On Ecumenical Partisanship

A reader with the magical name of Robertjwizard asks:

“So I ask – what, outside of banning abortion (which many Catholics practice) does a Catholic stand for politically?”

Not to be impudent, but our kingdom is not of this world.

Politically, we want to save man from death and damnation.

The Church has existed under the Imperial government of Byzantium, under warlords in the Dark Ages and kings in the Middle Age, monarchies both constitutional and absolute, under more than one Holy Roman Emperor, under republics, democracies, sultanates, and under modern dictatorships.

We believe the free market can be corrupted and used for evil, and so to the capitalist we sound socialist. We believe the state can be corrupted and used for evil, and so to the socialist we sound capitalist.

We believe in the ‘just war’ theory. To the doves, we seem like warhawks, because we are not pacifists. We do not believe in pre-emptive surrender. To the warhawks, we seem like doves, because we do not believe in pre-emptive attacks, nor war as anything but a last resort.

We are reactionary in that we hold that the laws of morality do not change or vary any more than the laws of nature. We are radical revolutionaries in that we hold that the world is broken and corrupt to its roots and needs Herculean and immediate effort to lift mankind out of the mire.

Politically, Catholics stand for sanity, for balance, and for every man under every form of government. We are catholic, that is to say, universal.

We are the only party that stands for the truth rather than for an ideology. We are not a party at all, but a family, or, to be precise, the body of Christ incarnate on Earth, whose every member is of Him and in Him.

Let me put impudence aside and give a clearer and longer answer, quoting a man both wiser and better spoken than myself.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.