Another Catholic Voice in the Public Square - September edition

I found where they kept the old issues of Voice of the Truth - The Catholic Voice in the Public Square that I missed when I was home with broken ribs. this is my response to the September 2017 edition.  This reads like a civics paper.  I used to grade these as a doctoral student.  It would not have been an A paper, both for the outraged tone and a misunderstanding of the concept of rights, particularly that they are both negative (protection against the state) and positive (provided by the state).

They first provide quotes from the Declaration of Independence, including the phrase "a decent respect of the opinions of mankind."  They miss the point that this also applies to how we deal with women and that how reproductive rights are guaranteed is part of the rights that women deserve.  They also cite, as all good Christian Republicans do, the seeking of Divine Providence.  History tells us that the person who wrote that line was a Deist, as was Franklin, although Adams was Congregationalist.  Not a Catholic in the bunch.  When they get to the Bill of Rights they put in Declaration text instead of Fifth Amendment text about life, liberty and property without due process (which makes no mention of God).

They do mention the First Amendment as well.  Until Vatican II, the Church was strongly opposed to the First Amendment.  They believed every nation should have an established Catholic Church.  that insanity stopped with Dignitas Humanae, which no longer requires Catholic public servants to enact Catholic doctrine into law.  We want to, of course, but how we do so is a matter of prudential judgment.  Forcing an abortion ban should not be required if we are serious about true doctrine.

The authors fast forward to 1820 and de Tocqueville and the lack of central government, which the authors credit to the Bill of Rights.  In reality, it is the lack of taxation that kept the government small and the rich very rich.  It also produced the states' rights doctrine (which pro-lifers try to use as the method to ban abortion), but that doctrine produced slavery, which made people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line rich and gave us Dred Scott.  The Fourteenth Amendment, which we first saw as Article 14 of the Bill of Rights as passed by the House and removed by the Senate, demolished states rights theory, from undoing Dred Scott to guaranteeing abortion rights for women and gay marriage (as negative rights, meaning state governments cannot interfere).

They remark about elementary schools reciting the Pledge, which is more GOP than right to life, if there is a difference.  I suspect my daughter still recites it in her Tennessee middle school, although it was a Cold War artifact.  Last I checked, we had won, although sometimes I wonder with Trump as President.

They also look at Russell Hittinger and his new natural law theory.  I like the old natural law, the one that does not give the Roman Curia and the Papacy a veto over reason.  As for American Law, it is based on natural rights, not natural law.  There is a huge difference. Natural rights are how we deal with the state. Natural law is how we order our consciences, not how we try to control society.

There is quite the discussion of Pope Leo, which I agree with, although both Leo and Pius XI had ideas about the family which are now decidedly quaint - see my comment near the top about the rights of women.  They both hit the nail on the head regarding a family wage, whether the employer provides it (economically impossible for many) or the state does (say through a child tax credit), it must be provided and doing so is NOT a matter of prudential judgment.  An adequate CTC is, according to USDA, $1000 per month, not $1400 per year.  The GOP has a long way to go before it is really the Party of Life - more than $800 a month.

Minus ten points for an incorrect use of subsidiarity.

We then get to the 1960s (it was a four page newsletter) and the authors talk about what seemed to be a coordinated rebellion against the establishment, including the Church, although neither I nor they were off the playground, or even born, by that time.  The comprehensive story of that rebellion is in the book 1959, the Year Everything Changed.  https://www.amazon.com/1959-Everything-Changed-Fred-Kaplan/dp/0470602031   It turns out that in the 50s (and this is not new information) the Catholic Church in America was poking its nose into everything, seeking not religious freedom, but religious power.  The birth control and marriage debates are an attempt at past glory, but have been two of the most notable failures of the last fifty years.

The next section carries that theme, from Jerry Falwell, who claimed Mission Accomplished once the Berlin Wall fell (he had a point, St. John Paul II's trip to Fatima seems to have worked).  They talk about a culture in disarray, but look has been elected President.  He watches FoxNews which until this past week was owned by the owner of the trashiest entertainment company, both TV and records, on the planet.  You don't even have to leave the world of Murdoch to find the corruption his talking heads complain about, or the kind of sexual abuse that turns all of our stomachs.  And if you don't have enough, you can go to the Republican Party of Alabama. Luckily a hero of civil rights litigation challenged them and won, putting Trump's attempts at alt-right and big money hegemony at risk.  The Congressional rating is well earned, although it is mostly earned by those who would insist on the Hastert Rule, in McConnell blocking Obama and in trying to circumvent the impeachment of a corrupt and unqualified President who lied to Catholic voters and claimed to be pro-life. Republican Gerrymandering keeps an unqualified Congress in place.

No conservative should lecture progressives on a corrupt society until they examine their own side.

And stop with the tax cuts.  Rome declined because it was unwilling to tax its patrician class adequately.  Until we do, we cannot distribute enough money to families to stop abortion.

The question of how to respond is interesting.  The authors say not to cooperate with sin.  The term of art is cooperating with evil. If it is not evil to give one kind of civilly married spouse benefits (which is sinful) then you cannot decline them to another civilly married kind of spouse unless you are practicing bigotry, which is sinful - for you.  Faith is about seeking God's help in finding your moral answers, not in judging the conduct of others.

Going back to the age of the Founders, the end of the Revolutionary was was interesting.  It did not end the way the King or generals wanted it to.  It ended with an election and the Tories being thrown out of Parliament.  After Yorktown, the Continental Army mostly disbanded while the Crown was billeted in Manhattan.  Any given Sunday they could have sent thirteen Companies out and captured each state capital, pretty much unopposed.  By then, Parliament held all the cards.

There is also the judiciary, which the authors do not mention, which is not accountable to the people (one of its virtues) but which usually does not go too far ahead of them either, as was evident in gay marriage, which could have been declared in Lawrence v. Texas.

The ending screed against progressivism is inflammatory.  Lincoln was a progressive and only a progressive solution will reduce abortion.   We are as constitutionalist as the other side, probably more so regarding the need to impeach Trump.  Indeed, our constitutionalism stands for the rights of all those the majority would marginalize (including those who are differently ordered sexually).  At the Centennial in 1876, progressives used the Declaration of Independence as a model for protesting how workers were treated by capitalists and their unaccountable Senate.  We used Article V to change the Constitution to stop it, as intended.

Not long ago, I was in a discussion on rights, positive and negative, and how they apply to the unborn.  You can see my half of the discussion at http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-is-life-right-letter-to-pro-lifers.html  The unborn actually have an absolute right to life vis-a-vis the government, who cannot force any woman to have an abortion or execute one who is pregnant.  Beyond that, abortion protection is a positive grant of life, like not being murdered.  The current Court considers some late term abortions (partial birth) as Infanticide.  Abortion is what happens before Infanticide and is allowed under privacy because the unborn person has no legal status under the 14th Amendment, which is the operative provision of law on who is and is not a person.

Congress can change the line on when Abortion becomes Infanticide.  You have a Congress in place now who might.  Put up or shut up.  The trick is that once an abortion is considered infanticide, equal protection demands legal sanctions for both mother and doctor.  You cannot order murder and not be punished.  The pro-life movement says that the mother will not be prosecuted, that she is somehow a victim of an evil abortion machine.  Baloney.  Until you decide what week of pregnancy you will hold the mother responsible for killing her child, abortion stays legal.  Pick a week and tell Congress to enact it into law, then confine the rest of your efforts to providing a living wage to families so that they won't consider abortion.  And quit using abortion to elect Republicans, since they won't go along with a high enough child tax credit to stop people from resorting to abortion.