Historical Nostalgia and Subsidiarity, Part II
I don't have a copy of the Bible in front of me right now, but in numerous places in the Old Testament there are passages that more or less say "as you were slaves in the land of Egypt, do not oppress the slaves in your lands." In other words, hold on to the institutional memory of what it is like to be the oppressed , the outcast, the minority, and do not repeat the same behavior.
People like to forget the fact that we, as Catholics, spent 200 years in this country as a minority suffering persecution at the hands of the Protestants. As one of the commentators on Arturo's blog points out, for most of American history, all of the tools of local governance and autonomy that Mr. Esolen lauds were directed mostly at us. Prayer in schools was not the fuzzy ecumenical exercise we see today--it was an attempt to make the Catholic immigrant kids into good little Protestants.
John Jay, a co-author of the Federalist Papers (though, in fairness, definitely the third wheel behind Madison and Hamilton) and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, advocated for a provision in the first New York state constitution that would have prohibited Catholics from holding office. He was unsuccessful directly (making New York and Virginia the only two of the 13 colonies that did not require officeholders to be Protestant), but the New York Constitution of 1788 required an office holder to renounce any loyalty to any foreign power "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." Guess who that was directed toward?
So, now that the Protestants have decided that the Whore of Babylon has been replaced in importance by The Gays, or The Socialists, or whomever, as the Main Adversary, we are going to sign up with them to impose on others the same playbook which was (unsuccessfully for the most part, by the way) inflicted on us for most of our history in the U.S.? Or, even if the Protestants are not involved, we are going to pick up their playbook on our own volition?
We, too, were slaves once in the Land of Egypt.
People like to forget the fact that we, as Catholics, spent 200 years in this country as a minority suffering persecution at the hands of the Protestants. As one of the commentators on Arturo's blog points out, for most of American history, all of the tools of local governance and autonomy that Mr. Esolen lauds were directed mostly at us. Prayer in schools was not the fuzzy ecumenical exercise we see today--it was an attempt to make the Catholic immigrant kids into good little Protestants.
John Jay, a co-author of the Federalist Papers (though, in fairness, definitely the third wheel behind Madison and Hamilton) and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, advocated for a provision in the first New York state constitution that would have prohibited Catholics from holding office. He was unsuccessful directly (making New York and Virginia the only two of the 13 colonies that did not require officeholders to be Protestant), but the New York Constitution of 1788 required an office holder to renounce any loyalty to any foreign power "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." Guess who that was directed toward?
So, now that the Protestants have decided that the Whore of Babylon has been replaced in importance by The Gays, or The Socialists, or whomever, as the Main Adversary, we are going to sign up with them to impose on others the same playbook which was (unsuccessfully for the most part, by the way) inflicted on us for most of our history in the U.S.? Or, even if the Protestants are not involved, we are going to pick up their playbook on our own volition?
We, too, were slaves once in the Land of Egypt.
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