Sure, the church should obey the government, but only to the extent that the church agrees with it:
"when the authorities move beyond the legal framework, where it can not and must not govern, there is no obligation to be obedient, and if they oppose openly fundamental rights, then one must deny it obedience."Surely, if a government breaks the law, there should be room for civil disobedience - here, I could not agree more. The problem with the the church's statement is of a far different character: It assumes the right and duty to decide for itself, based on bronze-age texts written in the Middle East, what "fundamental rights" are, and use these to deny other people rights - that of divorce, that of marriage, that of birth control, and so forth. These are truly frightening ideas, and sounds just like any pro-sharia advocate.
On a side note: It makes my stomach churn to see SME representatives attend Rivera's mass and mutually extolling each other's efforts. So much for "independent" unions - now allied with the must reactionary elements found in Mexico!
Interesting... I've "gone dark" for the most part because I've been busy writing a monograph on the Cristiada, and thought of writing something on this, but you (and Jan-Albert) beat me to it. Similar remarks by Archbishop Ruiz y Flores in 1928 were a breakthrough in the negotiations to end the clerical strike, which had given a veneer of legality to the Cristero insurgency.
ReplyDeleteI am not all that convinced that a "leftist" movement (SME's) collusion with the Church though is all that unusual. Saternino Cedillo's "agrarianistas" allied with the old Cristeros (and then-new Fascists) in 1938. This is, for better or worse, democracy though non-electoral means — not all that different than OWS or the Tea Party in the United States.
Er...should have said the SME attendance (non Cedillo's rebellion) was democracy...meant to pressure the administration to make change, not to overthrow it, as Cedillo and friends sought to do.
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