Tag Archive for: morals

A New Sign of Our Times


Robert Royal: The rise of populist Giorgia Meloni in Italian politics reflects a Europe-wide reaction against open borders and attacks on traditional culture, including the family. 

If exit polls hold, yesterday Italy elected its first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. The usual liberal voices will not be celebrating. Normally, Italian elections are of little interest. Since 1945, there have been seventy Italian governments – almost one a year, which might suggest instability. But Italians often say that the system is too stable. General elections just reshuffle members of the political class, which rarely change very much. Except maybe this time. A populist Italian prime minister (“extreme right,” “neo-fascist” in the mainstream media, of course) will have significant repercussions for Europe and America, and even the Catholic Church.

A prominent Italian theologian, now living in the United States has argued recently that Meloni’s election may “hurt Francis”: “The campaign has been vulgar and trashy, and all of the substantial issues – from the war in Ukraine to climate change – have been ignored.”

This account of “all the substantial issues,” like much political analysis these days, leaves out a lot. Namely, questions that daily concern most Italians – like crime, out-of-control inflation, and illegal immigration – in a country struggling economically and bewildered, as many Western nations are, by radical social changes, making their country unrecognizable to many citizens.

And Ukraine – about which Francis himself has been an uncertain trumpet – has in fact received considerable attention during the campaign. Italians, like other Europeans, don’t like Putin’s aggression, but are also deeply worried about crushing energy costs – multiple times their recent levels, even now, before winter.

The real problem with Meloni’s election for progressive Catholics appears to be that, “A new government in Italy could very easily strengthen opposition to Francis and severely limit the social and political reception of his pontificate’s core message.”

What is that “core message”?

For starters, openness to massive immigration. Even before “Who am I to judge?” Francis chose to make his first trip as pope to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than Cuba is to Florida.

Thousands of illegal immigrants enter Italy there, after perilous crossings of the Mediterranean – or die trying. Italy is not an ideal destination, especially given the large differences in culture and religion (mostly Islam) of the new arrivals. Large majorities of Italians – and Europeans generally – feel inundated by what are essentially open borders.

The pope occasionally mentions that countries, of course, need to consider how many immigrants they can accommodate. But his “core message” is that Europe should be taking in far more.

There’s a real debate to be had about this; and it may now actually occur, if a right-oriented government has indeed come to power in Italy.

Secular Europe still accepts the Christian notion of “welcoming the stranger,” a moral principle that carries no little weight. But there’s a difference in both principle and practice when strangers arrive in the millions and place heavy burdens on peoples and cultures – which have their own problems and claims to consideration.

The UK left the European Union in part over immigration. Hungary and Poland have adopted policies (as perhaps Italy will now as well) aimed at preserving national identity, which European elites dub xenophobia and Islamophobia. Even France seems headed in that direction. Some churchmen (Francis among them, it appears) regard calls to limit immigration as mere greed, selfishness, and callousness.

It’s not that simple, however, as we know in America, when our poorest citizens and illegal immigrants compete for jobs and resources.

Europe has just witnessed another stunning political development: liberal Sweden has elected a populist/conservative government, “a new far-right surge” according to The Washington Post, but in reality ordinary Swedes reacting to soaring crime, hundreds of Islamist bombings, and the highest incidence of rape in Europe

But European populism isn’t only about immigration. It also involves the “culture war,” something Francis has studiously tried to tamp down.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, recently warned that the European Union has “the tools” to deal with Italy if “things go in a difficult direction.” Even heads of Italy’s liberal parties felt obliged to remind the EU “not to enter into Italian affairs,” as one put it.

Von der Leyen mentioned how those “tools” (mostly withholding EU funds) were being used  against Hungary and Poland, not solely because of their immigration policies (Poland has generously absorbed tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, almost all Christians, for example), but because of their support for traditional families, advocacy for more children and national identity, and – perhaps the sorest points for the EU – efforts to limit abortion and LGBT+ propaganda directed at young children, all tagged as tending towards “fascism.”

Meloni, however, is a poor candidate for the label. A Tolkien enthusiast who sees her work as protecting the Shire – i.e., Italy – she’s said, “I consider power very dangerous. . .an enemy and not a friend.”

She’s been cagey about abortion – willing to tolerate existing Italian law, but wanting to reduce abortion – this in a country where many medical professionals already refuse to be involved in abortion on conscience grounds. Her coalition will clearly favor more traditional social policies, something that triggers the international elites who have come to consider their own extreme positions on abortion, gays, and trans people as moral imperatives.

Pope Francis has spoken about abortion as like “hiring a hitman” and gender theory as a kind of Western cultural imperialism. At the same time, he has been quite indulgent towards pro-abortion politicians, and homosexual and trans groups. He has no stomach for the kind of culture skirmishes needed to make a difference.

As a non-Italian, it would be hard for him to criticize a political coalition that enjoys broad public support. The Italian bishops themselves will now be in a difficult spot between papal preferences and popular sentiment. It will be interesting to see if they can all get past the slurs about “fascism” and help Europe come to grips with a populism that is not without its perils, but has its reasons – a challenging new sign of our times.

You may also enjoy:

Brad Miner’s Meddling and Puritanical Jacobins

Alessandra Bocchi’s Italy Returns to Masses

AUTHOR

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

Don’t Endow The State With Moral Authority

It is one thing to say that you are pro-life or pro-choice. It is another to say that the state should legalize or illegalize abortion.

It is one thing to suggest that we should help the poor financially. It is another to suggest the state does it for us.

It is one thing not to discriminate against people on stupid grounds. It is another to suggest that the state morally polices everyone and punishes those it deems discriminatory.

It is one thing to want educational access for everyone. It is another to get the state to jump into education.

People are welcome to have their stances and opinions. They are welcome to act according to their opinions. They can help the poor financially or pay their employees a higher wage if this is what they want. However, they shouldn’t force others to do the same.

The moment you try to enforce your morality via the hand of the state, you endow the state with moral authority.

You put the state on a pedestal. And this is almost irreversible. Once the state occupies the moral high ground, it never relinquishes it. This is the beginning of a statist civilization. Most countries on Earth today are deeply statist. They look to the state for the matters of right and wrong.

I have my inclinations and stances, but I would never want the state to enforce my stances. Let’s say, for example, I incline towards the pro-life stance, but I won’t want the state to actively seek out women who aborted their babies and imprison them, for this would grant them moral authority. Moral authority is like an addictive drug. Once a man gets it, it fills him with so much pride that he becomes blind to his shortcomings. It rots him to the core. Moral highness is a shortcut to soul sickness.

If we want to bring people to reason and conscience, we must do so via reason and conscience, not via force. We must be more reasonable, talk more reasonably, and awaken the voice of conscience in our fellow beings.

Only a tyrant hopes to bring people in line by force. And we mustn’t feed the tyrant within us by getting the state to enforce our opinions/ideas or we would manifest a tyrant outside us.

Don’t endow the state with moral authority.

©Anand Ujjwal. All rights reserved.

This is what happens when you remove God from the public square

I received an email from Sarasota, Florida resident Tad MacKie with a link to an Associated Press article titled, “Teen charged with encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself.” The article is about the suicide death of a teenager. The AP reports:

At first glance, the text messages appear to show a disturbing case of cyberbullying: one teen urging another to kill himself.

But the texts were not sent by a school bully. They were from a 17-year-old girl to her boyfriend, whom she called the love of her life.

“You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get why you aren’t,” Michelle Carter allegedly wrote to Conrad Roy III the day he parked his truck outside a Fairhaven Kmart and killed himself through carbon monoxide poisoning.

Michelle Carter

Michelle Carter and boyfriend Conrad Roy.

MacKie reflected on this article and wrote:

THIS is what happens when “there is no God”…

One lost, misguided, emotionally and intellectually retarded, product of pop culture, psycho-babble and political correctness, texting back and forth to another lost, misguided, emotionally and intellectually retarded, product of pop culture, psycho-babble and political correctness… BOTH totally self absorbed and totally screwed-up, counting on life’s circumstances and other people to create some meaning in their lives.

The whole thing is tragic but totally predictable.

The plain, hard, truth being that, without God, and I’m talking about Jesus, here, life is tragically meaningless. Without being able to KNOW truth… (“I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life”… Jesus said that.)… Without being emotionally and intellectually confident of the Truth, when life becomes “unbearable” there is NOTHING to sustain us through it.

My own experiences have shown me, beyond ANY shadow of doubt, when life is a confused, mind-numbing, whirlwind of angry reaction to circumstance and/or the extremely hurtful actions of others, the “still, small voice” comes through all the noise and confusion, bringing the realization that, as my dear Mother used to say, “This, too, shall pass.”

With no God and no eternal life, not only is there no “still, small voice” to carry us through, there’s no reason to go through it.

The above article painfully illustrates the results.

Also, please note that there is NO mention of parents of either one… Just an aunt and a grandparent. While it may be a mere coincidence or oversight, it seems to be, more and more, the “norm”.

What about YOU…? Take away all that you have and all your ability to do what you do… Job, home, spouse, kids, money, health, mobility, TV, internet, peer approval, professional respect, all the while your “friends” telling you that you MUST have done something wrong because, as we all know, “what goes around, comes around”… What do YOU have left? What would be YOUR reason to continue to live?

May I suggest, if you’re coming up empty-handed, you might want to look into this whole Jesus “thing” a bit more seriously because the “Shrink” will just hook you on some “anti-depressant” drugs that, while temporarily masking the reality will, ultimately, kill you anyway.

MacKie is right, this whole thing is tragic but totally predictable, when you take God out of the public square.

Oklahoma Supreme Court: The Ten Commandments Suck!

635713507058167020-AP-Oklahoma-Capitol-Ten-CommandmentsLook, this ain’t hard. Once a person abandons the solid moral foundation of the Ten Commandments, that person will have complete and continual instability in his life.

Extrapolating from there to a social context indicates that this principal of moral instability follows a society which abandons the solid foundation of the 10 Commandments in exchange for the illusion of a foundation built on the shifting sand of cultural relativism.

On today’s show we illustrate this critical element of humanity by using the 10 Commandment controversy in Oklahoma and how it relates to each American.

Important stuff, tune in.

Too much Jesus? Or not enough Jesus?

When I was a boy growing up in Lancaster Country, PA, I had several crucial experiences with Christian pastors that contributed to my loss of faith. Mind you I don’t blame anyone but myself for becoming an atheist. But back then it seemed as though there was really no longer anything to hold onto. The truth is, it was there all the time. I just didn’t see it.

The first such experience was when a pastor that my family looked up to said unequivocally that my two sisters and I would never grow up to adulthood because Jesus was coming back before that. He pointed to Bible prophecies to support that. My older sister was the first to outlive this prediction, followed by the other two of us.

The second such experience was a series of visits to a church in Maryland whose pastor’s sermons were broadcast from a Pennsylvania radio station. The pastor sounded so humble, so kind and so dedicated to the Lord.

But there was a rumor that some of the congregation were or had been KKK members.

Then one Sunday the pastor preached a sermon on negroes. He said that the black race was the “sons of Ham,” a swarthy Hebrew tribe whose patriarch had sinned and which was therefore condemned to serve others forever.

I knew that African blacks were not related biologically to the Hebrews, so this raised questions.

Near the end of his sermon, Pastor Don spoke of intermarriage between whites and blacks and at one point, he shouted “any black man who introduces black blood into a white woman ought to be hung!”

Normally, whenever Pastor Don raised his voice and made a point, the stalwarts in the congregation would reflexively say “amen.”

But this was the early 60s and there was a general sentiment in favor of civil rights. A subtle change had come over the congregation. Not one of the stalwarts said “amen.”

Already inclined to reject religion, instead of focusing on this sign of a positive trend in the church, I indignantly swore to myself never to darken a church door again. My sin lay precisely in this failure to focus on the Lord’s hand in changing hearts in the congregation and my choice to reject Christ based on the pastor’s thoughtless words.

I went wild for 2 decades, carousing and womanizing, and speaking against religion. And then I felt empty and began to seek God again. I scoured the globe, including Taiwan, where I spent 3 years looking for truth among the Buddhists. A few times I thought I had had a spiritual breakthrough, but nothing stuck.

A decade later, through a series of circumstances, God came for me and I was led back to Jesus in an emotional epiphany. I found my faith, but I didn’t find the church of Jesus. It seemed to have disappeared – or gone underground. I found the same shallowness and hypocrisy that had contributed to my falling away decades earlier. But this time, having gone through the school of hard knocks, I knew that the actors involved were of Satan and swore never to be misled again.

Yesterday the world was shocked at the senseless murder of 9 black worshippers at a church in South Carolina.

I couldn’t help thinking of Pastor Don in Maryland and his racist words. But having had half a century to think over that faith shattering sermon, I have come to realize that sermons like the above-described by Pastor Don are not in any way representative of Christianity. In fact, they are tools of Satan who misguide the unbeliever into thinking, as I once had, that Christianity itself is racist and evil. Though it was a sin on my part to think that way, if we look at things from only a superficial viewpoint, it was an understandable conclusion, especially for a naïve teen.

It is quite likely that a few whites-only churches are still racist but how can that discredit Jesus when He preached love and urged Christians – even the gentiles, representing all races – to love one another? It simply can’t.

Like my former self, the U.S. government and its puppets throughout the West, including journalists – who ought to be called propagandists – the public schools and the institutions of higher “learning,” have focused only on the dark side of “Christianity,” or rather on a religion that is nothing but a perversion of that faith. They forget that it was a Christian leader, William Wilberforce, who spearheaded the movement to end slavery in England, and that the civil rights movement in the US sprang up in northern churches. The slaves who fought for emancipation and the blacks who led the civil rights movement in Selma sang Christian hymns even as they were beaten and persecuted, meek and Christ-like, by the police. Meanwhile, there is only one religion in the world today that lends “moral” authority to slavery and that is Muslims, whose ancestors were among the first slave traders in Africa, and whose religion is being subtly thrust upon us by the Washington anti-Christs.

These same anti-Christs also spread the lie that Hitler was a Christian. Yet the fact is, there were German pastors in the 19th century who had perverted the gospel to promote folkish nationalism, declaring, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, that Jesus was actually the illegitimate son of a Germanic mercenary. It was not Christianity that gave us Adolph Hitler but a cynically perverted “gospel” that persuaded mindless Germans to accept the lie that Jesus had come to avenge himself of the Jews.

Likewise, “Christians” are blamed for supporting G.W. Bush’s war in Iraq. But in fact it was atheists who devised the diabolical ideology of Neoconservatism and it was foolish “Christians” who followed these wolves in sheep’s clothing.

While Irving Kristol wrote the book on Neoconservatism and is generally regarded as the “godfather” of the ideology, Leo Strauss has been identified as an early precursor, and today’s Neocons pursue his ideas.

Alternet writes, in an article titled “Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception“:

Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere.

At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were “a pious fraud.” 

Obviously, while Neocons want Christians to support them in their policies, notably their wars, they despise us, and we owe it to ourselves and our God to study their history and their writings so as to avoid being deceived by them. How is it possible that genuine Christians who take Jesus’ words to heart, could follow these utter Satanists, who denied the existence of morality itself? Yet in the early 2000s I attended services at megachurches in Lancaster County that wholeheartedly supported G.W. Bush in his wars, mostly because Bush had insisted that he was a born-again Christian. Some pastors even mentioned reports that the US Marines who first arrived in Baghdad had found themselves impermeable to bullets, protected by God. Yet the upshot of this war was that indigenous Assyrian Christians who had survived for millennia among the Iraqi Muslims, found themselves persecuted and banished from their homeland within days of our “victory.” It was Neocon deception at its best. To my shame, I was one of those who were initially deceived by these pastors.

Further, Alternet writes:

“According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that “those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior.”
This dichotomy requires “perpetual deception” between the rulers and the ruled.”

How is this different from Nazism? How does it square with what Christ taught? It has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and is in fact a cynical perversion of the faith.

Thus, although it would seem on the surface that Christianity goes hand in hand with unjustified wars, just as it seemed on the surface that Christianity supported racism and slavery, the fact is, none of these phenomena emerging in the Christian church has a thing to do with Christ’s teachings. Indeed, these perversions prove that Jesus was right when He said in Matthew 24:

9 “Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.

10 “At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another.

11 Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many..

You know, Folks, we really ought to thank God in a way for all the adversity, even the perversion of the Gospel by men like the Neocons, because for genuine believers, these perversions – even though they have led to horrible wars and other consequences – are the most solid evidence we have of the power of God and the supernatural prophetic power of Jesus Christ.

True Christians understand that the world’s crises and tragedies, far from being the product of too much Jesus, are in fact caused by too little Jesus.

Thank God, following the murders, the members of the black church gave witness of what it is to be a true follower of Christ. According to the Washington Post,

“Larry Grooms, a state senator, wrote on Facebook:

‘My heart breaks for the loss of Sen. Pinckney, the other victims and for their families. Now is the time for prayer. Let us all unite our hearts in prayer and ask God for His Grace, Love and Mercy’.”