What Would You Call a Catholic Who Holds a High Position of Authority in an Anti-Christian Administration?
Just imagine if the internet existed in the third and fourth centuries. You hear about a Christian who submits himself to Emperor Diocletian, asking to be taken in as a soldier. Diocletian had known the young man’s father and is pleased to take in the new recruit. The man quickly finds himself advancing in rank and by his late 20s, he becomes a Tribune stationed with the Emperor in Nicomedia.
Remember, this is a Christian man who was to have a close bond with Diocletian.
What would Christians on the internet say about him? Would people accuse him of formal cooperation with evil by being a high ranking soldier in Diocletian’s army? Remember, this is Diocletian — the Roman Emperor and the leader of an empire which has long persecuted Christians and had not done anything to stop it. What exactly would be said about this man? How would he be treated? What kinds of scandals would he be implicated in? Would he deserve all the names he would be called for having such a high ranking position in an anti-Christian administration?
What exactly would you say about such a man?
Now. Who is this man? Do you know? Click on the “read the rest of this entry” to find out. This man was St George.
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I suppose I would appluad him when he did this:
But George objected and with the courage of his faith approached the Emperor and ruler. Diocletian was upset, not wanting to lose his best Tribune and the son of his best official, Gerontius. George loudly renounced the Emperor’s edict, and in front of his fellow soldiers and Tribunes he claimed himself to be a Christian and declared his worship of Jesus Christ.
–
Knowing this site’s proclivities, I suspect this is supposed to be a jab at pro-lifers for criticizing those who work for the Obama Administration. I’m not aware of many people being criticized for merely serving the government.
People like Doug Kmiec have been subject to criticism, but my impression is that has cooled since the election.
Indeed, the most parallel situation I can think of is co-blogger Michael Iafrate’s entreaties that we should not let any loved one serve in the military.
John
Look to the videos being made by “Real Catholic TV” and all the attacks on the USCCB and people like John Carr (Fr. Pavone himself defended John Carr btw). It’s not a jab at “pro-lifers.” It’s pointing out how real life exists and if people want to find scandal, they can with anyone.
John – That’s a strange “parallel” indeed.
I would assume that Michael would accuse him of “death dealing” and worshipping death and demand that he leave the military immediately…
On a more serious note: I think that one of the things you successfully highlight on this post is that the moral questions created by democracy are much more tangled than those in a monarchy or other non-elected government.
When someone campaigns for a presidential candidate, one obviously expresses a will that that person become president rather than any of the other options. Serving the Roman Emperor did not necessary mean saying that the emperor in question was the best man for the job, or was in any sense a good man. He simply was the emperor and that was the way it was short of assassination or civil war — two actions which, as Christians, we are justly leary.
Some positions within our country remain similarly non-political. I don’t think that anyone would accuse someone of being an unfaithful Catholic if he accepted an appointment by Obama to chair the Federal Reserve, or serve as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or was appointed Poet Laureate. But when someone actively campaigns for a candidate, or supports and advocacy organization which pushes things contrary to Catholic teaching, the moral waters become significantly more murky.
Context, Darwin, context…
He simply was the emperor and that was the way it was short of assassination or civil war — two actions which, as Christians, we are justly leary.
Sadly, DC, the Church did not follow your wise advice in Spain, 1936.
While it’s true that John and Darwin are being a little snarky here, I do wonder, Michael, what do you generally think of soldier saints like St. George and St. Louis IX, King of France?
Kurt,
Diocletion ran a pretty stable empire, indeed the most stable in many years. Republican Spain did a pretty thorough job of destroying civil government from the inside in 1931-1936 before the formal war even broke out. But yes, clearly, from a just war point of view one should be very hesitant to start a civil war. (Though surely you aren’t actually a supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, are you?)
(Though surely you aren’t actually a supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, are you?)
I am. I oppose Fascism, to which I would support assassination or civil war as a means of combating.
The willingness of the Church to align itself with totalitarian govenment, be it imperial or fascist, so long as that government is not openly atheistic, has always been problematic. It is a danger for us, here and now.
Rodak:
I think that can be generalized:
The willingness of the Church to align itself with government has always been problematic.
My comment above should not, btw, be taken as singling out the Catholic Church for criticism. Many of the Protestant denominations manisfest this tendency in even more egregious ways.
Tom–
While your point is taken, I don’t see the Church aligning itself with our government under liberal leadership.
Kurt,
Well, I suppose one can at least hope that you’re saying that while only knowing the common cultural stereotype of the war, and little of its actual history. I would tend to agree with Evelyn Waugh’s assessment that the proper response to the Spanish Civil War was to refuse to take sides, both Nationalists and Republicans behaved despicably with shocking frequency. And while Franco’s regime was certainly repressive, a Republican regime dominated by Stalinists would hardly have been any less so.
Further, the civil war was in many ways precipitated by the center-left governments from ’31 to ’36 ignoring the civil liberties of their own constition in order to confiscate Church lands, ban religious schools, burn churches and murder clergy and religious. If the communists and anarchists could have restrained their desire to kill and steal from their ideological opponents, civil war might never have broken out.
One would have to be a very committed communist indeed to see the slaughter of literally thousands of clergy and the overturning of the civil liberties of a liberal constitution as no small price to pay for the glories of a politburo dominated and repressive communist government. I find it hard to understand why a Catholic would actively sympathize that way, no matter how much he might rightly reject Franco.
Rodak,
In what sense, exactly, do you see this supposed tendency as a danger to us here and now? Forgive me, but I don’t see a lot of major totalitarian governments on the scene at the moment for the Church to lend its support to even if it wanted to — and the ones that do spring to mind are too busy actively pursecuting the Church for her to get the chance to lend her support to them.
“Forgive me, but I don’t see a lot of major totalitarian governments on the scene at the moment for the Church to lend its support to even if it wanted to–”
I was speaking of the danger inherent in passive acceptance of the proposition: IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE.
That’s a valid point, Rodak.
I guess I’d tend to see the greater current threat as being that of both sides of the political spectrum constantly accusing their opponents of being totalitarian. As both right and left become more accustomed to accusing the others of being repressive totalitarians, it seems to me that one increases the danger of both sides becoming more oppressive, having convinced themselves that they need to because “the others started it.”
Well, I suppose one can at least hope that you’re saying that while only knowing the common cultural stereotype of the war, and little of its actual history.
No, I am a student of it and quite convinced in my views and feel I am properly informed.
Civil wars are generally not good times for civil liberties — ask President Lincoln. And no doubt, at a certain point during the civil war, the Republican cause was lost and the losing battle was simply carried on by an extreme faction.
The period from ’31 to ’36 had governments both of the right and the left. And yes there was an instability. And anti-clerical laws were enacted though nothing the Church in Europe had not seen before from Joseph II, Bismarck, or the Risorgimento.
Prior to the civil war, the situation in Spain was not much different than in Weimer Germany — a democratic center left government, non-governmental militias in the streets, a certain civil instability and a fascist movement hostile to the Republic and democracy that was offering to take over and restore order.
The Church had some legitimate complaints against civil actions and there was a degree of illegal street thugs of both the right and left wandering around. However, there was no slaughter of thousands of clergy prior to the fascist generals launching the civil war against the legitimate, democratic and elected government of Spain.
As to the sad events during the civil war, I would remind you of what then Cardinal Ratzinger said (writing about a different matter, but the principle remaining): That when action in the civil sphere is taken “to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
Those, including the Church, who supported a fascist insurgency against the elected and democratic government of the Republic, should not be surprised that the state they have declared themselves the enemy of, treats them like an enemy of the state. No one, including the Church, has any conceivable right to support a fascist coup against a legitimate and elected government.
I think this all would be a good lesson to some Catholic conservatives who seem to suggest they have grievances with the current US government far in excess of what the Church in Spain had in 1935. Happily, I appreciate that you, DC, have never joined up with that element.
I agree completely: nowhere to turn, government-wise.
First off, it seems to me you’re vastly overstating the stability and “legitimacy” of the leftist governments in early ’30s Spain. This was a country in which rightest opposition politicians were kidnapped and murdered by the military/police, apparently under the direct orders of leftist elected officials. Civil strife was already endemic. The leftist factions were actively supporting the confiscation of Church property, had banned the Jesuits from the country, were burning and desecrating churches, were trying to elminate freedom of religion, etc.
Would I have advocated a coup ahead of time, probably not. But had I lived in Spain at the time I would absolutely have carried a rifle against the communist and anarchist forces once war was joined.
Honestly, I don’t get it. Is your complaint simply against going against an “elected government” (in which case one would have had to support the fascists in Italy) or do you honestly think that a communist client state would have been better for Spain than Franco’s regime? Was East Germany or Czechoslovakia a better place to live in the 50s than Spain? Really?
As for your point on US conservatives, I move a great deal in conservative circles, and I have nowhere seen anyone suggest that the Obama administration is remotely as objectionable as “popular front” Spain. I suppose if one goes out into the fever swamps which are the equal and opposite of the “Bushitler” crowd one could find that, but why would one want to go there?
“I suppose if one goes out into the fever swamps which are the equal and opposite of the “Bushitler” crowd one could find that, but why would one want to go there?”
Really? How about the following:
“Former Republican Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo has told an enraptured crowd that because ‘we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country, people who could not even spell the word ‘vote,’ or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.’”
You may, or may not, agree with me that the Teabaggers represent, as you call it, a “fever swamp,” but their nativist, racist, and fascist leanings are unmistakable. They are trying–and may well be successful in their efforts–to co-opt the GOP and the conservative movement in this country.
But, not to worry–they’re pro-life.
Note: I neglected to cite the source of the excerpt I used above, which was the result of a Google search:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/02/tom_tancredo_ki.php
Like any political movement (peace movement, anyone?) the tea party movement has a very wide mix of people involved — some crazy, others just very rightist. However, I fail to see how what you quote is remotely “fascist” — nor is the idea of expecting people who vote to have a very basic level of civic education of the sort required to apply for citizenship necessarily oppressive (though the claim that Obama is a socialist is obviously false). Nor does it suggest that a state of civil breakdown and near war is going on — which is the status quo that existed in 31-36 Spain. Seriously, in pre-civil war Spain there were dozens of open political assassinations each year, and hundreds killed each year in open street battles between rightist and leftist militias.
We haven’t seen anything remotely like that in the US since our own civil war. Even the extreme turbulence of the late ’60s didn’t come close. I think people do themselves and the civic square and extreme disservice when they compare our current political situation to the sort of strife that was seen between fascists, communists, socialists and anarchists in early 20th century Europe. It disrespects history, and it increases division in our country more than it heals it.
I would actually tend to see the “our opponents are all rabid” line of argument as one of the greatest threats to our country right now, wheter it comes from the Village Voice or from Glen Beck.
(Though, for the record, I’m not in favor of having a civic knowledge test to vote in our country at this time. I think it’s clearly a divisive, non-starter idea and it shows Tancredo up as a fringe character that he’d advocate it.)
I think DarwinCatholic makes a good point. Surely the *form* of government has some relevance to answering Henry’s (rhetorical?) question. And to point this out is not to back away from the context of the issue; it is, rather to (rightly) note that the issue can’t be decided in the absence of the context’s consideration.
It’s interesting that the Spanish Civil War is still being fought here on Vox Nova. Apparently the religious/political issues of a hot war several decades ago retain their heat in our current Catholic Cold War.
Some look to the earliest years of the Church as a golden age, and most of us in one way or another see that era as a yardstick by which to measure our own faith today. And this was a time when the political authorities alternately ignored and persecuted believers. The Church was as apoltical as it could be–and yet, as we know, found ways to make its own politics and plenty of its own discord.
Still, removing the discords we import from secular politics would probably be a big improvement.
Perhaps the Church should stop being involved in secular politics and go its own way, preaching the Gospel and taking care of its own and the poor among all of us as best it can. We could be Amish without the funny clothes and renouncing modern technolgy, and see what happens.
Is it time to give up the Papal States for good?
“It’s interesting that the Spanish Civil War is still being fought here on Vox Nova.”
And they’re still trying to impeach Nixon. :)
Philip
For you ;)
Sorry, my work blocks such things. Explain.
It’s a short film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon.
Scary. Glad I can’t watch.
DC–
Had Tancredo called only for a basic knowledge of civics to vote, that would be one thing. But he didn’t. He called for literacy tests. I don’t know how old you are, or how much education you have, but literacy tests were one of the prime devices used by southern racists under Jim Crow laws to prevent African Americans from voting. If one was Black– especially if one was Black in the American south–in those days, one lived in a totalitarian state–call it “fascist,” or not. Tancredo and his enthusiastic audience (their enthusiasm comes through clearly on the clips), seemingly want to bring those days back.
At the risk of cited for a violation of Godwin’s Law, I will point out that many socially prominent Jews, and well-meaning Christians in Europe derided the nascent Nazi party as a brutish, unsophisiticated fringe group from which there was ultimately nothing to fear; they were just too ridiculous to take seriously. The real threat was the socialists and the communists, no?
We don’t know how long it will take the economy to recover; or how far it will ever come back. Take care who makes a push for power in a time of transition.
I’m certainly aware of the “literacy tests” in the south, though at a tea party rally I would bet you plenty of money that what he’s awkwardly trying to attack is the immigration issue, not suggesting a return of Jim Crow.
As I said, I think one does well to take real political threats to liberty seriously. (This is, I suppose, something that makes me a “liberal” in the sense of classical liberalism, in the way often derided around here.) But at the same time, I think it’s important not to increase division and hatred in our country by imagining or exaggerating threats.
Trust me when I say (as a registered Republican, National Review subscriber, and certified by Michael Iafrate himself “Christo-fascist” and “republicatholit”) that there simply will not be a significant effort to create racist literacy tests in our country. The fascists simply are not howling at the gate any more than the socialists are.
DarwinCatholic, as you ignore the “tea-baggers’” racism, their support for torture, for bombing Iran, for giving all of “Eretz Israel” to the Jews, for labeling a temperamentally conservative Democratic President a “socialist,” you ride the tiger, just as the industrialists and the junkers and the “conservative” Catholics of Weimar did.
And, as you comfort yourself with your illusions of a calm, “socially conservative,” constitutionally-republican political tradition (which sounds more like the “Whig theory” of British history to me), you manage to ignore the ingrained violence of American political and social history. Where are the Klansmen (who helped elect Wilson), the bounty hunters who murdered Indians, the yellow press that screamed for war with Spain, the strike-breakers of Chicago in your rosy picture of the improbability of a home-grown fascist movement led by the likes of Sarah Palin? You, like those self-same effete German “conservatives” of Weimar, don’t have to go out into the hinterlands and meet the yahoos who scream for Obama’s blood.
Again, you ride the tiger, like the effete “conservative” German aristocrats of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories.
“Perhaps the Church should stop being involved in secular politics and go its own way, preaching the Gospel and taking care of its own and the poor among all of us as best it can. We could be Amish without the funny clothes and renouncing modern technolgy, and see what happens.”
This is an idea the implications of which need to be seriously considered. I don’t know that Christianity, in anything resembling a “pure” form, is compatible with “business as usual” in all of its broader implications.
DC–
How do you figure that changing the race targeted by literacy tests from African American to Mexican/Hispanic changes the nature of the tests themselves?
First off, it seems to me you’re vastly overstating the stability and “legitimacy” of the leftist governments in early ’30s Spain.
It was a government democratically elected under the Constitution. I regret the instability as I regret the instability of Weimer Germany, also victim of a fascist takeover.
This was a country in which rightest opposition politicians were kidnapped and murdered by the military/police, apparently under the direct orders of leftist elected officials.
As were leftists such as the martyr for democracy Jose Castillo. Of course, here MLK and RFK shot in the same year. None of these were government ordered killings.
The leftist factions were actively supporting the confiscation of Church property, had banned the Jesuits from the country,…
As I said, so did Joseph II, Bismarck and Victor Emmanauel.
…were burning and desecrating churches
After the civil war started and the Castillian Church supported a fascist coup against the legitimate government, there were predicatable consequences for that action.
Would I have advocated a coup ahead of time, probably not. But had I lived in Spain at the time I would absolutely have carried a rifle against the communist and anarchist forces once war was joined.
Neither the Communists nor the anarchists dominated the Popular Front at the time the coup attempt was launched. Once the coup was launched, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy joined with the Catholic Church in support of the insurgent generals. Thin Umbrella Britian, as cowardly here as they were at Munich, stood on the side. The Soviets strengthened the hand of the CP but the Communists did not come to dominate until the cause was essentially lost.
Yes, at a certain point the Republican cause was hopeless and at about the same time in history, the Communists came to dominate the Popular Front. But there is no reason to think matters would have ever come to that point had the generals respected democracy.
As for your point on US conservatives, I move a great deal in conservative circles, and I have nowhere seen anyone suggest that the Obama administration is remotely as objectionable as “popular front” Spain.
For a while last year, I could not make the short walk to my workplace without having to view signs and banners suggesting this.
Rodak & Digby,
Well, what can I say. If you’re determined see groups that disagree with you as dominated by evil rascist fascists, and consider any reasonable conservatives you meet to be dupes, that’s a worldview that’s impossible to argue with — rather like solipsism. It’s also startlingly similar to the people you dislike, except you use the term “fascist” rather than “socialist”.
Kurt,
If you consider Jose Castillo a “martyr for democracy” (despite being the head of the military organization rather than an elected official), then one must at the very least consider Jose Calvo Sotelo to be equally so — given that he was an elected member of parliament and the head of the monarchist party, and was illegally arrested and murdered by Castillo’s fellow members of the Assault Guard in “retaliation” for Castillo’s murder. When military units with explicitly socialist paramilitary leanings are kidnapping and executing leaders of opposition parties, one can hardly talk about a stable or legitimate democracy. Nor are we talking about just a couple assassinations and riots — according to Stanley Payne’s research there were over two hundred political assassinations, over three thousand deaths in street fighting, and over 100 churches burned in Spain between 1931 and the start of the coup in 1936.
As Payne (hardly a man with fascist leanings — his early work censored by the Franco regime as it was being published) describes in The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, the Spanish left was under the influence of the NKVD and other international communist groups and seeking to destroy true democracy as early as 1934. Of the Red Terror which the Republicans inflicted upon the Church, it was hardly a last gasp effort of bitter enders, it had precursors in the burning of churches and repression of Catholics before the coup, and heated up rapidly. 861 clergy mere murdered in the first two weeks of the war (July 18 to Aug 1st, 1936). 2077 during August, including 10 bishops. Payne writed this slaughter was “a semi-organized activity carried out by sections of nearly all the leftist groups” and (in words not far from the Ratzinger quote which you found) he observes that Catholics were quickly left with little alternative than to side with the Nationalists, so great was the violence of the Republican pursecution.
As for whether conservatives have accused Obama of similar depredations — I’ve certainly never seen anyone accuse Obama of burning churches, ordering assassinations, or leading street violence against his opponents in an effort to establish a communist state. Of course, I live in the capital of Texas, which is generally much saner than the capital of the Union. So I’m sorry if such people have been congregating in DC. If it’s any comfort, I would assume that the equal and opposite crazies decorated your route quite gratifyingly for the previous eight years. Seeing opposition protests is, perhaps, a mild price to pay for total control of the executive and legislative branches. (Enjoy it while you can — it never lasts, and it certainly didn’t do our party any good.)
And my apologies, Henry, for helping to hijack the thread. I hope it has at least been interesting. I’ll promise to drop it after this.
DC
You can keep the conversation going as long as others want to as well. I have no problems with threads going on tangents — often threads like this are meant to open conversations and to see where they go.
Of course, I do think more conversation over the original question would also be interesting. For example, I do not think “oh, it was not a democracy” really settles the question of St George before martyrdom and his association with evil. There was no need for St George to look for such a position but he did. It’s a complex question, but I still think it shows reality is more complex than the ideals we use to judge people for “cooperation with evil.” Of course, we rarely judge our own, only that of others. So I always think the lives of the saints and their imperfections are important. It is not to justify such cooperation, but to temper our judgment with mercy.
FWIW, I do think that the “cooperation with evil” accusation is often overused, by Catholics on both sides of the political spectrum. There is a real moral issue, I think, when people actively work to bring about the election of an official or the selection of a policy which includes elements of moral evil from a Catholic perspective. But at the same time, just working for an administration (which may hold some very bad policies) is not itself necessarily supporting or promoting those bad policies. So, for instance, if Obama appointed Bart Stupak as his secretary of health and human services, I wouldn’t see it as wrong for Stupak to accept the job. Though as with St. George, he might at some point be asked to do something contrary to his conscience in that position, and he’s have to be prepared for that test, as St. George was.
DC
Though of course one of the differences is St George went looking for such work, and wasn’t just offered it. And I think we both agree — cooperation with evil is an overused accusation. It’s the big problem I have with the attacks on the USCCB. Of course I and many others agree things can be better– and it is best to work for better — but to go about it as a scandal like that –seems to have more interests at heart than the good of the Church.
DC,
There was crime and violence in the streets of Spain before the Civil War. I know that. And while we also have crime and violence here, it was to a degree modern Americans would find shocking. If the soluation to that problem is to replace an elected government with a fascist government, I would refer you to Weimer Germany. The crime and violence were just as much an issue. And the same solution was proposed.
While I know the weak point in my arguement is that in the end, the fascists took control of both Spain and Germany, it would have been wiser and better for the Spanish Church to do what the German Church did and ally itself with the Republic and the democratic parties against totalitarianism.
On your other comment, can you explain for me why you would welcome the nomination of a man for HHS Secretary who actively worked to bring about the election of an official who supports “more evil from a Catholic perspective?”
Kurt, don’t you know that the Catholic Church’s hierarchy in Germany did NOT “ally itself with the Republic and the democratic parties against totalitarianism”?
The most crucial concession that Hitler won from the papacy in his unholy concordat that Pacelli negotiated was that the German Catholic Party would be withdrawn from active participation in German politics. That is considered, by some, to have been Hitler’s shrewdest political move, after coming to power. From then on, the Catholic Church in Germany was in the position of tacitly supporting the monstrosity it had parlayed with.
During the Weimer period, the Catholic Party formed a coalition with the Socialists and the Liberals (I would love to personally write this on a palms of every Tea Party Catholic!). This coalition did heroic work in attempting to maintain the Republic. When in 1933, the Catholic-Socialist-Liberal coalition lost its majority, they invited the Conservatives to join them. They refused and instead allied themselves with the Nazi Party. In turn, the Catholic Party was asked to join a right-wing government and refused (except for the renegade Von Papen, who was expelled from the Party).
However, the conservative Hindenberg held the mostly ceremonial Presidency ever since he (sadly) defeated Wilhelm Marx, a Catholic who was also backed by the Socialists. The Presiency had the power to appoint a Chancellor with a minority government if no coalition could assemble a majority.
The Pacelli deal-making is no reflection on German Catholics. There are debatable questions on the actions of the Catholic Party after Hitler took power. The Party’s left wing were arrested or disenfranchised. Absent its most progressive voices, it voted to accept the Government’s demand it dissolve, some would say with a gun to its head. I would note the German Jewish Federation also voted “voluntarily” to dissolve.