Saturday, November 03, 2012

Get out and vote

Okay. So I'm a Catholic monarchist. But I don't see a Catholic monarchy on the horizon in this US Presidential election. Do you? Politics is the art of the possible. So don't be a miserable purist who thinks he can't vote for anyone but a Catholic candidate calling for an amendment of the Constitution to make the United States of America a confessional Catholic state. We'll be lucky if we even have a state left with any hope of financial solvency, let alone rights of conscience for religiously-affiliated institutions and their employees in this country. I know all the counter-arguments. And it's true that the bishops' come-lately appeal to the "rights" of religious freedom is a bit of a limping "fall-back" position from what it should be: the abominating of contraception, sexual sin and abortion that has led to this present pass.

But in considering what is possible today, we're faced with intermediate options between the direct theocratic governance by Christ our King and the tyrannical rule of Moloch-worshipping baby-killers and perverts like Herod and Nero. I would rather have lived under good King St. Louis of France than under the Dhimmitude of Sayyed Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini in Iran, certainly. But those are not the alternatives before us today. St. Thomas Aquinas counsels his readers what their duties are under different types of regimes, and he is under no illusion that Catholics will always be living under the benign rule of Catholic monarchs. In his Summa Theologiae, he explicitly addresses circumstances in which Catholics live under non-Christian regimes. Some of these regimes are obviously more just than others, and it is our job this coming Tuesday to discern which politically viable parties and their platforms (the "cards we've been dealt") are the most inimical to Catholic faith and morals, and to vote against the candidates of that party. Not a few of our bishops, unlike the appallingly-lame official USCCB voter guides, have spoken out clearly and forcefully on the issue.

Of course, my mother used to send chills up my spine when we were growing up in Asia by praying that America would someday, like ancient Israel, experience the blessing of defeat and persecution at the hands of a foreign enemy. And that, my friends, is surely what we deserve far more than another generation of personal peace and prosperity, given the record of our last half-century. But pray like Abraham, if you will, that God would stay His hand of judgement and not yet destroy Sodom if there is but even a small remnant of righteous inhabitants remaining in her, so that the flickering embers of faith may again be rekindled into a fire that would yet bring repentance and healing to this wayward land.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Move to the Vatican. _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ This is a country where separation of church and state is inherent in it's Constitution.


[Note: offensive material was removed from this comment by Site Manager.]

Pertinacious Papist said...

Anonymous,

You need to be more precise in your statement about what you mean by "separation of church and state." Even confessionally Catholic states and medieval kingdoms recognized a separation of church and state. And this historically Protestant country never assumed in its history that separation of church and state meant separation of the state from acknowledgement of the Creator and his moral law, as any elementary acquaintance with the words of our Founding Fathers on their national monuments in our nation's capital shows, along with the continued existence of such things as our salaried Senate chaplains.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

All Catholics, especially Bishops, must work to change America into a Catholic Confessional State.

That aside, I have decided not to stay home, drink cabernet, and listen to Vivaldi on election day; I will vote for Mittens

Pertinacious Papist said...

Not Spartacus,

I confess: I was tempted in extremis to take up your suggestion of the bottle of Cabernet and sitting things out. But it came down to opposing the anti-Catholic. I agree in toto with the notion of a Catholic confessional state as an abiding norm. But I sadly concede the realism of politics as the art of the possible, as I've said.

Here, too, I think the approach of Judy Brown and the American Life League is as mistaken as it is right-intentioned. What they want is candidates opposed to Abortion under any circumstance, and committed to the overthrow of Roe v. Wade. That's my ideal too. However, I think they're simply wrong in refusing to support, for that reason, any candidate committed merely to the reduction of abortions. When you can make a difference for the better, that's an opportunity not to be squandered.

Anonymous said...

Don't invoke "our founding fathers" because at the very most, they were deists, most wouldn't bend a knee, for any god or man, let alone get down on both knees, and all had a rightful, vehement distaste for Catholics and their whore of Rome.

Your superstitions have no place in the public forum. Move to the Vatican, or Poland, somewhere that is still backwards enough to allow a sodomite such as yourself and the vile priests you cow to, to exist.




Anonymous said...

Please find & quote the separation clause in the constitutin

Donna

Pertinacious Papist said...

Anonymous,

Wish you wouldn't hide behind "Anonymous." First, I will invoke the Founding Fathers, not because they are Catholic; except for one they were not. Second, you're wrong about them all being Deists. The ones most people KNOW were Deists, true -- Ben Franklin, Tom Jefferson, George Washington, and one or two others; but the rest should not be tarred with that term. They were Protestant Christians, many of them clergymen confessing the same Creeds of Nicea as Catholics.

You are right about the anti-Catholicism. The American Revolution was more against Catholicism, perhaps, than it was against the English crown, at least in some respects.

I will let stand your ad hominem vitriol for all to see this time, though I do not know what I have said or done to deserve such abuse and hostility, let alone libel and slander. Why should the fact that a few Catholic clergy have in the past been involved in sexual abuse scandals reflect negatively upon me? Why should you call me a "sodomite," and what does any of this have to do with the post? May the Lord bless you with some self-knowledge and awareness of your own soul. Kind regards, PP.

Steve "scotju" Dalton said...

I believe in voting for the best possible good, not unrealistic pie in the sky 3rd party unicorn nonsense. Lets hope and pray that God can work through Mitt Romney like he did King Cyrus, and throgh Mr. Ryan, his VP>