DISLODGING THE KEYSTONE OF LIBERTY

            Last month, Federalist contributor Benjamin Dierker dismissed Justice John Paul Stevens’ (ret.) imprudent suggestion that the Second Amendment should be repealed altogether. Dierker argued that the natural right to self-defense and the Ninth Amendment render repeal of the Second Amendment irrelevant in a properly functioning America.

But is this really true?

The natural right of self-defense does not protect gun rights.

The natural right to self-defense, recognized and respected by long-standing legal tradition, does not provide a catalogue of weapons for use in personal defense that ought never to be restricted by law. It only provides a basis for the use of whatever means were circumstantially available—and allowed by law—to one person’s reasonable defense against an imminent threat of significant bodily injury or death. It does not validate an a priori right to own, carry or wield a gun. Legal officials determine after the fact if a person defended himself reasonably under the circumstances whether he used a gun, a knife or his bare hands. More importantly, one person exercising his natural right to self-defense does not provide for “the security of a free state”, but for the security of an individual. This is no minor point. Every modern Englishman has a legal (and natural) right to defend himself and his property against aggression; yet, few Americans would call England a “free state” because no Englishman has the fundamental right to own, carry, or wield a gun or even a knife—only the privilege to do so as granted, limited, or withheld by government fiat.

 

However, ensuring the “security of a free state” simultaneously secures each person’s right to defend himself because securing the good of the whole necessarily secures the good of every part within that whole. A citizen cannot secure his community without securing his own house simultaneously as a constituent part of that community, but he can secure his own house to the detriment of his community’s security.

Only the Constitution, correctly construed, provides legal protections to natural rights.

The idea of a properly functioning America would seem to imply that every citizen and representative respects, obeys and enforces every law, including the Second Amendment, and that patriots will meet any disregard for the law with legal, political, or, if necessary, physical force. The Founders composed laws subordinated to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" to combat man’s natural temptation to abuse power. And they surrounded those laws with double guards in the Bill of Rights, not one provision of which is expendable. Repealing the only protective provision declared to be “necessary to the security of a free state” should be unthinkable under any circumstances, let alone in an ideal American society; yet, well-meaning advocates on both sides still discuss—and what is worse, litigate, lobby and legislate—in unfeigned ignorance of the Amendment’s meaning and relevance.

Construing the Constitution, or any part of it, requires one to interpret the words in the “natural sense” that the men who framed them and the people who adopted them would have understood them at the time the Amendment was written. “Natural sense” does not mean “colloquial”; rather, it gives precedence to any relevant legal definitions that essential terms may have had at the time. This is the heart of “strict construction”.[1] Given that rubric, the plain legal meaning of the Amendment absolutely controls this otherwise confused debate.

Unfortunately, that plain meaning has been paved over, largely with the asphalt of good intentions. 

The well-known text of the Second Amendment reads:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

            Most people—including professedly "textualist" Supreme Court justices—are content to divide the Amendment’s text somewhere near the middle and to set each half against the other. Justice Antonin Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller divorced the use of firearms as part of one’s service in the militia from an individual's use of arms for lawful purposes not connected with militia service, essentially separating the right to use guns for lawful personal aims from the right to defend one’s polity.

Heller contradicts the “natural sense” of “[a] well regulated Militia”.

If the “natural sense” of any constitutional word requires that any relevant contemporaneous legal definition must take priority, then it is of paramount importance to discover whether a given term or phrase had been legally defined by the time the Constitution was written. The idea of “a well regulated Militia” was not an innovation of the Founders. It was a long-standing, statutorily defined, legal entity requiring persons to ensure the political welfare and physical defense of their communities. Generations of colonists, reaching back to the earliest days of Plymouth, had been subject to the ubiquitous statutes requiring each citizen—unless specifically exempted for public duties or conscientious objections—to acquire and maintain in his home a rifle or musket with shot and powder, and to appear on select days armed and accoutred with the same, or to pay a fine for any defect. Moreover, these colonists had served their militias not only in their local communities, but also with those militias in the field both with and against English soldiers.  

In other words, the historical reality of “a well regulated Militia” does in fact define the “natural sense” in which the Amendment must be construed. The constitutions of the thirteen original States confirm this interpretation. They express not only the vision of the federal Framers but also the vision of their counterparts in state legislatures who had to consider that text and its meaning carefully. Each State adopted language similar to that expressed in Virginia’s Declaration of Rights (Article XIII):

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and be governed by, the civil power.

The “well regulated militia” is not contrasted with the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”; rather, the “well regulated militia” is identified as the “body of the people, trained to arms” and opposed to “standing armies” which “should be avoided as dangerous to liberty”. Any person apprised of the arguments before the Federal Convention or before the State ratifying conventions would have appreciated this crucial distinction. How could he do otherwise? He was a militiaman, and he had seen written on the bloody fields of New York, Massachusetts and Virginia the principle—known to others by a careful study of history—that a standing army was a means to a single end: usurpation of power, that is, tyranny.

            It is no mere coincidence, then, that the militia is mentioned in Article I § 8 clauses 15 and 16 of the federal Constitution.

               The Congress shall have Power...

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress[.]

The Founders expected that the militias of the several states—not the military—would be ready to perform these tasks on a national scale whenever they might be called into federal service. State and local governments would keep their militias ready to perform those federal duties in addition to whatever duties served a State or community’s particular needs. At bottom, then, the militias are the primary defense mechanism for—the necessary means of securing—a free state. They secure public order by executing the law; put down domestic violence against the rightful authority, whether that violence issued from an unruly populace or from a usurpatious and tyrannical government; and repel invasions by foreign enemies. Gun control advocates can advance no argument against the need to arm “the body of the people” with so-called “assault weapons” or “weapons of war” or “military grade weapons” to achieve those provisions. 

            Put in this light, the full scope of any militiaman’s rights and even the nominal scope of his duties will include and exceed those available to any theoretical free layman.

            Once again, those powers over the militia are expressly separate from and in no way identical to the powers that Congress has over the military as expressed in the three preceding clauses of Art. I § 8. No one should conflate the terms “militia” and “military”. Gun control advocates profit immensely from this confusion; no Second Amendment patriot can afford it or should even tolerate it. 

The body of the original Constitution nullifies an appeal to the Ninth Amendment.

The Ninth Amendment provides only that no power granted in the Constitution shall be read in such a way that denies or disparages other rights retained by the people. In other words, it only protects those rights not expressly granted in the Constitution. Therefore, it cannot apply to any rights that may be incorporated into the constitutional meaning of the express provisions of Art. I § 8 clauses 15 and 16. The Ninth Amendment does not clarify or define the extent of those provisions. It was not intended to. It was not intended to form the substantial guard against those who may seek to erode or eliminate “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” as “a well regulated Militia”.

No. No. No.

The Second Amendment is that guard, that buttress, that clarifier, that belt to the suspenders of the provisions stated in Art. I § 8. It ensures that, if at any time the meaning of “a well regulated Militia” became obscured either by a lapse in the people’s vigilance or through the machinations of encroaching tyrants, the people would have clear legal recourse to claim for themselves the right to assemble—armed, organized and disciplined—for the defense of their God-given rights. Removing it, or even countenancing such removal except for the sake of argument, is to play into the hands of gun control advocates whose agenda will eradicate at the source the possibility of an armed, organized, and disciplined—and therefore vigilant—populace. Dislodge the keystone and the arch will collapse. If the Second Amendment falls, so does the Ninth Amendment and the whole Bill of Rights because no such protections are needed in a state that is no longer secured by, and for the good of, free men.

---

[1] See Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary, 69, 74-77 (Vision Forum Ministries, 2004); see also, Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1, 188 (1824) and United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 731 (1931) as quoted in his text. See also, Constitutional Homeland Security, Vols. 1 and 2 by the same author.

Pitching "Hitler's Pope"

This article was posted to my feed today. I could not let it slip by unchallenged. The body of the article and the work it reviews betray an ignorance not only of basic history but also of the history and teaching of the Church. They are but a talisman of a waning fad. Bear in mind that I shall challenge only a few of the inconsistencies, calumnies and detractions made against the Catholic Church in this article. Much more lurks within its depths.

To begin, the allegations that the Church only acted to preserve its political power in Europe betrays a gross misunderstanding of the Church's position at the time. The last vestiges of a "confessional" state―one which answered in conscience to the Church because it "confessed" the Catholic creed―were long since dead in modern Europe: the death blow to political Christendom had been struck at Westphalia in 1648, the revolutions that convulsed Europe from Paris in 1789 to Moscow in 1917 were the funeral procession, and the political machinations following World War I laid the corpse to an uneasy rest. The Church's political power then as now may be measured by the size of Her political state: 109 acres surrounded by ancient stone walls. Her moral authority, however, is not subject to measurements of a political character. Even though states may come to fear that authority, they fear more the truth known to history: that the structure of the Church may collapse into ruin―ruin sufficient to destroy any political entity yet known to man―and yet the Church herself shall not be destroyed. Said renowned anti-Catholic Thomas Macaulay: She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. 

Anyone wondering why the Vatican kept silent during this time of crisis need only look at the facts of the matter. Pope Pius XI (Eugenio Pacelli's immediate predecessor) had written to the German bishops in 1933 praising their zealous condemnation of Nazism and encouraging them to speak out even more against the evils that were inevitable should this pernicious ideology take root. Mit Brennender Sorge publicly denounced the Nazis, and Hitler was not sure of enough support to publicly condemn the Church in return. Hitler had to play the game very close to the chest in the early years of his Chancellorship. What might have occurred had the war been delayed and Hitler better solidified his public power? At the turn of the eighteenth century, Napoleon Buonaparte had captured and imprisoned the Pope, forced him to participate in a crowning ceremony, removed him from the public eye, and effectively silenced any criticism the Pope would have voiced against the revolutionary regime in France. Did this possibility―indeed likelihood―not present a legitimate concern for Pius XII? His city and public seat of authority were located in the capital of fascist Italy, Hitler's dedicated ally. As a political entity, the Vatican signed a concordat both with Italy (which recognized the mutual legitimacy of Vatican territory and Mussolini's government, though it did not approve of fascism itself) and with Germany to safeguard the needs of Catholics in both of those countries. How necessary this was in Germany especially, where Bismarck had initiated a sustained and vicious kulterkampf in order to destroy specifically Catholic influence which often barred his aims at German unification and consolidation of government power. Regardless, one cannot infer moral approval from a political treaty. That would be a tremendous leap of logic even if the historical record did not bear witness to the contrary. Hitler's Pope indeed!

Was it Hitler's Pope who became responsible for the hundreds of thousands of Jews and other refugees who were smuggled through Catholic networks and the unknown numbers permanently hidden within the Vatican, and thereby kept safe from the Nazis? It is estimated that nearly 860,000 Jews were rescued by the efforts of the Church. This was possible only as long as the Vatican remained ostensibly neutral. Pius and the clergy of Europe faced tremendous challenges. Protests against the treatment of Jews and other untermensch were not unilaterally effective as a countermeasure across Europe, and in some cases, public clerical protest only aggravated the Nazis' policy toward Jews. Should the clergy have spoken out, if doing so would actively worsen the situation? Should they not then have better worked in secret, as they did? Was it Hitler's Pope who dispensed cloistered monasteries and convents from their rules and allowed them to open their doors to refugees? Was it Hitler's Pope who encouraged cathedrals, chapels, hospitals, orphanages, and countless other institutions run by the Church to act as crucial safe-zones and stops along the various escape routes? Would Hitler's Pope have covered up the issuance of fake baptismal certificates to non-Catholics? What utter rubbish! Nor are these assertions mere Catholic propaganda. Many Jews, including the Chief Rabbi of Rome, publicly thanked Pius XII for his service to the Jewish people to show their gratitude. Personal testaments, awards, documents and historical scholarship stand in stark contrast to the singular allegations popularized by Hitler's Pope and The Deputy and Constantine's Sword. Nor should one ignore the credible assertions that The Deputy was heavily influenced by the active Communist campaign to discredit the Church in Europe as Her influence was challenging and slowly eroding the effects of Soviet conquest. Any works which appeal to The Deputy as a reliable source must be equally suspect.

Much of this defense of Pius XII, however, rests not on the evidence which is available to anyone who looks for it, but on a basic proposition that it appears ludicrous for anyone―let alone a libertarian, as the author of the article in question purports to be―to deny: that a man has the duty to defend first those chiefly under his care. Common sense demands that if fire endangers John's family and Ben's family equally, John ought to protect his own family first, and Ben ought to see to his. Why is this allowance denied to Catholic prelates whose primary concerns are and of right ought to be for their own people? Such unreasonable demands as would force the Church to care for others before her own are truly mystifying in this light.

Who shall condemn Switzerland for neither speaking out against the evils of Hitler and Nazism nor praising the efforts of the Allies? Will no one admonish Sweden? Ireland? Portugal? Andorra? Liechtenstein? No one mentions the failure of the Princes of Liechtenstein to take a public platform, or convicts the cowardice of the Portuguese Prime Minister, or accuses the Irish, Swedish and Andorran governments of complicity by their silence. Rather, they are remembered (if at all) for their actual contributions, however small, not for their public posture. Vatican City is smaller than any of these, and has for an army less than 250 mercenary (but dedicated) guards; yet, it is expected to have done what no one demands of these larger and more capable states. Even so, the Church that protected the victims of Nazi aggression more effectively than any other entity is the more scurrilously condemned for not making its disapproval sufficiently public. Even if the Vatican had not taken these documented and heroic actions, was it not privileged as the other neutrals were to protect its own interests first and to maintain its neutrality in the face of grave danger and war? Or will someone say that these other neutrals were equally selfish and worthy of contempt? At least that would establish some consistency within the narrative, though its timbre would sound equally hollow.

To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, it swiftly becomes clear to the careful observer that any stick appears good enough to beat the Catholic Church with. The world does not more consistently place any one thing in the unenviable position "damned if you do; damned if you don't" than it does the Catholic Church. Nor does it do so with such obvious bias couched in self-righteous platitudes. Those who value true history cannot too quickly abandon nor too zealously fight to dispel this abusive lie, this false narrative, for it is no more than a canker blossom in the mouth of truth.

Science of the Gaps

Lately, it reoccurred to me that I am very frustrated with the so-called dialogue between scientists and Catholics. Their attempt to deal with an unnatural disagreement has, partly through its artificiality, come to appear like the squabbling of poorly mated couples who have nothing better to do with their time than to aggravate the one they feel is responsible for their unhappiness and to avoid making up because neither one will admit to being in the wrong. None of this does any good for their children―the general public―who know instinctively that their parents do belong together and should be happy for being so. And even though the children may not fully understand the nature of the disagreement, they know that each parent is, to a certain extent, laying it on a bit thick.

In the course of this disagreement, two things have become clear: first, that both camps lack clarity in presenting their respective cases, and second, that neither side can in fact convince the other as it is currently arguing. 

Clearly, we are in a fog. Bulverism has entered the arena. One can argue without having to engage his reason at all. He can dispel any uncomfortable notions with a category statement about the beliefs and desires of the other side vigourously applied to the peccant part of his own psyche. Rather like the man who, though lost, refuses to ask someone else for directions because, as he puts it, "They have not got my sense of direction." When this attitude is not only generally accepted but also honored, one cannot even blame himself for being lost because in his own mind no one else knows where they are going either.  

Neither science nor religion is to blame for the preeminence of this sophistry. After all, bad philosophy―unlike morality―must be practiced to be preached. That is why this problem is not between science and Catholicism, but between scientists and Catholics. Eradicating one bad philosophy will not settle the question anymore than eradicating one bad philosopher. Nor will bad philosophy end by the destruction of philosophy itself anymore than philosophy will end by the destruction of philosophers. Any man can be a philosopher because every man can think. Those few who think with purpose stand apart as leaders of the rest. The man who does not think is only half alive. He is one of those who, as Benjamin Franklin puts it, "die[s] at twenty-five and [is not] buried until [he is] seventy-five." To destroy philosophy, one must utterly destroy mankind. To practice good philosophy one must allow both for the aforementioned fact that every man can think, and the sad reality that not everyone will agree even with the soundest reasoning. That is the unfortunate failing of fallen human nature, not an unique sickness of this age of science.  

Despite these unfortunate circumstances, Catholics and scientists do have common ground; quite literally in fact, as the observation that this universe is made up of material things simply is quantifiable from a scientific point of view and observable from the fundamental perspective of the human senses. All humans are not only philosophers but scientists, albeit untrained and often sloppy ones. It should be lauded by Catholics that St. Thomas Aquinas began his great treatise Summa Theologica with the simple observation that things around us exist and are in motion. And yet, from this point, however, the divergence of scientistic thought from Catholic thought is almost immediate. Scientists claim that all that is, is observable, while Catholics argue for a broader reality that surpasses sensual observation. Moreover, scientists cling to their methods and Catholics to their beliefs. Seldom do they engage themselves with anything unlike panegyrics for their wisdom and anything like serious critical thought. More often they look on one another with nothing but suspicion and engage in some form of ridicule and derision―derision that forms an unrelated and unempirical argument against the bad history of the other side. Scientists scoff at the" Dark Ages" of slavery to unreason and blind faith, while Catholics balk at the "Enlightenment", the fountainhead of unprecedented progress toward ultimate human misery. Scientists forget (if they ever knew) the debt they owe to the great discoveries made by scientists of deep religious conviction (many of them Churchmen), and Catholics are in no small way to blame for keeping out of sharper relief both the tremendous contributions made by their rich tradition to all forms of learning and the many orthodox improvements to theology that have come from the minds of scientists. But that to one side, it hardly gets to the meat of the case between the two.

Far be it from me to create a program through which every strained nerve in this fight will be healed; however, one thing should be noted as having particular benefit.

It is desirable to neither affirm nor deny too strenuously points made by either side. Each person ought to explain his reasoning, then perhaps many apparent points of conflict will disappear. And one must ask the right preliminary questions in order to reach a point of agreement or disagreement. Beginning as we are with a point of disjuncture, is it any surprise that we have nowhere to go together? Such a point is to an undefined argument as the earth is to the stars around her: a mathematical point, having a position but no appreciable value. Having an infinity of destinations can be just as paralyzing as having none.

So, we must take account of the different theses and question their validity. We must, in the proper sense of the term, be skeptics, that rare breed who take their cue from what is sufficiently proven, not merely what is proposed.

What then is the basic assumption of scientists today? That material existence is the only existence. Any gaps in man's knowledge of the universe are holes merely waiting to be filled. In the context of any debate with religion, these holes have nuisance value quickly expressed by the argument that because science does not yet know everything, "god" must exist. This notion of god is fading away and will dissolve, scientists say, when the book of knowledge is complete. In time, science will explain the universe and all that resides in it or beyond it.

But can science alone ever achieve that aim? Certainly not. It would require scientists to accept certain principles that are beyond scientific proof. It is fundamentally misleading for a scientist to claim that "god cannot exist because he is not scientifically measurable" and to conclude as a proven fact from that scientifically unverifiable claim that "the notion of god will disappear with the advent of new scientific discoveries." Scientists the world over stress that science deals only with the material universe by examining material facts and events and experimenting with limited links of cause and effect. That is what makes it reliable: every aspect of its inquiry can be researched, verified and either duplicated or amended. Scientists have further observed that the material in the universe is not endless. That there is a limited amount of matter means that the chain of cause and effect must be cyclically repetitive if it does not reach a point of first motion. That limits the scope of scientific inquiry significantly.

For it is a curious reality that to fill a hole in one place, one needs material taken from another place. Cut down a hill to fill a hole, or grind stone to get gravel, or divert a stream to flood a lake, one may do a great many different things to achieve these and other similar ends, but one things is certain: no material from beyond this universe is a plausible help. Recycling is the only strategy in a world without infinite fecundity. Until recently, the late Stephen Hawking had admitted this basic proposition; however, Hawking revealed the new axiom: something can come from nothing, as long as "nothing" means "the law of gravitation". This new axiom only reinvigorates the import of the old one that something cannot come from nothing; therefore, it is up to the scientist to explain this universe without referring to anything beyond it, to fill the gaps with data, not theories; with physics, not metaphysics; to note with scientific rigour the incompleteness of their own observations and the limits of their sphere.

Anyone seeking a complete look at the material world must step outside it, and in doing so, he must acknowledge the existence of immaterial things like reason, which alone can capture the essence of material things because of its higher nature. The very act of reasoning defies scientific explanation because it deals with the immaterial abstraction of material things. If scientists are ever to prove anything in this material world, they must rely on the material that is available to them. That material as we have seen is limited, and scientists know it well. The well-documented limit of material existence limits the extent of material investigation. The changes and challenges to prevailing theories, the incompleteness of every experiment, even those that are successful, and the consistent unveiling of new technologies that only reveal a deeper and unlooked-for complexity to the universe indicate a level of uncertainty that scientists must accept.

We are left with a "science of the gaps" which cannot prevent the flood of infinity from surrounding and penetrating the universe, one which cannot create but can only re-purpose, one which is doomed to mad frustration without the help of other branches dedicated to the search for knowledge.

In truth, the more the scientific community puzzles together the fabric of the universe, the more evident the reality of a Designer essentially distinct from the universe becomes. Every piece properly placed reveals a little more of the grandiose picture that in no way could have accounted for its own existence. Either the puzzle is a real object created by an artist or it is a product of one's epistemological imagination and void of all real meaning.

Let us turn then to the arguments posed by the theological fellows.

It is a common error, at least it is an error that I myself commonly make, to believe that faith is a provable phenomenon. Let me be clear. I do not mean that there are no proofs for the reasonability of faith, nor that faith is never proved true by our own experience or the experiences of others. But these two things, the reasons for having faith and the fulfillment of one's faith in concrete ways, are separate from the issue. There is a real difference between what drives us to profess our faith and what our faith can prove. Further, there are different levels of proof, with the level corresponding to science having some of the narrowest standards, and here I do use proof in that narrow scientific sense. To bear the name, a proof must be repeatable and verifiable. From this springs one important conclusion: the existence of God cannot be proven through science in the way that modern scientists demand and modern Catholics want. As an aside, conversely, this means that science cannot disprove the existence of God, or even the existence of Jesus. Those questions are entirely out of the realm of scientific inquiry. And if scientists quibble about the existence of Jesus and the veracity of what He claimed, one might do well to ask them by what standard they admit to the existence of Newton and the veracity of what he claimed.

Of course, this is a bitter pill to swallow. Those who believe in the superiority of Revelation to rational inquiry find little comfort in the fact that their faith has limited use here below. And those who profess the efficacy of reason naturally defy any power which imposes a limit upon their knowledge. And what limit could surpass that of an impenetrable mystery? What greater magnet for the mind, indeed, but what a blow to our pride in great accomplishments! How truly it is said that the Gospel will be a stumbling block to the wise: a truth so real and so vast as to be incomprehensible dropped right into the path of those seeking only comprehensible answers.

Yet here is a powerful tool for spreading the Gospel: knowing the frustration that accompanies the failure to understand any number of mundane realities, should we not become even more sympathetic to those who, like us, cannot fathom the supernatural mysteries before them, but unlike us have not been given reason to accept them anyway?

Would not the most efficacious argument admit that we are all of us seeking answers, and incapable of finding them on our own?

What is Natural about the "State of Nature"?

The more I have encountered libertarianism and all that that broadminded ideology embraces the more often I have needed to review and examine what underpins my own political philosophy. I find much solace in my growing certainty that nothing I hold to be true is founded on libertarianism but upholds it instead. It just goes to show that even if a man builds a stick hut on solid rock, it will last much longer than a mansion built on sand. In my position, however, I happen to have a mansion built upon a solid rock foundation.

In time, I hope to publish more thorough examinations of the libertarian sophistical system, but for the present, I wanted to put down a few thoughts on one fountainhead of modern liberalism (from which source individualism and libertarianism likewise grow), the "state of nature".

The "state of nature" supposedly is one in which man is removed from―existing prior to and without aid of―political society, i.e., government, law and pre-established social connections. While in some cases that isolation is complete, not every theory requires the abolition of all natural connections and bonds. As expounded here, for example, marriage and family contracts are not held to be under the penumbra of the political "social contract" in some cases. The theory is a thought experiment trying to discern what rights a man possesses before he opens political negotiations with his fellow man. Its aim is to discover the natural rights of man by giving him a political blank slate. In more extreme cases―Hobbes comes immediately to mind―it isolates him completely when man is demonstrably incapable of living an isolated life. It always amused me that mothers seemed to be no part of Hobbes' natural state: after all, what would every mother think of her child if he proved incapable of peaceful negotiation except wherein he needed to preserve his own life. It seems perfectly normal to assume that these men are, like Adam, created without mothers, but not created, unlike Adam, with an inherent need for friendship and community―even community with God. Perhaps Locke's state of nature more closely resembles reality than does that of Hobbes; however, a less-than-personal approach to God also distorts the natural need in man for communion.

It is no accident that Locke and other social contract theorists stumbled upon the fundamental rights of life, liberty and property which happen to coincide with three undeniable instincts an individual has to live, to choose the good and to possess things. It would have been more remarkable had Locke insisted that these three impulses did not constitute three such natural rights, as they had been recognized not only by the ancient rationalists, but also had been divinely sanctioned in the Old Testament ("Thou shalt not murder", "Thou shalt not steal", "Love thy neighbor as thyself"), reaffirmed by Christ during His ministry and maintained and defended by His Church for seventeen centuries. It could be argued instead that Locke chose those three natural rights because he could not escape the rational tradition of the West.

The search for natural rights is limited by those who chose to examine what man has in a state of nature rather than what man is by his own nature, to discover what a man does in pristine conditions rather than what a man is which manifests itself regardless of his circumstances. One can more accurately observe what a man is by how he acts in every circumstance than by how he acts in one protean situation. That man is endowed with certain natural rights should be evident through nature, not constructed by nature.

Railing on Trump's "Wall": Part IV

To my knowledge, this issue has not yet arisen, but as I have mentioned above, it may yet make an untimely appearance. The validity of Trump's powers in this regard (previously explained) notwithstanding, such advocates may argue that international law safeguards a "right to immigrate" and a "right to asylum" which Trump now has abrogated.

The Supreme Court has increasingly appealed to international law as a measure to judge the legality and even the morality of legislation challenged under the authority of Constitutional law. This disingenuous and necessarily disastrous juris-imprudence clearly reveals a bias in favour of international law, as if the will of Europe's governments were of more consequence to American law than either the will of the American people or even the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" upon which this Constitution is rightly founded. Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., guts the internationalist practices and biases which the Supreme Court has gradually adopted in his excellent book How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary.

A more reasonable critic could rightly claim that international treaties may influence the legality of the President's executive order. Article VI of the Constitution states that "all Treaties made...under the Authority of the United States, shall be [part of] the supreme Law of the Land[,]" and the United States has subscribed to both the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  One question must be entertained here: does the Treaty or any part of it violate the Constitution or require any sworn official to disregard his essential duties to "preserve, protect and defend" this Constitution? If the answer were affirmative, then the offending part of the treaty―possibly even the treaty in total―would be null and void without needing further declaration.

If the treaty is entirely legitimate, then one might further ask what the parameters of these international protections might be? How specific are they? How are they worded?

Marine le Pen, a front runner in France's current Presidential race and Member of the European Parliament, deftly answers this query. I need not add anything to her statements here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sfhc_e5P88 (beginning at 8:30). The strict terms apply to all emigres and to every subscribing nation.

If it comes down to it, Trump's best response would be to imitate the mighty Andrew Jackson and ignore the ruling of the Court. The law, if it stands acquitted by a common-sense reading of the Constitution, must continue to stand, especially if the Justices rule that it should fall because they prefer to stand by vapid international standards which justify their position, rather than uphold the Constitution.

"The world must construe according to its wits; this Court must construe according to the law."
              ~Thomas More: A Man for All Seasons

Railing on Trump's "Wall": Part III

"The best laid schemes o' mice and men
   Gang aft a-gley. ~ Robert Burns

It appears that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the Temporary Restraining Order issued by the District Court in Washington State to halt enforcement of President Trump's executive order until it has been reviewed and deemed lawful.

Following the arguments of the plaintiffs, the Court dismembers the executive order remotely, preferring again to relate immaterial motifs that depend more on conjecture than on what the Executive Order stipulates: it prefers the interests of non-immigrant and immigrant visa holders to those of citizens, it prefers the interest of private institutions to the public welfare, and it prefers the arguable interests of the States to the explicit rights and duties of the Federal Government.  It also prefers to reserve judgment on the Constitutional issue relating to the Establishment Clause, not because the accusation is groundless both in fact and in law, but "in light of the sensitive interests involved", whatever that means.

All this while it continues to ignore the material claims of the relevant statutory law.

Such an oversight is striking particularly in Section VI of the appeal decision which reviews the Government's likelihood of success in countering the State's due process claims. Not once is 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f) mentioned in connection with the duty to provide due process, nor is it regarded as an integral part of due process. And since the President has the authority and the duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed", a statute which provides immediate and effective power to the President to halt all immigration or any part of it that he deems in the national interest at any time and for any period of time would seem to be sanctioned by his constitutional authority. (One may even argue that the Executive authority in 1182 (f) is especially intended for national emergencies, when due process may be altered according to the demands of the general welfare.) Nor does it regard the statutory right of the President to stop immigrants from entering the United States in any way relevant; it focuses instead on aliens who are already on this soil. It challenges the Executive's authority to enforce this Order upon aliens immediately and without notice or chance of reply as a violation of due process. It should be noted that the Order does not in any way require the deportation of undesired aliens, immediately or otherwise. It merely suspends their entry for ninety days, which provides them ample time to appeal their cases, and does not recommend any further action until the period of review and report has been completed.

And of course, pace this great authority, "due process" does not mean that undocumented aliens cannot be deported. It means merely that the government authority must have proof of an alien's undocumented status in order to enforce upon them compliance with national immigration laws. Illegal aliens are de facto and de jure criminals. Proof of illegal entry demands deportation. End of story.

As it is, I am still primarily concerned that this case will make its way to the Supreme Court, and that that august body will decide against the statutory power of 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f) without once considering it on its own constitutional merits. And that will be the end of border control, of defense against multi-cultural invasion and, in the end, the last nail in the coffin of the sovereignty of the United States.

Railing on Trump's "Wall": Part II

Word is spreading.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia under the signed names of their attorneys general (allegedly supported by this familiar face) have filed an amicus brief alongside Washington and Minnesota's federal lawsuit contesting Donald Trump's Executive Order. The original lawsuit has been upheld in one Washington court and denied in one Massachusetts court. (This opinion piece compares the conduct of the two cases well).

In summary, the Washington court judge enjoined a temporary restraining order against Trump's Executive Order without any argument based on the relevant statutes. Massachusetts' court did consider the ramifications of statutory law and executive-legislative prerogative in this matter and decided against a temporary restraint.

So naturally, the former judge's brief relies on some rather stunning legal gymnastics.

The first three observations do not offer any valid objections to the order or support the legal cause against it. If they serve any purpose, it is as red herrings and sob stories aimed at reducing what should be a legal issue to an emotional appeal.

The latter two objections raise the central problems projected by these states, claiming that the order violates the Establishment Clause and inflicts "irreparable harm" on the amici states and further arrogates their legal prerogatives.

However, the amici in the case are not so circumspect as to provide evidence of the violation. They claim a priori that a violation has occurred and argue instead that the alleged violation inflicts irreparable harm on them. Nonetheless, the argument could only take a few directions and maintain any validity. 

The Establishment Clause uses very precise language regarding the relationship between the federal government and religion: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[.]" What does it mean to "establish[]" a religion? At the time, Colonists knew of only one established religion, the Anglican Church, which received tax revenue from Parliament and was under the control of the political head of the nation, the king. The Continental Congress realized that such a union of religion and state policy would have disastrous consequences not unlike the persecutions and wars that ravaged England barely a century earlier; so, they cut all ties between the state and an officially funded, politically managed religion.

More recently, however, "establishment" has been colloquially reinterpreted as "endorsement" or "preference", and bans on praying in public schools and bible reading for example have swiftly followed with "protected" satanic clubs hard on their heels. A much vaguer term, "endorsement" allows for a broader swath of contrary actions such as simultaneously demand protection of Muslims and disenfranchisement of Christians.

Accepting that the advocates of this lawsuit have no claim that Trump has "established" a religion in the strict (and therefore only proper) sense, one must assume that they instead claim he has in some way "endorsed" one religion over another. Several relevant paragraphs of the order are referenced as proof of the order's anti-Muslim bent:

   1) Sec. 1, par. 3 refers to "hostile attitudes" and "violent ideologies" that should not be allowed to enter into the United States. It further references "honor killings" and other rights violations that should not be countenanced;

   2) Sec. 5(b) directs the Secretary of State to "prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality". Of course, in the seven targeted countries, Islam is the majority religion;

   3) Sec. 5(c) specifically denies entry to Syrian refugees "until such time as...sufficient changes have been made...to ensure that admission...is consistent with the national interest[]"; and

   4) Sec 5(d) restricts the entry numbers of refugees in general to 50,000 until such entries are deemed in accord with the "national interest."

Now unless the litigants want to argue that Islam is the only religion with "hostile attitudes" and "violent ideologies", that it is the only religion that could ever endorse "honor killings" and other rights violations, that Christians and other non-Islamic religions are not being actively targeted in Islamic countries and that Syria is not an active war zone endangered by the Islamic fundamentalists known as ISIS, they have no grounds to suppose that the order singles out Muslims for scrutiny because of their religious beliefs. 

If, on the other hand, as presented in another amicus brief filed by law professors across the nation, the executive order violates 8 U.S.C. 1152 (a)1(A) which forbids preference or discrimination based on "race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence", then it remains to be seen what is illegal about preference or discrimination based solely upon religion or political persecution. This becomes even more problematic if, as this brief claims, 8 U.S.C. 1152 (a)1(A) supersedes the presidential prerogative provided in 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f) [see pg. 10-11 (35-36/62)] as Trump would have been restricted by law to consider religion or political affiliation as the only legal bases upon which to enforce his immigration ban. A Muslim ban it should have been then! 

Why assume that 8 U.S.C. 1152 (a)1(A) supersedes 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f)? Why assume that because a statute was passed after another related statute that the latter repeals the former or even amends it? Statutory laws are repealed, revised or amended specifically by other statutes, or they are proven to be at variance with the Constitution through judicial review. 8 U.S.C. 1152 (a)1(A) makes no mention of 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f) and as such leaves the preceding powers intact. The broad language of 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f) is not used by accident; it implies high levels of power and discretion in the President's hands and his alone. To limit the preference or discrimination in one place while leaving intact the power to discriminate against "all alien or any class of alien" flies in the face of reason.

Even the brief filed by the "Constitutional scholars" cannot avoid the fact that "every President over the last 30 years has issued at least one Executive Order pursuant to 8 U.S.C. 1182 (f) and that many of those order excluded aliens on the basis of nationality"; however, these scholars attempt to justify their objection by observing that those orders were "not categorical exclusions of broad classes deemed to pose a risk" but restricted "individuals that had engaged in culpable conduct". [See pg. 6 (12/25)]

False. False. False.

Honestly, the Left should be ashamed of their own proponents and their own arguments. They play the Constitution as if it were a chip in their game, when they could make far more headway by openly disowning the Constitution instead. Perhaps they have not noticed that those who take hard stances on the core issues have more clout than those that take coy stances on the hard issues.

What is next? Will a court expound the illegality of Trump's order based on a survey of international law and practices and opinions of the international community? Before they attempt it, I shall provide arguments against such juris-impudence in the next installment.

Railing on Trump's "Wall"

Much fuss is being made over President Trump's recent executive order to temporarily halt immigration from certain countries with incidents of Islamic extremism or terror-related unrest. People from the left and the right question the morality, legality, propriety and even the sanity of this measure. One-time Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gushed to CNN that the Statue of Liberty now has tears in its eyes. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts went so far as to implore her fellow senators to reverse the order, to condemn what she called an "illegal, unconstitutional and immoral" measure.

Setting aside the question of the timing and promulgation of the order which have more to do with the circumstances surrounding the measure than the measure itself, it is worth examining the basic complaints leveled so clearly by Senator Warren: that Trump's order is "illegal, unconstitutional and immoral."

Perhaps Warren has engaged in repetition for effect, but calling a measure "illegal" implies that that measure is also "unconstitutional", at least as far as American law is concerned. The reverse is also true: any measure proven to be unconstitutional is also de facto illegal and has no binding force whatever. So arguing that any measure can be both "illegal" and "unconstitutional" either indulges rhetorical redundancy or misrepresents the terms. It may be that Warren intends "illegal" to mean "unstatutory," which simultaneously interprets her statement with more nuance and bankrupts it of all legitimacy, as we shall see. All that she could mean, then, is that Trump's order either follows no current statutory regulation or defies such regulation: plainly, she means the same thing by "unconstitutional."

The Constitution, however, contains a trio of clear references regarding the Executive's role in immigration. Article I, section 8 gives Congress the duty and power to "establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization"; thereafter, Article 6 clearly states that "this Constitution, and all Laws made in Pursuance thereof...shall be the supreme Law of the Land"; and finally, Article II, section 3 ordains that the President shall "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed". The relationship is clear: Congress legislates the rules governing immigration and insofar as those laws conform to the "supreme Law" the President is obliged to enforce them.

Now, the President already has Congressionally delegated powers regarding the control of immigrants and visitors to the United States. 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) states:

  (f)Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.

In pursuance of such aims Trump enacted his temporary halt on immigration from countries deemed to host political elements detrimental to the interests of the United States.

Either Senator Warren is unaware of the existence of this statutory protection of such Executive action, or she disregards it. In no way can she claim it legal to bar the President from acting on such laws made in pursuance of the Constitution. It is his duty to faithfully execute precisely such laws, and so he has done however unsystematically or surprisingly. To obstruct the President in the execution of the law—the measure for which Warren ultimately advocates—would itself be an illegal act.

Concern for those immigrants with previously approved visas currently held in airport custody should not be blown out of proportion either. Immigrants with pre-approved visas will undoubtedly be released quickly and without further bother. I also find the hysterical tweets by Senators Chris Murphy and Diane Feinstein over children in Syria hypocritical to say the least. Their party has overseen and protected the murder of tens of millions of innocent children in the safest space that should ever exist: the womb. And if that were not enough, the idea that the United States can hold all displaced persons from any country without consequence has been roundly disproved (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DFPKNdYFkE&t=441s).

CNN cannot avoid hearing the conclusion that Trump has the law on his side, and that any court which has a respect for rule of law investigating this order would find his ban legal and non-discriminatory (pace whatever Al Jazeera and Harvard Law might suppose http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/wrong-trump-immigration-ban-170130102549929.html). Moreover, anyone who reads the "ban" cannot miss the leniency of Trump's measures. No ban on the Muslim religion (which Trump could have enacted under the statutory banner of "any class of aliens"), no ban on all immigrants from all Middle Eastern countries, and the halt itself is to last no longer than ninety (90) days. Three months from now, this measure will expire, unless further legal measures are needed.

As for the morality of the order, Senator Warren must answer one simple question: which is truly immoral, to temporarily halt the influx of immigrants, many of whom are already forbidden from entering the United States by virtue of the preceding sections of 8 U.S.C. 1182 (particularly 4a, "Public Charges"), or to disregard the safety and security of those citizens of the United States who are and continue to be the primary concern of the President of the United States?

It seems Warren would prefer to permanently prejudice the President against the citizens of the United States rather than rein in or review their suicidal open-door policy.

In the Hall of the Joyful King

     "One who fights for victory and not the truth will have only one ally, that is the devil.  Not the defeat of the intellect, but the acceptance of the heart is the true object for wielding the sword of the spirit."

     The sword of the Spirit, like the scythe of the harvester, hews untruth from under the good and the bad. One is wise to be certain of his own position, motives and arguments before he comes to the test. If he is not so prepared, he should listen and conduct inquiry to avoid becoming a victim on the scaffold of truth: a man who proves that he cannot explain his own position is more likely to search for answers than the man who believes he has explained it without challenge. It is foolish to oppose things that do not work against the Truth, and it is ridiculous to assume a man's position without assuming his posture. One must hear a man through, dig the truth from whatever depth it has been buried and expose it. Little more is needed in argument or evangelization; often, the seed is found to have been left untended, not unplanted.

    One need not fight to win. The victory is won. Now one must fight to conquer hearts which remain at odds with the rightful King. Defeat is for the lost.

  The faerie sight that sharpens the faculties to readily spot incongruities must walk with the affection that the human heart holds for all things true and all things lovable. A true sense of humour bonds inner sight (to see the inside of a song, as it were) and humility; it adores the hidden preternatural side of life. It is Joy, a presentiment of things eternal, a sign of what is to come. It is a sacrament of the hidden side of Christ, the side that delights in all creation, in all Good, in Himself, in the Spirit and in the Father. Perhaps that is why it is so important to live a life of Joy: it is the face of God that Christ asks us to reveal to the world. He remains with us so that our Joy might be complete. It is for us to revel in it. Catholic Joy springs from certainty that comes with sight, even of things seen "in a glass darkly" to be revealed in their fullness at a later time.

   Certainty, because it is rational and well-examined, is not bigotry, the result of a blind faith in opinion. The true bigot not only claims faith as his cornerstone, but as his whole foundation, if not his entire structure of belief.  He makes himself the arbiter of his reality. If he ceases to believe, not only does his belief die, but all that he believed in dies with it. The validity of belief is the difference between the man who holds up a house and the man who lives in one. The first destroys his house if he leaves it, the second leaves either to find the house well-founded or weak; whoever the man may be, however great his faith, only the strength of his will can maintain such a structure; the mind lends it no aid of certainty. If that will is broken, the structure of belief will fall, with the weight of all reality following fast upon it. If his house stands without him, he never loses that sense of longing for what he has made his own.

  Certainty is built upon the foundation of reality, the bedrock that does not sway under pressure from men. Arguments leap forth like buttresses to hold the walls and roof firm to protect the interior from the elements of dissent. Even if one stops believing in what is certain, it remains to touch his mind. He may even forget it exists until he catches the familiar "scent." Then he will unearth it eagerly and show it to his friends, no matter how dirty or dilapidated it has become in his absence. Its original magnificence can be restored and refined through care. Then the house can ring again with the laughter of true Joy, firm and prepared to stand the rumblings even of the laughter of God.  

What is the Ultimate Question?

I have just had the pleasure of reading an article by Grant Freeman entitled "The Ultimate Answer". It was published by Those Catholic Men and is available here: http://thosecatholicmen.com/articles/the-ultimate-answer/. Mr. Freeman's article fired my interest and gave me several thoughts upon which I would like to elaborate. In the film adaption of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings (known on earth as mice) build a supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate the ultimate answer to "life, the universe and everything." Later, when they confront Deep Thought, they receive an unlikely response to their important question.

        "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is forty-two."

        "Forty-two!?"

        "Yes, yes, I thought it over quite thoroughly. It is. It's forty-two."

        "Rubbish!"

Here, Freeman stops, explaining that Douglas Adams may have unwittingly pointed to Christ as the numerical centre of "life, the universe, and everything," as forty-two generations elapsed from the time of Abraham to the birth of Christ in Matthew's genealogy. While Freeman expresses this hint at God's marvelous sense of humour—at the "gracious hand [that] gives not only without, but even against [one's] plans and inclinations" (http://thosecatholicmen.com/articles/how-to-be-a-humble-hero-in-2017/)—the  dialogue continues. Deep Thought defends its answer.

        "It would have been simpler of course to know what the actual question was."

        "But it was the question. The ultimate question. Of everything!"
        "That's not a question! Only when you know the question will you know what the answer means."

        "Give us the ultimate question, then!"

        "I can't. But there is one who can. A computer that will calculate the ultimate question. A computer of such infinite complexity that life itself will form part of its operational matrix, and you yourselves shall take on new, more primitive forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten million year program. I shall design this computer for you and it shall be called [Earth]."

Douglas Adams hits upon a tremendous insight. We all have the answer to life before our very eyes; we are not asking the right questions. Perhaps the trouble is that we are asking the questions. We may become frustrated with answers that we do not reasonably conclude ourselves, but ultimately, the answer is right in front of us. We do not understand that we need it. Like children, we ask "why?" when given a straightforward response. This is neither wrong nor bad, it is profoundly human. But like children, sometimes we need to accept the answer without an explanation or experience to prove the point. Although "the burnt hand oft teaches best," we could avoid the pain by obeying.

Many people are leaving the Church because they feel unfulfilled, unanswered, and unencountered. They live searching for what they want out of life. They fish on the sea, unaware of the current that inexorably draws their boat homewards. They do not listen to the questions that life poses for them. They do not answer what life asks, give what life demands, or follow what life instructs. Their faith does not seek understanding, but to be understood. How many people waste their lives trying to "find themselves" instead of trying to find another? Ultimately, Douglas Adams is right: life is about living for another.

At the end of the film, before the mice can harvest Arthur Dent's brain to complete the reconstruction of the Earth program up to the moment it was destroyed, Arthur desperately tries to dissuade the mice from killing him.

        "You want a question that goes with the answer forty-two? Alright, well, what about what's six times seven? Or how many Vogons does it take to change a light bulb? Here's one: how many roads must a man walk down?"

        "Hey, that's not bad."

        "Fine, fine, take it! Because my head is filled with questions, and I can assure you no answer to any one of them has ever brought me one iota of happiness. Except for one. The one, the only question I ever wanted an answer to: is she the one? And the answer isn't bloody well "forty-two," it's "yes." Undoubtedly, unequivocally, unabashedly, yes. And for one week, one week in my sad little blip of an existence, it made me happy."

In short, Dent exposes the core of life, the ultimate question that beats upon everyone's heart: who will you love? No Catholic could disagree with this question. What is the purpose of life? To be happy. How does one achieve happiness? By living for another. Who is that other? Here, paths diverge. We choose either created things or their Creator. Dent chooses Trillion, and if we are generous to him, he is not entirely wrong. Each spouse through marriage brings the other closer to the ultimate answer. We can hope that Dent and Trillion help each other reach "forty-two." If Freeman is right, then "forty-two" has a more familiar name, one that is "above every other name": Jesus.

Jesus is the answer. What is the ultimate question? Will you give me your heart?

Considerations on Loss

  Sometimes, it is not enough to point out all the physical goods God bestows on us. We can easily point to the evils we suffer and ask why they are with us. For some reason, we refuse to believe that we are the cause of those evils. We seem more willing to feel sorry for ourselves than to realize the extraordinary benefits provided in suffering. Is it just to blame God for taking away our pleasure and to call Him a spiteful tyrant because He allows us to suffer pain?

  Well, no. What goods truly belong to us? Have we any "goods," any "rights" which are not essentially "gifts"? Have we any right to those same goods when we break faith with the gift-giver and abandon our duty to obey Him? And beyond that―well, things get rather complicated.

Those questions have been answered many times in exactly the same way: We take nothing with us beyond the door of death: all we have has been stored up behind it. We will lose every extraneous thing. We will stand naked before the Eternal Judge to account for every act of ours in this lifetime. None shall stand between you and Jesus, none shall stand beside you except Jesus, and He only as you have stood by Him. This is a frightening thought, and many people rightly shy away from it. It has reduced many great saints to tears; it has caused many to flee in terror, seeking solace in this world instead of repentance for the next. When God reveals His completed Providence at the end of the world, it will not affect us in the same way as when He reveals His plan to each man at the end of his life. The Four Last Things offer a keen image on which to meditate through Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell: my death, my judgment, my everlasting reward or punishment.

I have seen many books on the currency of the end times, many readings of the books of Daniel and Revelation that predict an immediate end to the world. Awaiting the imposition of "the Sign of the Beast" has become some Christians' favourite pastime: they wait to slay the dragon or be slain by it as their ultimate (and sometimes only) act for Christ. Catholics, too, suffer from this disease. They sometimes fear that the Church has become, as Protestants often depict it, the whore of Babylon, the modernist's playground. Unfortunately some of us have not yet accepted that we have been living in the end times since Christ's Ascension. We choose to focus on who or what will cause the Great Return. We construct end-time scenarios that require Christ to act, rather than require us to do so. Such millenarianism implies that someone or something will be to blame for Christ's return, that Christ is waiting for things to get to just the right pitch in order to make a clean sweep of it all and start afresh with the eternal New Jerusalem. In this belief, it is easy to place the blame on someone else. We can always find a sin worse than the greatest one we have committed, or a person we presume is more committed to evil than we are. Surely Christ will come to punish them? Scapegoats are easy to find, but seldom fulfill the demands of repentance. In fact, only one has ever done so, and He chose to bear that burden. Christ does not call us to find and destroy the evilest among our numbers, but to eradicate whatever evil lurks within ourselves as if we were the evilest human living. Then we may call others to do likewise. Most people are burdened by their sins and will not take kindly to those who would add more to their load. On the other hand, concentrating on our own end time, we will find it very difficult to offload our burden of sin onto anyone other than Christ. Remembering our own death should remind us to be grateful to Christ Who added Heaven to the list of Last Things possible for mankind. Remembering His death should dissolve any blame that does not fall on ourselves because He died for each of us!

If we forget His marvelous solicitude for us, we can easily blame others for our suffering. And since we cannot change others, we classify them among the lost who caused Christ's suffering. We make orphans of them, forgetting both our own lost patrimony and the promise God makes never to leave us orphans.

  Forgetting that solicitude is the surest means of losing Hope, and as one loses Hope, so hope is lost for him.  

  True Hope, which is united to Joy, is never lost. We discard it when self-pity forms the bitterest part of loss. When our fields lie fallow, we think it profitable at least to harvest the weeds, rather than uproot them, preparing our fields for the next planting and trusting in God to grant a new increase.

  God's love for us is not disproved when He takes away our pleasures; in fact, it is strengthened by suffering. Posit the contrary. If God were truly cruel, He could give us a desire for Joy that would not be fulfilled in this life or the next. But then we must ask: why does He break the illusion before the crucial moment of death? Perhaps He wishes to build the illusion by breaking it once in a while. All right, suppose that is possible. Then why, in the name of all good sense, did Christ come to Earth offering us promises that would not be fulfilled, and suffer a most excruciating death by way of leaving mankind with a certificate of His good Word signed in His own Blood? Could God derive such pleasure from the death of sinners that He would send His only Son to suffer death to entrap them? What folly! What arrogance to think that our sins are so great that God would elaborately disguise this nefarious purpose to effect the death of those He could refuse to create! What device could bring a wrathful God to say

   "What pleasure should I find in the death of the sinner...when he might have turned back from his evil ways, and found life instead? . . . The wicked man abandons his wicked ways, and learns to live honestly and uprightly; he wins his life by it. He bethinks himself, and turns away from his evil doings; there is life, not death, for him."? (Ezechiel 18:23, 27-28, Knox)

  The wrong answer, of course, lies in denying the entirety of what God has revealed about Himself through Jesus. If God is Goodness, Love, Mercy, Justice, Wisdom, Knowledge, Omnipotence, then we must grant Him a measure of action in some way different from our own. A man may create a thing and do with it as he pleases, regardless of what others wish him to do with it, simply because he made it, and it belongs to him. How can we refuse that same courtesy to God, Who created all things and should be able to dispose of them as He sees fit? Is it a question of rights? Again, what rights do creatures have that are not also gifts?

  In fact, I think it safe to say that there are no natural rights before God. Only His magnanimity and solicitude separate us from non-being, only His Son stands between us and death, only His Spirit defends us from damnation. We are not "sinners in the hands of an angry God". What angry God would spare those who had so ruthlessly disowned their parentage?

  Jesus brings the sword to Earth to divide those who see God as the eternal despot from those who know Him as our Eternal Destiny. No middle ground exists; we shall all fly to God or from Him at the end of time. So why choose to wallow in the mud? Now, as always, is the time to work! Self-pity is the first and greatest obstacle to self-abandonment. Take heart! The readiness is all. Prepare for the coming of the King!

The Devil's Greatest Lie

  It is said that the devil's greatest lie has been convincing the world that he does not exist, a claim that accounts for an important aspect of the most sinister―and in fact only―plot against humanity. Something has always seemed to be missing from that consideration of the devil's ultimate goal before the end of time, and now I think I know what it is: his pride.

  In Chapter VII of the eponymous Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Uncle Screwtape reveals part of the devil's plan of misinformation: 

    My Dear Wormwood,

      I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The “Life Force”, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

 Screwtape intimates with some surprise at Wormwood's ignorance that concealment is a temporary means to an end, a midpoint tactic between the age of magic, in which hidden demons could terrorize humans with their power, and the end of the world, at which time the demons shall reveal their hatred unreservedly for the rest of eternity. As Lewis may be correct that disbelief in the devil is a temporary setback as well as a pragmatic measure, it seems right to ask whether or not the devil's greatest lie could have been convincing the world he does not exist. 

  What does the devil gain if he only teaches us to deny his own existence? Surely Satan must also campaign against the existence of God, of Goodness, Truth and Unity to avoid frustrating his own designs. Even if the devil convinces someone that there is nothing in which to place belief, he still has not barred the door against the forces of Existence, Grace, Reason or Will. A person who truly disbelieves everything still passionately thinks that something is worth believing—even if it is the value of his own disbelief, and he may be brought to believe in anything, even the Good God. Once the foot is set to a path, there is no turning back; one must see such a journey of discovery to the end, unless the devil successfully employs his greatest lie. Belief in Another is unnecessary, everything important is contained within oneself, and no journey is needed: the pilgrim is the shrine.

  In such a case, the devil does not want people to disbelieve in him or in everything; rather, he wants them to believe very strongly in themselves alone. If he can introduce someone to the cult of self, he can succeed in his other goals: to destroy grace and hope in the soul and to steal the worship due to God. The cult of self strangles grace through all manner of sin; it also imitates the founding member of that cult, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

  To look at it in another light, no atheist disbelieves in all gods. The "materialist magician" that Lewis alludes to must believe in some all-powerful force controlling everything, and surely, the most irreligious scientific fanatic must equally accept the existence of some controlling, eternal factor in the universe. Nonetheless, every atheist disbelieves in this or that god. Agnostics, on the other hand, are more universally skeptical. Even though the sophistical command "Doubt everything!" crumbles under rational inspection, it is small wonder that sloth lounges in the shadows of skepticism. It is easy to refuse things one does not want, it is easy to celebrate everything and believe nothing (as the Unitarian Universalists do), but it is difficult to believe. Even more to the point, it is perilous to believe. Every belief has its consequences. How differently men live when they grasp the reality of what they believe!

   Accepting the reality of what is perceived, even when it surpasses rational explanation, is called Faith. Faith is an act, a movement of the will to assent to propositions, promises, instructions, commands and consolations revealed by God to His people. Faith is a virtue, a habitual disposition to acquiesce to the authority of God's infinite Wisdom. In short, Faith is a choice to adhere to a body of Truths encompassing every grammatical type from descriptive to imperative. That choice of Faith is embodied in the choice to Love. Men and women of the simplest minds have become the greatest saints because God's Love is as deep as His Wisdom is great, and those who accept God's Love and do as He commands live in the greatness of His Wisdom. For this reason, the devil assaults the will most severely while wracking the intellect with doubts, filling the present moment with lively distractions and chilling the heart with the icy breath of his hatred.

   Yet, for all this effort, what new thing does the devil offer besides the stale self-sufficiency of his first temptation? The punishment for Adam's sin is also its cure. Men must first learn to respect their dependence on God through toil and labour. Is it not significant that Adam and Eve sought knowledge from the forbidden tree, that they wanted to be enlightened and not to learn?

   Sloth is the deadliest fruit of the tree of deadly sins; it plays upon the natural desire for leisure, and turns the object of that desire to selfish pleasures until the body becomes saturated and the will becomes comatose; it poisons the will against leaving the shade and standing in the light. Until a man burns in the Light of Truth, until he purges his body of the gross humours of his idleness and re-enters the Valley of Tears, until he responds to God's purifying grace against Satan's greatest lie, he cannot be saved.

   "If ye love me, keep my commandments."