An Interesting Episode of The General Eclectic?

I enjoyed filling in for @roddreher on "The General Eclectic" last week.

A great discussion on:

▪️Post-liberal conservatism
▪️Localism vs nationalism
▪️The limits of religious liberty

with shoutouts to @SohrabAhmari, @RyanTAnd, @PatrickDeneen, @DouthatNYT, and more⬇️ https://t.co/o19oqLKoKK

— Emile Doak (@EADoak) June 21, 2021

Classical Liberalism?

Or is the author of Politics After Christendom is just endorsing Protestant toleration of non-Protestant Christian sects? Maybe the reviewer is projecting too much of his own liberalism onto the author.

“Conservative Liberalism” after Christendom https://t.co/RUVefDjC1k

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) October 12, 2020

Public Discourse

Book might be worth checking it. I disagree that the Noahic covenant is a fundamental foundation of understanding political authority and that Christendom was a problem. Christian Empire, especially with the patriarch of Rome as a competitor, was a problem.

Related:
Politics After the Noahic Covenant? by John Shelton

Reformed Forum Podcast
(Youtube)
Reformed Faith and Practice review




Office Hours podcast

The New Geneva Podcast

Mere Fidelity Podcast

Review by Justin Hawkins

Review by Brian K. Miller

FSSPX and Religious Liberty

Fortnight of Freedom

Hadn't heard anything about it in the last two years... The NCRep is probably happy that it fizzled out. A failure at "spiritual activism" by the USCCB?

Fortnight For Freedom: Our Most Cherished Liberty

Illiberal Catholicism

John Zmirak, Illberal Catholicism

Thought about it, but I won't be wading into this discussion...

Rejecting Zmirak’s Rejection of ‘Illiberal Catholicism’ by Andrew Haines
Illiberal Catholicism, the Moral Self, and the Political Community by Aaron Taylor
Discussion of Zmirak's piece at WWWTW.

Related:
Liberalism is a Sin
CDK, On Tolerance, the Benignity of the Christian
Why are U.S. conservatives so obsessed with monarchies?
Tocqueville on Keeping Our Countercultural Churches

Zenit: Cardinal Zen Ze-Kium: 'Tyranny is Encouraged by Silence'

Post by Zenit News Agency.

George Weigel Reviews Russell Shaw

U.S. Catholics: Overly Assimilated?

And seems to give the nationalist, neo-Yankee proposition-nation view as the basis of his critique (which would not be surprising given his reputation as a theo-con):

To read the history of the Catholic Church in the United States as a centuries-long struggle for assimilation and acceptance certainly sheds light on one dynamic in the development of the Church in America. Yet too close a focus on the question, “Is it possible to be a good Catholic and a good American?” is to argue the question of Catholicism and America on the other guy’s turf. Once, the “other guy” challenging Catholics’ patriotic credentials was militant Protestantism; now, the other guy is militant secularism. To play on the other guy’s turf, however, is to concede at the outset that the other guy sets the terms of debate: “We (militant Protestants/militant secularists) know what it means to be a good American; you (Catholics) have to prove yourselves to us.”

That’s not the game, however. It wasn’t really the game from 1776 through the 1960 presidential campaign—when militant Protestantism was the aggressor—and it isn’t the game today. The real game involves different, deeper questions: “Who best understands the nature of the American experiment in ordered liberty, and who can best give a persuasive defense of the first liberty, which is religious freedom?”

The nineteenth-century U.S. bishops and intellectuals whose enthusiasm for American democracy Russell Shaw now views skeptically (and, yes, they did go over the top on occasion) did get one crucial point right: the American founders “built better than they knew,” i.e., the founders designed a democratic republic for which they couldn’t provide a durable moral and philosophical defense. But the long-despised (and now despised-again) Catholics could: Catholics could (and can) give a robust, compelling account of American democracy and its commitments to ordered liberty.

Mid–twentieth-century Catholic scholars like historian Theodore Maynard and theologian John Courtney Murray picked up this theme and made it central to their reading of U.S. Catholic history. Murray presciently warned that, if Catholicism didn’t fill the cultural vacuum being created by a dying mainline Protestantism, the “noble, many-storied mansion of democracy [may] be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged.”

Related:
Religious freedom and the need to wake up by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

The Assault of the State on Marriage

The Revenge of Religious Liberty by Thomas Storck

I think Mr. Storck attributes too much to [Lockean] liberalism as a cause - rather it is the predicament of an "immigrant" Church (rather than a "missionary" Church) in conflict with a growing, centralized state that is no longer Christian. Mr. Storck still adheres to a nationalist understanding of the founding - the federal government is national government and the ultimate authority in all public matters.

The impossibility of gay marriage and the threat of biopolitical control by John Milbank (Patrick Deneen comments)

Homosexual Activist Admits True Purpose of Battle is to Destroy Marriage | Illinois Family Institute

What Few Deny Gay Marriage Will Do

Related:
UK: 'New law will compel churches to offer same-sex marriages'

Homosexuality: Yes, I Am Surprised

Oz Conservative: Abbott's scheme

Loss of Community Means More Power for the State

Raimondo vs. Rauch: The Marriage Debate You Haven’t Heard Before

Ann Barnhardt on Defending Liberty

L. Auster recommends the following video:


I might have seen her name mentioned at VFR before, but I had not bothered to look at her website until now. Apparently she is Catholic. (And a traditionalist might ask, "How traditional?") I don't know how good her business/economic analysis and advice are.

Add Another to the "Why Bother?" Category

Rod Dreher, Douthat Says ‘Cut The Crap’

No compromise is possible because of opposing first principles. So why bother to turn Douthat's column into a discussion? Those who support SSM, etc., will not budge on what they think is a fundamental question of "equality." It's a waste of The American Conservative's web "space" and does little to advance a positive program for renewal.

"A live and let live" policy does not seem to be tenable, though it is questionable that those proponents of SSM would be willing to back up their "enlightened" morality themselves, instead relying upon the power of the state. That's where we are.

From Public Discourse

Expertise and Ethics
Anthony Esolen
The virtuous life is an art; and one learns art not from theorists but from the artists themselves.

Marriage, Religious Liberty, and the “Grand Bargain”
Robert P. George
In the name of “marriage equality” and “non-discrimination,” liberty—especially religious liberty and the liberty of conscience—and genuine equality are undermined.

Religious Freedom Under Fire
Melissa Moschella
The threats to religious freedom in our nation are real, and they’re serious. And things will get worse unless we defend our rights. The first in a two-part series.

The 2012 Napa Institute Conference

Insight Scoop has a description of this year's program.

Items of Interest, 29 June 2012

Thomas Storck, Corporate Personhood and 14th Amendment Rights
World made by hand by Lindsay Curren (EB)
Ruthless extrapolation by Tom Murphy

MATT VIDAL, Apple’s American Workforce And The Service Economy

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, It Came From Washington

Peak Oil and Energy:
Peak Traffic
John Michael Greer, The Cussedness of Whole Systems
Peak Oil Exhorts Us to Reflect (EB)
Björn Lindahl , Svenska Dagbladet / Aleklett's Energy Mix

Natural Resources:
Waste Not by Jo Homan (EB)
Thirst for power: How coal, nuclear and gas waste our water (EB)
by Wendy Wilson, Travis Leipzig & Bevan Griffiths-Sattenspiel
Drip irrigation expanding worldwide by Sandra Postel
Schools in Transition: mapping watersheds by Isabel Carlisle

Obamacare:
Jerry Salyer on the Fortnight of Freedom Campaign: Freedom is Not the Good
The Day After: A Declaration of War by Christopher Manion
Cardinal Dolan: Freedom is Rooted in Human Dignity

Six Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling

Kevin Carson, The Manufactured Debate Over Obamacare

The Myth of the Free-Market American Health Care System

From the left:
DAVE LINDORFF, Why The ObamaCare Ruling Stinks
MARK DUDZIC, Supreme Court Ruling Means Health Care Remains A Commodity
CLARK NEWHALL, MD, ObamaCare As Corportists United
ANTHONY DIMAGGIO, Health Care And The Hollow Hope
FRANK SMECKER, Why The ObamaCare Ruling Was A Victory For The Corporate Right

Catholic:
Let’s Raise a Glass to the Bad Popes! by Donald Prudlo
Archbishop Fulton Sheen Becomes "Venerable"

Getting a Grip on Envy by Paul Kokoski

Is Nice a Vice?

The Voices of 20th-Century Chinese Martyrs (via Insight Scoop)

Misc:
Wonder Girls _ Like this _ FLASHMOB & MINI EVENT

Should We Be Suspect of the ‘Fortnight for Freedom’? by Andrew Haines

There are at least two definitions of religious liberty that come to mind. The first has to do with one’s ability, as a voluntary agent, to pursue unencumbered and freely the eternal truths that he or she deems most appropriate. Another concerns the license that one might be granted under law to pursue those truths even in the face of opposing religious convictions, held by other citizens or even by the state, itself.

License granted by the law? Or a right protected by law? Are there limits to the freedom of conscience? How is freedom of conscience to be balanced by the demands of law or right authority?

Fortnight for Freedom

Went to Atonement today; experienced the Anglican Use again. At the end of the Mass there were some prayers for religious liberty; one of the prayers seemed inspired by the Pledge of Allegiance. Were these prayers composed as a part of the Fortnight for Freedom Campaign. Does the campaign go beyond necessary political rhetoric into an actual endorsement of the errors of modern democracy and liberalism?







Fortnight for Freedom: Why Now? by José H. Gomez
Launching the Fortnight for Freedom by Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

"Nationalist" conservatism

Early Religious Freedom in America by Justin Dyer

A discussion of religious freedom by focusing exclusively on the "Founders" and with a nationalist interpretation of the Constitution? One then is blind to the reality of the established churches in the states and the like. Intellectual inertia or blindness, perhaps, but it keeps the author of this piece, and the website, from making any real advances in presenting an alternative to statism.

CNS: Religious liberty is focus in 'For Greater Glory'

Zenit: The Cristero War: the Story Behind the Cover Up
Historian Gives Evaluation of Film, Explains What Happened in 1920s Mexico

American Religious Liberty

Does religious libery trump other rights in liberal thinking? Probably not. Should the Church be framing the argument in terms of religious liberty? (Is that the one that is most likely to persuade?) Fighting for tolerance of organizations with different viewpoints on "private morality"?

If separatism is inevitable, why fight it?

Whispers in the Loggia: "Now We Must Be Loyal Americans By Being Bold and Courageous Catholics"

HOMILY OF THE MOST REVEREND WILLIAM E. LORI, DD, STD
SIXTEENTH ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE

SOLEMN MASS OF INSTALLATION
CATHEDRAL OF MARY OUR QUEEN
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
16 MAY 2012

KofC
Archdiocese of Baltimore

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, First Things First



MoJ: Paulsen's Theory of Religious Liberty: "The Priority of God" (the paper)


Related:
Archdiocese of Baltimore