[Withdrawn]

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.

Stop. You're just embarrassing yourself. The spiritual sword can only be the Catholic Church, and I think that you know that, but you pretend otherwise.

That sword at the founding of the U.S. would have been Protestant and probably Masonic. Maybe all would have gotten Masonic aprons not swords? Catholics were not exactly welcome at times during U.S. history.

It isn't.

The heresy of Americanism is now fully matured...

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.

https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13teste.htm

I don't pretend. I recognize reality on the ground cannot be waived away for LARPing despite my own beliefs, metaphysics and preferences. Speaking of swords and LARPing.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

Live Action Role Playing. Imagine the Society for Creative Anachronism, but without the real fun and self-education because it's much more grandiose and self-important. At least way back in the day with SCA, there were folks who relished understanding and inhabiting the the most oppressed roles and being on the Wrong Side, as it were; in LARPing Land, most folks appear to imagine they are part of the wise and prudent elites and always part of the Right Side.

LARPing is not about living ritual uses (which include the EF and the Russian Orthodox and Anglican liturgical ritual uses). It's actually a modern phenomenon, trying in the mind to resurrect a dead way of living in a grandiosely insistent way, precisely because it's no longer traditional as it has not been unconsciously received as a way of living.

But it served to keep the topic in quarantine. not contaminating other threads.

I invite you, since I started this thread to quarantine the other threads, to delete it immediately.

Chris:

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?

Protestants wield the temporal sword; even pagans can. Christ acknowledges this in the Passion recounted in Saint John, and the Apostle does as well.

But, the Protestant religious authorities cannot properly wield the spiritual sword. Only the church does, and by the church, I mean it in the way that we normally do: the church of Jesus Christ founded upon the rock of the Apostle Peter and in full communion with Francis, his successor as Vicar of Christ. So, for example, while a Protestant government would be obliged to rule according to natural law, because all are, only the church can define right from wrong.

For example, a government (of any kind) that rules according to natural law may decide that leaving prostitution unregulated or indeed regulated (confined to brothels and so on) is more prudent than banning it outright while conforming to the recognized standard of what is good and what is evil; however, this is not a determination that legalized prostitution is in fact a morally good or neutral thing, nor is it inconsistent with banning other things recognized as evil. It's an acknowledgement that the civil power has to act prudently. Were the civil authorities to claim that in fact prostitution is good or at least neutral, the church would have to step in to correct this false assertion, and the civil power would be bound to obey; remember, the church has authority over all of the baptized, so it wouldn't matter if the civil authority is Protestant, and it's a question of natural law, so it wouldn't matter if they're atheists, but the church would not order the civil powers to ban prostitution again if it had been legalized, though counseling so wouldn't be off the table. Practically, would it make a difference? No, perhaps not, but pretending that the church can't wield the sword is part of the problem.

If this seems confusing, well, sure. In reality it's sometimes messy, and not because men of state or rulers are bad actors. The boundaries are sometimes a bit like the center of a Venn diagram.

Anyway, Newman in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk agrees on the discernment of good and evil; for subordination, see Unam Sanctam; for authority, see Mt. 28:18, 1 Tm. 3:15, and Mt. 28:18-20; Mk. 12:17; Jn. 19:11.

So, no, the spiritual sword wouldn't have been Masonic or Protestant, because they only wield one sword that must be subordinated to the other. This is the problem: the US is explicitly founded on not subordinating the temporal to the spiritual. OK then. We've chosen a completely incorrect idea of the common good instead of that which nature informs us and that which is fully revealed in revelation, and that's OK, because Catholics are welcome? Alright, but they're not, and they never have been. 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.

If Protestants want to pretend that they wield both swords like in sixteenth-century Geneva, then fine, but I'm not going to pretend like they do so legitimately or that the alternative of American liberalism is much better.

Goodness gracious. And then there are priests (Jesuits, even, shocker) who make such outrageous, backwards suggestions for the Catholic Church.

https://religionnews.com/2021/04/13/the-future-of-liturgical-reform-in-the-catholic-church/

It is time to return to bishops the authority over the Tridentine liturgy in their dioceses. The church needs to be clear that it wants the unreformed liturgy to disappear and will only allow it out of pastoral kindness to older people who do not understand the need for change.
Children and young people should not be allowed to attend such Masses.

Can a deacon or layperson anoint the sick or hear confessions? In an age of declining numbers of priests, such questions must be faced.

More important than the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is the transformation of the community into the body of Christ so we can live out the covenant we have through Christ.

The comment section is very interesting, as it also is where I originally found the content, here: https://wdtprs.com/2021/04/a-jesuits-brilliant-notions-about-needed-liturgical-reform-what-could-go-wrong