Greetings. For those of you who are Roman Catholic and also consider yourself a Libertarian, Anarchist, Min-Anarchist, Anti-Statist or otherwise, how do you possibly reconcile your political and philosophical belief system with the idea of the Vatican City?
Here we have a state, run by an (in truth) unelected absolute monarch (the Bishop of Rome, the Pope), with all of the moral, religious and legal ramifications that that carries.
There is also the President of the Pontifical Commission for to consider. There is a military and police force. There are taxes. And forget about keeping your state and religion separate, obviously.I know that LewRockwell.Com has a Catholic bent, I was wondering how libertarianism and the line up with the posters here at Mises.Org. To say that government is immoral except when run by the Pope is nonsensical. I do not mean for this thread to be “anti-Catholic” or anything as shallow as that. I personally would die before I kissed any man’s ring, but that’s for another post.Could an honest Libertarian live in with a good conscious? I’d like to perhaps elaborate more but you probably get my drift. Thanks!
I’m not sure it would matter either way, any more than the politics of the state of Israel should necessary have some determined effect on one’s attachment to the Jewish faith.
Why? It sounds perfectly sensible to me, or at least consistent and meaningful, not nonsense. What if you rephrase it as “Government of man is immoral, government by God, through His chosen emissary, is not.” Doesn’t that sound better?
How about Jews? Leave the State of Israel aside for a moment, since there are non-Zionist Jews. Instead, let’s talk about Mosiach. Jews believe that when Mosiach comes, he will gather the Jews into Israel and be their King. Is this necessarily a non-libertarian view? Perhaps, but perhaps also we could understand libertarianism as applying to men only, not to the Kingdom of God.
Which brings me to a further point. Would you hold that a libertarian should oppose the divine criminal justice system? It’s a monopoly, there’s no fair trial, and there are victimless crimes. In fact, there are in some religions very unfair beliefs about the system. For instance, the status in Christian faiths of the righteous people who lived before Christ. For them to go to Hell is not fair, certainly, from a libertarian standpoint.
Why is adultery banned? Why do Jews believe that people can go to Gehenim for eating pork, or driving on Saturday? Shouldn’t we as libertarians oppose this too?
The point I’m making is that it’s perfectly consistent to believe that libertarianism is the ideal way for men to relate to one another, but it quickly becomes silly to apply it to God.
JAlanKatz, it’s not at all that I think religion and libertarianism do not mix. It’s when I hear certain Catholics rail on and on about statism, the welfare warfare state and government in general… then I think, I can’t take this guy seriously, he’d have us all bowing down and kissing the rings of some old dude in a pointy hat in a heartbeat if he could. Granted that not all Catholics are this militant, but the ones I’ve come across in the libertarian community are.
I’d rather serve God than man, and that means any man. Just because the Pope is believed by some to be a sort of “emissary” does not make it any better. I cursory look at many of the past “emissaries” will prove that there are some, shall we say, unsavory murders and ruthless tyrants who have been called pontiffs.
My question was really directed towards the Vatican City in particular… if governments are intrinically evil, why is this one any better?
Well, that seems to be the crux of the matter. To a Catholic, that is not an accurate description of the Pope. Now, you’re right that there is a contradiction, I think, if a Catholic wants to force other people, on Earth, to be Catholic. But that wasn’t in your original question.
As to the rest, we don’t understand God’s will, but we do understand man’s will. This means that a Pope who murders as a Pope is different from a President who murders as a President. The Pope is infallible, as a starting point.
You seemed confused. Vatican city is nothing like what you are envisioning.
Vatican City is owned by the Catholic Church. A tax is what you pay the government in order to keep them from throwing you off land you rightfully own. It is only a tax when the collector does not own the land. Likewise, if the owner of a mall places a “sales tax” on any shops in that mall that is not really a tax, it is a form of rent.
So rather than being “governed” the Papal State is administered by its owner.
While Vatican City is official sovereignty in pratice it is not. It is no more soveriegn then a similar market created city-state, Disneyland. The Vatican, like Disneyland, uses the municipal utilities of it’s surrounding city. The Vatican also uses Rome’s Fire Department. And should Italy withdraw its grant of Vatican Sovereignty the international reaction would be little different than if California State troopers seized Disneyland for the State.
Vatican city is 100 acres and has 800 residents, probably most being unmarried men. Surely not a single person there feels that they are subjects.
Vatican city is nothing but a Church owned compound for Church staff.
I’m not saying that people don’t voluntary choose to be Catholics (although leaving the church is very hard, especially if your family is devout, but anyways), or that the Catholic Church does not own the property that Vatican City sits on. I’m not saying that it does not have a right to exist.
I’m asking how a voluntary Catholic anarchist or Libertarian can voluntarily live in the legitimate nation state of Vatican City and be okay with it.
Well, yes, actually, libertarians should oppose those things!
Of course it’s perfectly OK for you to believe that eating pork is evil and avoid doing so - that’s voluntary - it’d be quite another thing to bring force to bear on someone else who eats pork (which, of course, noone is talking about doing…though many bad laws are religion-based). What any god(s) might do about it, assuming any such nonsensical being(s) exist(s), is another thing - I guess a god is just another law of nature, and it makes no more sense to say it’s “not fair” that you go to some uncomfortable place for eating pork than to say it’s “not fair” that you fall to your death if you step over a cliff… (except, of course, that it’s possible to learn through scientific investigation whether or not it’s safe to walk over cliffs; but if there’s a god and it’s such an unreasonable creature, well, Thoreau said “under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”; same applies here)
What libertarian said voluntary association was bad? Most oppose the state simply because it’s a coercive monopoly. If it was simply an organization that did not force you under it I doubt many would have a problem with it. It boils down to what is voluntary and involuntary, not what is most restrictive of the self (since that is an interaction that only an individual should make).
I’m sorry, I don’t see what you’re arguing. My question was if libertarians should oppose God’s practice of sending people to hell for victimless crimes, like eating pork. You seem to have said that yes, we should, but you also appear to be an atheist, in which case we shouldn’t, because you’d believe we’re protesting against something which doesn’t exist. My answer is that we shouldn’t, regardless of whether or not God exists, because if He does, then he is outside the scope of libertarianism.
Now, you go on to say that a God who did the things I describe would be “unreasonable.” I fail to see what standard of reasonableness makes sense to apply to God.
God doesn’t send people to hell. Much like If I choose to be a christian, an atheist community has full right to reject my entry into their land, they don’t send me elsewhere, I must go where they are not, so through practice I essentially choose to be where this community doesn’t exist. Hell is a choice, not a punishment. If you do not want to be with god, you dont have to be. I think it would be much more cruel to force everyone into heaven.
I wouldn’t say I’m knowledgable about it, but I would say that the reasoning behind a hell is debatable. I certainly wouldn’t deny an afterlife If I trust human observation at all. My grandfather observed it first hand and recounted it after beind dead on a hospital bed for thirty minutes. But anecdotal evidence doesn’t really make a broad case, so I dont expect anything to come of it.
I’m an atheist, but the question only makes sense if we assume God exists; I’m saying that, regardless of God’s assumed existence, God’s rules about such things as eating pork ought to be entirely irrelevant to legality - even if God shows up in person, proves his existence beyond any shadow of doubt, and says “don’t eat pork”, it would be wrong to use force to prevent people eating pork or punish them after the fact. Then I said that if God wants to use force, that’s a different matter entirely - God is (or would be, if he/she/it existed, which I don’t for a minute believe) like gravity. When you fall after walking over a cliff, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk about nature engaging in unlibertarian use of force to injure you for the “crime” of walking over a cliff, right? I’m agreeing that “God is outside the scope of libertarianism”, as you put it.
But if God exists and punishes people for eating pork, God is being unreasonable because it’s not possible for people to discover that God exists and punishes people for eating pork. (The effects of gravity can be discovered and known in advance, so that you can know that if you walk over a cliff you’ll fall and be injured or killed;the effects of “God” wrt eating pork are not independently discoverable. That’s unreasonable, sez me)
