A Manifesto

Some things that Paulinus and Andrew Sullivan--not obvious intellectual bedfellows, or indeed bedfellows of any sort--both wrote this weekend have made me think.

Andrew Sullivan has a good quote from Gaudium et Spes, which he deploys on the matter of torture. However, on reading it, I found it a manifesto for the core of things I am against as a citizen of Europe, though of course not coercively.

One of the reasons I was driven away from 'the left'--and there is an awful lot of spite and confusion there--was the suspicion of those who declared themselves in it that I believed in precisely this sort of thing, in the context of a limited, small state and an active society characterised by free business, reason, and open debate.

I did try and be 'left'. I was 'left' culturally. I believe in a balance of collective effort and individual freedom, but mostly in a doctrine of limits given the limited and flawed natures of people. That means that I think the arrogance of the state and the arrogance of marketeers should both be limited, incidentally.

Yet, constantly in attempting to be a citizen and a catholic, I found myself hiding my faith, or staying silent. Sometimes this led me to give myself over to excesses of drink and lust, for which I was wholly responsible and which I enjoyed in an animalistic sort of a way.

I had a really good time and made good friends doing so; I was lucky enough to love a lot, and to be loved in return. But the manner of my life was and is no way for a man to live, either spiritually or in terms of simple sustainability.

Neither my liver nor my body nor my overcomplicated life nor the women I wove into my overcomplicated life, many of whom are still there, could or should have been expected to cope with it, and it wasn't enough just to go to mass on a Sunday and convince myself that I was trying, or to loudly protest the faith that I always had.

Professional life, and life as a citizen, are much, much harder if one refuses to lie or to wallow in the pleasure that comes from one's faults. I have lived the pleasures of the world in the past years. But the truth that I return to, and from which I cannot resile, is here.

When it comes to my life as a member of the public, I am now happily adrift from political parties, and love the distance of it. To be in political life on any level these days, you seem to have to lie to others and yourself. That, to me, is a very sad thing, but not one that I will waste much time over--and you don't normally hear me turning down a timewasting opportunity on this blog!

This is what Sullivan quoted. I think that it makes a good enough manifesto; my only qualification is that I would extend love to those who have suffered or done these things for their own reasons. Le plus terrible dans ce monde c'est que chacun à ses raisons....

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

God help me when the time comes round to actually have to pay for some of the things that I have done. Still, as my mum would say, there is time and reason for a little bit more damage to do yet. And I still think that picture of the German ladies with the beer beneath this post is lovely.

Update:

Traditions that are life-enhancing and capable of tolerance tend to strive toward the same things. On Martin in the Margins' blog, I found a link to Russell Blackford, a secular liberal and I suspect no friend of Catholic thinking, as is his right. His blog is interesting. He quotes Martha Nussbaum on the Constitution, and on attempts to chill American freedom;

If people seek to torture children, or to enslave minorities, citing their religion as their reason, their claims must be resisted even though they may be sincere. If they simply talk in favor of slavery or torture, their freedom to speak must be protected, up to the point at which speech becomes a threat. They will not, however, be able to present their ideas in the political sphere on an equal basis with other ideas, since the Constitution (in the case of slavery) and the criminal law (in the case of torture) forbid the practices they recommend. So: people are all respected as equals, but actions that threaten the rights of others may still be reasonably opposed, and opinions that teach the political inequality of others, while they will not be suppressed, will still be at a disadvantage in the community, since their advocates would have to amend the Constitution to realize their program."

I agree. Dr Blackford seems to think religion and science are incompatible, by which he means insufferable to each other, and I disagree with that, but I don't think that the question can be resolved and am not a philsopher but an historian. So I can cop out of that one and uphold the commonalties in our separate excerpted manifestoes.