Evil: Catholic versus Protestant Points of View
By Joseph Andrew Settanni
As Malcolm Muggeridge, a quite profound thinker, had correctly understood the serious matter, present civilization wishes to exist as if God does not exist, which is, in fact, a situation unprecedented in all of recorded human history.
Religion is, thus, to be summarily dismissed as a merely antiquarian subject unfit for any intelligent public discourse on important affairs of men and nations. Such a circumstance is not to be thought of as being quite evil or malicious in its desired intent, according to the progressives and their supporters.
Modern men, furthermore, are supposed to then logically compartmentalize their lives. This includes separating parts of their brain so as to (it is assumed) objectivize reality. One’s religion or its substitute, if it exists, is not supposed to ever really impinge upon other parts of a person’s normal life, unlike the premodern or classical world where people had lived holistic lives by which their religion or faith had informed, enlightened, guided, etc. the entirety of their lives. There was no (expected) dividedness.
Modernity, then, has had consequences, along with its industrialization, rationalization, urbanization, bureaucratization, standardization, routinization, and other such examples of modernization. All are to be interpreted as unqualified signs of progress or, at least, that used to be the proper perspective, especially prior to the secularized West being, in effect, morally disarmed by an aggressive Islam.
It is so often thought these days, therefore, that whatever possible metaphysical/religious orientation might, perhaps, exist within one’s being should not axiomatically so reflect upon a person’s cultural, historical, political, etc. views or any such life-centered perspective to any significant degree. And, Christianity is not meant to appear in the public square.
Developing a Theology of Evil and Politics
Such thinking is opposed to the classical or traditional consideration of moral order and public virtue as is seen in Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, and his Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. But, these days, this is the distinctly minority point of view that is clearly countercultural; and yet, the ongoing conflict in thinking can be illustrated vividly by discussing the often clear interaction of politics and evil, set now in the contemporary world, especially considering the case of America and present political crises.
Religion, for the dedicated modernists, is not to be seen appearing in the secular public square; it is, basically speaking, just a private matter as to its manifestation. The vast majority of liberals, leftists, moderates, centrists, and even many conservatives would, on the whole, concur with such a general assessment of contemporary social reality and man’s basic (nonreligious) place within the economic, political, cultural, etc. universe.
But, into this supposedly neat and tidy cosmos comes the critical confrontation, sooner or later, with such extremely difficult questions that cover, e. g., the question of evil in this world, which even (most) dedicated modernists have not been able to dismiss lightly. Neither social nor political reality gets exempted from discussions and considerations of why there is injustice, suffering, terrorism, and all manner and degrees of excessive unpleasantness, why, in short, Utopia does not (yet) exist on earth.
Metaphysics supplies clues; and, religion, among the predominant majority of human beings in recorded history, tops the favored list as to the attempted explanations given.
Secularism and, in general, many secularist attitudes and opinions are meant to appear as being just normal and fairly acceptable for the majority of contemporary people. After all, legal problems do develop whenever religion is brought into public view as with public schools and the assumed need to remove all mention of God from the classrooms for fear of contaminating the children with any, by definition, improper religious messages.
Of course, this modernist politico-neurosis is actually new to historical times since prior ages had not dismissed the Lord from being considered a normal part of all political, social, cultural, etc. order in this world, as the eminent Catholic historian Christopher Dawson would have agreed.
Modernity is, therefore, clearly meant to be quite fundamentally consonant with the anthropocentric viewpoint that, logically speaking, favors only secular or secular enough approaches to reasoning, life, culture, politics, economics, and other areas of human endeavor. Such cognition makes the developing of a theology of evil difficult or, perhaps, impossible since relativism, subjectivism, and situation ethics has too often come to rule over judgments that wish or claim to be value neutral; few people seem to want to be judgmental; sin, for instance, is a medieval notion unworthy of truly modern intellects.
Truth becomes a relative value and evil itself a highly debatable or even ambiguous proposition, subject to examinations directed by positivism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism, that seeks no moral normativity in hollow pursuit of nonjudgmental attitudes; and so, a terrorist becomes someone else’s honored freedom fighter and “evil” gets defined ideologically as anything that opposes the Left, not a definition encompassing only gross moral turpitude or intense wickedness.
All moral opinions become then equal and (by the way) equally worthless in their explicit or, at least, imputed subjectivity added to a vigorously growing ambiguity in cognition. This is the (often disguised pursuit) of modern objectivity (read: nominalist subjectivity) that really becomes the express lane for those driving toward Hell.
But, human beings rarely, if ever, do follow such precise modeling to a truly perfected degree of being, thinking, or acting in a paradigmatic way all of the time. Even those, e. g., wishing to be evil cannot be so perfectly all of the time. And, no matter just how rational someone may think he is, there is still the popular appeal to metaphysical beliefs, under various guises, that may even fool a dedicated secularist into thinking that he is simply being a pragmatist. Self-delusion is then the worst kind of delusion yet imaginable; it becomes, whether noticed or not, self-enforced.
Theological presuppositions, however, still exist in that they can be unconsciously or otherwise hidden within the cognitive structure of one’s intellect, regardless of how superbly rational and highly scientific a mind that may presumably be so possessed. After all, one call correctly recall that, e. g., Dr. Albert Einstein had, it is so known, disagreed vehemently with Dr. Werner Heisenberg’s Quantum Theory’s Uncertainty Principle by, then, overtly asserting that: “God does not play dice.” Of course, this is hardly a scientifically based refutation, as one may rightly guess.
Religion or the perception, however supposedly tenuous, of metaphysical principles of thought do, in fact, impinge upon many human thought processes much more than is ever really generally suspected or, perhaps, admitted to by many people most of the time. Few if any folks do think or speak as if from a total tabula rasa; they have with them as they have, undoubtedly, acquired presumptions, prejudices, presuppositions, and other such (minimal or otherwise) starting points for reasoning and drawing what are considered to be either logical or fair conclusions. All of this ought to be really common sense stuff.
This necessarily covers every human being. Protestants and Catholics are, of course, still among the category of beings classified as humans, so they are not to be at all exempted from such a normal and rational consideration.
The topic of evil will here be chosen, so as to better illustrate how and why different metaphysical frameworks of thought can and do lead people into coming to very different conclusions; but, regardless, human beings need to be recognized as political animals, according to Aristotle, who naturally engage in political life, except for the ever tiny minority of hermits. More than that, no committed Christian can actually divorce his politics from his religion in that the latter is to inform the former concerning ethical, moral, and spiritual right versus wrong, which is the common sense view.
There is no doubt that theological speculation is involved concerning the subject at hand, which can be very well illuminated by reading such interesting books as Fr. James V. Schall’s Roman Catholic Political Philosophy, Heinrich A. Rommen’s The State in Catholic Thought: A Treatise in Political Philosophy, and Frederick D. Wilhelmsen’s Christianity and Political Philosophy; these are to be among the important sources of knowledge that could be cited; and, there are epistemological consequences.
It is too often thought these days, wrongly, that the proper understanding and comprehension of evil is really or, perhaps, basically the same for both Catholicism and Protestantism. This is not true. These are two separate and opposed religions that do not have any agreement whatsoever as to what ultimate theological truth consist of; naturally, therefore, their different interpretations of evil and the proper theology pertaining to its understanding are necessarily opposed to each other, which ought logically and reasonably to be, thus, simply expected.
Difficulties of interpretation are to be encountered, for religious differences, especially when they are fundamental, lead to different ways of reasoning; and, religious truth must be defended no matter if people, among the unbelievers, may be offended. However, the ecumenical movement starting in the mid-20th century and after, allied so easily to the innumerable theological, intellectual, and especially spiritual errors coming out of the moral and spiritual fiasco known as the Second Vatican Council, have naturally exacerbated multiple errors of thought, of theological confusion.
Ecumenism is the god that failed; religious indifference and ambiguity, instead, arose to fill a gap of contemporary belief, not any crescive unity of faith as had been earlier expected. Moreover, Vatican II contributed mightily toward the great Christian apostasy in Europe and elsewhere, though its blind and myopic supporters vehemently deny this rather obvious truth.
The permanently enormous set differences existing between Catholicism and Protestantism have been, therefore, too often semantically papered over in the wrongful desire to supposedly achieve a syncretic-synthetic understanding of a then modernized, broad-based Christianity; this is even though Christianity is not a religion, only a religious orientation toward belief, however strong or tenuous, in the Christ.
But, the attempted dilution and consequent misinterpretation of both Catholicism and Protestantism does a great disservice to both faiths by obfuscating theological disputes, minimizing problem areas, and applying a destructive reductionism concerning opposed doctrines and teachings. This then has definite consequences regarding interpretations of society, culture, politics, etc. If fundamental agreement cannot really be found totally upon the subject of something that ought to be as simple and basic as a matter called evil qua evil, then how can there actually be any true concurrence upon other matters, in an ecumenical era?
One so perceives that ecumenism then usually exists as a lie, especially whenever there is a desire to please or to become an accommodationist; a honest ecumenism, in direct contrast, does not seek to minimize or disguise surely pivotal and fundamental divisions of thought; it is so meant to initiate and sustain genuine dialogue toward, by definition, the mutually wanted end of true and undivided unity, which from the (orthodox) Catholic point of view only means acceptance of Catholicism, not any alternative.
The plain and undivided unanimity sought is true orthodoxy, not heterodoxy. Thus, what normally exists as ecumenism is surely an untruth and ought always to be rejected for the falsehood it always is. There can never be the absurd union of heresy and orthodoxy under one roof, for a house divided against itself cannot stand, Satan cannot cast out Satan; his kingdom would not stand. Those who do sincerely seek creating the reign of Christ by proclaiming Christianity ardently and logically then desire and are, thus, to relatedly profess and confess a single and united church, one universal religious confession, not an ever increasing multiplicity of Protestant competing and arguing sects. That situation is a real scandal.
Otherwise, the presumed search for a religious common ground ends up becoming, sooner or later, a demonic mine field, not the holy pasture of sheep following a single shepherd, the Vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome since the time of St. Peter himself. There is, as was founded upon the Rock, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church to be properly located at the See of St. Peter. And, yet, as it is known, religious, political, and other divisions, differences, do haunt this world. What, however, needs to be made known here for the better clarification of the facts?
Few people today easily realize how political differences of thought are related, sooner or later, directly to religious differences; back in the 19th century, two people as widely different as the anarchist/socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 – 1865), to his then own utter astonishment, had ended up so totally agreeing with Henry Edward Cardinal Manning (1808–1892) that all political disagreements can be, actually, traced back finally to religious ones.
And, moreover, this theological and political matter is yet much more important than most people ever realize, since it intimately affects one’s basic view of reality and cognate causation; moreover, it rather critically defines, therefore, one’s own view of the world.
On May 6, 2013, Rush Limbaugh, who is a Protestant, gave his rendition on his radio show about the thinking of liberals and leftists, which was in line, logically enough, with his own Protestantism and its theology. The orthodox, traditionalist Roman Catholic viewpoint is, however, so fully opposed to his considerations that are denominated as errors in reasoning and logic; this directly contrary point of view can be termed the thinking, as seen in Fr. C. N. R. McCoy’s The Structure of Political Thought: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, of the traditionalist right, though not ever conservatism or, for that matter, neoconservatism. Why is this said?
Limbaugh had contended and conjectured that the acts of the progressivists, Obama, Hillary Clinton, etc., such as what then was allowed to happen in Africa at Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, were purely accidental or just coincidental.1 [see: NOTES] The events, meaning on the American side side of things, were not planned. Obama and his ilk, he further added, are narcissistic egotists who do believe in their own propaganda; they were simply, as a result, unprepared for a terrorist attack.
Since they assumed that the Islamic world hated President George W. Bush, they then also assumed that attitudes among the Islamic terrorists and their supporters would be much more highly favorable to Obama et al. When anything occurs opposite to this grand illusion, such people are then in a state of complete denial and categorically refuse to think that they could be wrong. So, the Benghazi attack was, of course, never really expected; it was, in effect, an accident of circumstances in that part of the world, as the conservative talk show personality had so contended.
Limbaugh’s obvious Protestantism and its nominalist view of evil does not, therefore, permit him to think otherwise, for notions of Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide have consequences pertaining to how people interpret actions, how thoughts do get formulated. He attributes incompetence, truly fundamental ineptitude, as the primary key to correctly understand Obama, etc., as did his late father, who said the same thing about John F. Kennedy, meaning as to why he, in 1960, could not vote for such a politician.
Thus, incompetence, according to both Limbaughs, is to be seen as being the real problem to be appropriately confronted about why liberals and leftists in power do such things that can lead and, in fact, usually do normally lead to these obvious disasters. Someone steeped in Protestantism could not think otherwise; his nominalist-inspired cognition would not, therefore, allow him to think differently.
The contrary view, however, is that because their Leftist ideology is intrinsically and integrally evil what happened should not, therefore, be ever absurdly thought of as being merely or mostly accidental or, perhaps, just coincidental to such an occasion. While it is freely granted that such power-obsessed people are, by their clearly immoral natures, truly narcissistic egotists lost in their own psycho-worlds, however, such considerations have nothing substantial to do with objective, real-world consequences of the actual evil that empowers them. A sort of backwards misinterpretation has been done by Limbaugh, a man of obviously limited intelligence.
What really then occurs is not ever directly due to their alleged inherent incompetence as at Benghazi, rather, it is an intrinsic manifestation of the direct evil that they intend to do that can and does then too often result in creating successful acts of evil, again, as at Benghazi. What is, thus, really going on with Limbaugh’s “reasoning” by which he cannot come to perceive the rather obvious truth?
Protestantism, again, because of its nominalism, splits man’s soul/mind against itself as it, in a parallel fashion, divides faith against reason; regardless of that, however, one of the important questions to be dealt with by any proper subject known as moral theology is the problem of evil.
Thus, Catholicism and Protestantism, not surprisingly, have significantly different and opposed set views regarding the nature and workings of evil; moreover, no general or generalized Christianity can develop a comprehensive consensus on this point or, supposedly, fill in the vast gap between two very different faiths. Ecumenism doesn’t work. It can be, also, usefully added that there is no true Judeo-Christian religious tradition/attitude because, again, Judaism and Catholicism will not, therefore, have the same theological interpretation of evil, including about what happened at Benghazi.
Thus, to here pick another important historical example for critical examination, it was JFK’s deliberate betrayal of the Cuban anti-Communist fighters at the Bay of Pigs fiasco that had lead to the failure and loss of life, not questioning about degrees or qualities or questions of mere ineptitude; positive evil was, in fact, deliberately done, and the resulting historical betrayal was not, therefore, somehow accidental or supposedly coincidental to the circumstances. Incompetence was not the reason for what occurred.
It was, in fact, supremely intentional and openly made so by the evil involved in the overt decision to not then oppose Communist tyranny actively. Castro’s bloody regime was not to be threatened. Assumed “incompetence” was, therefore, a true result of the evil involved and intended, not just an assumed side effect of some indefinite kind or other, due to often alleged inexperience/incompetence.
One can then perceive clearly that, such terribly disastrous events as at Benghazi or the Bay of Pigs, though admittedly set scores of years apart in time, are yet both intimately and immediately linked ideologically. The truly consistent Liberal-Leftist ideological response is so frightening to behold but, nonetheless, still real. And, the consequences, meaning people getting killed, are usually quite similar.
The real betrayal of American interests, of the needed struggle against tyranny, is always intentional, not coincidental, as Limbaugh erroneously believes, nor is it, upon correct analysis, just a matter of assumed incompetence. For the sake of the mentally deficient, however, no conspiracy theory is being engaged here for any understanding and comprehending of such events, in case this needs to be made clear to mindless dolts. Rather, what needs to be rightly mentioned is the truly egregious matter of the unconscionable treason committed by politically placed agents of the Left in the White House, in the Executive Brach of the Federal government.
Ideological cognition trumps any practical or pragmatic considerations when American efforts can be so thwarted to serve the evil interests of progressive thought and actions; conditions and circumstances are, of course, then allowed to occur or develop by which Leftist forces opposed to this country, to the Free World, can succeed in their agenda and/or efforts; in summation, liberals, e. g., almost never see any real enemies on the Left but do quite actively perceive all the set time the supposedly terrifying existence, though almost always imaginary, on the Right, for a “religious” fervor and intensity exists within ideological-collectivist thought.
It is, thus, not surprising that a tremendously skewed vision of the world and all reality itself necessarily results, therefore, from this ever heavily ideological defining of all evil (read: the Right) versus (Leftist) good. But, as has been historically witnessed, every usually bombastic attempt to forcefully kick religion out the front door invariably results in surreptitiously disguised attempts to, somehow or other, smuggle it in through the back door, under whatever euphemism might prove useful to the task.
Added into all this must, of course, be the always important Catholic versus Protestant divide over the Catholic doctrine of free will versus Protestant determinism and predestination doctrine.2 The question of evil must then be properly framed or put into the needed context of how free or not is man’s will.
If the doctrine of free will is a mere theological fiction, then, yes, one can “reason” toward thinking that liberals/leftists do the various things they do out of their incompetence, rather than the deliberate, by design, and not accidental evil of their own ideological preferences and orientations as acts of will, not, e. g., merely coincidental side effects. Those can be either intended or unintended depending upon circumstances, situations, etc. but do not ever affect the primary question at hand whatsoever. If there is no free will, then the choice of evil is not really a free choice because degrees of determinism or even of fatalism can take hold.
It is, thus, quite theologically consistent for Limbaugh and other Protestant political conservatives to (incorrectly) attribute the actions and thoughts of the progressives to their incompetence. However, no one is saying here that merely mortal creatures are able to actually exercise God-like free will, according to often Protestant and other misinterpretations of the Catholic doctrine. On the other hand, only an extremist would so contend that man is just a kind of puppet of God being pulled by invisible strings, with no real thoughts regarding any kind of actual self-responsibility. An absolute fatalism is, also, dismissed as an option here.
It is clear, moreover, that no free choice (in and of itself) is ever infinitely inexhaustible nor is it then so absolutely limited for human beings, as to be completely meaningless or, perhaps, entirely arbitrary to the point of sheer absurdity. All such possible kinds of extreme philosophical or theological views are, therefore, rejected totally as being nonsensical and not at all applicable to the cogent argumentation being, thus, deliberately presented.
One may properly understand that, within the terrene scope of the requisite human ability to have the fundamental capacity to (imperfectly) exercise free will [in that only God can perfectly exercise free will], people, therefore, are still free to really choose between good and evil, for sin is ever truly the empowerment of evil. Both Protestantism and Catholicism, however, do have not just significantly theological but, also, major indicative or directive intellectual consequences, cognitive results, as to the genuinely opposed belief structures being offered to all the willing believers, inclusive of the correct understanding of evil.
Reaching the Right Conclusion
That does not axiomatically imply, however, that all and every possible consequence of a choice is, thus, foreseen and fully accepted prior to and inclusive of that choice, since Godlike wisdom, understanding, and comprehension is not actually possible for mere humans. However, both ideas and actions have significances. It helps to know, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, that evil is the deprivation of what is good; nothing in evil is positive, only a negation, which is why Hell is always full of literal fury and why every nihilistic nightmare and Nietzschean will to power is definitively hellish in its so vile inspiration.
Definitions and explanations of evil are, it can be admitted, seemingly limitless. In the 4th century, St. Ambrose, in his work entitled Hexaem, had stated: “There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience.” Such a statement appears clear enough. St. Augustine, in the 5th century, had earlier concurred with the same later view of St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Enchiridion, by thoughtfully saying: “What is that which is called evil, but the privation of good? … But to lessen the good is to give rise to evil.”
The Angelic Doctor of the Church, in his justly famous Compendium of Theology, makes the Divinity’s role readily understood concerning both good and evil, in cogently writing that: “Take away all evil, and much good would go with it. God’s care is to bring good out of the evils which happen, not to abolish them.” The consequences of Original Sin, prefaced upon the existence of free will, lead to having fallen creatures living in a fallen world subject to evil, which then means that human beings are, by definition, imperfect, not the Supreme Being. It becomes difficult to avoid considerations of theology.
Not surprisingly, governments or regimes in this world that seek to ideologically create a New Eden end by making a hell on earth in their ever vain attempts to supposedly abolish perceived evils such as, e.g., opposition to sodomite marriage by immorally legalizing such a gross and unnatural abomination, which spits upon God, His creation, and moral law itself. However, because evil is only a negative and not a positive force, it lacks any power unless people do exercise their wills to effect evil, which can even be seen in attempts at political perfection.
Perfectionism set within terrene political orders, assorted regimes, is the manifestation of hatred shown toward the Lord Almighty through an immanentist orientation in politics, meaning, logically, that all the ideologies of modernity and postmodernity evince either greater or lesser contempt for God’s creation. Politics, however, ought never to become a supposed ersatz religion or a substitute for religion; it becomes then a form of ideological idolatry first seen, e. g., during the French Revolution.
A century later, Pope Leo XIII’s Libertas Praestantissimum helped clarify the needed theological linkage between political order and how evil is to be dealt with, in his sagaciously writing that “… for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability.”
And, this kind of sound thinking can be easily added to proper considerations of classical Natural Law teachings, though not the modernist law of nature, based upon nominalism, as was erroneously developed by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, the French philosophes, etc., which, if examined closely, has relied much upon felicitous Protestant ways of thinking.
Martin Luther went to one extreme by having a contempt for human reason; John Calvin went to the other extreme by wanting to rationalize theology in a legalistic manner, as if it were a sort of deified or, rather, reified reason; every man, one way or another, ends up becoming his own pope as to both individual judgment and the question of authority. Religion became a sportive and speculative game, while traditional and orthodox theological science was pushed aside to make way for truly thunderous religious revolt to be mildly called a reformation.
The working out of the principles of Protestantism creates, eventually, a true intellectual inversion of thinking about the subject of evil, due to the Lutheran denial of free will added to Calvin’s thoughts on predestination. Interesting reading on Luther and Calvin would include Thomas P. Neill’s Makers of the Modern Mind, a most cognitively insightful and illuminating volume.
One can see this troubling noetic inversion, most vividly, by considering the theological and historical case of the Puritans who claimed that they wanted to appropriately and theologically purify Christian faith by eliminating all papist (read: Roman Catholic) excesses, priestcraft, and superstition. It is often the case, nonetheless, that those who forcefully try to push certain metaphysical principles right out the front door do end up, sooner or later, trying to secretly or furtively push those basically same principles, seemingly, in through the back entrance. Every heresy, sooner or later, claims to be an orthodoxy.
However the matter may get denied, the plain situation did develop that when the Puritan experiment, the City on a Hill, necessarily had failed to eliminate sin (read: evil) from their Saints, the question of sin ceased to be naturally intrinsic and, over time, became supposedly extrinsic to (Protestant) human nature. Really? How so and what might this imply?
From trying to studiously reform religion and its Christian people, the effort, generations later, had so turned toward reforming institutions or, when perceived as a great evil, to eliminate institutions entirely as may be thought needed. Unsurprisingly, the descendants of the New England Saints became, most of them, warmly and, some, hotly committed, e. g., to the 19th century Abolitionist movement against the institution of slavery. The vast majority of American Catholics, as is historically known about the era, were basically indifferent to this particular (read: Protestant) issue.
Though not, of course, always openly admitted or acknowledged as such, however, the main social and psychological perception of evil became an extrinsic subject, which can be observed as being much more of a Protestant matter, again, as the noted working out of Protestant principles, when considering, e. g., Unitarianism and Universalism.
When it was so found, by the later Puritans, impossible to religiously perfect human beings, the move was made toward attempting to perfect society, so the principle of perfectionism was not at all really abandoned; it was simply inverted. Another famous or infamous example was the so-called Nobel Experiment, Prohibition, directed by neo-Puritans against spirited libation, a national cause, once again, certainly not congenial to Catholic attitudes and thinking upon such a subject.
One can instructfully read, for instance, John Passmore’s The Perfectibility of Man concerning various historical and theological efforts at perfectionism and their rather baleful consequences. Spirituality cannot really be forced upon people nor can human beings, since they are not flawless, successfully act beyond being fallen creatures in a fallen world. The need for grace and redemption cannot really be overlooked. Repentance must be fully a part of a committed Christian’s life toward the direction of a wanted holiness.
One sees here, therefore, the extremely problematic nature of the proper development of a theology of evil and politics, meaning when the questionable and debatable first principles involved are noticed as, thus, being entirely and critically erroneous as to both cause and effect.
The above discussion is meant to clear away matters entirely extraneous to the proper debate and for lending proper concentration upon the particular matter at hand as to the public contention, made by Limbaugh, that Obama and his ilk think, say, and do things because of their ineptitude regarding political power and its exercise. The major disagreement noted concerns the fact that this conservative3 political commentator/pundit has been rather obviously influenced in his opinion, which he adamantly insists is the one and only correct way to view these matters, by his Protestant religious faith.
This important point would, unfortunately, normally go unrecognized almost always because of the general reality of America’s Protestant culture, no matter how apparently attenuated it may seem.
The then opposed position of the traditionalist right, in line with orthodox Roman Catholicism, insists that the doctrine of free will fully allow for the free choice of deliberate evil, which has very little or nothing to do with allegations of incompetence. A qualification can be still freely rendered. While ineptitude may very well be a fair part of the equation and is not to be totally dismissed, however, any such substantive concentration upon this nearly myopic explanatory vehicle then just ignores the wider picture significantly involved as to human actions and responsibility, meaning the exercise of free will and its so cognate consequences.
What is critically being said is that if evil gets misunderstood, it will, most likely, get misinterpreted as being something else, such as political incompetence or the kind of politics related to the distinct lack of a sound ability to think and act properly.
Limbaugh did not/does not, therefore, correctly understand or comprehend the real nature of what is going on in terms of what is happening that truly covers those salient features of human behavior best described as certain versions or varieties of malice, malevolence, ill will, wickedness, etc., not the mere lack of a good political or other ability to do what ought to be done, to do the right thing. Evil is, thus, a moral reality to be acknowledged and confronted as such, along with its regular bodyguard of lies.
Whether analytically considering the, e. g., Bay of Pigs or Benghazi, there were both sins of commission (orders to stand down) and sins of omission, as would be appropriately understood by Christianity, meaning both orders given and those not given; this is regarding each particular event and what had, thus, empirically transpired. Reading that would aid in providing a solid and significant basis for what needs to be critically thought about, in philosophical terms of reference, should include Frederick D. Wilhelmsen’s Being and Knowing and his Man's Knowledge of Reality.
There is, in manifest point of fact, this seen Catholic v. Protestant disagreement over what had actually happened and, much more so, why such things happen because of the different and conflicting views of evil, free will, classical Natural Law teachings, and related consequences pertaining to the ways of fallen creatures in a fallen world; this is because, again, all political disagreements, as Proudhon and Cardinal Manning both knew, can be rightly traced back always to theological disputes. Limbaugh’s often nominalist-influenced/Protestant cognition, therefore, can and does come to then substantially blind him in important matters to the real truth. What, therefore, in summation needs to be further said?
In explicit reiteration, it is not any imputed gross ineptitude or, perhaps, extreme political naïveté but, rather, the active desire to ideologically will evil to occur either passively and/or actively that defines the actual truth, inclusive of Islamic terrorism and aggresison, concerning directly what had happened at Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, meaning especially the four needless deaths that had occurred. The evil involved was intrinsic to the acts of will exercised by Obama and his evil minions.
And, speaking openly to this matter set at hand, the viewpoint of the traditionalist right accepts that aforementioned understanding and comprehension as being the correct one, not the conservative misinterpretation, as is, thus, represented by Limbaugh’s fallacious and questionable opinion as such.4
Conclusion
Evil cannot be eliminated from this fallen world, of course. Politics usually tends, moreover, to divide and not unite people, even with the best of will, for its many misdeeds must be covered by lying.5 The Protestant religion and its consequent culture will, as demonstrated above, always come to further exacerbate political disputes, misunderstandings, and misinterpretations of political and such related events.
Modernity with its side effects of rationalization, standardization, etc. has been a monumental failure in the effort to achieve the (ever expected) creation of the New Eden on earth. Secularism has not, in fact, brought about any sense or degree of perfection on this planet; on the other hand, a divided Christianity qua religion has not sought out to enthusiastically and absolutely embrace ecumenism.
As is easily seen in this present article, with its cogent philosophical and theological analysis, not even the correct understanding or comprehension of such a basic matter as evil can be ever actually agreed upon by Christians who are, ultimately speaking, divided forever by their set intrinsically opposed faiths. Ecumenism has failed, from the 20th and now into the 21st century, to close the enormous significant gap that still inevitably exists.
What would truly help, of course, would be the conversion of all people everywhere in the world to the Roman Catholic Faith, though always only in its best orthodox understanding and comprehension, not ever modernist Catholicism that deliberately seeks to corrupt the Faith. Could that supposedly help achieve a kind of religious nirvana? Would there finally be a sort of worldwide peace on earth forever?
No, humans, being inherently imperfect, are naturally prone to sin; when Western Europe, e. g., had (only) Catholic monarchs, they still fought wars with each other and all claimed that God was on their side. The benefit overall, however, would be a general one in that a common universe of discourse, one defined cosmos of spiritually united thought and dialogue, would then fundamentally exist for a single, Catholic world community.
Catholicism and its right and moral defense would, therefore, be the noted uniting principle and very clear focus of this decisively and unquestionably Christocentric, not anthropocentric, worldview. Again, this to-be-hoped for situation is not to be absurdly thought of as being any paradigm, kind, or type of a supposed Utopia; it would be, of course, a new Christendom, which ought to truly be the aim of all true Christians dedicated always to properly spreading the loving peace of Christ, the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi.
The only other real-world alternative is the ever bloody and terror-prone faith and murderous sword of Mohammad as a universal belief; however, one can here still freely guess that no genuinely humane and intelligent person ought to accept that kind of religion where the assumed pursuit of religious orthodoxy axiomatically breeds vile, intensified moral savagery and horrific brutality in the committed believer. It is absolutely the only faith in this world that includes many bomb-making terrorists as being prominently among its many hallowed saints.
Therefore, the blessed cross of Christ must come to replace totally the murderous sword of Mohammad if civilization is to survive.
Athanasius contra mundum!
NOTES
1. It was learned that Obama was the one and only person officially/legally authorized to issue the two stand down orders then given. Special Operations Command was not given permission to automatically attempt any rescue resulting in the deaths of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other men: Tyrone Snowden Woods and Glen Doherty, former Navy SEAL commandos who heroically gave up their precious lives, as well as Sean Smith, a foreign service officer.
The contemptuously denied help was just about two hours away in Tripoli, Libya during the over six hour terrorist attack. This was at least a million times worse than Watergate ever was, meaning, of course, with the actual and totally needless deaths of those four people being so intimately involved, while Obama, unfortunately, will never be impeached and Mrs. Clinton, regretfully, will never be prosecuted for what happened. And, it was sadly noticed that, figuratively speaking, the majority of the American people just coldly shrugged their shoulders and looked away, especially after Congressional Hearings were held.
Benghazigate will be lucky, therefore, if it ever at least ends up as a mere footnote in American history books, totally unlike the reality of Watergate, which forever pales into deserved insignificance beside the forever horrendous nature of Benghazigate. ABC News reported, in May 2013, that it had obtained no less than 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were, in fact, extensively revised; this is not at all surprising since the Left firmly believes all truth, thus, to be (ideologically) relative. They forever do refuse to acknowledge that the truth has no agenda.
The real coverup is, of course, concerning the heinous efforts by Obama to ship weapons to jihadists, known enemies of the United States; it was an act of treason, for which he ought to be impeached by the US House of Representatives and convicted by the US Senate and kicked out of office, though all that will never happen, which casts a permanent stain upon this country’s honor. The diversionary IRS scandal had helped to substantially overshadow and wrongly push aside the extremely worse Benghazi scandal, which will, sadly, just fades into an obscure history, as if it were mere trivia.
Benghazi is now just yesterday’s news, falling ingloriously down the Orwellian memory hole forever, into virtual oblivion. The enormously frenzied spirit of Watergate’s towering investigatory fury can only be ideologically leveled against Republicans, especially any conservative Republicans or conservatives in general; otherwise, there’s just no real interest in the Leftist mass media/propaganda networks about what happened, including, of course, four dead Americans. So, who cares? Unfortunately, evil has been greatly empowered, once again.
2. This article seeks to demonstrate that such significant Catholic v. Protestant theological differences do, logically, relate to conflicting and different political interpretations of events and ideas, which the American people need to be made aware of, through the elucidation and extrapolation of the subject.
3. To such a point, what needs to be much better known is that conservatism, as coming, e. g., from the thoughts of the English Whig Edmund Burke, is really another form of liberalism, as is properly noted in such books as Fr. McCoy’s The Structure of Political Thought: A Study in the History of Political Ideas. And, liberalism can, in fact, be correctly traced back to Protestantism. The opposed thinking of the traditionalist right, in terms of modern political consciousness, goes back to Fray Juan de Mariana.
4. Curiously, as of May 2013, the emerging consensus, among the majority of the liberal and leftist defenders of Obama et al, fully sides with Limbaugh’s incompetence thesis, meaning that no (real) scandal or (actual) coverup whatsoever exists.
5. Satan, the notorious Prince of Lies, readily understands what happens if evil is to be, thus, strongly defended with the related attempt to hide it. The Benghazi Scandal, IRS Scandal, and Wiretap Scandal must all situationally metastasize, therefore, because of the obvious need to lie to cover the past lies in preparation for needed future ones, due to both the past and still ongoing massive coverups necessarily involved.
One can come to both reasonably and fairly acknowledge that the same contemptuous and mendacious syndrome still politically holds true, whether it was Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and, now, Barack Obama who is, of course, doing the quite extensive and premeditated lying. Evil, as is known, requires the use of lies. And, once the lying starts, it becomes quite devilishly hard to stop.
But, in terms of realpolitik, meaning Machiavellianism, since the mass media, being ideologically aligned with Obama et al, has no real intention of bringing down this ethically and morally rotten regime, the lying is OK and will, after all, have no significant political consequences whatsoever. In basic terms of the sustained and intensifying investigating that significantly needs to be done, there is, instead, a complicit media blackout by the vast majority of the propaganda networks and major newspapers.
Because impeachment is a total nonissue, furthermore, this much extreme political lying, duplicitous knavery, and outright skullduggery has not been seen, in America, since the presidency of FDR.
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