News Item: : When Democracy Isn't
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Friday 01 June 2018 - 13:22:36

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Christian Democracy?

Our British Prime Minister Theresa May, the daughter of an Anglican minister, has been described as a Christian lady whose Christian faith impacts on her public politics.

Such an assessment looks starkly out of place when one considers the response Mrs. May made on twitter to the disastrous abortion referendum in Ireland.

On the Sabbath last weekend (!), the Prime Minister tweeted: ''The Irish Referendum yesterday was an impressive show of democracy which delivered a clear and unambiguous result. I congratulate the Irish people on their decision and all of Together4Yes on their successful campaign.''

Well, it was certainly unambiguous. But may we really call it democracy?

In light of the revealed Divine Law of God, and indeed the Natural Law which is accessible to all human beings by the power of reason with good will, such assertions can be seen to elevate ''democratic ideals'' to the hideous point of idolatry.

Catholic Prelates or Politicians? 
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Photo from 1 Peter 5, who pursued a clear answer from Archbishop Eamon Martin, after his deeply troubling appearance on RTE at the shrine of Knock, Co. Mayo.

Such is the position on abortion of a mainstream Anglican politician, indeed Prime Minister, after five centuries of Protestant hegemony in these isles.

Perhaps, though, one might be able to hope for better things from Archbishop Eamon Martin, being that he is the successor to the 17th-Century martyr St. Oliver Plunkett in the offices of Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland?

Alas, even though Archbishop Martin has been heckled in pro-life marches, led pro-life prayers and spoken out against abortion more than many other Irish prelates, even he managed to completely stun onlookers when he appeared on RTE from the hallowed shrine of Knock, in Co. Mayo, earlier this week.

When the Archbishop quoted the Taoiseach, to call on all ''No'' voters to now do all they could ''to make abortion rare, safe and legal'' I almost choked on my own teeth!

Had His Grace just said ''rare'' - and combined this with a robust denunciation of the referendum itself and its evil result - then this would have sounded more acceptable.

However, the archbishop seemed to be over-extending himself in making his message sound to be both in line with that of the Taoiseach and at once acceptable in a newly pro-abortion system. (I say system, as it is difficult to describe the voting-in of something as reprehensible as the killing of the unborn as being in any way worthy of the name society).

Thankfully, after dedicated pursuit by Steve Skojec and his team at 1 Peter 5, Archbishop Martin did walk back his shocking statement and duly affirmed his pro-life beliefs and commitment.

This is well and good but, come now, using the very slogan of the pro-death revolutionaries on ''making abortion safe, legal and rare'' must rank as a seriously nightmarish misstep for a top Catholic prelate to make...

A Deep Seated Error

At least, albeit after such committed Catholics took the trouble to seek answers, the archbishop has corrected the unfavourable impression he gave in that interview.

However, all the evidence shows that there is a very deep-seated problem in terms of the conception by Catholics of contemporary political systems and governance.

For example, even priests who gave clearly pro-life sermons in the days immediately prior to the referendum were heard to clarify - we might more honestly say ''undo'' - their message by adding in a chummy-sounding, ''Ah sure now, I'm not going to tell you how to vote.''

These kinds of episodes, combined with the far more Modernist clergy who went so far as to suggest that voting ''Yes'' was up to the conscience of each individual - with the celebrity Fr. Brian D'Arcy being one of the most public offenders in promoting this grave error; even adding to it with the claim that voting for abortion was no sin in ''an emerging republic'' - , combine to make clear that there is a widespread and deeply rooted problem of idolizing the post-modern democratic system, even within the clergy.
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Fr. Brian D'Arcy: In an emerging way, in an emerging world, in an emerging republic, he wouldn't call voting to bring in abortion a sin... Gracious, No!!!

Whilst such problems were much more prevalent during the 2015 ''same-sex marriage'' referendum, their reappearance during a vote on the actual slaughter of babies demonstrates just how deep-seated this problem really is.

Beyond the Symptoms...

In what follows, I will leave aside the various claims being made that the referendum was ''rigged''. Merely repeating what I said earlier that those claiming that older people, and some nuns, had been marked as deceased, or else were recorded as not eligible to vote, need to take such worrying claims with plenty of witnesses to their nearest station of the Gardai.

So, too, do those who have since suggested that a young person, on receipt of three voting slips, contacted their local authority to ask what they should do with the spare ones, allegedly to be told to ''use them!''

In any case, more demonstrable than these claims is the fact that pro-life advertising, and even pro-life prayers, were being obstructed by undemocratic behaviour displayed by internet companies and a number of local officials.

Again, one may also well ask just how much a mob of under-educated youths with bad attitudes, shouting obscenities at opponents and conditioned to use slogans without development of critical thinking, are truly capable of being described as ''democratic'' voters to begin with.

... To the Cure

As I say, leaving these various things aside, I would like to move to a conclusion by looking at the very nature of democracy and democratic voting itself, as it pertains to these recent cases of identity, morality and the right to life.

The, then, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made extensive academic explorations of these questions in his various and numerous writings. To name just two, these include sections of his books, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures and Europe, Today and Tomorrow.

He used those, and other, writings to show that, in even the most liberal conceptions of a ''social contract'' there has to be an overarching acceptance of truth to protect society from descending into the mere law of the jungle, wherein might alone would make right.

The timeless quality of those aspects of his extensive writings in the Ratzinger corpus, was the fact that they situated and demonstrated this overarching truth in the divine, and at the very least, in the natural law.
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More officially, Evangelium Vitae has set out some very lucid Magisterial teachings on this matter; with which it would be opportune for all Catholics everywhere to now refamiliarise themselves in these times.

For example, EV 70 makes clear that, ''democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a ''system'' and as such is a means not an end. Its ''moral'' value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behaviour, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs.''

Furthermore, ''the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes.''

In EV 72, we read further: ''Consequently there is a need to recover the basic elements of a vision of the relationship between civil law and moral law. .. laws and decrees enacted in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience...; indeed, the passing of such laws undermines the very nature of authority and results in shameful abuse.''

In fact, ''Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity... Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law.''

The Degrading Slavery of Our Age
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Stalag Luft III near Sagan in 1940's Poland. Will prison camps be a thing, not of the past, but of the future in a post-Christian dystopia? Hence the urgent need faced by all societies to secure their civil laws in natural and divine law.

About nine years ago, I attended an excellent lecture in the reading room of a public library in the British Midlands.

The lecture was being delivered, complete with accurate scale models, by a distinguished elderly gentleman, dressed in a smart tie, blue blazer and grey slacks, who had been one of the team who helped his fellow POWs to escape through tunnels out of the German held Stalag Luft III camp, near Sagan in Poland, during World War II.

The chaps in his stalag unit had used a gymnasium horse each day in the exercise grounds to cover the patch of land from which the tunnel was being dug.

It was a most interesting, even exciting, presentation, during which the former serviceman spoke of prisoners continuing to fight for their country, even whilst held as POWs, by escapes, attempted escapes and also by having fun obstructing the German guards, nicknamed ''Goons''; in order to cause the German war-machine to tie up much-needed resources in the requirements of prison camp management and security measures to prevent further escapes.

What made this truly British gentleman's story so splendid was the sense that Britain, at least during that time in our island story, represented ideals of freedom, democracy and good old-fashioned underdogs fighting against impossible odds for the truth.

To quote the fictional Captain Mainwaring in the classic British comedy series Dad's Army, we prided ourselves as a nation that stood up for justice and ''played cricket in a sportsmanlike manner with a straight bat.''

Certainly, as was the case with so many of his generation, those were the British values so conveyed by that old man in the library that day in the British Midlands. It was an honour to attend and listen to him.
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He's always backed Britain, don't you know!The late, great Arthur Lowe in his best remembered and longest-running role as Captain George Mainwaring; the pompous, bumbling, yet eminently likeable bank manager, and leader of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard Platoon, in the classic BBC comedy series, Dad's Army!  

Alas, the popular conception of freedom and democracy has altered somewhat since those days when ''Tommy Atkins'' and his ilk were taking on ''Jerry'' in the pock-marked battlefields and the forested prison camps of Europe.

Although subsequent generations have (so far) been spared the horrors of Total War, in so many ways, ours is a more brutal age.

More hopefully, it was G.K. Chesterton who reflected that, ''the Catholic Church is the one thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.''
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It occurs to me now that, in our present age, we are witnessing the convergence of two very disturbing forms of degrading slavery.

The one is close to that depicted by Chesterton, in terms of those who, conditioned by contemporary culture, idolize ''democracy'' at the expense of God, identity, morality and, now, even the unborn.

On the other hand there are those who, almost like real-life versions of Orwell's fictional Winston Smith, put their heads above the parapet to ask questions and even to say ''Oi, No!'' to injustice. These face a rather different kind of slavery; for they maintain their inner dignity, but also face obstruction, surveillance and, in worst cases, even incarceration.

In recent weeks, the international community has looked askance at Britain in light of the treatment meted out to Tom Evans and also Tommy Robinson.

It is not hard for those with eyes to see that Popes as disparate as Benedict XVI and John Paul II, as well as deep-thinking writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, were not wrong when they warned that the denial of God and His rights always ended in the denial of man and his rights too.

Given the tenor of the times, we consider it urgent that Catholic prelates, priests and lay faithful, as well as all people of good sense and will, ought to rediscover the foundational necessity of having civil law rooted in natural and divine law.

In the meantime, as unfolding events continue to show, it is no longer foreign enemies who are the Goons...

Our Lady of Walsingham - Pray for us and Reclaim England, Thy Once Glorious Dowry!    



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