America's Babylonian Captivity?

May 11, 2011 by Mark Shea

Continued from Page 2

That is because, at the end of the day, I don't believe that the state or the corporation or the party are what history is about. I believe history is about Jesus Christ, not the American experiment, nor any other state or nation that is a mere human creation. I believe that Christ is the center of history and I believe that the family, as the image and likeness of God is the most crucial thing on earth, short of the Blessed Sacrament. Therefore, I believe that the center of Catholic social teaching is the good of the family. All my bleats of protest, whether at the sacred Dem sins of abortion and gay "marriage," or the sacred GOP sin of torture, have in view my conviction that these evils constitute an enormous peril to the family because they empower something else—whether the individual, the state, or the corporation—to play the tyrant over the good of the family (in addition to being Just Plain Wrong). And I believe that the family matters ultimately because it is the primal human sign of the Blessed Trinity.

That's why I find myself forced to talk about political stuff like abortion, torture, and gay "marriage" and any other grave evils our Ruling Classes may attempt to transmogrify into signs of National Greatness: because these things are inseparable from my faith as a Catholic. It's also why I find myself at sixes and sevens with any political ideology. In the words of Treebeard, I am not on anybody's side because nobody is on my side.

I try to be on the side of Catholic social teaching. I often fail whether through lack of wit or charity. But I see no alternative to that approach to ordering my political life, since I am aware of no party that views the teaching of the Church as something other than a thing to be exploited when useful and castigated when it stands in the way of their pursuit of the One Ring. Therefore, as a free man, I make use of political parties when they support Church teaching and reject them when and where they do not.

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