Two Vatican Memes

Fun Facts about the Vatican Nation-State

Terrorists and Vatican Passport Policy

America's Anti-Catholicism

It's 24 hours after the initial Reuters-inflamed conflagration, and a few things have become clear.

The facts are now easily available to anyone who wishes to find them.

What has become clear is this: to a large group of people out there, the facts don't matter.

They hate the Pope, they hate the Catholic Church.
It doesn't matter what the Pope actually said.
The fact that Trump attacked the Pope is manna to them.
There are even Catholics in this group.

They want to hate, and they are not going to let ANYONE take their hatred away by citing a few tawdry facts.

So, it doesn't matter that the Pope didn't actually say Trump wasn't Christian.

It doesn't matter that the Vatican is a 100% immigrant city, with absolutely open borders, a nation state that has already taken in refugee families and whose leader has directed every European parish, monastery and shrine to take in refugee families.

It doesn't matter that the Pope has never said people should not build any walls, but has instead said that someone who wants to build only walls is not Christian. It does not matter that the Pope even expressed doubt that anyone would hold such a position.

All that matters to the people who are now pushing this meme is that they have a legitimate political opportunity to express hatred and contempt for this Pope, and by extension, for the Catholic Church.

They thank God and the MSM for giving them the chance to spew out their anti-Catholic hatred. This is a golden opportunity to legitimately express bigotry, and by heaven!, they will not miss the chance.

Rush Limbaugh and the Vatican Wall

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Well, there's big news to open the program with. CNN just reporting that il Papa, Pope Francis, upon boarding the pope jet on the return to Italy from Mexico said that Donald Trump is not a Christian. Man are they pulling out all the stops now. The Pope says that Donald Trump is not a Christian, because Christians do not build walls, they build bridges. Nevermind that the Vatican is surrounded by a wall and we won't even talk about who built that wall. But that's what the pope said. And given the pope's political leanings I'm surprised he isn't on the campaign trail for Bernie Sanders. But maybe Bernie Sanders is too far to the right for the pope.

Perhaps someone should tell Rush: 

1. The Vatican is the only 100% immigrant country in the world,
2. Anyone can enter the nation-state of the Vatican, any time of the day or night, without a passport,
3. The Vatican has not only accepted refugee families, it has directed every parish, monastery and shrine in Europe to also welcome refugee families. It has also accepted homeless refugees from Italy.
4. At 1.5 crimes per citizen, Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world, all directly attributable to its open borders. Many of the people who cross its borders every day are pickpockets who target all the other people who cross its borders each day, or shoplifters. It has no working prison. 
5. And, yes, we know who built the wall. The Popes did. In fact, part of the wall was built in order to prevent the Muslims from raiding the city, as they had in 846 AD. 

The Vatican has already taken in 2% of its population in Syrian refugee families alone, not counting the dozens of Italian homeless. To match population refugee percentage, the US would have to take in 6,581,298 refugees a year (2%). 

The population density of Vatican City is 1884 people per square kilometer.
The population density of the US is 35 people per square kilometer.
To match population density, the US would have to take in 18,527,256,000 refugees. That's over twice the entire world's current population.

Update:
Now that many people are beginning to understand how generous the Vatican is, I hear people making this complaint:

The Vatican is not welcoming millions of settlers, that's the difference. Those millions are tourists who go home, they don't overstay their visas and disappear into Vatican City.

Americans misunderstand. 

All the Pope is asking is that people be afforded food, shelter and dignity.
That's it.

If the US had a program wherein everyone who came across the border got fed,  bid a fond farewell, and were then put on a plane to a safe home somewhere else in the world, we would have done all that the Pope asks. We would have been a bridge for them to a new life. 

If our laws don't allow for that, or if our laws allow refugees to do something else, that's not the Pope's fault. That's on Congress and the President and us, the citizens who elected them.

It is really very simple.
We don't want to be the rich man in the story:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Mexico, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores...."


Or, as another commentator points out: 

To tear down those walls would be to destroy historically significant structures. Destruction like that, for symbolic purposes, is like what ISIS did when it razed Palmyra!

The preservation of historical structures — whatever they might symbolically mean — is dramatically different from the question whether to build something new.

"Pope Francis, tear down that wall!" might seem funny at first, but look again. You are unwittingly giving support to the terrorists who blow up temples and sledgehammer statues.

Update:
Today, 26 August 2018, the Vatican has taken over a hundred additional immigrants off Italy's hands.

Pope Francis On Donald Trump

The media is exploding about the remarks Pope Francis reportedly made about Donald Trump. Let's take a close look at EXACTLY what was said:

Phil Pullella, Reuters: Today, you spoke very eloquently about the problems of immigration. On the other side of the border, there is a very tough electoral battle. One of the candidates for the White House, Republican Donald Trump, in an interview recently said that you are a political man and he even said that 

1. you are a pawn, an instrument of the Mexican government for migration politics. Trump said that if he’s elected, 
2. he wants to build 2,500 kilometers of wall along the border.
3. He wants to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, separating families, etcetera. I would like to ask you, 
4. what do you think of these accusations against you and if a 
5. North American Catholic can vote for a person like this?

 Pope Francis' response:  

1. Thank God he said I was a politician because Aristotle defined the human person as 'animal politicus.' At least I am a human person. 
2. As to whether I am a pawn, well, maybe, I don't know. I'll leave that up to your judgment and that of the people. And then, 
3. a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel. 
4. As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. 
5. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.

Now, let's take note of a few things.

1. The reporter said Trump disparaged the Pope,
2. The reporter listed only Trump's negative proposals, failing to mention that Trump welcomes legal immigrants,
3. He reiterated Trump's disparaging remarks,
4. And asked the Pope to get involved in America's political process.

Looking at the points in the question, a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the reporter was deliberately trying to bait the Pope.

The Pope responded precisely as he should:

1. He assumed the reporter was acting in good faith (Christian benefit of the doubt towards the reporter),
2.  Refused to take the bait on the name-calling,
3. Pointed out that, if the reporter's synopsis was accurate, this is not the attitude of a Christian,
4. Refused to get involved in the political process,
5. Gave Trump the benefit of the doubt by asking if this was really an accurate summary.

Now, as my friend, Dan Severino pointed out, the reporters' synopsis was inaccurate. It left out salient facts. But someone reported the papal remarks to Trump - whether accurately or not, we don't know.

We can be fairly certain the reporter's question was not included in the summary to Trump. Thus, Trump had no idea that the reporter seemed to be deliberately baiting the Pope to attack Trump. If he didn't have access to the Pope's reply, Trump would not have had a chance to examine the nuance with which the Pope spoke. 

In any case, Trump immediately attacked the Pope. Perhaps a reporter had helped him misunderstand the Pope's answer, or perhaps he did that on his own, but here is the relevant portion of Trump's response (full response at this link)

For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President. No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith. 

If Trump had spent some time, gotten the full context of both the question and the answer, and had spent some time in thoughtful reflection, there would be no news story.

But, in ironic imitation of Ted Cruz's response to the CNN report that Carson was dropping out, Trump didn't check his sources. 

Instead, he went for the quick, politically safe response. And, in Protestant America, disparaging the Pope is always a politically safe response. In fact, it is a guaranteed vote generator in certain areas of the South.

In both the Cruz-Carson flap, and in the Trump-Pope flap, reporters have been the go-betweens. The accuracy of their reporting is suspect. But the popularity of the controversy their reporting generates.... ahhh, it is, as the French say, magnifique!  

From a political perspective, this whole mess is a win-win. The media gets their conflagration, lots of clicks, and lots of people tuning in to watch while Trump gets lots of votes. Nobody is left out but Catholics, and they deserve the blowback. So, the Pope was certainly used as a pawn... but not by the Mexican government. 

UPDATE:

Now you can watch the video!

Theocracy

I have heard some people complain that Ted Cruz is a Dominionist who would attempt to impose a Dominionist theocracy on the United States. This is, according to the whiners, hateful. After all, we are Americans, who have and cherish separation of Church and state!

Now, let us leave aside the fact that, for Catholics, separation of Church and state is heresy, and deal with the simple fact: in America, we neither have nor cherish separation of Church and state. Consider: if the Church and the state were truly separate, then actions undertaken on religious grounds could not be prohibited. But they ARE prohibited.

Followers of the Aztec religion cannot kill and eat each other. Muslims aren't allowed to rape and behead non-Muslims. In many cities, Christians are not permitted to feed the homeless. Obamacare requires Catholics to buy contraception, and requires religious sisters to pay for abortion.

We ALREADY live in a non-Christian theocracy. There is no separation of Church and state in this country. There is only domination of the Church by the state. That's it.

As a Catholic who very much opposes Dominionist theology, I have no serious issue with Cruz wearing his religion on his sleeve nor would I have serious problem with any attempt he makes to impose his beliefs on the nation. His beliefs are not any worse than what has already been imposed on us. Dominionist theology may be whacked in many respects, but at least Dominionists don't murder babies.  And, today, that's a pretty high bar.

Homosexual Activity is ALWAYS Rape

If I contracted with someone so that, under the right conditions, I agree to be their slave, that is not a valid contract. I have neither the right nor the ability to consent to that, nor can the person I contracted with enforce that contract.

Maybe I WANT to be enslaved, because I don't have to worry about income or taxes anymore - that's my owner's problem. Maybe my owner WANTS me to be a slave, because s/he always wanted to experience that relationship. Maybe my slavemaster treats me very well, and that's why I want to be his/her slave.

NONE of that matters. I don't have the ability to consent to such a relationship, nor does the one who wants to enslave me. The Declaration of Independence makes quite clear that our rights are:
(1) inalienable and
(2) endowed by our Creator.

The only theology that holds both of those principles to be true is Christianity. Christianity says that we have rights because: (1) God has rights and (2) we are made in God's image and likeness, so we have a share in the divine rights. No other theological system makes those two statements.

It isn't a question of emotion. No one has the ability to consent to homosexual activity. Period. Because no one has the ability to consent to the act, the act is always rape.

Sharia Law: American-Style

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

God gives us rights that are "unalienable", that is, even if we wanted someone to take them away, these rights cannot be removed from us. We do not have the ability to throw away these rights, nor does anyone have the ability to strip those rights from us.

Now, people can kill us. But, when they kill us, they violate our rights by killing us. You can take the thing itself, but you never actually have the right to take it.

So, let us say you create a legal contract wherein you become someone else's slave, perhaps for some payment, perhaps for some other reason. It doesn't matter. That contract cannot be enforced in a court of law. No matter how much you insist you want to do it, you do not have the ability to consent to become a slave. No American court would recognize the contract, nor would they recognize your consent as valid.

Keep in mind, however, that Muslim courts would recognize a right to self-enslavement precisely because Islam does not recognize that individual people have unalienable rights.

Unalienable rights come from God, they are endowed by our Creator. The Founding Fathers were not Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or Taoist. Insofar as they were familiar with any religious tradition, it was purely and only the Christian tradition. They lived in a purely Christian culture.

The Declaration of Independence does not list all of our unalienable rights, just three. But, as the Founding Fathers pointed out in the Declaration, we can determine what our other rights are by looking to the source of our rights: the Christian God.

Once we do that, we can see not only what rights we have, but also what rights we do not have. So, just as no one has the right to contract themselves into slavery, so, in a like manner, no one has the right to consent to homosexual activity.

Now, anyone can engage in homosexual activity, but no one has the right to do so.  In that sense, homosexual activity is identical to rape or slavery. It is an act that cannot be consented to. No one has a right to engage in it.

Again, keep in mind that just as Muslim courts recognize a right to enslave others, so Muslim courts recognize a right to rape, even a duty to rape. For instance, Islam recognizes a duty for the jailer to rape a virginal woman in prison facing execution. Virgins cannot be executed. A virginal woman must be raped in order to carry out her execution and keep her out of Paradise. Thus, the jailer has a duty to "marry" and rape his prisoner before she is executed. He is advised to repeat verses from the Koran during the rape, so as not to become contaminated by her impurity while he helps guarantee her eternal end.

Only Christians believe in divinely endowed, unalienable rights. Islam is what a culture looks like when it fails to recognize the Christian concept of divinely endowed, unalienable rights.

Now, American courts have begun to imitate Muslim courts. American courts now recognize a right to rape in certain circumstances. Because homosexual activity cannot be consented to, every act of homosexual sex is an act of homosexual rape.  No one has a right to rape. But, American courts, like Muslim courts, now recognize the right, under certain circumstances, to rape.

In short, American courts are now no more nor less insane than Muslim courts.
Thus, we can now see the homosexual "rights" movement is simply the American version of sharia law. If you've ever wondered why liberals like sharia law, you have the answer. They may or may not like the details, but they very much like the principles.

Defining "Consent"

One's choice of consensual sexual expression is a freedom-of-conscience issue that must be respected, if we expect others to respect our own freedom of conscience.

Can you see the hidden assumption in the statement above?

Correct!

It assumes that we share a common definition of  "consent" But what if we don't? For instance, what if two men consensually decide that one of them should be cannabilized, that one man should have parts of his own body carved off him while he is still alive, and both men then cook and consume the parts? What if that is a consensual action? Does society have no right to interfere?

This is not an academic question. Exactly these kinds of cases have been popping up during the 21st century. Google "Armin Meiwes" - a homosexual who used wants ads to find a like-minded homosexual, and both proceeded to act exactly as I have described.  Now, Armin was prosecuted and jailed (so much for consent), but this Japanese cook was not. So, in terms of consent, which country did the right thing? The Germans? Or the Japanese?

What constitutes consensual? For Islam, an eight-year old girl can be given to a fifty year old man for marriage and sex. For libertarians, there is no legal problem with two individuals who enter into a private contract wherein one freely sells himself into lifetime slave-bondage to the second one.

So, therein lies the problem - even if we agree that "consensual" makes something acceptable (an incredibly stupid definition, but let's go with it), we are still left with the problem that not everyone agrees on the definition of "consensual". Some insist on elements (age, mental capacity, etc.) that others deny are necessary.

Without a Christian substrate to judge the relative merits, there is no way to determine who is correct. No matter which side wins, the win is arbitrary. Why should person A's values be held acceptable over person B's values? To ask the question is to despair of an answer. The conundrum is purely rhetorical.

Modern-day libertines, such as those that populate our political and intellectual classes (such as they are), tend to legalize stupid, insane behaviour for a simple reason: they intend on acting badly, but if they can define even more outrageous behaviour as acceptable, then their own behaviour will get a pass. So, they see no serious problem with using public definitions that make their own personal definitions seem reasonable. That's how we get legal contraception, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, and a host of other socially destructive behaviours out in the public square.

Sure, all of these things lead to social breakdown, but at least our fearless leaders get to do what they want. And isn't that why society exists - to give them their hearts' desires, without fear of social disdain? 

Should Women Be Educated?

Among rad-trads, there is a certain level of opposition to female education. Their idea is that women shouldn't go to college, young women should instead get married between the ages of, say, 16 and 21, and start popping out babies. FYI, canon law (Can.  1083 §1.) sets the minimum age for marriage for women at 14, minimum age of marriage for men at 16.

Now, I love babies more than pretty much anyone I know, but preventing women from getting an education will only get you a lot of dead babies (see here or here, for instance).

It is very well-known that the more educated the woman, the less likely her infants are to die (see here, for instance). High education among women greatly decreases infant mortality. Infants get sick, and when they do, you want an educated person there to take care of that baby. An uneducated mother won't have the skills necessary to prevent a baby from falling ill, properly assess a sick baby's needs, nor correctly handle the infant's illness. So, if you want those babies to live, you better educate their mothers: the more, the better.

But, as is also very well-known, educating women has a downside in reference to fertility. Not only does education take time - a woman in the classroom is, by definition, not at home taking care of children - the increased infant survival rate actually decreases family size and female fertility.

You see, when infant mortality is high (as it has been for nearly all of human history), parents have a lot of kids, because they don't know which ones will survive to adulthood. Family size is large, fertility rates are high because there are a lot of dead babies between the ages of one and five. But when infant mortality is low, parents stop having many children because they can be sure the few they have WILL survive to adulthood. They don't need the insurance policy of a large family. So, female education correlates to high infant survival. High infant survival correlates to low female fertility rates.

But therein lies the NEXT problem. All other things being equal, large family size is very well correlated with high numbers of priests and nuns. Small family size correlates to lower vocations to Holy Orders and religious vows. When fertility rates drop, the Catholic Church ends up with fewer priests and nuns. A LOT fewer priests and nuns.

So, the Catholic is caught betwixt and between. We certainly want low infant death rates, but we ALSO certainly want large family size so priestly vocations don't fall off.  From a cultural perspective, nobody knows how to get both.

Many rad-trads don't understand how the correlations work, they just know that female education is somehow interfering with Catholic family life, thus the absurd and useless proposal that women shouldn't pursue an education. Ripping education out of women's hands is NOT a Catholic solution. When a solution is found, it will undoubtedly involve training up people who come from small families up to live as sacrificially as do those from large families.

That's a problem in how to educate parents, not a problem in how to prevent them from being educated. Anyone who advocates uneducated adults is advocating an essentially non-Catholic "solution", a "solution" that actually makes everything much, much worse.

Why Libertarianism is Stupid

Libertarians don't want "big government" interfering in private contracts. This creates certain problems for the libertarian.

Assume we have two people who wish to enter into a private contract. One of the two wants to sell himself into slavery to the other. According to libertarian principles, no one has a right to interfere in that contract.

Think I'm exaggerating? This is what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has to say about libertarianism

It wrongs an individual to subject her to non-consensual and unprovoked killing, maiming, enslavement, or forcible manipulation. (emphasis added)

Full-self ownership is sometimes thought to guarantee that the agent has a certain basic liberty of action, but this is not so. (emphasis in the original) For if the rest of the world (natural resources and artifacts) is fully (“maximally”) owned by others, one is not permitted to do anything without their consent—since that would involve the use of their property. For example, as a result of one's trespass on their land, one may become their slave. The protection that self-ownership affords is a basic protection against others doing certain things to one, but not a guarantee of liberty. (emphasis added) Even this protection, however, may be merely formal. A plausible thesis of self-ownership must allow that some rights (e.g., against imprisonment) may be lost if one violates the rights of others. Hence, if the rest of world is owned by others, then anything one does without their consent violates their property rights, and, as a result of such violations, one may lose some or all of one's rights of self-ownership. (emphasis added) This point shows that, because agents must use natural resources (occupy space, breathe air, etc.), self-ownership on its own has no substantive implications. It is only when combined with assumptions about how the rest of the world is owned (and the consequences of violating those property rights) that substantive implications follow.

Libertarianism is the philosophy of libertines and teenagers (but I repeat myself). It is incompatible with Catholic philosophy. Catholic philosophy views "ownership", in the strict sense, as an attribute of God - God owns all things because He created all things.

Libertiarianism directly contradicts the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The right to freedom is "unalienable" - I am not capable of entering into a contract of slavery, on either side. But libertarianism must allow such a contract, or it isn't libertarianism.

Every human individual is, at most, a steward of one or more created goods. Strictly speaking, in Catholic philosophy, we don't own anything.  Our lives revolve around the rights that flow from being appointed a steward and exercising stewardship, they do not flow from ownership. Thus, the core concept of libertarianism is fundamentally incompatible both with being an American and with being a Catholic.

UPDATE:
Most libertarians can't even define the word.

The Politics of Greed

Seen on the Web:

The "that guy has more than us" narrative is getting old. Stop adding up the wealth of the poor to "prove a point," because it's misleading. Here's why.

If you have a net worth of just $1, you have more wealth than 2,000,000,000 people COMBINED. How? Because "if you take the bottom 30% of the world’s population — the poorest 2 billion people in the world — their total aggregate net worth is not low, it’s not zero, it’s negative. To the tune of roughly half a trillion dollars. My niece, who just got her first 50 cents in pocket money, has more money than the poorest 2 billion people in the world combined."[1]

That same $1 makes you richer than 40% of Americans,[2] who combined have a net of $0. Between 20%-25% of Americans have negative net worth,[3] while the 2nd quintile's meager net worth offset the 1st's negative worth to a balance of $0.

Now consider this: of the global poorest decile (bottom 10%), Americans make up 10% of that, while less than 1% of the poorest are from China [4, Page 12, Figure 7], a country where the majority of the people could only dream of being as well off as the poorest Americans. That's right, 10% of Americans are worth less than a poor person from China! How could that be? Because while the poor in China have next to nothing, over 20% of Americans have LESS than nothing.

Why is that? Think about this: a typical 18 year old kid who is working for minimum wage at McDonald's has more wealth than a typical 27 year old doctor. Because that doctor is fresh out of medical school, with an average of $170,000 in student loans. Before his first paycheck, car payment, or rent, that doctor has a net worth of negative $170,000 [5]. Who would you rather be, a min-wage fast-food worker with $0 net worth, or a young doctor with negative net worth?

Point is, adding up the wealth of a large number of poor people for comparison is misleading. They should just come out and say it: "I'm jealous that someone else has more than me."

You know what they say about people living in glass houses. Yes, those 62 people live in really huge glass houses, but you live in one too. By you, I mean someone privileged enough to have access to a computer and/or mobile device to access Facebook. Because as you point to that 1-percenter, saying "that's excessive," 2,000,000,000 people in the world could do the same to you.

[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/…/stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-th…/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/the-top-10-of-americans-o…/

[3] http://publications.credit-suisse.com/…/ren…/file/index.cfm…

[4] https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/…

[5] https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/…
http://www.bestmedicaldegrees.com/is-medical-school-worth-…/

An Open Letter to Donald Trump Supporters

To Donald Trump supporters:

Donald Trump said you would be fine with him murdering someone in the street. He could shoot someone in the street, and you would still support him.

That's what Trump thinks you are.



And if you continue to support him after he says that...

...then that is, in fact, what you are.


Trump has been bought by his own money.

When he invests millions in the Clinton Foundation, he HAS to make sure the Clintons stay in power or he has lost millions on a bad investment.

He has invested millions in the Democrat party and its principles. He can't afford to lose that money.

Why Hillary Will Still Win

Is it worth the trouble it takes to vote?
Seems to me, the North Koreans and Russians will elect Hillary.

Pope Benedict vs. Traditional Catholics

Your Holiness, please at least acknowledge that the sacraments and discipline we adhere to was the universal norm of the Catholic Church for many, many centuries until the rupture of the Second Vatican Council.-- Kenneth Wolfe, Rorate Caeli contributor and "traditionalist"

... it must be stated that Vatican II is upheld by the same authority as Vatican I and the Council of Trent, namely, the Pope and the College of Bishops in communion with him, and that also with regard to its contents, Vatican II is in the strictest continuity with both previous councils and incorporates their texts word for word in decisive points.-- Benedict XVI as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report

The Second Vatican Council was the product of the pre-Vatican II Church. It was called by, populated by and approved by essentially all the pre-Vatican II bishops in the world.

Thus, according to "traditionalists," the traditional Latin Mass leads to rupture in the Church. 

We certainly know it leads them to directly contradict Pope Benedict.

Income Inequality and Human Dignity

God bless the secularists, but they are completely at sea. They are trying to resolve the problem of human dignity and income inequality, but their solutions are, to put it nicely, just stupid.

Some of them recognize that work confers dignity, so they insist that we must get everyone working. While that is correct as far as it goes, it doesn't go far enough. Why does work confer dignity? Because the Judeo-Christian God is unique in being the God Who Works. Out of all the gods of the ancient, only Yahweh works in the clay of the earth, only He forms things out of nothing. Only He institutes a day of rest after His labors. He is the God Who Work.  We are made in His image and likeness. Our work gives dignity to us precisely because our dignity is a splinter, a reflective shard of the divine dignity.

In the same way, God is rich and He gives freely of His riches to every person. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. But neither the just not the unjust can forcibly wrest the rain from the sky and redistribute it as they see fit. God gives freely from his own wealth, physical goods to care for physical needs, spiritual goods (grace) for spiritual needs. You will see why this matters later in the essay.

Economic conservatives understand that work confers dignity, but they don't understand why. Thus, these same economic conservatives tend to insist on two diametrically opposed ideas: everyone must have a job AND faith must be a private sphere practice, separated from the public sphere. What they don't realize is this: such a scheme doesn't result in dignity, it results in slavery.

If God is stripped from the public sphere, if we aren't allowed to place our public work into the context of a public faith, then our public work must, necessarily, be strictly utilitarian. And therein lies the problem. Talking about empowering the people is all nice and good, but by definition, 50% of the population has an IQ below 100. You can empower that half of the population all day long and twice on Sunday, and they still won't have anything meaningful, in a utilitarian sense, to contribute to society. All of their work skills have been taken over by machines. They are now superfluous. They have no dignity and work can never give them dignity because they can perform no physically useful work.

Remember, in a Christian society, work confers dignity because we, through our work, imitate God, and everyone can imitate God. In a utilitarian society, work only confers dignity if the work is useful. How does this play out in real life?

Well, take, for instance, suffering. In the Christian scheme, anyone who suffers is participating in the Cross of Christ. Jesus is the God Who Works. The Cross of Christ is the work that redeemed the world. Thus, every suffering person is materially contributing to the salvation of the world. Since everyone suffers at some time in their lives, no one can be considered unworthy of dignity, no one can ever be considered superfluous. In the Christian scheme, every person is important because every person can do meaningful work, even if that work is only to lie in a sickbed and endure the suffering that ultimately kills him. That work is important, meaningful, worthwhile, more important than the work of the doctors and nurses who try to save him.

But for utilitarians, it is not so. For utilitarians, the work of suffering is not considered work at all. It accomplishes no good, in fact, it is an evil that must be wiped out. The suffering of the man in the bed is useless suffering. The work of the doctors and nurses, if not successful in saving the man's life, is so much wasted effort. If we cannot end the suffering, then we should end the person who suffers, so as to wipe out the wasted effort and eliminate the unnecessary suffering. A person only has worth and dignity insofar as that person does not suffer. And, since everyone suffers, everyone is potentially a target for the ravening genocide of utilitarian society.

So, yes, the idea that work establishes dignity is the general point of Catholic teaching for millennia, and the concern enunciated by Pope Francis specifically since the beginning of his pontificate. But when he uses the word "work", he doesn't mean what utilitarians think he means.

The Pope understands that we live in a utilitarian age, where one's worth to society is largely measured by one's net worth. In such a society, income inequality is a huge concern. The lower a person's net worth, the less dignity that person has. Economic liberals resolve this by trying to give everyone an equal net worth (income redistribution). Economic conservatives resolve this by insisting that all people be given jobs, so they all have the potential to become rich (read "have dignity").

Both groups are fundamentally insane. Just as it is impossible to give everyone physically utilitarian work, so it is impossible to assign dignity by forcibly taking one person's wealth in order to reassign it to someone else. When we take someone's wealth, we also take away their ability to image the living God. God gives freely. He gives us resources so that we can also give freely, in imitation of Him. If our wealth is taken from us, so is our ability to imitate this aspect of God.

If we recognize that wealth is not a sign of dignity, then income inequality is actually not a problem at all. In 1800, everyone lived in the same box of low income and low health (see Hans Rosling's Youtube video, 200 Years in 4 Minutes). Now no one lives in that box. There was essentially no income inequality for most of human history, and for most of human history everyone died young and died poor. Now there is a lot of income inequality, but everyone dies old and - by comparison to 1800 - rich. The problem isn't income inequality, it is dignity inequality.

In the essentially religious endeavor of recognizing human dignity, work (defined as Catholics define it) has a role to play. When God is stripped from human existence, work (as anyone defines it) becomes utilitarian and can no longer be used as a gauge (see the IQ problem above).

If society won't allow religion in the marketplace, then we have to figure out some other way of recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. But, without religion in the marketplace, without a spiritual economy to balance the physical economy, monetary economics is never going to resolve the problem of dignity inequality. Not even close.

Why Homosexuals Are Poor

Because Andy Rooney doesn't know how to read Scripture?

First, the largest charitable organization in the world is the Catholic Church - it has fed more people than anyone in history, with the possible exception of Norman Borlaug. It has certainly housed and clothed more people in history, even including Mr. Borlaug.

Second, the two things are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to work towards treating mental illnesses, such as homosexual proclivities, while also feeding and clothing the poor. Thus, the Catholic Church has ALSO created and maintained more hospitals, nursing homes and hospices than any organization in history (e.g., the Catholic Church has more AIDS hospices than any other organization in the world).

Third, the physical works of mercy are paired with the SPIRITUAL works of mercy: instructing the ignorant, correcting the sinner, etc. From the Catholic perspective, it is absurd to do only one without doing the other.

Fourth, the physical works of mercy are interpreted by the Fathers of the Church as correlating to SPIRITUAL works of mercy. Thus, the command to "feed the hungry" doesn't JUST mean give them physical food, it ALSO means teaching them the Gospel in order to satisfy their spiritual hunger.

Fifth, by the Catholic definition of poor that obtained up through 1800, there ARE NO MORE POOR PEOPLE. No one is as poor today as EVERYONE was in 1800.

Sixth, God tells us that we ARE our brother's keeper, so we MUST not only feed the poor physically, but ALSO correct the sinner. Anyone who reads Scripture would know that.

So, Andy Rooney is wrong at least six different ways.

Bad Idea: A Constitutional Convention

A lot of people propose creating a constitutional convention to "fix" the problems in our current Constitution. For some reason, conservatives seem to be big fans, perhaps because they think Republican control of most state legislatures gives them an edge. But anyone familiar with the history of the original document would tell you that this is a really, really bad idea.

The commission of the original Constitutional Convention was to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Although they were not authorized to do so, the Framers decided not to amend it, but to replace it. Could a modern Constitutional Convention do the same thing? Yes.

Technically, the Articles of Confederation could not be amended without the consent of each and every state in the United States. If the Constitution was an amending document, it was illegal. This was well-known at the time. The Constitution itself was produced in strictest secrecy during the Philadelphia convention. When the Congress that had commissioned the work, the Congress of the Articles of Confederation, found out what the Framers had done, they considered censuring the delegates for having both failed to do their job and for violating the law.

Instead, like many legislators today, they decided to punt. Not only was no one prosecuted, the Congress kicked the whole thing back to state conventions.

Now, the Articles of Confederation called for unanimous consent. But that rule was thrown out and replaced by "nine of thirteen." Today, those in favor of a convention argue that 37 states must pass any changes. Well, maybe. But maybe not. If the last Constitutional Convention could throw out the requirement for unanimity, what on earth prevents the next one from throwing out the requirement for 37 out of 50 states? Why not just a bare majority? Or perhaps discard the need for states at all, and go to passage by a certain number of large (as some arbitrary person defines "large") cities? After all, why should the state of Montana (entire population: 1.02 million) have more say then the city of Los Angeles (population 18.55 million)?

The Constitution was a document of bloodless revolution — it overthrew the confederation with a federation, and everyone knew it. That is precisely why the Constitution calls for ratification by only nine of the thirteen states. Why nine? Because the Framers didn't think they could get all thirteen to pass it. Federalist #40 deals with the problem of the legality of "nine vs. unanimous" by simply refusing to discuss the problem at all. The legal problem is acknowledged, then explicitly dismissed with a wave of the hand. In fact, Federalist #40 ends not by an appeal to the legality of the Constitution (which was impossible to support), but by appealing to the idea that the Constitution is good advice! Talk about a hopeless non sequitor.

And remember what Congress did? They kicked it to state conventions. In order to keep state legislatures from adding on their own amendments, the state legislators and their legislatures were entirely cut out of the process. Instead, special state conventions voted on whether or not to approve it.

The first state to ratify was Delaware, on December 7, 1787. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify and the Confederation Congress set the new Constitution's operational date as March 4, 1789, but that left four states out in the cold. Virginia and New York ratified it by July of 1788, but the remaining two did not ratify it before it became operational.

The Constitution was essentially imposed on North Carolina, which didn't ratify until November 21, 1789, and on Rhode Island. In fact, the last state, Rhode Island, didn't ratify it until May 29, 1790. By the time Rhode Island finally made it unanimous, the first Congress had already been in session for over a year (convened March 4, 1789, didn't release until March 4, 1791) and George Washington had already been President for over a year. In other words, at least two of the four states named above were forced to go along with a document, the Constitution, that even their own state conventions didn't approve. If this is a model for the interaction between states' rights and federal power, you can see who wins very early on.

If we look at it from the point of view of the Articles of Confederation, by September 13, 1788, eleven states had illegally seceded from the Articles. If North Carolina and Rhode Island would have had the military capacity, they could legally have declared this a rebellion and forced the eleven ratifying states back into the Articles of Confederation in exactly the same way Lincoln forced the Southern States back into the Constitution eighty years later.

Now, with this in mind, consider what the map of state legislatures looks like today:

Does anyone think today's process would run any smoother? Can we afford a couple of years of political anarchy while we try to get everything squared away with a new Constitution? Because anyone who thinks we won't get an entirely new Constitution, along with a whole new set of rights (which may or may not reflect any of our current rights), really isn't paying attention.

What makes you think a new Article V convention would treat the Constitution with any more respect than the the original convention treated the old Articles of Confederation?

We already have a political elite who argue that the Constitution is not a good structure for America nor a good model for new democracies in the 21st century. This same political elite controls the media and a lot of the political processes, they control the colleges and universities from which "expert" advisors will be drawn.

These are the people that got Obama elected.
Twice.
What makes you think we could stop them at a convention?

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Thus endeth the plug.

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Nullification: An American Tradition

There are people who get upset because juries have the ability, nay the right, to refuse to convict someone of the violation of a law if that jury decides the law is stupid. This fact drives prosecutors crazy. Judges insist it isn't legal, although in practice, there is very little they can do about it. It is called "jury nullification" and any jury in the United States can do it.

John Adams didn’t mince words about the jury’s purpose in 1771 when he said “it is not only [a juror’s] right, but his duty… to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

Similarly, states can not only refuse to enforce federal laws, states can even pass laws that directly contradict or overturn federal law. The feds can yammer all they want, but unless they want to send in troops, the feds can't do much to prevent it. This is also "nullification". It is in complete accordance with the Constitution via the Bill of Rights, Tenth Amendment. As even SCOTUS justices admit, there is absolutely nothing in any of the above ideas which violates the principles laid down by the Founding Fathers.

"The approach is on sound legal footing, with notable Supreme Court opinions backing the view that the federal government cannot require a state to expend manpower or resources in the enforcement of a federal act. The 1997 case, Printz v. US serves as the cornerstone. In it, Justice Scalia held:

'The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.' "

We have been doing this for 200 years. Whenever there is a law people don't like, they just don't enforce it (the legal term is "desuetude"). Thus, even though someone technically SHOULD be arrested, no one actually DOES get arrested when a woman wears pants in Tuscon. 

Look, we don't actually live in a nation of laws. That ended forty years ago, when we started killing babies and selling their parts. Anymore, we just pretend. Any citizen, any jury member, any state, can do whatever s/he/it likes, and apart from starting a civil war, no one can do anything about it.

So, when people tell us we have to follow an immoral federal law, we can laugh in their faces. Screw the Feds. They stopped working for us a long, long time ago.

How Excommunication Works

Question: How does excommunication work?

Based on the words of Christ Who said what is bound on earth is bound in heaven and what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven in regards to the "keys" of the Church:

If you are validly excommunicated (note that sometimes an excommunication is invalid, e.g., St. Joan of Arc) and you do not have the censure lifted or at least form the intent to reform or muster the requisite contrition for the delict, and die while in the state of excommunication, then, you do, in fact, show up to the particular judgment, excommunicated. In this sense, the Church does have jurisdiction, at least as far as Christ will uphold the adjudication.

I was recently told by an expert in canon law that the Church does not have jurisdiction in the next life. He said this in reference to my assertion that an excommunication would necessarily follower the sinner in the next life if not rectified.

Answer: 
The theologian is obviously Lutheran, because the idea that the Church does not have jurisdiction in the next life constituted the central error in Martin Luther's 95 Theses.

That having been said, excommunication is a juridical ruling about participation in the temporal life of the Church (i.e., the individual is barred from participation in most sacraments). Now, certainly, this lack of access to sacramental grace may also redound to eternal life, but God also might, in his infinite knowledge and mercy, take into account aspects of the situation which the Church, in her finite knowledge, is unable to consider.

Thus, excommunication is not a guarantee that the person excommunicated is absolutely cut off from heaven. Excommunication is objectively something to be avoided, but subjectively we cannot be sure the excommunicated person is in hell - only God and the individual who has died has absolute surety of how that person's eternal existence will be spent.

Excommunication means that, from an external viewpoint, the Church judges that the individual has distanced himself from God so effectively that he may well be damning himself to hell.

But the Church's judgement is not a judgement of the actual state of the individual's soul. It is merely a judgement about all that the Church knows about the person's public disposition. It is a judgement about the external, public factors. There may well be internal aspects of which the Church knows nothing, and the Church's judgement does not presume to include those aspects.

Further Question:
But what if the application of the penalty was subjectively in play, that is, total and utter culpability? What do we make of the Lord's words that what is bound on earth is bound in heaven? If the Lord discounts the censure in the next life, then would we not deduce that the Church's power to excommunicate expires at the death of the subject who labors under the penalty?

Deeper Answer:
Not at all.

The Church absolutely has power over the next life. That's what the doctrine of indulgences is all about. It's just that She chooses not to exercise it to condemn anyone to hell, for even God Himself does not condemn sinners, rather, the sinners condemn themselves.

Christ came into the world to save it, not to condemn it. The Church, as the Bride of Christ, imitates Her Spouse by using Her power (which comes from Christ) to do Christ's work - to save the world, not to condemn it.

Christ is Judge, but has not yet returned as Judge, so it is not the Church's role to negatively judge anyone's soul. Yet.