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 Catholic Amendments to US Constitution 
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New post Catholic Amendments to US Constitution
afterword of Charles Coulombe's «Puritan's Empire» wrote:
Blanshard declared that American Catholics had a hidden agenda to "subject" this nation to the Church's social teachings. We have seen the great outrage this brought about in U.S. Catholic circles, and the resulting dispute between Frs. John Courtney Murray [author of Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanæ] and Joseph C. Fenton regarding relations between Church and State. But Blanshard had outlined what he believed would become of the vaunted American Democracy, did the Catholics gain political power. This was a list of three amendments to the Constitution. [source] The first he called the "Christian Commonwealth Amendment:"

1. The United States [are] a Catholic Republic, and the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion is the sole religion of the nation.
2. The authority of the Roman Catholic Church is the most exalted of all authorities; nor can it be looked upon as inferior to the power of the United States government, or in any manner dependent upon it, since the Catholic Church as such is a sovereign power.
3. Priests and members of religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church who violate the law are to be tried by an ecclesiastical court of the Roman Catholic Church, and may, only with the consent of the competent Catholic authority, be tried by the courts of the United States or the states.
4. Apostate priests or those incurring the censure of the Roman Catholic Church incurring the censure of the Roman Catholic Church cannot be employed in any teaching post or any office or employment in which they have immediate contact with the public.
5. Non-Catholic faiths are tolerated, but public ceremonies and manifestations other than those of the Roman Catholic religion will not be permitted.
6. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

This shocker was to be followed up by the "Christian Education Amendment:"

1. American religious education belongs pre-eminently to the Roman Catholic Church, by means of a double title in the supernatural order, conferred exclusively upon her by God Himself.
2. The Roman Catholic Church has the inalienable right to supervise the entire education of her children in all educational institutions in the United States, public or private, not merely in regard to the religious instruction given in such institutions, but in regard to every other branch of learning and every regulation in so far as religion and morality are concerned.
3. Compulsory education in public schools exclusively shall be unlawful in any state of the union.
4. It shall be unlawful for any neutral or non-Catholic school to enroll any Catholic child without permission of the Church.
5. Since neutral schools are contrary to the fundamental principles of education, public schools in the United States are lawful only when both religious instruction and every other subject taught are permeated with Catholic piety.
6. The governments of the United States and of the States are permitted to operate their own schools for military and civic training without supervision by the Roman Catholic Church, provided they do not injure the rights of said Church, and provided that only the Roman Catholic Church shall have the power to impart religious instruction in such schools.
7. With due regard to special circumstances, co-education shall be unlawful in any educational institution in the United States whose students have attained the age of adolescence.
8. The governments of the United States and of the states shall encourage and assist the Roman Catholic Church by appropriate measures in the exercise of the Church's supreme mission as educator.

Then at last came the "Christian Family Amendment:"

1. The government of the United States, desirous of restoring to the institution of matrimony, which is the basis of the family, that dignity conformable to the traditions of its people, assigns as civil effects of the sacrament of matrimony all that is assigned to it by the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.
2. No matrimonial contract in the United States that involves a Catholic can be valid unless it is in accordance with the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.
3. Marriages of non-Catholics are subject to the civil authority of the state, but all civil laws that contradict the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church are hereby declared null and void.
4. All marriages are indissoluble, and the divorce of all persons is prohibited throughout the territory of the United States: provided that nothing herein shall affect the right of annulment and remarriage in accordance with the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.
5. Attempted mixed marriages or unions between members of the Roman Catholic Church and non-Catholics are null and void, unless a special dispensation is obtained from the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church.
6. Birth Control, or any act that deliberately frustrates the natural power to generate life, is a crime.
8. Sterilization of any human being is except as an infliction of grave punishment under the authority of the government for a crime committed.

This supposed "Catholic Master Plan" for America received much criticism from Catholic and non-Catholic critics of Blanshard alike. But Blanshard rightly defended it, declaring (p. 305):
Blanshard wrote:
I remember a verse from Job which is appropriate at this moment: "If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me." That is meant for Catholic liberals whose temperature has been rising while they have been reading these three amendments. As most of my readers have doubtless guessed, there is not a single original word in my entire three Catholic amendments. They are mosaics of official Catholic doctrine. Every concept, almost every line and phrase, has been plagiarized line by line from Catholic documents. The most important phrases are derived from the highest documents [sic!] of Catholicism, the encyclicals of the Popes. The provisions on education come from Pius XI's Christian Education of Youth [Divini Illius Magistri], and those on family life from his Casti Connubii, both of them accepted universally in the Catholic Church as the Bibles of present-day educational and family policy. A few provisions are taken directly from Canon Law, the recent laws of Catholic countries like Spain, and the 1929 Concordat between Mussolini and the Vatican [Lateran Treaty], all of which have been publicly approved by Catholic authorities. Only place-names and enabling clauses have been added to give the Papal principles local application. The sources are listed in the notes.
Get Charles Coulombe's excellent Puritan's Empire: A Catholic Perspective on American History here.

«The Essence & Topicality of Thomism»:
by Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Modernism: modernism.
blog: sententiaedeo.blogspot. com
Aristotelian Thomism: scholastic.

Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:17 pm
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