If the spiritual sword were to have dominated the temporal sword at the founding of the USA ... Catholic would not be here, as it would have been a Genevan sword, not a Roman one. LARPing is exactly what this is about.
These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church’s teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.
From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some “Americanism.” But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.
In theory. Many countries in the world are struggling with its islamic version, which is all too real; it also affects western societies, I vaguely remember that the temporal sword dominated by it cost several thousend lives in the US alone some twenty years ago.The spiritual sword can only be the Catholic Church, and I think that you know that, but you pretend otherwise
Matthew,
Protestants wield the temporal sword, if I understand you correctly, not because they impose theocratic institutions but because, being Protestants, they can't wield the sword they don't have?
this! ...and Rome fell in a day... Did we see our day on January 6?Almost everything about American Catholicism is a compromise or is due to other flaws in the American constitutional order, to the point where most prominent American Catholics do not believe in the binding character of natural law even when it counts the most, on abortion.
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