The Pope's speech to the German Parliament

[fpb]

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_listening_heart
As ever, the man is worth listening to. But the responses in the comments thread just show how bloody useless it is to deliver intellectually distinguished and morally valuable speeches in a world where most people know no history but are stuffed full of out-of-context factoids and believe themselves entitled to judge.

Comments

Five

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The Declaration of Independence was not some sort of personal effusion of Jefferson's. It was an official document released in the name of the legal authorities of thirteen colonies - which were also legally states, something that is not very clear to modern minds but on which the signers were perfectly correct - and embodying their reasons to dethrone their former sovereign and go to war against him and his supporters. You are quite right that Jefferson and a few others were anti-clericals of a rather foolish and provincial stripe, and I have castigated Jefferson for his personal silliness on a couple of occasion. But it is just in the kind of personal effusion which this document is NOT that Jefferson indulges his silly prejudices; in this document, written as the spokesperson of thirteen free peoples, he and his fellow-founders declare their reliance on Divine Providence and build their claim on the rights bestowed on them by Him. If you deny validity to this claim, I expect you to say that the Founders were wrong in their principles and in their reason to act, and that their war was therefore nothing more than illegitimate and cruel revolt.
Incidentally, two of the Founders were not just Christian but Catholic. One of them was the cousin of the USA's first consecrated Catholic Bishop, later archbishop, John Carroll - a member of the first great Catholic dynasty of America, who provided the country with two more centuries of fine servants and sons before ending, alas, very much in piscem with the ghastly James Carroll.

Re: Five

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

I go where my reason and observation lead me: so if I come to the conclusion that the founders were incorrect in believing in natural law and a creator (regardless of religion), then so be it.

That does not mean I must disagree with them as far as the value of representative government, or legal rights, or that they did not have genuine disagreements with Britain that warranted breaking away. Many of their enlightenment contemporaries ascribed rights to being granted by the State, such as Spinoza, Kant and Durkheim, so there was hardly a unified idea of the origin of rights to begin with. Yet we have common ground on the end results. And of course, I should mention Jefferson's best line:

"As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Re: Five

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Which, considering that representative government was an idea seven hundred years old, would have meant that Jefferson should have supported the up-to-date tyrannical ideas of the most advanced rulers of the age, the likes of Frederick of Prussia and CAtherine of Russia, whom all progressives in their time loved and admired and tried to follow. That was the progressive party: the United States were trying to cling to an armoury of mediaeval notions with mediaeval names - county, council, alderman, sheriff, habeas corpus, militia, etc etc. But then Jefferson could be quite silly if he put his mind to it.

Re: Five

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

Jefferson and the other founders took the existing democratic institutions and ideals and developed them further, breaking away from those modern tyrannical examples. That is exactly in keeping with the spirit of his quote: namely, times change and institutions progress. He also anticipated future improvements and changes after his death...which is exactly what happened.