Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 2:23am

PopeWatch: La Vanguardia Interview-Secession

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

Often times Popes are asked questions they would be wiser to decline to answer simply because the answer has nothing to do with the Faith, and their response would be a personal opinion rather than one that pertains to their office.  A perfect example is this question and response in the La Vanguardia interview:

 

 

Does the conflict between Catalunya and Spain worry you?

All division worries me. There is independence by emancipation and independence by secession. The independences by emancipation, for example, are American, that they were emancipated from the European States. The independences of nations by secession is a dismemberment, sometimes it’s very obvious. Let’s think of the former Yugoslavia. Obviously, there are nations with cultures so different that couldn’t even be stuck together with glue. The Yugoslavian case is very clear, but I ask myself if it is so clear in other cases. Scotland, Padania, Catalunya. There will be cases that will be just and cases that will not be just, but the secession of a nation without an antecedent of mandatory unity, one has to take it with a lot of grains of salt and analyze it case by case.  

This response has caused something of a minor furor in Scotland where the Scottish National Party is in charge and dreams of a socialist Scotland, with Queen Elizabeth still queen, afloat on North Sea oil. Go here to read one of many articles in Scotland on the Pope’s comment.  Of course the Pope should not have any position on whether people in Scotland get their welfare checks from London or Edinburgh.  It simply is not relevant to his office as Pope and he does the Church no favors when he ventures personal opinions on questions that are not his concern as Pope.  Besides, he might get Mel Gibson crazy-angry and that could be dangerous!

 

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, June 18, AD 2014 4:28pm

His reply was hedged. As for the SNP and Plaid Cymru, they are great manufactories of humbug; if he ticked them off, he at least irritated the irritating.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Thursday, June 19, AD 2014 8:18am

Pius IX would probably disagree regarding secession. Donald?

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, June 20, AD 2014 4:55am

One recalls the pastoral letter of the Swiss bishops, following the First Vatican Council’s definition of papal infallibility:-
” he [the Pope] is tied up and limited by that doctrine, divinely revealed, which affirms that alongside religious society there is civil society, that alongside the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy there is the power of temporal Magistrates, invested in their own domain with a full sovereignty, and to whom we owe in conscience obedience and respect in all things morally permitted, and belonging to the domain of civil society.”
They were not prepared to take Calvin’s Geneva as their model for Church-State relations.

trackback
Friday, June 20, AD 2014 1:18pm

[…] Davidson, Ignitum Today The Unsurprising Erosion of the Presbyterians – Fr. Z’s Blog Pope Francis on Secession Movements – Don. R. McClarey JD, TACatholic The Facebook Timeline and the Disintegration of Memory – […]

Lurker bee
Lurker bee
Friday, June 20, AD 2014 10:35pm

American independence WAS won by secession. The founders declared their secession from Great Britain and backed up their declaration with force. Europe didn’t grant a dad-gum thing.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, June 21, AD 2014 6:17am

Lurker bee

I imagine the contrast the Holy Father is making is between emancipation, where a colony separates from the mother country on the one hand and the partition of an existing state into two or more elements, such as his own example of Yugoslavia; another example would be the formation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia from Czechoslovakia.

The history of independence in the Americas is rather mixed. It was, after all, Pedro I (The Liberator) who had been left in Brazil as regent by his father, King Dom João VI of Portugal in 1821, who was acclaimed Emperor and declared independence. He and his son continued to rule the country until 1889.

Again, the Mexican revolt was brought about through fear of a power vacuum in Spain, following the Riego Revolt and the Liberal Triennium. Agustín de Iturbide allowed himself to be acclaimed Emperor, not least because he feared the Bourbons in Spain would be replaced by a liberal republic.

Tom Mellon
Tom Mellon
Saturday, June 21, AD 2014 7:37am

England have been getting one big welfare check from Scotland for decades now. Its called North Sea oil.
England would benefit from its own independence. In fact I believe the quickest route to England rediscovering its Catholic culture and identity is through independence. The quicker it shakes off its Protestant Unionist yoke the better.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Sunday, June 22, AD 2014 5:58am

Tom Mellon

In Scotland, the Protestant party has always been the anti-national party, eager to call in the English to advance their cause; a fact pointed out by the redoubtable Regent, Mary of Guise, at the very beginning of the Scottish Reformation.

Whether it was the nobles who intrigued with Elizabeth against her daughter, our Royal Martyr, Mary, Queen of Scots, or the supporters of William and the Act of Settlement, of the Union and the House of Hanover, the same pattern repeats itself.

When, on the 19 August 1745 at the gathering at Glenfinnan, the Apostolic Visitor of the Highland District, Bishop Hugh MacDonald of Morar, blessed the Jacobite standard, “the Highlanders “threw their bonnets in the air and huzza’d 3 different times, crying alowd long live K. James the 8, and Charles P. of Wales, prosperity to Scotld and no union.” No wonder a vindictive London government prosecuted the bishop on a charge of being “by habit and repute a Jesuit, priest, or trafficking papist.” His real offence was being a patriotic Scotsman.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, June 22, AD 2014 7:27am

England have been getting one big welfare check from Scotland for decades now. Its called North Sea oil.

Oil and natural gas rents amount to about 1.5% of the gross domestic product of Britain. It’s not that important bar in the imagination of abrasive Scots particularists.

England would benefit from its own independence. In fact I believe the quickest route to England rediscovering its Catholic culture and identity is through independence. The quicker it shakes off its Protestant Unionist yoke the better.

From your mouth to God’s ears. The benefit England, Wales, Ulster, and the insular dependencies receive from Scottish independence would be that they’d be free of a mess of Peronists with brogues and their bad attitude supporters.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/06/10/great-scot-the-madness-of-late-stage-nationalism/

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