as an economic powerhouse that had its act together, but that stronger deutchmark would have held back their export-based industries, especially autos and construction.

Unfortunately for the EU, these benefits have not flowed in the other direction and the southern European countries are rife with high debt to GDP ratios in the EU and with high unemployment, especially among their youth. So some countries are now looking for WW2 reparations from Germany despite Germany’s protestations that these reparation issues were already settled. In other words, can you say cash grab?

At any rate, it should never have surprised anyone that Germany is the most dominant country in the eurozone, even the French have to bend to Germany. Germany is the one that forced austerity on everyone else.
 
Looking back at the Referendum era and all the ‘cake and eat it’ nonsense that was going around, the sheer arrogance, the sheer ignorance on the part of Leave politicians as to how the EU works.
 
The great evil of history in the west is not nationalism but collectivism.

People used to teach for example what was wrong with Hitler’s National Socialism was the nationalist part
He wasn’t much of a nationalist. he managed to find “Aryans” everywhere, even among Poles and Jews. Well, and he declared the Japanes “Aryans” too. The Germans were, to him, simply a means to a supranational empire.
 
He wasn’t much of a nationalist. he managed to find “Aryans” everywhere, even among Poles and Jews. Well, and he declared the Japanes “Aryans” too. The Germans were, to him, simply a means to a supranational empire.
I think one of the ‘bait and switches’ from the Left, apart from calling Hitler right wing is to describe him as a white supremacist. Then they try and link white supremacy with nationalism, make nationalism only right wing, call Hitler right wing and paint conservative parties today in the same vein. None of it makes sense.

As we know Hitler was following Darwinian modernist thought but by making him a ‘white supremacist’ nationalist and themselves anti-white’ the Left can paint Republicans and other conservatives around the world as ‘far right’ and ‘Hitler’.

It is hard to name any man for all recorded time who was directly responsible for the murder of more white people than Adolf Hitler. Some people would argue for that other Left wing socialist, Stalin but I don’t think so. It is silly to call Hitler a white supremacist.

The idea that Hitler was a white supremacist, that Republicans are white supremacist and therefore Republicans are Hitler is part of a conditioned brainwashing that people on the Left have been exposed to.

None of it is sane and I think people are starting to see that.

I do consider Hitler as a nationalist. He was a left wing nationalist socialist as was Mussolini who formed his Fascisto party under the principles he, and Gentile, another avowed Italian socialist outlined in their manifesto.

The Left wing nationalists have a history of being bad nationalists, for the most part, SNP excepted as mentioned above.
 
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According to this, I was “food insecure” during most of my young life and still am from time to time. Here’s USDA’s definition:

Most of those USDA-labeled “food insecure” did not run out of food; instead, they reported “reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet” with “little or no indication of reduced food intake.”

I’ll admit it. There were times when I was a kid when I ate sardine sandwiches instead of the steak I would have preferred. And my mother sometimes made fried potatoes with little cubes of Spam in them (Spam was cheaper then). Worst of all, there were times when we ate pancakes or waffles for dinner because money was a bit tight.

This morning I had a leftover roll from Friday with butter in it, microwaved so the butter would melt instead of the bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes and hash browns I would have preferred. Woe is me!
 
As far as they were concerned, the Canadians were the loyal Americans and the US were the rebellious ones. But hey, same continent I suppose.
This blows my mind for some reason. Were they that simple in their view of the world?
 
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According to this, I was “food insecure” during most of my young life and still am from time to time. Here’s USDA’s definition:

Most of those USDA-labeled “food insecure” did not run out of food; instead, they reported “reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet” with “little or no indication of reduced food intake.”

I’ll admit it. There were times when I was a kid when I ate sardine sandwiches instead of the steak I would have preferred. And my mother sometimes made fried potatoes with little cubes of Spam in them (Spam was cheaper then). Worst of all, there were times when we ate pancakes or waffles for dinner because money was a bit tight.

This morning I had a leftover roll from Friday with butter in it, microwaved so the butter would melt instead of the bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes and hash browns I would have preferred. Woe is me!
Given the obesity crisis, we could all do with some food insecurity.
 
No it is not silliness. It is calling out bad ideologies and processes.

It is politics. The EU is run by politics. Some of those politics have bad ideologies and processes.

You cannot silence that by claiming to know how such discussion helps people of good intentions.

If you don’t like what is said defend it with reasoned discussion. Don’t try to emotionlise the topic to claim to speak for people of good intentions.

My friend.
 
As to the EU, it always strikes me as odd when Catholics, of all people, express strong antagonism towards the idea of supranational authority.
The only supranational authority that Catholics ought to recognize is Christ present in the Church.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Catholics express a strong antagonism to supranational authority because Catholic social and political teaching is grounded in the idea of subsidiarity. The more distant from the individual that governing authorities become, the more authoritarian and out of touch they are.

With the advance of technology, centralizing power in the hands of human oligarchs is a more dangerous proposition than it ever has been. Decentralization of human political power is a safeguard against totalitarianism.

Think about Augustine’s City of God vs city of man. The kingdom of God is the only supranational entity Catholics ought to recognize. The EU isn’t that, despite what its advocates believe.
 
Things are partisan. You do what you want but you don’t get to control my language.

I’m sure there is a word for people who do that.

Fill in your own blanks if labels offend you.
 
Labels are the base of intelligent conversation. We have to name what we are talking about. The devil lives in obscurity and ambiguity.

The answer to your request is an emphatic no on intellectual grounds and on the grounds of actually being able to name what you are talking about.

If the Sun is going to rise then we cannot be prevented from naming the thing we are talking about. Ideologies can be evil. If we believe one is such we have a duty to say so. In this way the good decent human beings can be prevented from falling into this evil.

To not name that evil is to facilitate it.
 
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Here are a few well known EU parties who are leftist and socialist and are also nationalists.

Scottish National Party in UK
Podemos and Republican Left of Catalonia in Spain
Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy
Syriza and Communist Party in Greece

More can be found if one does not use Wikipedia as a source since Wikipedia labels nearly every nationalist and populist party as “right wing” regardless of its economic and socialistic views. For instance, Golden Dawn in Greece has fairly strong socialist leanings but is labelled far right by Wikipedia solely for its hard stance on borders, migrants and EU skepticism. Same with Fidesz in Hungary.
 
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You are being silly. If you can’t name what you are talking about you cannot make a cogent argument. Please stop disagreeing for the sake of it.

I don’t tend to use the word ‘liberal’ very much because the ideologies on that side shift so fast many people are caught calling themselves liberals but are shamed by other people calling themselves liberals having ‘progressed’ from previous stances.

These labels refer to real things. The idea that someone would call themselves a Conservative so as to somehow pat themselves on the back seem very foreign to me. People call themselves Conservative to forge bonds with like minded people because of real issues that are promoted and defended in society. To not have that name is an attack on those people who would wish to identify as such and forge bonds with like minded people. You cannot control that or diminish that very human and beneficial communication.

No this is incorrect. It is especially incorrect because those on the Left continually change their names once the very human and beneficial use of disparaging language catches up with them because of their ideology.

I don’t talk of ‘liberal ideology’ for the reasons given above. Liberalism is simply one of the iterations of the Left’s self identification which switches when people start criticising it.

One tactic to avoid critique is to change self designation. Another tactic is to argue against labels. People know this game and are not going to let them get away with it.

You can stop there. Looks like you might be doing a little demonisation yourself. Deal with what I say please. Don’t invent things so you can disparage your own words as if I said them.

and then give advice about what books I should read to address the problem that you just invented. Talk about narcissism.
 
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Here are a few well known EU parties who are leftist and socialist and are also nationalists.

Scottish National Party in UK
Podemos and Republican Left of Catalonia in Spain
Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy
Syriza and Communist Party in Greece

More can be found if one does not use Wikipedia as a source since Wikipedia labels nearly every nationalist and populist party as “right wing” regardless of its economic and socialistic views. For instance, Golden Dawn in Greece has fairly strong socialist leanings but is labelled far right by Wikipedia solely for its hard stance on borders, migrants and EU skepticism. Same with Fidesz in Hungary.
Thanks Zzyzx_Road.

Also the Sinn Fein party from Northern Ireland.

Maoist terrorist groups in South America have even been called far right wing by the BBC. As explained above the Left use labels to control thought and then complain when they are labelled themselves.

The BBC were contacted about doing this and the written response was that they meant ‘far right’ in the sense of being authoritarian.

Like the Soviet Socialists or North Koreans are not authoritarian.

Without insistence to a continual use of logical labels the BBC would be calling the North Koreans as ‘far right’ like some have called ISIS ‘far right’. (God help us.). This is why labels are important. They have done it already with Hitler’s socialists.

This in itself has caused error and division for decades and still today.

Labels are important IMHO and they should be called out when people try and change them such as defining nationalism always as right wing.
 
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Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy
This is the 5 star movement in Italy?

I didn’t realise they were Left wing.

From what I understand many of the 5 star nationalists are now defecting to the right wing nationalist party who are likely to be the biggest party from Italy in the upcoming EU elections.

That makes sense now. Thanks.
 
I guess when something is far away and not particularly impactful (if that’s a word) on your daily life it’s easy to have such a one-dimensional view. Not that I’m offended or anything but in my mind I thought most British people were a bit more worldly and knowledgeable than that. (Of course it is true that in many ways we are indistinguishable to the untrained eye but I thought that Canada being a Commonwealth country the Brits would have a somewhat warmer relationship with them, or at least understand that we’re not interchangeable.)
 
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The only supranational authority that Catholics ought to recognize is Christ present in the Church.
Not according to the Church:

Summi Pontificatus, encyclical of Pope Pius XII (1939)
The idea which credits the State with unlimited authority is not simply an error harmful to the internal life of nations, to their prosperity, and to the larger and well-ordered increase in their well-being, but likewise it injures the relations between peoples, for it breaks the unity of supranational society, robs the law of nations of its foundation and vigor, leads to violation of others’ rights and impedes agreement and peaceful intercourse.

The human race is bound together by reciprocal ties, moral and juridical, into a great commonwealth directed to the good of all nations and ruled by special laws which protect its unity and promote its prosperity.

Now no one can fail to see how the claim to absolute autonomy for the State stands in open opposition to this natural way that is inherent in man - nay, denies it utterly - and therefore leaves the stability of international relations at the mercy of the will of rulers, while it destroys the possibility of true union and fruitful collaboration directed to the general good.
Laudato Si, encyclical by Pope Francis
“The 21st century, while maintaining systems of governance inherited from the past, is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tends to prevail over the political.

Given this situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions."
Caritas in veritate, encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI (2009)
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John xxiii indicated some years ago.
 
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