"To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity."

H. H. Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate Encyclical. June 29, 2009

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Just to be clear

One thing is the moral obligation to help the needed. This is on what Christian love for others is based on.

Other thing is the right to demand the help of others. This is on what the State usually is based on.

On the one hand, the Christian teaching compels to help others, but doesn't promote any right to demand the help of others. Quite on the contrary, from its very origin, Christianity instructs to stoically put up with in facing need, without even trying to resort to others help, not to speak of doing it by force.

On the other hand, according to Bastiat, the State is a fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Government is usually the means through which majorities organize themselves in order to abuse from minorities.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Hayek the missionary

One of the strongest cases I've found to remain Catholic is Hayek's thesis, a summary of which appears in the next text:

"It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made men submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism." (1)

(1) Hayek, Friedrich. The Counter-Revolution of Science. 1952 -LibertyPress, 1979-. Pages 162-163.