MSW in Colorado | National Catholic Reporter

MSW in Colorado | National Catholic Reporter  MGB: A few thoughts. First, before the bishops speak for us politically, perhaps it would be good if they asked the people in the pews first - something the most blatantly ignored to do. Indeed, the one time they took our pulse on contraception, they did not like the result and ignored it - and not for any reason of natural law but to preserve their position on infallibility.


Both positive and negative liberty are best served by a liberated morality. We are not moral because God is trifling over sin, but because the moral life is a greater good in this world. Any teaching which departs from that departs both from natural law and the revealed truth that Jesus is gentle and humble of heart - his yoke is easy and his burden, light. The bishops in such a schema can be useful guides, but their rule is not absolute. It can not be at war with reason or claim a particular talent for it that appears to be absent in their drive for internal consistency. Indeed, the extent to which it is peppered with sexism makes it suspect in teaching on sex.

Annoint some female bishops and that witness may change some of our minds. Until then, their product is questionable.

As to life issues and the election, the economic tool of sensitivity analysis is useful here. If there is no realistic bill that deals with ending abortion in a way that serious people agree is constitutional, then there is no issue at all and someone is using private passions to pull one over on pro-life voters. Mature Catholics have stopped listening to such noise. If economic policies are better for preventing abortion than any change in the criminal law, then the economic apporach is what must be pursued by Catholic voters.

As to economic libertarianism, like social libertarianism it comes in two varieties. Indeed, left libertarian or libertarian socialism predates the modern Austrian variety. In this ideology, which shares much with Distributism and Rerum Novarum, such outside entities as the Church can be used to replace the government in providing services. There is a caveat, however - for the Catholic Church to do this more than they already are, they need to assuage the fears of secularists, protestants and even liberal Catholics and remove all vestiges of feudalism from the management of Catholic social entities - which in the early Church were run by Decaon(nesse)s and not the hierarchy. We need to return to that model - as modified with modern non-profie governance structures. There were very real reasons to distruct the early modern Church - often because it resorted to violence to get its way. Now its bullying is more gentle, but it is still bullying and this must stop.