Perspective on Catholic Political Action

Four years ago there was some play in the blogosphere about creating a Catholic alternative. If you searched my blogs archives, you’d find some links back to the particular blogs that were promoting this at the time. It’s coming around again, through a few more prominent blogs. The problem is there just seems to be a lack of motivation in the proper fields. I’d be all over it in a heart beat, but I have no poli-sci experience, no knowledge of how to start a third party or how to influence the parties we have! I did a little bit of research four years ago and it looks like you need to have a core group in any state you wish to raise a candidate, and every state’s regs are different. So you’re talking about a significant presence in every state in the nation, or at least a significant presence in one state to kick things off, which is difficult to engender given the basic scattered nature of the blog population which are discussing these ideas.

On a tangential note related to the platform issues that are in discussion in various comment boxes, I think that the Constitution, namely in the Bill of Rights and Amendments, has a fundamental flaw. I believe that Protestant ideology* is too enmeshed in the foundations of the country. What I am referring to is the over-emphasis on the individual as a unit of society. An alternative paradigm is to consider the family unit as the basic unit of society and formulate the role of government around supporting, sustaining and stimulating the life, health and well-being of the family to raise successful, contributing citizens. I believe natural law supports this structure. An individually centered government is too easily subverted to a government protecting its own self-interests through manipulation of the individual rather than preserving the public square for the ultimate development of the human person through protection of the natural formation of the individual within the family. What benefits families, ultimately benefits individuals, as psychological research, especially in the area of broken homes, demonstrates. But the reverse cannot be held as true, as individual “rights” can indeed conflict with the well-being of the family unit.

An encroaching threat to healthy families of late, is the growing trend of the nanny-state, which has been assuming more authority over our children, with legally defining safety practices, earlier full-time schooling, curriculum encouraging acceptance of all manner of fetish activities and psychologically damaging practices, at ever earlier ages, and governmental intrusion into family discipline decisions. This is the direct result of considering the individual as the basic unit of society, focusing the governments attention on the formation of the individual to its satisfaction.

When the family unit is viewed as inviolate, so many of the controversies we are currently engaged in across the nation become crystal clear. It benefits society to have healthy families, and certain claims to individual “rights” demonstrably damage the health of the family, i.e. easy no-fault divorce, unrestricted abortion, homosexual unions. I would argue that any individual “right” that damages the family unit, is by definition not a “right”, thus should not be a viable option for citizens, if our goal is a successful, productive nation.

So, I propose that any Catholic political movement be centered upon Natural Law as the ideal rule of government, with the inviolability of the family as its focus. In so doing, we will more perfectly fulfill the purpose of government as laid out in the Preamble of the Constitution, especially the responsibility to “promote the general welfare”, with the maximum freedom (as opposed to license) reserved to its people.

* protestantism emphasizes faith of the individual over corporate faith, leading to a preference for individualism rather than a healthy inter-dependence of persons in communion with one another.

~ by Bekah on October 28, 2008.