John Rao, whose NYC lectures on Church history I mentioned a while back, has a new website that includes his writings he thinks worth making public. They touch on some of the same issues I write about, the bizarre inversions of pluralism for example, but in a more outraged, partisan, stylish, distinctly Catholic, and (some would object) anti-American manner. (Here’s a comment I made on a characteristic article.)
His writings also have the benefit of a lot more historical knowledge than anything you’ll see here. I only hope he writes some more long pieces, for example a multivolume Church history based on his multiyear series of lectures.
[UPDATE: Especially see his long essay on Americanism, which has a great discussion of the problems of American nationality.]
Pluralism vs particularism for communities and nations
In a Christmas meditation up tonight at Vdare.com John Zmirak gets right to the heart of something I’ve long wanted to see: the working-out of the basis on which Christianity can explicitly approve reasonable, humane steps taken by traditional communities and nations toward the preservation of their racial and ethno-cultural identities—something I see as fully compatible with Christianity. As things now stand, many laypersons, clergy, and politicians have the vague notion that Christian self-abnegation frowns on racial/ethnocultural self-preservation by communities and nations. That’s wrong. It doesn’t. I for one really appreciate this exploration of this issue by John Zmirak. I hope it opens the door to more discussion of exactly this topic among Christian opinion-molders.
________________________
Long live free Flanders!
Good Fences
From Zmirak:
“Is there something in particular about the races descending from Europe which inclines them to special evil? Are they more prone to genocide? Tell that to the Tutsis and Cambodians. If it is payback for colonialism, then why inflict it on the Irish?
Or is the explanation more sinister? Do Western elites impose different standards on Christians and Europeans, because they quietly assume we are superior? As if we were above such tribal fetishes adored by “lesser breeds without the law.†‘
Of course they assume they are superior, and not so “quietly.” They are so superior they deem to condescend to other cultures, religions, ethnicities, and nations, and “include” them in their pluralistic mush. I’m sure these designated “others” feel honored that they are included in a world designed and offered by triumphal western elites.
From what I can observe, these designated “others” are either bemused, repulsed, or they play the pluralists for all they’re worth and hustle them into whatever advantage they can extract. And all the while, the pluralists think the “others” actually take them seriously. Then, the local subway blows up.
The leftist march through the American Catholic Church
There’s an important piece up today at Vdare.com by a Catholic writer named Vittorio Roma. It lays out, in part, the case against the recent decision by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to get very aggressive in its support for open borders, clearly a nation-destroying policy and a mistake of potentially epoch-making proportions on the part of the Catholic hierarchy in this country. I’m hoping a widespread discussion on this issue will be ignited and show that hierarchy the grave and absolutely unacceptable error in its thinking. What it’s doing it highly immoral. Here’s an excerpt from the Roma piece (I personally find this an extremely important issue for today, as we’re talking about the survival of the traditional nations as we know them):
“[…T]he American Bishops, or any Bishop for that matter, cannot make the faithful do something that is unjust—in this case open the U.S. borders to all. If such a position were translated into American public policy the result would be injurious to the welfare of this country. Hence the faithful would not be obliged to obey. Further, the fallacy of Open Borders ideology is simply a logical deduction from Catholic principles. The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses the right to defend oneself and one’s nation, even by inference in relation to the National Question, in item #1910:
“ ‘Each human community possesses a common good which permits it to be recognized as such; it is in the political community [emphasis in original text] that its most complete realization is found. It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies.’
“By ignoring this tenet of the Church, the [U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] is raising a serious problem for good Catholics who do not subscribe to Open Borders ideology, and who are trying to do God’s will. The bottom line for good Catholics—laity, religious and ordained included—is that they are not obligated to subscribe to the American Bishops’ position on Open Borders and illegal alien amnesty because it is so clearly against the common good of the United States. Note that unlike the USCCB, the courageous Catholic columnist Phyllis Schlafly correctly identified the current “guest worker/amnesty” drive in Congress as immoral.”
________________________
Long live free Flanders!