Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 10:21am

Selling Out to Caesar

Caesar Coin

 

 

The Catholic Church in this country has historically been in bed with the Democrat party.  Ironically, while many “Catholics” these days never darken the inside of a church except on very rare occasions, these same “Catholics” often retain an allegiance to the Democrat party as the sole living vestige of their ancestral Catholicism. John Zmirak explains at The Stream how this alliance between the Catholic Church and the Democrat Party has produced poisonous results today as the Democrat party mandates that the Church adopt anti-Catholic stances or be driven from the Public Square:

 

But how did they dig themselves into such a hole in the first place? How will they, inevitably, dig the next such hole and then the hole after that? I have analyzed both issues, and come up with an eight-step process for destroying a church’s witness.

  1. Distort your church’s doctrine, by pretending that it clearly supports just one side and one solution in a complex political issue that balances the interests and rights of millions of citizens. Instead, side unconditionally and unthinkingly with . . .
  2. A particular “victim” group that includes millions of voters, potential church members, or potential clients that can serve as magnets for federal money. Insist that the government help this group by . . .
  3. Growing the government and taxing the middle class, while also . . .
  4. Directing federal funds to church agencies or institutions. Now instead of performing the “corporal works of mercy” as Christians, they are simply working for pay as federal contractors. This has the added benefit that it will . . .
  5. Make the churches partly dependent on the whims of the federal government, whose bureaucrats and leaders are firmly opposed to Christian moral teachings on the sanctity of life and of marriage. Soon these secular leftists will . . .
  6. Impose laws and regulations that would force the church to abandon core moral principles. At this point church leaders will . . .
  7. Whimper, and flail around, pretending that the First Amendment protects their right to spend federal money however they wish, regardless of the federal government’s preferences. After this, look for . . .
  8. One of three results:

a) Church officials and agencies cave completely, and do not even pretend to put up resistance. This happened when the Obama administration decreed that Catholic agencies receiving federal money had to hire gay and “transgender” employees.

b) Church officials and agencies find a loophole through which they can fulfill the letter of church law, while flouting its spirit — for instance, through the HHS “compromise” accepted by the Catholic Health Association, which created a formal “buffer” between Catholic employers and the abortifacients they were effectively paying for.

c) The Church stands up prophetically against the real evils (#6 above) that would be required to obtain federal money (#4 above), and renounces the distortions of doctrine (#1 above) that dug them this hole in the first place.

I wish I had a news link to illustrate option 8c in action.

Go here to read the rest.  Welfare States require huge amounts of tax money and huge amounts of government power.  The default position of the Church today when confronting any need traditionally filled by private or Church charity, is to scream for Caesar to come fix things.  This bastardized parody of the social teachings of the Church inevitably comes back to bite the Church as Caesar will always exact a price for his favors and under the Obama administration that price is for the Church to bend the knee to contraception, abortion and gay marriage.  For all too many of our shepherds that is a small price to pay to keep the government largesse flowing.  There is a reason why Christ whipped the money changers from the Temple and why He uttered the phrase to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.   These days the Church too often seems willing to bow the knee to Caesar, no matter what Caesar demands, so long as the funds from Caesar keep flowing.

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Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 9:04am

Ooops. Another broken link. “Go here” link missing a colon.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 9:18am

I hope the link gets fixed because the article is very interesting. I enjoyed the closing paragraph and the link to the article on Locke v. Davey.

Don Lond
Don Lond
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 9:23am

This will all be fixed after Pope Francis goes to the UN in September to speak on the issue most threatening to the loss of souls so obviously endemic in our modern hyper-secularized world……”climate change.”

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 9:27am

This in relation to what we discussed the other day, Don? 😉

Catholics sharpen the teeth of Leviathan, and then marvel at being bit. One has to laugh to keep from crying. What’s even worse is how you can point this out to some of those Catholics and they’ll become VICIOUS. Often times more vicious than had you insulted the pope.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 9:58am

The people who run higher education are jealous enough of what they fancy are their prerogatives to fend off state legislatures and electorates wishing to put conditions on the patronage. The Church-o-cracy simply does not care.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 12:17pm

The transformation of the Catholic Church into an NGO is nearly complete. Faith into confidence in government; Hope into requests for funds: Charity into Money; Sinners into a victims; Church leaders into the politically correct; doctrine into propaganda; Heaven for everyone; social justice into redistribution, etc. Now we look forward to the day with the UN elects the next Pope.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 2:06pm

Hey, we have an advantage– gov’t funded NGOs are really ineffective.
Yes, there are folks abusing their authority…and they seem very common, because the folks who aren’t would have to abuse their authority to counter them.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 2:57pm

The Catholic Church and the Democrat Party “alliance” is not an alliance of Church-going believing Catholics and active Democratic party members… in both cases the “alliance” is an alliance of the guys at the top of both orders… Street level Democrats have the same chasm between them and the party leaders as do the Republicans.
Democrats I know are not in favor of abortion, nor of gay marriage, and have guns in their homes for self-protection. They wish their party wouldn’t be for those things, but the rich mean Republicans are odious to them.
The alliance that would be real- between the people of faith in the pews, and voting Americans will only be made when each group recognizes themselves in each other.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 3:05pm

The Democrat Party is organized crime. However, far too many self described Catholics sympathize with Democrat views, especially single women and young married women with no kids. I have dealt with both and they were both self-described Catholics who were stridently abortionist.

In other words, they were STUPID.

Paul W Primavera
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 3:36pm

Anzlyne, I have not met the Democrats of whom you speak. They may exist. But the overwhelming majority of Democrats whom I know hold individual gun ownership in anathema, demand gay marriage as equal rights, demand abortion as reproductive rights, and worship Caesar Augustus.

Mary De Voe
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 3:46pm

In talking to people in the checkout line at the supermarket, some said that they vote democratic because their parents and their grandparents voted democratic. These persons sincerely believed that they would be betraying their ancestors if they changed parties. Their ancestors voted democratic before human sacrifice, before any body could consider that our state could turn to evil the way it has.
Caesar, Kaiser, Czar, royal blood itself must have been fought for and won in victory of courage and goodness.
.
“so long as the funds from Caesar keep flowing”. The funds that flow from Caesar belong to the taxpayers. It is time to remind those in power that it is not their money but “our money”.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 3:55pm

In talking to people in the checkout line at the supermarket, some said that they vote democratic because their parents and their grandparents voted democratic.

Reading some of the topical commentary of Andrew Greeley or the remarks of some of the partisan Democrats who used to post at Open Book, I had to conclude it’s an identity marker for some Catholics and has been for several generations. Someone said of the bishops, “they want to vote Democratic”, it’s just that the inveterate hostility of Democratic Party and its constituencies to anything for which the Church claims to stand inhibits that.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, March 20, AD 2015 4:00pm

I hear you — the people I am telling you about are not involved at all in politics, but they consider themselves democrats because that is what they and their families always were– kind of like cafeteria catholics, they only own up to the party line that they accept in their lives. But they are so hardened against the Republican party that they judge to be greedy cheating-the-poor type sins they see among bankers businessmen they see as representative of the Republican party.
Having worked on campus I am very well aware of the Democrats with a capital “D” who are actively snarking for the issues I mentioned.
I still think the “alliance” of catholics and democrats is an alliance between active ideologues and not most cafeteria catholics and cafeteria democrats. This is a hopeful take, I think. Education and evangelization have not been tried and found wanting, they have not been effective so far in converting people to conservatism– maybe the frightening antics of this administration will do that for us.

Franco
Franco
Saturday, March 21, AD 2015 1:04am

Many political professionals of the Democrat Party who
are far left ideologues have slithered into many important
Diocesan Ministries to replace the teachings of the Church
with their pagan far left ideological positions to confuse and
corrupt the faithful.

A Cloney
A Cloney
Saturday, March 21, AD 2015 9:03am

Sorry, but if there are Dems out there who “wish” their party wasn’t for abortion, SSM, etc. they have to have a “come to Jesus” moment and decide if they do NOT defend “the least of these”, their hatred (or envy!) of “rich Republicans” and their love for “social justice” will lead to ruin!

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Saturday, March 21, AD 2015 3:01pm

Yes, yes. As I said I hope the reality of this cultural dive we are in will “scare them straight”. People are beginning to wake up. The leaders of this administration and other lefties will look around and see that the parade is not following them. ( as another post on this site refers to) I think they will have to face this reality that their useful idiot followers are no longer following. Because some of these lower information lower activity democrats never were totally sold on the party line. Plus those people have families too. Just as part of the gay plan was to use the love and desire for tolerance within family members of gays against them, choosing to accept because confused by rapidity of social change – those families have been knocked off balance but they are rapidly getting their feet back under them. This whole “after the Ball” plan and Alinsky agenda can only work for so long. And then love and reason will right the ship.

trackback
Sunday, March 29, AD 2015 12:50pm

[…] Catholic Thing Martin O’Malley and Magical Words – Dr. Ed Peters, In the Light of the Law Catholics Selling Out to the Democratic Party – Donald R. McClarey JD, TheAmCatholic Supporting School Choice is Being “Pro-Children” […]

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Tuesday, March 31, AD 2015 12:23am

1) I can’t find the Scripture in which Christians and Jews are instructed to render the poor unto Caesar.

2) I haven’t heard a homilist preach on the evils of coveting thy neighbor’s goods since I was a boy.

3) I’m told that the ancient kings of Israel gave alms to the poor. However, in those days the distinction between the king’s personal wealth and the treasury of the kingdom didn’t exist. In our democratic republic that distinction is recognized, the equivalent of King David giving alms these days is an individual voter who gives alms out of ones own pocket. Every Catholic who advocates more welfare spending programs for the poor from the public treasury–whether bishop or lay–is coveting ones neighbor’s goods, a grave matter. Sadly, a lot of Catholics appear to do just that.

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