Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 1:54am

Fortnight For Freedom: Getting in Bed With Caesar

tiberius

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Sam Adams, August 1, 1776

(This is a repeat from last year.  I can’t improve upon it, except for minor changes that I have made.)

The American Catholic is proud to participate in this year’s Fortnight For Freedom.  The Fortnights were started in 2012 by the bishops of this country in response to the unprecedented assault on religious liberty posed by the Obama administration, to remind Catholics of the preciousness of their inheritance of freedom as Americans and Catholics and the necessity of standing up to threats to it.  All well and good, and a very worthy cause indeed.  However, the leadership of the Church appears to be schizophrenic on this subject.  While Caesar seeks to limit the freedom of the Church, too many ecclesiastics respond by wanting to get into bed with Caesar.

The examples of this are legion.

It was the policy of the Church to aid the Obama administration in flouting the immigration laws of this country, acting as a virtual arm of the State in sheltering illegal aliens.  Thank heavens that administration is now one with Nineveh and Tyre.

The Church was all in favor of Obamacare, until the Obama administration targeted the Church with the contraceptive mandate.

The Green Encyclical, Laudato Si, released in 2015, is one long demand for Caesar to engage in an immense power grab, and regulate business and citizens to fight a mythical global warming threat.

The Vatican is a cheerleader of UN activities that spell a mortal danger to economic freedom in the West.

The Church through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development funds hundreds of left wing pressure groups to call for ever bigger government, and, inevitably, further restrictions on freedom.

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 was for the Church to bend the knee to contraception, abortion and gay marriage.  For all too many of our shepherds that was a small price to pay to keep the government largess 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.

So we join with our bishops in standing in defense of freedom, even while so many of them demonstrate that they are willing to sell out our freedoms, when it suits them, to Caesar.

 

10 And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.

11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.

12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to clear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

16 And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

17 He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.

1 Samuel 10-18

0 0 votes
Article Rating
16 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Sunday, June 25, AD 2017 3:58am

NPR doesn’t get it but Bishop Paprocki does. This Bishop has moxie. Willing to defend Holy Catholic Church and it’s teachings. Freedom fighter Paprocki!
God bless you.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/23/534127330/illinois-bishop-decrees-no-communion-funeral-rites-for-same-sex-spouses

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Sunday, June 25, AD 2017 6:29am

Not one red cent for any Catholic anything. Not one. None of them can be trusted to ensure the money is spent on what God wants instead of on Caesar.

“The Green Encyclical, Laudato Si, released in 2015, is one long demand for Caesar to engage in an immense power grab, and regulate business and citizens to fight a mythical global warming threat.”

“The Vatican is a cheerleader of UN activities that spell a mortal danger to economic freedom in the West.”

“The Church through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development funds hundreds of left wing pressure groups to call for ever bigger government, and, inevitably, further restrictions on freedom.”

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, June 25, AD 2017 7:40am

Pope Francis et al, Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a guidebook.

Todays’ St. Matthew is most important. Fear not that which can only destroy the body. Fear God Who can destroy body and soul, and consign one to eternal fire in Hell. Sadly, few are given that message. Concomitant with selling out to Big Brother, there is scarcely an iota of zeal for the salvation of souls. Tragic!

Sam Adams was a fire brand.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Sunday, June 25, AD 2017 9:19am

When a Capitular of 800 making the payment of tithes universal within the fiscal domain of the whole Frankish kingdom was published in Rome, we are told the reading of this Capitular was interrupted by loud and repeated shouts from Pope Leo III and the assembled clergy of “Life and victory to our ever-august Emperor!” – Vita! Victoria!

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, June 25, AD 2017 9:26am

The Church’s problem isn’t ‘getting in bed with Caesar’. Cadres who know their own mind (however witless the contents) will engage in try-every-door non-compliance (and will be selectively succored by the judiciary for so doing). The problem is that Caesar’s compliance mandates are a tool in the hands of intramural factions which wish to suborn and corrupt the institution. These people are already there. The bishops, religious superiors, and college trustees could can these crooks, but they cannot be bothered, by and large. (For reasons it’s not difficult to imagine). Dollars to doughnuts, a sociological and psychological survey of people who work for the Church and it’s subsidiaries would reveal them to be quite similar to people who work for NGOs generally. Remember Todd Flowerday, music director? (“Peace, All”). When he was in discernment (eventually electing not to go to seminary), he was working for the NPR station in Rochester.

There’s been a certain amount of chuffering about ‘religious freedom’ in this fora and certain parties may be quite right that the last Oecumenical Council generated some serious theological trouble with its pronouncements. Trouble is, brass tacks, it does not matter for obvious reasons.

“Welfare state” is a rhetorical thrust without much content, and people should stop using it. Some element of common provision administered by public or parastatal authorities is a pervasive feature of human societies. It wasn’t absent in the world in which Calvin Coolidge was a working politician, which was populated by state schools, state asylums, state sanitoriums, veterans hospitals, &c.

Social Security hardly requires more public power than is necessary to collect taxes. The same is true with SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), and, in a more qualified way, housing vouchers. The lumbering mess various authorities have made of the finance of medical care over the last 50 odd years (and, in some respects, the last 75 years) incorporates more discretion on the part of public authorities, but that’s contextually a subsidiary problem. The main problems all have to do with perverse incentives which have distorted and disfigured the market, the doctor-paitient relationship, and the professional lives of practitioners.

Where you’re going to see troublesome discretion, it’s in the state schools and the child protective apparat. The latter does not incorporate much of a financial flow and the former was a feature of the common life two-or-three generations ‘ere anyone had ever heard of Franklin Roosevelt.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 2:30am

You have perfectly stated the issue and the proper response Mr. McClarey.

Having given up their belief in the largess of God the Bishops seek succor from the government as tools of the Democrat party. The ultimate end of their endeavors has to be Communism which will bring untold misery to folks they presume to protect. One thinks that these faithless Bishops must be loathsome in the eyes of God as they focus on the goods of this world rather than those of the Kingdom of God.

By the way, this morning I was re-reading Bishop Fulton Sheen’s ”Life of Christ’, chapter 15, entitled (Christ’s) ‘Refusal to be a Bread King.’ The huge crowds that followed Christ stopped when He told them they must eat His body and drink His blood to be saved. They were looking for earthly satisfaction like our Bishops seem to be doing today.

Don L
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 5:36am

The main difference between the time of Samuel and now, is that back then some merely (if helplessly) wanted a king (Caesar), and today with democracy, we actually pick our own Caesar…i.e. we are Caesar…or perhaps lately, we are more like Nero.

Tom McKenna
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 7:59am

The establishment of a monarchy was basically a rebellion of the Jewish people against God (1 Sam 8):
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”
Just as men as societies now reject the Kingship of Christ.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 8:39am

The main difference between the time of Samuel and now, is that back then some merely (if helplessly) wanted a king (Caesar), and today with democracy, we actually pick our own Caesar…i.e. we are Caesar…or perhaps lately, we are more like Nero.

No, the main difference is that we’re not a collection of pastoralists organized around lineages. If you fancy you can do without a central government, you might just review what life was like in Beirut ca. 1982 or visit Mogadishu today.

TomD
TomD
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 11:26am

Art, you latest post, while in many ways true, has nothing to do with Don L’s post. Really.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 3:24pm

Art, you latest post, while in many ways true, has nothing to do with Don L’s post. Really.

It’s a precise reply to something he said, verbatim quotation included. I’m sorry the relevance eludes you, but that’s not my problem.

Mary De Voe
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 6:03pm

Art Deco: Love your put down of TomD.
“and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen” I understand that the souls in hell are not remembered not ever. Sam Adams got it right.

TomD
TomD
Monday, June 26, AD 2017 7:27pm

It is your problem, Art, if it eludes a fair number of other people.

trackback
Friday, June 30, AD 2017 6:36pm

[…] elements of the annual Fortnight for Freedom in the context of their longstanding track record of getting into bed with Caesar is, at best, a dog and pony show, and a bad one at […]

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top