A Catholic Looks at the Stateby Don Mathews After washing the feet of His disciples during the Last Supper, Jesus said to His chosen: If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.1 Following Jesus, the Church "invites us to become His disciples and follow Him."2 It calls us to be "imitators of God as beloved children" by conforming our thoughts, our words, and our actions to the "way of Christ," the example set by Jesus.3 At the heart of the way of Christ is Jesus’ twofold commandment of love. A Pharisee asked Jesus, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus replied: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.4 Here Jesus revealed the full meaning of the Decalogue. The first three commandments concern love of God; the remaining seven, love of others. All ten form a unified whole: to violate one commandment is to violate the others. "One cannot honor another person without blessing God his Creator. One cannot adore God without loving all men, His creatures."5
"The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ, portray his charity, and shed light on the actions and attitudes characteristic of the Christian life."7 They do not describe the sorts of people who are blessed but the spiritual disposition of the way of Christ. That disposition, the disposition behind Jesus’ commandment of charity as well as the Beatitudes, is a disposition of profound humility before God and before neighbors. The theme of humility runs deep in Church tradition. Jesus was the perfect embodiment of humility, as St. Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Philippians: Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.8 Mary, too, with her fiat – "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your will"9 – and in her Magnificat – "My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden"10 – personifies humility and obedience, which is part of the reason she is revered by the Church. And Catholic writers through the centuries have extolled the disposition of humility.11 The antithesis of the way of Christ, of Jesus’ commandment of love, the Beatitudes, and the disposition of humility, is the spirit of conquest and the desire for domination over others. And therein is the Catholic case against the State. For what is the state but the spirit of conquest and the desire for domination on a gigantic scale? St. Augustine, who was no anarchist, stated as much in The City of God: Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robber bands? What are robber bands but small kingdoms? The band is itself made up of men, is ruled by the command of a leader, and is held together by a social pact. Plunder is divided in accordance with an agreed upon law. If this evil increases by the inclusion of dissolute men to the extent that it takes over territory, establishes headquarters, occupies cities, and subdues peoples, it publicly assumes the title of kingdom! This title is manifestly conferred on it, not because greed has been removed, but because impunity has been added. A fitting and true response was once given to Alexander the Great by an apprehended pirate. When asked by the king what he thought he was doing by infesting the sea, he replied with noble insolence, "What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor."12 St. Augustine prefaced his observation with "without justice." On the subject of justice, he wrote: Justice exists when the one and supreme God rules his obedient city according to his grace, so that it does not sacrifice to any whatsoever except Him alone. Consequently, just like a single man, a fellowship and a people of just men lives by faith, which works through love, by which man loves God as God ought to be loved, and his neighbor as himself.13 But the modern State did not arise from the desire for such justice. It arose from the desire for conquest and domination. And it has served its purpose well. Its primary products have not been fellowship and justice, but war and death. Thus the State, being the embodiment of the spirit of conquest and the desire for domination over others, is a manifestation of the antithesis of the way of Christ. The State is a product not of man’s consent to love God with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his mind, or to love his neighbors as himself, but rather his refusal to do so.
March 29, 2002 Don Mathews [send him mail] is a columnist for the Brunswick (Ga.) News. Copyright 2002 LewRockwell.com |