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Whether or not there are "virtuous things you would not be permitted to do" would be entirely between rosends and God, NOT you or your Catholic Church or your desired anachronistic monarchy!!! You are an advocate for tyranny and an enemy to all those who value personal freedom.
Exactly. In a Catholic monarchy I would not be prohibited from doing anything virtuous, but "virtuous" would be defined by the government and would be between me and the civil-religious authorities, not between my and my conscience.
To be fair, even in a quasi-democracy like ours, or in a real democracy for that matter, the state does declare some things (e.g., murder, theft) to be prohibited, though that's not quite the same thing as pronouncing it (un)virtuous. The state has no legitimate interest in virtue, rather just in the general peace and its stability and sustainability. Modern governments that people actually want to live in do not restrict free speech, who you love / marry, whether or not you want to have children, what religion you want to (not) believe in, and that is what we are talking about. Apart from what I have decided to inform them about or discuss, my neighbors have no idea what I (dis)believe in or about my private life, much less any say in it, so long as I don't interfere in some substantive way with their private lives. The Church always wants to control things that aren't its business. Not the capital-C Church exclusively, it's often true of religion more broadly, but that's the discussion here. The evangelicals are trying to co-opt government to get into people's personal lives on their behalf. Why would the Catholic Church be any different? Particularly if their control were absolute, as in this hypothetical?
To be fair, even in a quasi-democracy like ours, or in a real democracy for that matter, the state does declare some things (e.g., murder, theft) to be prohibited, though that's not quite the same thing as pronouncing it (un)virtuous. The state has no legitimate interest in virtue, rather just in the general peace and its stability and sustainability.
According to Catholic political thought, the bolded is the fundamental error of the liberal order (again, I mean "liberal" in the broader, Lockean sense).
They Have Uncrowned Him, which I'm reading through now, goes into that. I wish I had the book on me now so I could post a relevant excerpt. Maybe I'll get a chance later this evening.
Catholic Political Thought by Bela Menczer was written for the task of "dealing with the historical background to the crisis of Authority and Liberty, which culminated in the French Revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the new direction of religious thought which originated in this crisis and transformed every concept of the 'profane' order of Europe - we use the word in the sense underlined by Jacques Maritain in his Humanisme integral, as a contrast to 'sacred' - the crisis of Authority and Liberty in France, which is not yet at an end in Europe or the world today."
According to Catholic political thought, the bolded is the fundamental error of the liberal order (again, I mean "liberal" in the broader, Lockean sense).
They Have Uncrowned Him, which I'm reading through now, goes into that. I wish I had the book on me now so I could post a relevant excerpt. Maybe I'll get a chance later this evening.
Understand, I am not suggesting virtue is a Bad Thing (quite the opposite really, see, e.g., The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Compte-Sponville, which rightly extols the Great Virtues). It is just that virtue is not the business of government. In fact I'm pretty sure government is constitutionally incapable of it. Some powers (and attendant responsibilities) must be reserved by the people or they become by turns meaningless or degenerate.
Understand, I am not suggesting virtue is a Bad Thing (quite the opposite really, see, e.g., The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Compte-Sponville, which extols the Great Virtues). It is just that virtue is not the business of government. In fact I'm pretty sure government is constitutionally incapable of it. Some powers (and attendant responsibilities) must be reserved by the people or they become by turns meaningless or degenerate.
I understand your point of view, and would have basically agreed with it until fairly recently. I'm very much trying to sort and work through my liberal presuppositions...
Why not? Do you believe that there are virtuous things you would not be permitted to do?
Yes, reject Jesus and live my life as an unbothered, yet equally considered and accommodated Orthodox Jew. I see nothing higher or more virtuous for me. If you think that there is any value to trying to convince me to change my religion, then that's a problem.
If you don't think think that my decision to reject Jesus and continue to be a Jew is virtuous then you want to impose your version of virtue on me and deny me the right to decide what I think is virtuous.
Yes, reject Jesus and live my life as an unbothered, yet equally considered and accommodated Orthodox Jew. I see nothing higher or more virtuous for me. If you think that there is any value to trying to convince me to change my religion, then that's a problem.
If you don't think think that my decision to reject Jesus and continue to be a Jew is virtuous then you want to impose your version of virtue on me and deny me the right to decide what I think is virtuous.
I hope you can see why this would be unwelcome.
I see no reason why you would not be permitted to practice your religion under a Catholic monarchy. Jews have always co-existed in Catholic societies. Sometimes they were mistreated by the masses, sometimes they were mistreated by the Crown. Sometimes Jews were expelled from a place because it was believed that they were encouraging some form or another of moral degeneracy or heresy. Whether they actually were or not, we'll probably never be able to accurately assess.
The fact is, Jews have been mistreated no matter what type of regime they have lived under.
I'd be so bold as to suggest that they have fared best under Catholic regimes.
Last edited by EscAlaMike; 07-11-2022 at 02:57 PM..
Your hypothetical Catholic Monarchy implies that!!! Saving souls against their will is NOT the Church's business which is why your monarchy nonsense is anathema!
"[The scholastic movement of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century]...were replies to heresies which threatened to disrupt the... unity of Christendom and the Church. They were replies to the Albigensian and the Calvinist heresies and to the Jansenist aberrations, the controversy in each case centering round the freedom of the human will...
Modern historians, writing with a more or less conscious, or even virulent, anti-Catholic bias and intention, have completely reversed this phenomenon and affirmed the exact opposite of the truth, by interpreting the various revolts in the history of French Christianity as so many steps towards 'emancipation', an aim which was, according to them, ultimately achieved with the triumph of the Great Revolution, after several minor ones had proved abortive.
This modern opinion, commonly held because it has been spread by historians, omitted to bear in mind the theological essence of the Albigensian, Calvinist, and Jansenist movements... They all challenged the authority of the Church, and at the same time, the doctrine of the freedom of the will; the relation between the two trends is obvious. The Crown and the Church recognised that they were a peril to moral responsibility, this indispensable basis of every legal and social order. To be free means to be responsible, and any doubt cast on this free, responsible and voluntary action is a danger to Church and State alike...
The Revolution, which made Liberty the first of its catchwords, thus confessed its spiritual ancestry in all the negations of freedom."
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