It isn’t “education” in any traditional sense; it’s “training.”

and following. It is a bit long [and includes digby's tendency to raise his voice in bold type]. But it is basically correct. In the abortion battle and the related issues of marriage, family, pornography, and the like, the late Fr. Neuhaus wrote that he could not but foresee another revolution in the making. This led Gertrude Himmelfarb to resign from FIRST THINGS.

But was he wrong? I think not. We are a country which is eating its children; a country which with its treatment of Indians and its immigration policies, refuses to share; a country whose workers [I include CEOs and such] demand ever higher wages which lead to ever higher prices [and that for products of ever increasing mediocrity]; a country whose politicians and economists spout meaningless phrases ["pro-choice"] not based on any moral principles, and refuse to see that the prosperity of this country is strictly based on the extraordinary natural resources of the land, which are being depleted.

Then there is education…

That sounds like a really bad bad bad idea – car LIABILITY insurance is required as a minimal protection against those whom you may injure in exchange for the privilege of operating a motor vehicle. But required to insure your own health? In exchange for what – the privilege of breathing? What if you just can’t afford it, but don’t meet some arbitrary government definition of “poor” and therefore don’t qualify for assistance? Is the gov’t going to put you in jail for not having health insurance? Shoot you at dawn?

Only an idiot or a corporate whore could think that insurance being tied to a job is a good thing. Not that government-run programs in the US are all that – try becoming a provider for/getting paid by Medicare or Medical. It defies belief. Medical in particular is so shoddily run that doctors try to avoid it like the plague. In the private sector, many insurance companies will not take on any more doctors in particular areas, or in Blue Shield’s case with psychologists, the entire state. I believe it was Jon Stewart who coined the term catastrophuck. He used it for Iraq, but it certainly applies to healthcare bureaucracy.

Kafka could not have dreamed up the American healthcare system. The constant screwups by the inane bureaucracy, private and government, are comical – unless you’ve been waiting to be paid by them, of course. It’s no wonder doctors want cash-paying patients whenever possible.

Exactly.

“There is…a central fifth tenet fundamental to the
Americanist point of view: a belief in the intrinsic compatibility
between Catholicism and American culture. Archbishop Ireland
expressed the idea in beguilingly simplistic terms in 1884: “The
choicest field which providence offers in the world today to the
occupancy of the Church is this republic, and she welcomes with
delight the signs of the times that indicate a glorious future for
her beneath the starry banner.” And in a remarkable address to a
French audience in 1892, seven years before the promulgation of
Testem Benevolentiae, Ireland declared:

The future of the Catholic Church in America is bright and
encouraging. To people of other countries, American Catholicism
presents features which seem unusual; these features are the result
of the freedom which our civil and political institutions give us;
but in devotion to Catholic principles, and in loyalty to the
successor of Peter, American Catholics yield to none…. Besides,
those who differ from us in faith have no distrust of Catholic
bishops and priests. Why should they? By word and act we prove that
we are patriots of patriots. Our hearts always beat with love for the
republic. Our tongues are always eloquent in celebrating her praises.
Our hands are always uplifted to bless her banners and her soldiers.

This is as naive as it is sincere. In the middle years of this
century, by contrast, John Courtney Murray, SJ, polished the
Americanizers’ intuitions to a sophisticated high gloss. The Catholic
Church, he argued, was not simply comfortable in America; properly
understood, the American tradition and the Catholic tradition were
very nearly one and the same. In his celebrated and enormously
influential book We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the
American Proposition (1960), Murray wrote of the “evident
coincidence of the principles which inspired the American Republic
with the principles which are structural to the Western Christian
political tradition”-principles which, he contended, find their
fullest expression in the Catholic natural-law tradition.

John Courtney Murray died in 1967. He lived long enough to see the
leading edge of the cultural revolution of that era, but not the full
collapse into secularized barbarism that followed. That may have been
his good fortune, but it raises unavoidable questions about his
relevance today. Murray correctly argued the compatibility of
Catholicism and the American system at a time when they were
compatible. What of the nearly three decades since then? What of the
situation now?

Kennedy in Houston

To Murray’s credit, he anticipated the onset of the deluge and
attempted to project his analysis into the radically changed cultural
circumstances that only fully emerged after his death. In 1962 he
wrote:

If this country is to be overthrown from within or without, I would
suggest that it will not be overthrown by Communism. It will be
overthrown because it will have made an impossible experiment. It
will have undertaken to establish a technological order of most
marvelous intricacy, which will have been constructed and will
operate without relations to true political ends: and this
technological order will hang, as it were, suspended over a moral
confusion; and this moral confusion will itself be suspended over a
spiritual vacuum.

For something written more than three decades ago, this is a
remarkably apt description of America in 1995. The struggle now, as
Murray foresaw, is for the very soul of America. Murray’s
intellectual heirs among contemporary Catholic neoconservatives
continue to argue the fundamental compatibility in principle between
the American system and the Catholic natural-law tradition. As a
practical matter they are right to make that argument, for unless
their position is correct and, even more to the point, unless it can
be vindicated against powerful forces of post-modern disintegration,
the likely future of the United States and its culturally assimilated
Catholics is an increasingly deadly moral chaos.

Just as John Courtney Murray provided the definitive intellectual
rationale for the Americanizers’ vision of Catholic and American
compatibility, so the election of John E. Kennedy as president in
1960 supplied the definitive affirmation of the same insight on the
political and symbolic levels. That also is significant. Crucial to
Kennedy’s victory was his famous speech in Houston to an audience of
suspicious Protestant ministers-a speech promising that he would not
allow religious allegiance to override his duties as president and
that, in the event of irresolvable conflict between the two, he would
resign. Whatever Kennedy and his theological speech-writers (the
Catholic journalist, later an Episcopalian priest, John Cogley, is
said to have been the principal author) were thinking of, the door
was thereby opened to a generation of Catholic politicians who soon
would troop through proclaiming themselves “personally opposed” to
abortion (as their religious affiliation required them to be) but no
less opposed to “imposing their morality” on others by law and public
policy.

Archbishops, theologians, and presidents are, in the nature of
things, not your typical men in the street. So one might ask: Are the
shifting currents of Americanism reflected in the everyday world of
grassroots Catholicism? Have ordinary American Catholics wrestled-and
do they now wrestle-with what it means to be both Catholic and
American? Indeed they have, and indeed they do.

* * *
For Catholics who regard this as a profoundly unhealthy state of
affairs, there is an obvious conclusion. Roman Catholics in the
United States must urgently explore the range of options open to them
for practicing creative counterculturalism. Obvious models exist.
These range from the Amish (separatism, flight-the deliberate effort
to escape a corrupt and corrupting secular culture and raise walls
against it) to the model of the Christian Coalition (aggressive
engagement, in hopes of besting the adversary culture with political
weapons). Does either model appeal to Roman Catholics of the United
States? Is there some Catholic third way? Without panic, but in
clear-eyed recognition of our parlous state, we need to begin talking about these things. If the Catholic Church in the United States means to survive, Americanism must finally- nearly a century after Testem Benevolentiae undertook to do the job be laid to rest. What comes next?”

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/AMERICAN.TXT

The principal difference between me and most of the nationalist and “American exceptionalist” pontificators at this website is NOT over abortion, or over “priestly celibacy” or over the “rights” of “gay” Catholics or of “gay” Catholic priests, or over Obama’s moderately conservative reforms of the American economic system in favour of European-style social democracy, or over American foreign policy in the Middle East or elsewhere. I’d be perfectly willing either to find “common ground” with all of you on a number of issues, or, else, to submit my judgment to the wisdom of a two-thousand-year-old “wisdom tradition” that I’m rooted in and respect enormously.

The principal difference between me and most of you who write here, and what I WILL NOT compromise on, is that, in the interests of self-preservation, I’d have the “American Catholic third way” be one of “separatism and flight,” in the style of the Amish, and you’d have it be one of attempted cultural war and coercive—and predictably violent–restoration of the status quo ante.

I’m more interested in the Church’s survival and most of you believe that the Church can and must “convert” a culture that always was and always will be fundamentally heretical because of its initial premises of radical individualism, of radical intellectualism of spirituality (“salvation by faith alone”) and radical exclusion of the “elect” from “God’s grace” (“pre-destination”). That Protestant culture cannot and will not compromise with the Catholic Church on those matters of theological DOCTRINE that are the GROUNDS of “moral theology.”

You “conservatives” are, for instance, in my opinion, making a TERRIBLE mistake in the matter of abortion by separating the “theology” of “personhood” (i.e. when “ensoulment” occurs) from the issue of “natural law.”

Theology or DOCTRINE (as gradually “developed” by a sacramental Church which has the RIGHT to decide, if it wants to, that a soul is imparted at, say, 80 days—referring to the DOGMA of the Immaculate Conception) takes PRECEDENCE over the ever-developing human understanding of “natural law.” There’s a certain anthropology that is a part of the history of the Church, and its belief systems are a part of its “prophetic” (or “infallible”) voice. You’d compromise that voice, by attempting to marry it to the American Founders’ contempt for “papistry” and “Romish superstition.”

Thanks for your response.

Let me say, first, that I have the highest respect for Robert George, which is precisely why I find his founding the American Principles Project so unsettling. From my own perusal of the site and its attendant blog, I derived the impression that it was a mouthpiece for some of the worst excesses of movement conservatism combined with an admirable support for pro-life legislation. Juvenile denunciations of the “statist ideology” of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, an over-the-top characterization of the “Age of Obama, when America will be transformed to resemble the socialist states and radically secularist societies of Europe,”–this sort of stuff is what you expect to hear from the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity, not from a venue founded by an actual thinker such as George. There is, further, no suggestion on the site that the American Principles Project is, in its supposed embrace of “conservatism,” willing to engage *actual* conservatives who don’t fit the National Security State movement mold–people like Daniel Larison, Rod Dreher, etc.–and this, to my mind, is rather strong evidence of its *real* function: to reestablish the political relevance of ideas important to social conservative issues *within* the current broad agenda of the Republican Party. Because I happen to think this party morally bankrupt and laughably hypocritical–though no less, of course, than the Democratic Party–I am saddened by George’s willingness to sell himself out to its dubious corporatist and stridently nationalist agenda. I don’t construe my position as “hostile” to George, though I do admit it is critical of George on this one decision.

Let me say, too, in response to your response about the free market, that our difference consists not in my total repudiation of free economic exchange and your total endorsement of unfettered capitalism, but rather in what–given our current circumstances–constitutes what JPII called a sufficiently strong “juridical framework” so as to ensure that the market, as you put it, “works”–not, however, “works” by increasing profits come what may, but works by ensuring productivity, helping to foster a relatively equitable society, one with sufficient safeguards for the working poor. For the Church does not, and has never believed, that the free market will “work” in this fashion without a robust regulatory framework–and insofar as Republicans seem always in favor of de-regularization, of privatization, of the economizing of sectors of society that should not be economized–education and health care come predominantly to mind–they are in need of correction.

Have you read any of the Communio school? I recommend David Schindler’s Heart of the World, Center of the Church, and Tracy Rowland’s Culture and Thomism: After Vatican II. Neither of these authors can be placed on the “left” or on the “right.” But both articulate the theological problems that arise from Catholicism’s engagement with liberal culture (which, of course, includes the ‘culture’ propounded by both Republicans and Democrats alike.)

I agree with you that CSJ cannot merely stay in the Compendium. I only wish that Catholics were more aware of the fundamental conflicts between the claims for CSJ and both strands of contemporary liberalism on offer to them.

“I am always fascinated to note the respectful engagement sought by most conservative commenters on this blog, and the unveiled contempt for conservatives displayed by most of the liberals.”

Me too, when it is the case. However, it is also not the case many time for the opposite reason. And, more often, it is not the case because lots of people don’t fit into those categories at all.

I am curious how the Republican Party is “seducing ” people tho free market unfettered by any meaningful Juridical restraints? The first question is is this fantasy Libertarian market at? Most people I know that are in business have to seal witha ton of juridical restraint via regulations and laws

Maybe people accept the free market not because they have been seduced by the GOP but because they observes it works, or they took economic classes and found it best in their viewpoint

I must say I don’t get the hostility to Robert George on this. Engage his ideas and the web site. Enter into the debate. Too many people on both the left and right have a viewpoint there is cookie cutter correct view of authentic Catholic thought. THere needs to be much engagement on ideas such as economics, war, social issues, etc and a lot less name calling.

If there is not then Catholic SOcial Justice will just stay in the Compendium .

Look, I disagree with MM about many things, and I am sympathetic to the general objection that s/he tends to point out Catholic hypocrisy issuing from political right much more than s/he does such hypocrisy issuing from the political left. But, from the vantage point of traditional orthodoxy, there is a good argument to be made that–in our particular time and place in history–Catholic hypocrisy issuing from the political right *requires* more attention and critique than that issuing from the political left *precisely* because of its apparently nearer approximation to orthodoxy.

In other words, in my opinion it is fairly obvious to see how, for example, publicly pro-choice privately pro-life Catholic politicians in the national Democratic Party machine misrepresent the demands of their faith for partisan political ends. And no Catholic that knows anything about her or his faith should be mislead by the sophistry by which such politicians laud the principles of social justice even as they support a law that denies its primary tenet to the the weakest, mutest, poorest class of human beings.

The Republican party, however, and “movement conservatism” more generally, constitutes a much subtler, and therefore much more difficult to perceive, distortion of Catholicism for its own ends. A purported respect for “Life”–no doubt held more or less sincerely by different leaders in the party–and a support for a hazily defined “social conservatism,” is the *best* thing one can say about this party, which at least puts it (for now) on the correct side of the most pressing ethical issue of our historical epoch: abortion. However, precisely *because* of the Republican party’s allegiance (real or apparent) to the pro-life cause, it has been able to seduce Catholics into accepting certain other of its positions, which include the ideology of the “free market,” unfettered by any meaningful juridical restraints (which are derided as “socialist”), a portrayal of the person as an “individual” first and a member of a preexisting community second, and, in recent years, a strident nationalism which includes, as its a priori test, a willingness to conduct preemptive (and therefore necessarily unjust) wars on the behest of American interests.

The cultural prestige of Catholic neoconservative writers such as Weigel, Neuhaus (in his more unreflective moments), and Novak has been instrumental in perpetuating the false conflation of Catholicism and a certain species of American exceptionalism to well-meaning and faithful Catholics who, partly through their own fault and partly through the fault of the Church, lack the requisite theological sophistication to discern the propaganda masquerading as apologetics that, unfortunately, marks the thought of these figures. Their influence, combined with the more obvious depravity of the Democratic Party platform, has made it too easy for Catholics to align themselves with the Republican Party, rather than recognizing that the enemy of their enemy is not their friend.

This is why I am really saddened by Robert George’s participation in something so blatantly driven by the worst aspects of movement conservatism as the American Principles Project. George is one of the few Catholics in America who has both sufficient knowledge and influence to begin to articulate, in contrast to both parties, a legitimately Catholic approach to politics in this country. But instead of doing this, he has opted, from the appearance of the website in question, to continue to encourage the subsumption of the pro-life cause *within* the pre-existing frame of partisan Republican talking points. And MM is right to call him out on it.

The Syllabus of Errors was issued by Pius IX in 1864. Pius IX was also the pope who took some personal interest in the Confederacy.

Longinqua was issueed by Leo XIII in 1895. Leo XIII was, of course, also the author of Rerum Novarum and thus the explicit social teaching of the Catholic Church — and not coincidentally the first pope _after_ the take-over of the papal states by Italy, which Piux IX never accepted.

Now your point was…?