Of course in the world of government none of these rights exist. This is, in fact, the trap the Catholic Church fell into originally, but it wasn't an accident. It was in fact their intentional throwing off of obligations that the Church has maintained for hundreds of years onto the State that led to this problem.
The Church loved this when it all worked their way. Rather than being the source of beneficience and charity, it has shoved off that onto state programs, thereby taking what was a voluntary act of donation and turning into a compulsion enforced by government with literal guns-up-the-nose through the power of taxation.
Turning tithing into taxation was the literal Holy Grail for the Church -- it was able to codify as a matter of law what was religious dogma. This, when it worked their way, was praised from the pulpit on Sunday and not one word was breathed about Establishment and its problems.
Of course that sort of tricksterism is the hallmark of Satan.
When you sleep with the Devil it rarely works out well.
The Church has never given a damn about the First Amendment's establishment clause when willfully ignoring it was to their benefit! By tossing off literal billions of dollars of annual expense in the United States alone that used to be allocated to charity works, from feeding the poor to running charity hospitals that provided care to people who had no money, The Church was the historic source of these good works for the poor, funded entirely from voluntary donations.
...
The Church in fact took what was a uniquely private institution -- provision of charity through hospitals (run by the Church), food banks (ditto), soup kitchens and provision of shelter for homeless people and others in dire straights and preached for literal decades that the forced taking of money from the congregation, along with non-believers, was not only justified but a moral imperative, thereby relieving what was a consensual act of charity and turning it into a legal obligation.
This burst of authoritarian jackboot application in fact met with the Church's explicit approval, not just silent assent. That same approval was voiced when EMTALA was passed in the 1980s when forced provision of care to the indigent came into law in the United States, taking what was a voluntary act and turning into a legal imperative. The very same position -- that of forced provision of cost-shifted care, has been considered a laudable goal for literal decades by The Church when it comes to Medicaid and Medicare, both of which effectively force private payers and working people to subsidize medical care for those who are either indigent or retired and have saved nothing of their own.
Then, having championed this organized theft from the citizens at literal gunpoint The Church stepped up to the trough and lapped up its share of hard-wrought blood from the people, attaching itself to the federal tit and drawing mightily upon tax benefits and transfer payments for its institutions (such as hospitals) that were once funded instead by the generosity of those who decided to tithe on Sunday.
In short the Church has, for decades, supported the entirety of the legal framework and the Democratic Left's position that the provision of charity, which was once provided for through voluntary tithe, was "best" provided instead in large part through mandatory taxation.
The very same Church that now bleats about the chains imposed by government, in short, was more than happy to help that very same government apply the chains of both fiscal and moral bondage to your neck.
The Bishops all need to drink a great big chalice of Shut-The-****-Up until and unless they reverse, in public, their explicit endorsement of Medicaid, Medicare, EMTALA and the rest of the blatantly unconstitutional and outrageous cost-shifting and forced charity that they have all supported for the last 50 years.
Civilization, in every generation, must be defended from barbarians. The barbarians outside the gate, the barbarians inside the gate, and the barbarian in the mirror...
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Mostly Correct
Not all, but essentially (Denninger):
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4 comments:
I don't see anything incorrect in the part you've quoted.
The ellipsis jumps over the part I disagree with.
Don't forget the Alinsky-Bishops connection that bilked millions out of our church coffers to set up the lefties in some very powerful positions. Ever heard of Acorn? Still going on.
This post reminds me of when the English government took over (raided) the Catholic monasteries in the 1500s. There was a total upheaval of the charitable order. The monasteries used to carry out the social services and with that taken away, there was social disorder. Only, in the sights of this quoted author, this time, the church gave away that birthright. Very tragic. Good thing the Holy Ghost is still in charge despite the utter disaster we make of things temporal. Good postings, Matteo. Really good. Sad they have to be so spot on.
Your Old Bible Study Buddy
I found your blogname in Ace's sidebar: love it.
I'm an Anglican, so I'm not altogether sure about this, but didn't Pope Benedict issue a declaration of some sort warning that the "social" "gospel" was NOT the Gospel, and shouldn't be preached in the pulpits in its stead?
My church has gone almost wholly over to the running dogs of socialism (the clergy, that is); my own minister happens to be that rare bird, a New York Republican, so we actually do get the Gospel in his Sunday sermons, not Leftism (hack, gaaack). But Andrea Dworkin's "husband," the homosexual John Stoltenberg, is an Episcopal minister, as well as the editor in chief of the AARP's magazine.
Unreal, innit?
Anyway, your post is the first I've seen that puts its finger on the point that has been bugging me: when Leftists claim that voting for OTHER people to fund the giveaway activities the Leftists want, it means the Leftists are being generous. (Especially noisy about this when they're voting other people's money into their own pockets!)
--Beverly
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