Would Dorothy Day be considered a “Christarchist”? That’s not a loaded question… just curious.

Thank you for reminding us that we have a lot to do.  Quite a lot.  Thankfully Jesus also left us with the Holy Spirit who will inspire us in the myriad of ways we can make the world both near and far a better place.  This often calls for a great deal of participation in the world and, yes, sometimes supporting the state in which we live.

@Kelley: Would Dorothy Day be considered a “Christarchist”?

Not to my knowledge. AFAIK Dorothy Day never said the state had no authority, any more than a mendicant friar under the Rule of St Francis, or a cloistered nun under the Rule of St Benedict, renounces the authority of the state. They subject themselves to additional authority without denying the legitimate authority of the secular government.

Dorothy Day might disagree with you or me about what was an unjust law (hence no law at all) but so far as I know she respected the power of the state. She practiced and counseled civil disobedience, but civil disobedience, properly so called, includes submission to the legitimate authority of the State to arrest and imprison, in order to awaken its conscience, and the consciences of one’s fellow citizens.

Since I live in Mexico and not the United States, I tend to see politics differently. Clearly, Mark, you are giving a clear presentation of the Catholic call for us to be politically responsible. Especially the laity need to know that salvation depends on being a responsible member of society. Something that disturbs me when talking to friends in the United States is the idea that one political party or another better reflects the teaching of the Church. Clearly, there are some elements in all political parties that promote human dignity, and other elements that work against it. I think a better approach is to identify what are the issues that fall into the area of grave matter: those areas where, even if one doesn’t slip into mortal sin, one is dangerously close. For example, everything that affects the dignity of human life, according to the Sermon on the Mount, is grave matter, and the Church recognizes this. In some areas, like war and imprisonment, human evils that we have not yet found a way to avoid, the Church gives us guidelines to reduce, if possible, the damage of these activities. But nonetheless, they are always grave matter. War is always grave matter; imprisonment is always grave matter; abortion is always grave matter. That there is not always mortal sin involved does not mean that we should get comfortable with these and other grave issues. Our desire is that these issues be mitigated and even, one day, abolished. Working with political parties—and there is no other way to be involved in politics—means searching out the areas of grave matter and working to find alternatives. It is not a question of prohibiting something: wouldn’t that be nice if a moral obligation could be met so easily? The issue is to promote a culture where these things are no longer issues, because the society has healed the problem at its roots. Easy to say, but so far civilization has not managed it. Still in some areas we have advanced in our modern world, and there are those who are studying the issues whose work, as responsible citizens of the twenty-first century, we really ought to know.

I really like that you’ve got the catechism quotes.

For me as a former libertarian lines 1924 and 1925 are the keys. Is there a common good AND is some subset of the entire group responsible for watching out for it? If I answer yes, then I basically have to give up libertarianism. If no, well . . . that doesn’t seem to be an option while remaining Catholic which I desire more than being a libertarian.

For those who are Hannity/Limbaugh Republicans though, I would almost recommend a tour through libertarianism. It simply makes you follow the 18th and 19th century liberalism of Montesquieu, Locke, Mill, Bastiat, etc to their logical limit. (Rothbard is the best btw.) I say almost because I fear for the soul who answers that he loves libertarianism more than being Catholic.

Mark, this’ll sounds weird and it’s only based on my own personal experience, but I don’t know how you managed to have a Catholic understanding of politics without going through Libertarianism. God bless you for it!

I suspect that “1919 Every human community needs an authority in order to endure and develop” has to be interpreted in light of “1922 The diversity of political regimes is legitimate, provided they contribute to the good of the community” since there have been many thousands of human communities which endured and developed without anything an American might see and recognize as an authority.  While the reader is obviously too extreme—Caesar, modern nation-states, and other governments are legitimate authorities—it should be plain that, if Nero counts as a legitimate form of authority, a libertarian regime (i.e. a polycentric legal system something like Christian medieval Iceland) would also be legitimate, and much preferable to some other possible regimes.

Noah,
Good point. And I think we could go one step further perhaps.

I agree that the word authority has a great deal of wiggle room. I think the thing that libertarians are good at recognizing and something Mark alluded to in his postings today on Latin law vs Anglo American law. Most people do the right thing most of the time, not because of some law without which they would rape, pillage and burn, but because of the norms and rules that govern that society. The question is do we need something more than just the norms of society to enforce the norms of society? And what do we do about people who get out of line? And what happens when the possibilities within the norms take a turn for the worse - legalized abortion on demand?

It’s funny how libertarians are really good at recognizing that men will do terrible things when they are given political power but they don’t seem to recognize that even as individuals who live in a voluntary society, they can also do terrible things to themselves. It is not ok that we have legalized abortion even if “we” did it to ourselves.

I am the reader who wrote.  Although I never mentioned the issue of authority, it was assumed that I am hostile to any exercise of legitimate God-given authority.  That is certainly not the case.  However, the proper understanding of authority is critical to determining the Church’s teaching regarding civil authorities as well as clearly understanding the scriptural references to the same.  Nothing I wrote is contrary to Scripture or the Catechism, it merely flies in the face on the common paradigm most in the U.S. suffer from.  That paradigm is that anyone or any government that claims to have authority is due obedience and has authority instituted by God.  If they were voted into office (by approximately 50% of those who actually voted), then everyone must obey.

Let us examine the institutions which God actually granted His authority.  First, God created man; that is, He created individuals and gave them free will.  Individuals have authority from God to which they exercise over themselves.  Next, he created the family and granted authority to husbands/fathers to cultivate and guard the garden (provide for and protect the family).  From 1 Samuel, God instituted kings, and provided the warning of how they would behave.  That was his wrath for the Israelites rejection of Him.  They were then enslaved by the kings, just as they were in Egypt, all the way through the line of David.  That is, until Christ the King, freed us from those chains.  Christ is the reigning King over heaven and earth, and although his “kingdom is not of this world”, the goal of the Church is to fulfill the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.  Finally, Christ instituted the priesthood and his Church, to which He gave His authority to “bind” and “loose”.  The Church and her priests have authority over the faithful in spiritual matters.
I’m hoping we can all agree on these being the only institutions that God actually granted authority.  Now, one could argue that civil governments have authority from God only by recognizing the authority of individuals.  Individuals can delegate their authority to someone in an agreement to be governed in certain matters.  It is up to individuals to provide their consent to be governed in order for the government to exercise legitimate authority.

Additionally, as was pointed out from the Catechism 1921, authority is only exercised legitimately when it is works for the common good through morally licit means.  Since most civil governments (one exception is Vatican City) do not actually work toward the common good (rather politicians work toward increasing their coffers at the expense of others) and do not use morally licit means (unjust wars, beatings, kidnappings, theft, threats, etc), their “authority” derived from the individuals governed is exercised illegitimately.  Incidentally, Nero was not a legitimate authority for exactly those reasons.  To say otherwise is espousing a “might makes right” attitude.  To say his authority is legitimate AND that it comes from God is even worse… “might makes Divine right”.

Taxes are due, revenue is due, respect is due, and honor is due to those who have legitimate authority.  But that is not to say that anyone claiming legitimate authority actually has God’s endorsement.  Paul’s letter to the Romans, in fact, begs the question of “who is due those things?”  It is certainly not Caesar.  That is falling prey to the most common misconception regarding Jesus’ statement of “render unto Caesar.”  The Jews understood that everything belongs to God (as we Catholics should also understand).  If everything belongs to God, and we render unto God what is God’s, what is left to render unto Caesar?  Exactly nothing.

In closing, the easiest way to recognize if a government is legitimate or not is to ask a simple question: Would the practices of the government be moral if an individual were doing the same thing?

Is it moral to take money from another person, without their consent, under the threat of death… even if the goal is to give the money to the needy?
Is it moral to kill another person, who never threatened or attack you, because you think their friends may attack you?
Is it moral to kidnap a person’s children because you think they are bad parents?
Is it moral to kidnap and imprison a person because he broke the Ten Commandments?
Is it moral to kidnap and imprison a person who hasn’t done anything wrong/evil but you think he has an increase probability of doing something wrong/evil?

Thank you all for your time.

@Noah: “(T)here have been many thousands of human communities which endured and developed without anything an American might see and recognize as an authority.”

Such as..?

@Tim: Mark 12:13-17 is a great place to start. Here’s the conversation, translated into modern English:

“Hey, Jesus. You know how the Romans invaded our country and took over and now they run the show? Is it cool to pay taxes to these oppressors of God’s chosen people?”

“Do you have any money on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s see it.”

“Here.”

“And whose face is stamped on it? Who regulates its value and protects business and commerce with his centurions?”

“Caesar.”

“Right. So you’re good enough to use Caesar’s money and accept his centurions’ protection of your business and commerce and abide by (and expect others to abide by) the value placed thereon… But too good to pay the taxes associated with using it? Pay the coin tax to Caesar; give God your love and your obedience.”

Yes, everything belongs to God. But what does that mean in practical terms? When you get your paycheck at the end of the month, do you sign it all over to God? Or do you, rather, give some of it to charitable causes and use most of it to pay rent and bills and buy groceries? You render unto your landlord and your grocer and your local utilities, just as you render unto Caesar when you have FICA and income tax withheld from the check in the first place.

Most of what a government does is legitimate; it gives us the security to conduct business and make a living. And we who accept the protection of the law, the right have our grievances addressed in court, and the protection of the police from criminals - we accept thereby the authority of the state. That doesn’t mean we need to comply with unjust laws or refrain from objecting to abuses of power by agents of the state. But such laws and abuses do not change the fact that the authority of the state is, fundamentally, valid.

Think of it this way: If you work in a water treatment plant, you have a valid arrangement with your employer: you perform the services he asks of you, and he pays you for it. His valid authority over you means that he owes you certain protections as his employee, as well as pay, benefits, vacation time, and so on. It also means that you need to do what he asks you to do on the job, and he has the right to take disciplinary action against you if you don’t. (In other words, if you sleep on the job, you’re likely to get fired.) If one day he asks you to pour poison into the outgoing “clean” water supply, however, you are within your rights to disobey. There is a higher authority that supercedes your boss’s authority without rendering it entirely invalid. He’s still your boss, and you have an obligation to obey him on the job, as long as his orders are just (not in violation of the laws of the state or the higher laws of God.)

The government’s authority can still be fundamentally valid, even if some of its laws and actions are not.

You might also have commented on patriotism, since Christarchy closely parallels the Jehovah Witness “restorationist” mania. Patriotism was described best by such Catholic greats as Hilaire Belloc and Chesterton. We should love our land, our neighbors, our leaders. If we don’t, there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Inventing a Christarchy is just avoiding responsibility. Remaking the world into a McWorld bereft of cultural and political divisions (the coming NWO) is an insult to humanity. “How can you love humanity and hate anything so human?”

@John Henry and others interested in the correct interpretation of the “Tribute episode.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/barr-j1.1.1.html

@John Henry and any others interested in the correct interpretation of the “Tribute episode”.

Look to Tim Gray, Scott Hahn, Tom Woods, Thomas Aquinas, and Summa Theologica.

Or google: Render unto Caesar misunderstood.

@John Henry
An employee/employer relationship is a consensual agreement between individuals.  One agrees to perform certain tasks and the other agrees to provide some form of compensation.  It is voluntary and thus an example of legitimate authority.
An employer would no longer possess legitimate authority over the employee if he forced the person to work, upon threat of pain or death, against his will (even if he also paid him for the forced labor).

I am a disciple of Jesus. I try, however haltingly, to adhere to his principles and follow his way. Not being Catholic nor Christian, I am not bound to accept Paul’s fawning peon to the almighty state, the very same state that brutally tortured and murdered my Savior. You probably know that Bible-scholar James Kallas argued that Paul did not write Romans 13 Verses 1-7, that it is an interpolation. One reason: the message is quite unlike Paul’s rather low regard for human authority, which he exhibited in Acts subsequent to his conversion. It would certainly make good sense for some Church scribe to insert those words into the text at a later date, after the Church had allied itself with the Roman empire and begun to share in the loot from Rome’s taxes.

Notice that Paul was a Roman citizen who never renounced that status after his conversion, and, as evidenced in Acts, was proud of it. On two occasions Paul cited his Roman citizenship to Roman officials, once to save his skin and on another occasion to elicit an apology from those who had jailed him. As a Roman citizen, Paul was likely exempt from the crushing Roman taxes levied on non-citizen Jews, which were brutalizing Jewish peasants, causing many of them, likely including some of Jesus’ disciples, to lose their precious land to loan sharks (money changers) who would lend them money to pay their taxes.

Mark Shea, you wrote this: “If we are not to participate in and obey the legitimate commands of the state then why did Jesus say ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s’?  Why did he and the apostles after him tell us to pay our taxes?”

Mark, where in the Gospels do you find Jesus telling us to pay our taxes? Certainly not, as everyone can plainly see, in his words that you quote here. And if you are saying that the words of Jesus you quoted mean pay your taxes, I believe you err egregiously. Those words of Jesus are more logically and rightfully interpreted as a call to his followers to resist Caesar’s tax.

Taxation is a palpable violation of Jesus’ Father’s command: “Thou shall not steal!” God’s command is unequivocal. It makes no exemption for tax collectors, who would all be imprisoned for extortion but for the immunity given to them by their extorting masters—the rulers of the almighty state. Furthermore, the important principle of righteous living that Jesus required of his followers known as the Golden Rule, cannot be practiced by tax collectors, who can not do only to others that which they would have others do to them. Furthermore, taxes depend on the initiation of force by the state without provocation against otherwise innocent people, contrary to many of Jesus’ admonitions in his Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus said, “Seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you,” those things include everything that states can provide. God provides freely everything we need if we stay close to him and seek to do his will, whereas the state use force to obtain the revenues to provide its benefits, and there are always strings attached.

To understand the meaning of Jesus’ statement, “Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but give God what is God’s,” it is obviously necessary to know what belongs to God and what to Caesar, or more precisely to know what property Jesus believed belonged to each respectively. Throughout his ministry, including during his several confrontations with Jewish religious officials—the “Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, lawyers, elders and teachers of the law”—Jesus consistently justified himself and his teaching by reference to sacred Jewish Scripture. So in this case we may be sure that Jesus relied on Scripture to determine who owned what. And Scripture declares in at least five places, as for example in Psalm 24, verse 1, “The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains,  The world, and those who dwell in it, ” which clearly leaves nothing whatsoever for poor old Caesar. Therefore, what Jesus said should be interpreted to mean, “Don’t pay that blaspheming usurper of my Father’s role as Lawmaker anything. Nada!” (See the passage in 1 Samuel 8 that your voluntaryist correspondent cited.)

The “spies” who had been sent by the enemies of Jesus to “trap” him into expressing his well-known opposition to taxes so they could hand him over to Pilate as a seditious tax rebel. But the stupid spies evidently did not know Scripture, so Jesus’ statement bamboozled them and foiled their attempt to fool Jesus. But when the spies reported back to the priests who sent them and who did know Scripture, the priests realized full well what Jesus meant by what he said. So they next sent their thugs to arrest Jesus. According to Luke (23), they then dragged him before Pilate and accused Jesus of sedition, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar…He stirs up the people, teaching (Teaching what? Tax resistance?) all over Judea, starting from Galilee even as far as this place.”

Mr. Shea, in Luke’s account of Jesus’ wilderness ordeal at the outset of his public ministry, Satan tempted Jesus: “And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish” Pointedly, Jesus did not challenge this assertion by the devil. Given the murderous historical record of the almighty state, who can doubt that state rulers obtain their authority from Satan, even though they be democratically elected.

Oh, and btw, I think democracy is mob rule; “Christian democracy” an oxymoron.

Peace