Dr. Fleming clarifies his latest post:

On anti-Family arguments, most modern leftist and even liberal political theorists have called either for the elimination of families or the reduction of their significance. Freud sees the family as a neurotic reenactment of the primal crime that led to the Oedipus complex, and many feminists have called for the abolition of the family or for doing away with rules on incest. From Locke to modern libertarians, classical liberals have viewed the family as a mere contract between individuals, who are free to dissolve it so long as (according to conservative liberals) it does not impose a burden on others: Locke, for example, though in his usual trivial way that parents should be free to divorce once the children were grown. This is a very long story, one that I began to outline in my first book and will be a large part of my next one, supposing anyone will publish it.

The right-to-life ideology is hopeless and is best ignored. They are well-intentioned people but entirely muddle-headed. What do they imagine the state to be? Is it a universal form of organization found everywhere and possessed of the same duties and rights? Obviously not. Since this is the subject of the book I am at work on, I will confine myself to a few brief points: 1) The state is an historically invented phenomenon, and, depending on definition it was either invented in the ancient Near EAst (a proposition I do not accept) or at the end of the Middle Ages. In either case, political organizations is a varied phenomenon. In general, the household has been a castle into which rulers do not intrude except in extreme cases–treason and great crimes like murder. 2) In the Christian world, it was the Church’s job to regulate marriage, not the state’s. 3) The transfer of authority from Church to state has been one of the great mistakes of the Renaissance/Reformation, and the consequences include state education, child protection statutes, no-fault divorce, and Gay Marriage. Enough is enough. 3) The language of the common good being invoked is Marxism with a human face. Decent societies never entrusted the rulers with some authority over private and family life as modern states possess. The most aggressive states–say Renaissance Florence and Venice–did establish mechanisms (e.g., a dowry fund or laws on dowries and inheritances) to promote marriage and procreation for the purpose of avoiding a decline in the citizenry (a legitimate concern), but Christian marriages were arranged between the families involved. In much of Europe, by the 11th century, the Church had begun to play a more aggressive role, partly to eliminate the irregularities that persisted among the barbarian French and Germans. In Tuscany, however, marriage did not even involve the presence of a priest, much less a Church ceremony, until the Council of Trent.

Finally, let us be clear about what we mean by terms like state and common good. If the state is a permanent institution, separate from the people it presumes to rule, and the judge of its own authority, we must suffer it without necessarily trusting or respecting it. If the state is simply an organic expression of the way people live together and work out their problems, it should not really be called a state but something else, like commonwealth, republic, politeia, or civitas. In either case, it does not exist to create or enforce virtue, as Thomas says, but to maintain conditions favorable to a virtuous life. Does anyone think that the states of the USA or the Federal Government are even making a feeble attempt at doing that? If not, then the state cannot be entrusted with teh power to regulate marriage or the rearing and educating of children.

I am not suggesting, ------, that the Church is in a position today to reassume its historical powers. I am saying that working to build up an anti-Christian immoralist regime is the last thing that Christians should be doing. As much as it is possible, one can rely on private resources, on local communities and parishes. Where this is not possible, we must go the law and treat our neighbors as gentiles, as Our Lord instructed. There is no simple solution, but there are broad outlines of the direction in which we should be going.