Friday, 27 April 2012
Socialists and Abortion
Question for thought on this cold April day. Why is it that socialist governments push abortion and contraception? For those who have not noticed, this is usually the case, in Europe and in America. A few reasons off the top of my head are here. One, socialism is materialistic, does not believe or value the spiritual life; two, socialism is pragmatic and utilitarian-that is, the person, the individual lives for the State, not the State for the person and therefore, the weak are disposed of as not useful to the State ; three, socialism separates the Church from all life of the State.
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
On Bunny Rabbits
Years ago, just because I do these sorts of things, I studied rabbits. I was interested in their social structure, habits, needs, and so on. That was in the days before blog and websites on house rabbits. I had to use books!
We had a house rabbit, and I wanted to make sure I understood, to a certain extent, my pet. Sooty Little Ears was a Black Rex, which are highly intelligent and fun pets.
Sooty Little Ears had the run of the house. He did his necessaries in a cat box, and was tidy.
This rabbit would meet people at the door. A person would bend over and stare, then say something like, "What an unusual cat. OH! It's a rabbit."
Sooty thought we were all rabbits. It thought we were strange rabbits, but rabbits none the less.
It sat next to us when we were on the sofa. It sat under the table when we ate dinner.
But, if there was danger, in its little, beady, black eyes, Sooty revealed it was an Alpha Rabbit. We found this out in several ways.
One day, a huge cat from the neighbors, a house once removed, jumped into our upstairs window. Suddenly, we heard this thumping. Sooty was warning all of us of danger. Then, Sooty ran under the bed in the master bedroom and hid until I tossed the cat out of the house.
From then on, Sooty changed behavior. The rabbit would sleep at the door of the master bedroom at night, when before it would sleep anyway. It would sleep right at the open door, across from the window where the cat had jumped in.
Sooty was from there on in alert mode. If it sensed danger, it would thump and even wake us up at night.
Sooty remained wild, as most house rabbits do, because they have not been domesticated as long as dogs or cats. Wild animals need much more freedom and less stress than domesticated ones.
I compare Sooty's reversion to being a guard rabbit with thinking like a Christian.
Sometimes, Christians must move along with society or culture becoming domesticated, becoming one with the rest of society, losing the edge of being a contradiction in the world.
Then, something happens which awakens the wild, wakens the real Christ-likeness is the soul, the mind the heart.
This is our situation now. We need to be like Sooty Little Ears. We have been warned.
Unless we think like Christians, we shall not see the danger nor be ready for it.
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
On Bunny Rabbits And Socialism-Part Two Out of Three
Now, you might be puzzled as to what Fulton J. Sheen has to do with bunny rabbits or with socialism.
Did you know that the wild rabbit can travel up to 25 miles a day? Could....and that is a mile an hour, if the rabbit is not sleeping, which it would be doing, so more than a mile an hour, if needed for safety, food, or setting up a new warren.
That rabbits need freedom for survival is true even of house pet rabbits. This need for movement and freedom is not merely a natural drive, but a need for the rabbit to be a rabbit, and not a cat or a dog, which a rabbit is nothing like.
Now, Fulton J. Sheen had a lot to say about communism. He spoke eloquently and intellectually, but also practically about what communism does to the soul, the mind, the heart of a person, of a nation.
One of the best points Sheen made in one of his talks was that when he was teaching in a Catholic university, (he taught philosophy for 25 years), was that the Catholic teachers knew both sides of the argument concerning communism. These professors could argue, like St. Thomas Aquinas, as Sheen notes, both sides.
I gave my house rabbit freedom to run around a very large walled-in garden. It was safe in that garden. When we moved into that house, it had been abandoned for a while and the garden was half-full of briars. It took us a month to clear back the heavy, stubborn briars. At the end of the large garden, we left some in a contained area. This was Sooty's special play area. If Sooty needed space, the rabbit would go into the tangled briars for time-out.
One of my favorite memories was a mid-summer night when Sooty did not come back in when we called at the patio door. It was getting dark, and we were concerned, as Sooty slept inside.
I remember my husband standing on top of the briar patch calling Sooty, who apparently did not want to come in. Finally, I put food in its dish and stood by the patio door. The rabbit came out quickly and popped into the house for din-dins.
Now, we understood Sooty's needs and habits, but also the danger from owls and other predators, which would eat this little rabbit.
Sooty had freedom within limits. This is not the case for those living under communism as Sheen points out.
Our rabbit was free because we loved it and had a relationship with it. As Sheen points out, Catholicism is a relationship with God, not with a system.
Sooty knew whom it was obeying-a kind person who was feeding it and concerned.
We do not have that kind of relationship with tyrannies. Socialism and communism, as Sheen points out, create an anonymous "they" and we give that "they" power, or they take it.
The they is only so powerful as we make it in the West. and we have created a monster.
It is hard for me to convince people who are excellent Catholics of the danger of socialism. These good people in Europe cannot see how the society, the family, their own wildness, that is their own individual dignity have been eroded by group think and the "they" who control their lives.
The arguments usually end up centered on how wonderful the baby-killing national health system are for people. I cannot help those who desire such systems to determine who lives or who dies, who is fit for the utilitarian world and who is fit to serve the state as opposed to those who are a burden on the state.
I cannot convince group-think Catholics who do not really know the other side of the argument.
Catholicism gives real freedom. As an institutional Church, the Catholic Church knows both sides of the argument. And, she preaches a relationship, not merely dogmas. As Sheen points out, to be free, one needs order and law, but God's laws not man's. And, socialism and communism both re-define man.
That is the problem. I did not re-define my rabbit. It was a rabbit, not a person.
The person is not merely a cog in the wheel of the state; the person does not exist for the state.
To know the arguments might help some Catholic who are socialists to repent.
There is also a misunderstanding between the term materialism and consumerism. This must be corrected. Too many Catholics think materialism is merely being caught up in the buying and accumulating of things-that is consumerism. Materialism is the philosophical idea that the world is all there is-there is no afterlife.
The goal of both communism and socialism is materialism-the denial that the ultimate goal of men and women is heaven. Those isms make earth the goal and earthly comforts the work of humankind.
This is not the case. The popes knew that materialism changes the definition of what it means to be human.
Be a Catholic. Fulton J. Sheen in this chapter mentioned that a communist told him that the encyclical on communism by the pope was the best understanding of the system he ever saw. The same is true for the encyclicals on socialism. Nothing has changed. A rabbit is a rabbit, a man a man, and a system which replaces God for security and identity is a tyranny.
Here is Pope Leo XIII.
In fine, the rewards and punishments of a future and eternal life having been handed over to oblivion, the ardent desire of happiness has been limited to the bounds of the present. Such doctrines as these having been scattered far and wide, so great a license of thought and action having sprung up on all sides, it is no matter for surprise that men of the lowest class, weary of their wretched home or workshop, are eager to attack the homes and fortunes of the rich; it is no matter for surprise that already there exists no sense of security either in public or private life, and that the human race should have advanced to the very verge of final dissolution.
...
Even family life itself, which is the cornerstone of all society and government, necessarily feels and experiences the salutary power of the Church, which redounds to the right ordering and preservation of every State and kingdom. For you know, venerable brethren, that the foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law, and is completed in the mutual rights and duties of parents and children, masters and servants. You know also that the doctrines of socialism strive almost completely to dissolve this union; since, that stability which is imparted to it by religious wedlock being lost, it follows that the power of the father over his own children, and the duties of the children toward their parents, must be greatly weakened. But the Church, on the contrary, teaches that "marriage, honorable in all,"[13] which God himself instituted in the very beginning of the world, and made indissoluble for the propagation and preservation of the human species, has become still more binding and more holy through Christ, who raised it to the dignity of a sacrament, and chose to use it as the figure of His own union with the Church.
more here and here
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13apost.htm
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12CH42.HTM
On this organic conception which alone is living, in which the noblest humanity and the most genuine Christian spirit flourish in harmony, there is marked the Scripture thought, expounded by the great Aquinas: Opus Justitiae Pax—The work of justice shall be peace—a thought which is applicable to the internal as to the external aspect of social life. It admits of neither contrast nor alternative such as expressed in the disjunction, love or right, but of the fruitful synthesis, love and right. In the one as in the other, since both radiate from the same Spirit of God, We read the program and the seal of the human spirit; they complement one another, give each other life and support, walk hand in hand along the road of concord and pacification, while right clears the way for love and love makes right less stern, and gives it a higher meaning. Both elevate human life to that social atmosphere where, even amid the failings, the obstacles and the difficulties of this earth a fraternal community of life is made possible.
But once let the baneful spirit of materialist ideas predominate; let the urge for power and for predominance take in its rough hands the direction of affairs; you shall then find its disruptive effects appearing daily in greater measure; you shall see love and justice disappear; all this as the sad foretaste of the catastrophes that menace society when it abandons God.
to be continued....
to be continued....
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
On Rabbits, Catholics and Communism-Part Three
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| A Pillow Mound Rabbit Warren from the Luttrell Psalter. |
Well, a rabbit in a briar patch is completely natural. A person in a family is natural as well. For a state to want to supplant the parents and the family as the basic unit of society is not only unnatural, but anti-God. An human has a nature and both communism and socialism destroy that nature. Our nature involved being in the image and likeness of God, not in the image and likeness of an economic or social system.
Perhaps Catholics have never read the Decree Against Communism, written in 1949 by Pope Pius XII andreconfirmed in 1962 by Bl. John XXIII. If a Catholic joins a communist party, that Catholic is excommunicated.
Catholics today need to read several encyclicals on this subject, but here are the links to a few. If you do not know what it is to be an individual, a person, with dignity and independence, you will fall into error.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html
Pius XII against communism--a snippet
What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word. the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a humanity without God.
13. When all men have finally acquired the collectivist mentality in this Utopia of a really classless society, the political State, which is now conceived by Communists merely as the instrument by which the proletariat is oppressed by the capitalists, will have lost all reason for its existence and will "wither away." However, until that happy consummation is realized, the State and the powers of the State furnish Communism with the most efficacious and most extensive means for the achievement of its goal.
14. Such, Venerable Brethren, is the new gospel which bolshevistic and atheistic Communism offers the world as the glad tidings of deliverance and salvation! It is a system full of errors and sophisms. It is in opposition both to reason and to Divine Revelation. It subverts the social order, because it means the destruction of its foundations; because it ignores the true origin and purpose of the State; because it denies the rights, dignity and liberty of human personality.
and
30. Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted rights, the most important of which We have indicated above. Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible. It is therefore according to the dictates of reason that ultimately all material things should be ordained to man as a person, that through his mediation they may find their way to the Creator. In this wise we can apply to man, the human person, the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who writes to the Corinthians on the Christian economy of salvation: "All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's."[12] While Communism impoverishes human personality by inverting the terms of the relation of man to society, to what lofty heights is man not elevated by reason and Revelation!
31. The directive principles concerning the social-economic order have been expounded in the social Encyclical of Leo XIII on the question of labor.[13] Our own Encyclical on the Reconstruction of the Social Order[14] adapted these principles to present needs. Then, insisting anew on the age-old doctrine of the Church concerning the individual and social character of private property, We explained clearly the right and dignity of labor, the relations of mutual aid and collaboration which should exist between those who possess capital and those who work, the salary due in strict justice to the worker for himself and for his family.
and, Bl. John Paul II
and a snippet from there---His (Leo XIII) words deserve to be re-read attentively: "To remedy these wrongs (the unjust distribution of wealth and the poverty of the workers), the Socialists encourage the poor man's envy of the rich and strive to do away with private property, contending that individual possessions should become the common property of all...; but their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are moreover emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community".39 The evils caused by the setting up of this type of socialism as a State system — what would later be called "Real Socialism" — could not be better expressed.
13. Continuing our reflections, and referring also to what has been said in the Encyclicals Laboremexercens and Sollicitudo rei socialis, we have to add that the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call "his own", and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.
In contrast, from the Christian vision of the human person there necessarily follows a correct picture of society.According to Rerum novarum and the whole social doctrine of the Church, the social nature of man is not completely fulfilled in the State, but is realized in various intermediary groups, beginning with the family and including economic, social, political and cultural groups which stem from human nature itself and have their own autonomy, always with a view to the common good. This is what I have called the "subjectivity" of society which, together with the subjectivity of the individual, was cancelled out by "Real Socialism".40
If we then inquire as to the source of this mistaken concept of the nature of the person and the "subjectivity" of society, we must reply that its first cause is atheism. It is by responding to the call of God contained in the being of things that man becomes aware of his transcendent dignity. Every individual must give this response, which constitutes the apex of his humanity, and no social mechanism or collective subject can substitute for it. The denial of God deprives the person of his foundation, and consequently leads to a reorganization of the social order without reference to the person's dignity and responsibility.
The atheism of which we are speaking is also closely connected with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which views human and social reality in a mechanistic way. Thus there is a denial of the supreme insight concerning man's true greatness, his transcendence in respect to earthly realities, the contradiction in his heart between the desire for the fullness of what is good and his own inability to attain it and, above all, the need for salvation which results from this situation.
14. From the same atheistic source, socialism also derives its choice of the means of action condemned in Rerum novarum, namely, class struggle. The Pope does not, of course, intend to condemn every possible form of social conflict. The Church is well aware that in the course of history conflicts of interest between different social groups inevitably arise, and that in the face of such conflicts Christians must often take a position, honestly and decisively. The Encyclical Laborem exercens moreover clearly recognized the positive role of conflict when it takes the form of a "struggle for social justice";41 Quadragesimo anno had already stated that "if the class struggle abstains from enmities and mutual hatred, it gradually changes into an honest discussion of differences founded on a desire for justice".42
However, what is condemned in class struggle is the idea that conflict is not restrained by ethical or juridical considerations, or by respect for the dignity of others (and consequently of oneself); a reasonable compromise is thus excluded, and what is pursued is not the general good of society, but a partisan interest which replaces the common good and sets out to destroy whatever stands in its way. In a word, it is a question of transferring to the sphere of internal conflict between social groups the doctrine of "total war", which the militarism and imperialism of that time brought to bear on international relations. As a result of this doctrine, the search for a proper balance between the interests of the various nations was replaced by attempts to impose the absolute domination of one's own side through the destruction of the other side's capacity to resist, using every possible means, not excluding the use of lies, terror tactics against citizens, and weapons of utter destruction (which precisely in those years were beginning to be designed). Therefore class struggle in the Marxist sense and militarism have the same root, namely, atheism and contempt for the human person, which place the principle of force above that of reason and law.
