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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone

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back to part nine of my reading of Raizard Lagut

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Goos demon in Democracy. I'm judging we only have two episodes. Left.

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There'll be total of ten on this one, so let's

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get going. We have chapter five. This is the last chapter.

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Read half of it, read the other half, and then

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the conclusion on the next one. Chapter five is called

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Religion Part one. For the Communist ideology, religion has always

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been a matter of pressing concern. Marx hated religion with

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all his heart, but at the same time distanced himself

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from those criticisms of religion, such as Ludvik Foyerbachs, that

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he thought too crude. Using a quasi Hegelian argument, he

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contended that religion would be abolished at some point of

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a not too distant future history, and that with human

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development coming to its completion, it would no longer be needed,

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and that when this happened, man himself, in full bloom

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of his humanity, would become the proper object of worship.

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It was going to worship something right. Marx's attitude well

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reflects the feelings that the socialists and Communists have always

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had about religion. On the one hand, a profound hostility,

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often accompanied by an almost sadistic longing for a world

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in which religion would be wiped out without a trace.

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On the other, a wish to socialism become a genuine

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form of religion in the sense that it would satisfy needs, dreams,

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and desires, similar to the way in which religion did,

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and which apparently adhered in human nature. The problem with

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religion was that, as they said, it satisfied those needs, dreams,

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and desires in a perverse way, pushing people toward goals

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that were not theirs, but imposed on them through an

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ideological manipulation, and ultimately bringing calamities on them and the

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entire society. That could be anyone's religion, not necessarily the

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from history, we see that more with political ideology than

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we do with actual quote unquote religion. But whatever the

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crimes or religion, its mobilizing power was truly inevit enviable

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to the socialist and communists who up that once there

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ideology ascended to a similar ruling position in human hearts,

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humanity would reap immense benefits. In the communist practice, hostility

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to religion clearly absorbed the party and its functionaries far

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more than the task of making it redundant. As a

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result of the socialist ideology winning the hearts of the people,

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no matter how quickly communism progressed the initial plantar replace

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the worship of God with the worship of man in

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its full bloom, advance more and more into the Future's

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starting to understand where he's gone with this. So throughout

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its entire history, the Communist system was waging its war

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against religion, religiosity, religious superstition, clerical obscuritanism, obscuritism, clericalism, and

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particularly that despicable institution called the Catholic Church. The war

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was brutal, oftentimes murderous, and the atrocities committed by the

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Communists still boggle the mind. The Communists felt quite rightly

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that the Church and Christianity were the strongest barriers that

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protected the nation against the regime and its ideology, and

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that their power would not be secure until the Christians

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were totally subdued. In Poland, the strongly felt allegiance to

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the Catholic faith, as well as the historically well established

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position of the Catholic Church within the society, or perhaps

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regardless of the political games that the bishops sometimes played

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with the regime. The key factor that accounts for the

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fact that too many Poles never really sold their souls

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to the Communistic regime and if you remember my reading

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of the Last Crusade by Warren Carroll, Oh what did

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they say? They said they would have to They attempted

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to destroy completely the Catholic Church and said that they'd

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probably have to kill half of the Catholics in the

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country before the others just gave in. But Communism, although

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eventually defeated, enjoyed a considerable success in various fields, also

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in strengthening and enlarging the anti religion front. It's applied

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an additional fuel to the anti Christian and particularly anti

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Catholic streak that had long been present in the European tradition.

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Also in Poland, even though despite the new powerful means

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of propaganda, it never managed to change the overall pro

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Catholic stance of the majority of the Polish population. Also

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in Poland, the biggest inroads made by Communists anti Catholic

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propaganda were among educated groups, especially the intellectuals, who took

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over the old pre war secular stereotypes, and imbued them

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with so much venom that it paralyzed their own moral

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reflexes and pushed them to endorsing without a moment's hesitation.

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The most outrageous acts of the brutality perpetrated by the

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regime against the Catholics in the Church. There is a

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well known letter, nowadays spoken of most reluctantly, written by

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a group of the leading Polish writers and intellectuals in

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the early nineteen fifties, condemning the Krocile priests, whom the

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Communist charge was spying for the Vatican and America. The

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charge was utterly nonsensical, but the sentences were ruthless. The

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letter is a dark page, unfortunately one in many in

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the history of the intellectuals depravity. In this age of

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human folly. It may be that those intellectuals who were

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duped or duped themselves to serve totalitarianism were occasionally capable

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of feeling guilt for what they had done. But it

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seems that infamous letter, signed by Vslawa Zimboska, future Nobel

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Prize winner in literature, Lamir Russik, a prominent playwright, and others,

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did not provoke any special moral self examination. Supporting the

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Communists in their war against the Church must have appeared

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to them ideologically the least doubtful of the moral transgressions

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that they committed in communism. Whoever was against religion and

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against Christianity, made a first step to make a good

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comrade and to deserve special protection from the Party, but

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above all to earn a label of being enlightened. No

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true Communists stated that each human being with a minimal

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claim to intelligence had to be agnostic or atheist, that

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he had to be highly critical of the priests, harsh

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toward the holy scriptures, and flippant about church dogmas and all.

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This was believed to be to be not a revolutionary eccentricity,

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but a continuation one of the most enlightened European traditions,

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especially those of the Enlightenment. The Party intellectuals convinced themselves,

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through fear, ignorance of self deception, that their humiliating servility

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was not that but a somewhat modernized version of vultarianism. Interesting, huh.

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Some people claim that communism was responsible for well, there

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was a certain group that invented communism spread it. Yet

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they also claim that. Some of them also claim that

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the Church has always been a there's always been that

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they control that too. Yet when you look around, the

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Catholic Church was the one fighting against it in the

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twentieth century. I don't know you know, a house divided

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against hisself can't stand. I don't know. Maybe. Unfortunately, the

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Christian faith did not make the believers immune to the

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communist temptation. For a long time there was a trend

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in Christianity with an obsequious proclivity toward communism and socialism,

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which probably spread it out of common strong anti capitalist sentiments,

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but also of a conviction shared by some Christians but

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not reciprocated by the secular left, that both Christianity and

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socialism in their roots stem from the same moral impulse,

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the good of the people. Both Protestants and Catholics, and

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even the greatest the theologians fell prey to this illusion.

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Karl Bart, Paul Tillik, Jacques Martine, and many others had

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such episodes. Some, like Emmanuel Monnier, went clear beyond, clearly

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beyond sympathy and became openly pro communist and pro Soviet

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fellow travelers. Thousands of pastors in Roman Catholic and Eastern

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Orthodox priests joined them the system and for many years

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served it faithfully out of stupidity, opportunism, ideological blindness, or betrayal,

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all of which they supported with pathetic intellectual contortions. Dean

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of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson, was once Stalin's notorious puppet at

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propaganda meetings organized by the Soviet Communist Party in Poland,

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the church was sabotaged from inside by renegade priests, whom

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the Communist authorities called, in the mendacious language so typical

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of them, patriot priests, and whose number in absolute terms

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was by no means small. When the terror evaded an

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indoctrination began to subside, the Communists tried another strategy, this

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time by luring a larger group of Catholics into the system,

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not only traders and pathological opportunists. They even allowed a

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small party group of Catholics to be represented in the Parliament,

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which for many seemed the promising beginning of an evolutionary

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change for the better. At one point, immediately after the

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nineteen fifty six Thought Law, the Polish Episcopate officially urged

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their flock to support the reformist parties of the Communist Party,

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and the government gave permission to establish a few quasi

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independent associations of Catholic persuasion. It soon became clear, however,

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that no further changes would be made and no further

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political plurality tolerated. But the door for those Catholics who

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wished to support the regime was still open. That's why

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we call it a remnant people. The Communist Party went

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so far as to encourage what was then called the

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Dialogue between Marxist and Catholics. To launch such a dialogue

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was on the one hand, a propaganda ploy to show

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how the Communists cooperated with all the people of goodwill,

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but on the other a clever tactic to divide the

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Catholics and to push those intransigent, those intransigent into the corner,

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into the corner. Whatever the reason of the propaganda, this,

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the mere fact that the so called dialogue lasted for

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at least a decade proved that the Communist side theology

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was still effective. Behind the decision of quite a few

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of those Catholic intellectuals who decided to converse with the

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Marxist was a sort of practical imperative. They felt that

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socialism communism was inevitable, ubiquitous, and philosophically unchallengeable, and therefore

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thought it a matter of urgency for the Catholics within

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the world as it was, or rather as they believed

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it was to find a safe place and obtain some

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kind of official intellectual legitimacy. This dialogue, when we look

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at it today, is not an uplifting spectacle and reveals

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essential asymmetry between the two sides. One had to make

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serious concessions to accommodate itself to the communist reality. The

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other conceded nothing, promised nothing, and treated its opponents patronizingly.

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The Catholics concession were the following. They spoke highly of

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socialism as both theory and practice, and distance themselves from

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those bad Catholics who did not appreciate the benefits and

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virtues of the new regime. They postulated that because Catholicism

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had much in common with socialism, the Church should be

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more listened to and its presence more recognized in the

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socialist society. The Marxists, in turn, made no concessions at all.

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They noted with satisfaction the fact that progressive Catholics finally

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came to accept socialism, although they should have done it sooner,

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and that they came to denounce the bad Catholics, although

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they should have done it more forcefully. To the Catholics

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postule that the Marxists respond responded that of course the

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Catholics could find their place in the process of building socialism,

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but they must be aware that socialism has to higher

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value in that because the historical record of the church

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was ugly, they should try harder than others to earn

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the trust of the socialist community. The Catholic Church in Poland,

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led by Primate Stefan Wazinski, later to be called the

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Primate of the Millennium, was generally hostile to the reproachment.

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The Polish Episcopate, however, had not been so adamant in

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the past. They had treated the patriot priests with surprising

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leniency and made declarations that were quite painful to the faithful,

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for example condemning anti communist resistance groups as gangs. But

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in his rejection of the dialogue, Primate Wazinski was right.

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He did not trust the intellectuals, and in fact he

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never trusted them, as one can see from a well

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known article published before World War II, when the specter

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of communist Poland was not yet in sight. Hence his

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decision to make the Catholicism of the people, the Catholicism,

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so to speak, the stronghold of the Catholic faith was

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quite understandable and compatible with his deep convictions. The decision

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had far reaching, in generally positive effects. By relying on

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rural religiosity, the Church managed to preserve a large area

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of social practices and religious traditions that was not accessible

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to the communist ideology. In countries where this type of

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full Christianity did not exist or was considerably weaker, the

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communist system managed to wreak more havoc and penetrated deeper

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into the social fabric. The Primist decision, however, had negative

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effects as well. Polish Catholicism survived in amazingly good shape,

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but not without flaws. What it clearly lacked was an

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intellectual leadership. Most of the Catholic intelligentsiare represented so called

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open Catholicism, which had scarcely any influence on the people's

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minds and souls, or if it had, was largely destructive.

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Probably the only period when one could see a close

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alliance between the Church and the intelligentsia was in the

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nineteen eighties, but the love affair was short and its

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disappearance was as abrupt as its coming into being. No

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signs indicating that it would happen appeared before. No signs

238
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indicating that it would happen appeared before, and it would

239
00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:56,159
have been almost incomprehensible were it not for the emergence

240
00:15:56,159 --> 00:16:02,279
of the magnetic personality of Karl Attila, who ascended to

241
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the papal throne in nineteen seventy eight. Unfortunately, this cordial

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00:16:07,759 --> 00:16:11,399
alliance came apart even before the fall of communism. It

243
00:16:11,519 --> 00:16:13,639
is interesting to note that its beginning and its end

244
00:16:13,679 --> 00:16:17,159
were proclaimed by the same man at a Mishnik, a

245
00:16:17,240 --> 00:16:20,679
top anti regime dissident who for decades had been dictating

246
00:16:20,679 --> 00:16:23,039
to the Polish herd of independent minds which way they

247
00:16:23,039 --> 00:16:27,919
should be going. When read today, both of his proclamations

248
00:16:27,919 --> 00:16:31,200
marking the beginning and the end of the entant corgial

249
00:16:31,480 --> 00:16:35,480
with the Church disclosed what previously was overlooked, namely a

250
00:16:35,559 --> 00:16:39,759
consistently anti church and anti religious bias that has now

251
00:16:39,799 --> 00:16:44,000
been laid bare. After the rhetoric of purely tactical concern

252
00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:46,480
for the fate of the Church and religion in Poland

253
00:16:46,559 --> 00:16:51,120
became worn out and lost its persuasive power due to

254
00:16:51,159 --> 00:16:54,159
the absence of the vigorous Catholic intelligentsia. The effects of

255
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:57,799
Communism on the Polish elites proved more durable than previously thought,

256
00:16:58,240 --> 00:17:01,039
and an anti religious ideology left a permanent mark on

257
00:17:01,080 --> 00:17:05,319
the soul of Polish academics, writers, and artists. No wonder then,

258
00:17:05,720 --> 00:17:08,599
that after the fall of the regime, an anti religious attitude,

259
00:17:08,599 --> 00:17:11,759
this time in a new and liberal democratic formula, found

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00:17:11,799 --> 00:17:14,440
fertile ground and spread quickly among a wide range of

261
00:17:14,599 --> 00:17:18,640
educated people, and even more quickly among those who, through

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00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:24,240
down rights though downright stupid, had intellectual pretensions because they

263
00:17:24,279 --> 00:17:28,519
graduated from something or other, or, as was not uncommon,

264
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worked at some educational institution. It simply did not occur

265
00:17:34,279 --> 00:17:36,119
to them that the Church was so helpful to the

266
00:17:36,200 --> 00:17:39,440
nation under communism, not because she was simply against this

267
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particular political system, but because the system was wrong in everything,

268
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and the Church was right in almost all the issues

269
00:17:46,559 --> 00:17:49,400
that were critical to the existence of a viable society,

270
00:17:49,920 --> 00:17:53,160
and if so, the Church should have been worth listening to,

271
00:17:53,319 --> 00:17:57,000
regardless of what political arrangement the society took, and perhaps

272
00:17:57,039 --> 00:18:00,240
even more so after the communist regime fell and the

273
00:18:00,279 --> 00:18:06,319
liberal Democrats took over. Part two. The attitude of liberalism

274
00:18:06,359 --> 00:18:10,160
toward religion was from the start frosty and sometimes hostile.

275
00:18:10,640 --> 00:18:13,400
Like the socialists later on, the liberals were aware of

276
00:18:13,400 --> 00:18:16,880
the great ideological power wielded by religion, although the term

277
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:20,720
ideology had not been coined yet, which they found politically

278
00:18:20,839 --> 00:18:26,160
most troubling. Religion, they said, provokes deep divisions, insite civil wars,

279
00:18:26,240 --> 00:18:29,720
pushes people to violence against their neighbors. The grounds for

280
00:18:29,759 --> 00:18:32,680
this view, as well as general philosophical framework for the

281
00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:36,920
classical liberal concept of religion, were provided by the Reformation.

282
00:18:40,920 --> 00:18:44,519
Speaking somewhat simplistically, the Protestants moved religion more than ever

283
00:18:44,640 --> 00:18:47,960
before into the realm of faith, so that its outward

284
00:18:48,039 --> 00:18:52,119
forms and even its dogmatic aspect, lost their importance. They

285
00:18:52,119 --> 00:18:55,000
brought back Saint Paul's old distinction between the inner man

286
00:18:55,039 --> 00:18:57,880
and the outer man, which they translated into the analogous

287
00:18:58,279 --> 00:19:02,720
distinction between internal and external religion. The former was considered

288
00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:05,880
to be appropriate and protected, the latter secondary and not

289
00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:09,720
deserving of any special protection. It was the external form,

290
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:13,039
the traditions and additions, as John Milton called them, that

291
00:19:13,079 --> 00:19:18,400
could destabilize the political order and generate irresponsible behaviors, zealousness, fanaticism,

292
00:19:18,759 --> 00:19:23,640
and a desire to convert dissonance by force. The controversy

293
00:19:23,680 --> 00:19:27,160
that was going on at that time between the tolerationists

294
00:19:27,440 --> 00:19:30,440
and the anti tolerationists i e. Those who wanted to

295
00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:33,279
allow public presence of external religion and those who wanted

296
00:19:33,319 --> 00:19:36,839
to have it significantly reduced heated, though it was did

297
00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:41,319
not dramatically set apart. The disputing parties both actually agreed

298
00:19:41,319 --> 00:19:44,480
that internal religion deserve respect because, and both use the

299
00:19:44,480 --> 00:19:47,279
same argument this is so deeply embedded in the human

300
00:19:47,359 --> 00:19:51,000
soul that it is impervious to any political control, including

301
00:19:51,039 --> 00:19:55,119
the most ruthless coercion. They also agreed that external religion

302
00:19:55,119 --> 00:19:58,240
can be politically dangerous and is arguably the most important

303
00:19:58,359 --> 00:20:04,400
source of political conflict. The major difference between the two

304
00:20:04,440 --> 00:20:08,000
parties was that the anti tolerationists asserted that outer religion

305
00:20:08,079 --> 00:20:11,640
should be totally controlled by the government, while the tolerationists,

306
00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:15,119
such as the Old John Locke. The Young Locke belonged

307
00:20:15,119 --> 00:20:19,079
to the opposite camp, allowed for its public presence, sometimes

308
00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:22,279
quite considerable, but gave the state the right to supervise

309
00:20:22,319 --> 00:20:26,440
its religious rights in dogmas Politically, if any among these

310
00:20:26,519 --> 00:20:29,559
rights in dogmas appeared to threaten social peace, public order,

311
00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:33,759
existing laws, or political stability, then claimed Locke and others

312
00:20:33,839 --> 00:20:37,519
and other like minded thinkers, the state should not hesitate

313
00:20:37,559 --> 00:20:40,720
to step in and remove the threat. Such a decision

314
00:20:40,799 --> 00:20:44,359
would be purely political, not religious. The government or its

315
00:20:44,359 --> 00:20:47,000
officials banning a right or a dogma would not be

316
00:20:47,079 --> 00:20:51,319
motivated by its alleged religious truth or falsehood. Such verdicts

317
00:20:51,319 --> 00:20:53,599
would not be in their power to make, but would

318
00:20:53,640 --> 00:20:57,720
solely assess its practical consequences for the stability of the

319
00:20:57,759 --> 00:21:02,640
political order. The political argument was almost behind the exclusion

320
00:21:02,680 --> 00:21:06,480
of Catholics from the shield of religious toleration, the standard

321
00:21:06,559 --> 00:21:10,559
rule among the Protestant tolerationists. It was claimed that the

322
00:21:10,559 --> 00:21:13,519
Catholics were not trustworthy as other citizens because of their

323
00:21:13,559 --> 00:21:17,039
divided loyalty one part of the country the other to Rome,

324
00:21:17,319 --> 00:21:20,799
whereas a good citizen could not have but one sovereign

325
00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:26,440
the state. This exclusion was widely supported in the Protestant countries,

326
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:30,480
apparently in the belief considered self evident that whatever message

327
00:21:30,559 --> 00:21:33,279
religion conveys, it cannot override the will of the sovereign

328
00:21:33,359 --> 00:21:37,559
and cannot exempt citizens from civic obedience. But because the

329
00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:41,599
genuine religion was in a religion, this prerogative that gave

330
00:21:41,599 --> 00:21:44,160
the state the power to supervise out a religion did

331
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:53,279
not seem to those who accepted it particularly painful. Regardless

332
00:21:53,279 --> 00:21:56,920
of how sincerely the Reformation theologians desired to liberate religion

333
00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:00,640
from the institutional strait jacket, and how ardently they defended

334
00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:03,400
the purity of faith, the overall result of the schism

335
00:22:03,519 --> 00:22:07,559
was different. Religion, freed from the dictates of Rome, fell

336
00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:10,119
under the control of the state, to which the liberals,

337
00:22:10,119 --> 00:22:13,880
so distrustful of revealed religion of any kind, readily assented.

338
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:17,400
It is often said that the controversy over toleration led,

339
00:22:17,759 --> 00:22:21,319
thanks to the perseverance of the liberals, to the establishment

340
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:23,920
of a constitutional principle of the separation of Church and

341
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:26,079
a state, which was to become one of the key

342
00:22:26,119 --> 00:22:31,720
standards in liberal democratic societies. Nothing could be Nothing could

343
00:22:31,759 --> 00:22:34,160
be further from the truth. The principle was binding in

344
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:37,599
the United States, but certainly not in European Protestant societies.

345
00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:40,319
In the United States, the First Amendment ruled out the

346
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:44,400
existence of what it calls an established religion, which in

347
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:47,839
fact means the state religion. What Britain and several other

348
00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:51,359
Protestant countries did was the opposite, by making the head estate,

349
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:54,319
the head of the church they institute, is something that

350
00:22:54,359 --> 00:23:00,400
clearly falls into a category of established religion. The idea

351
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:02,839
that the state is the ultimate supervisor in all matters

352
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:06,240
relating to the political community, including religious ones, had a

353
00:23:06,279 --> 00:23:10,240
long tradition and in itself was not revolutionary. The problem

354
00:23:10,319 --> 00:23:12,480
was that the state could go too far in imposing

355
00:23:12,519 --> 00:23:15,200
discipline and be tempted to use the argument from political

356
00:23:15,319 --> 00:23:22,440
rationality to extirpate some religious groups. Some religious groups deemed

357
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:26,359
suspect to violate human conscience on a massive scale and

358
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,799
to usurp the role of the spiritual and moral authority

359
00:23:28,839 --> 00:23:33,079
under the pretexts of the disinterristed political supervision. This has

360
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,119
occasionally happened in Europe for several centuries, usually at the

361
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:40,359
time of political turmoil, example, the brutal persecution of Catholics

362
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:43,240
after Henry the eighth broke with Rome, or when the

363
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:47,519
state officially accepted an ideological agenda hostile to Christianity, as

364
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:49,720
was the case after the French Revolution when the new

365
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:53,759
Assembly passed the civil Constitution for the clergy. The usual

366
00:23:53,799 --> 00:23:57,400
practice was to humiliate the potentially suspect group by forcing

367
00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:00,440
them to take an oath interpreted as a purely political

368
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:03,640
act of allegiance on the regulations that they found morally

369
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:08,279
repugnant or religiously unacceptable, as in the case of Thomas Moore, who,

370
00:24:08,279 --> 00:24:11,559
despite his de facto loyalties to the British monarchy after

371
00:24:11,599 --> 00:24:14,400
the king's breach with Rome, was executed for not taking

372
00:24:14,519 --> 00:24:19,640
the oath on the Act of supremacy. With respect to

373
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,079
the separation of church and state, the Catholic countries in

374
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:25,440
Europe fared better than the Protestant countries. The secular and

375
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:30,559
ecclesiastical powers were, by definitions separated. In Catholicism, the supreme

376
00:24:30,599 --> 00:24:33,200
authority as the church in the Church was in the

377
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,119
hands of the Pope, who was sovereign with respect of

378
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:40,240
the powers of emperors, kings and presidents. Such was, of

379
00:24:40,279 --> 00:24:43,720
course the theory. In practice, the relations between thrown and

380
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:46,720
altar varied, and in a long and complicated history of

381
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:51,119
those relations we have had various combinations, from the de

382
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,319
facto subordination of one authority to another though close cooperation,

383
00:24:55,839 --> 00:24:59,599
to deep political and doctrinal conflicts. Of course, some time

384
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:03,279
after the religious wars in Europe ended, religious peace prevailed,

385
00:25:04,079 --> 00:25:07,559
with the exceptions of such extraordinary developments as the French Revolution.

386
00:25:08,319 --> 00:25:11,480
As a situation became stabilized, most governments in Protestant and

387
00:25:11,519 --> 00:25:15,480
Catholic countries pursued the policy of accommodation, not interfering too

388
00:25:15,559 --> 00:25:19,920
much in religious matters, and thus respecting in practice religious liberties.

389
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,319
This began to change in recent decades when the European governments,

390
00:25:25,319 --> 00:25:32,200
by having expoused an ambitious ideological mission, started legislating morality

391
00:25:32,279 --> 00:25:35,519
in an open confrontation with the teaching of Christianity and

392
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:39,400
other religions. Moreover, to justify their policy, they used an

393
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:43,680
analogous political argument, spurious as it is easy to see,

394
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:50,079
but enormously effective, that ran as follows, quoting, what we

395
00:25:50,319 --> 00:25:53,680
enforce is the law of the land and the constitutional rights,

396
00:25:54,079 --> 00:25:58,200
be it in matters of abortion, marriage, education, life, death

397
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:01,359
and not religion. And what we supervise is not the

398
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:05,119
people's souls, but our citizens' loyalty to the existing legal

399
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:12,000
and political system. This offensive was so formidable that a

400
00:26:12,039 --> 00:26:16,240
lot of religious groups, mostly Protestant but some Catholic too, acquiesced.

401
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,119
Those that acquiesced had to adapt their teaching to the

402
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:23,839
requirements of the liberal democratic state, and consequently to revise

403
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:30,400
their doctrines substantially, sometimes beyond recognition. Those that resisted put

404
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,359
themselves on a collision course with the liberal democratic state, and,

405
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:40,240
as their critics repeatedly said, with modernity as such videism

406
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:45,960
characteristic of protism, but spreading beyond its boundaries, which encouraged

407
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:49,240
the subordination of external religion to the state, caused a

408
00:26:49,279 --> 00:26:53,799
gradual marginalization of Christianity in the public realm, which, as

409
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,480
was to be expected, had to result in progressive secularization

410
00:26:58,799 --> 00:27:02,160
in any highly political society. As a liberal society is,

411
00:27:02,559 --> 00:27:05,880
whatever lacks political legitimacy to appear in the public square

412
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:10,880
loses its race on deetra. Altogether, internal religion regarded as

413
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,039
the only form of religion that could be tolerated. If

414
00:27:13,039 --> 00:27:16,799
it wanted to retain this quasi protection, had to seek

415
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,519
some political respectability, and the only way to do it

416
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:24,880
was first to dispel any suspicion it might that it

417
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:28,759
might undermine liberalism and human souls, and furthermore, to prove

418
00:27:28,799 --> 00:27:31,920
that it motivates people to do things that are politically useful,

419
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:36,079
such as bringing about peace, preaching the attitude of toleration,

420
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:42,279
and inspiring philanthropy. In other words, religion was to demonstrate

421
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,240
that it supported the liberal order and help the liberal

422
00:27:45,279 --> 00:27:48,880
state to perform its functions. Religion in a non political

423
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,400
sense should be confined to the church and the inner life,

424
00:27:51,759 --> 00:27:55,279
or better yet, exclusively to the inner life and family life, because,

425
00:27:55,440 --> 00:28:01,480
for example, a politician os ostentatiously going to church could

426
00:28:01,519 --> 00:28:04,880
be accused of encroaching on the secularity of the state.

427
00:28:07,039 --> 00:28:09,119
Those Christians who took this view did not put up

428
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:11,880
a heroic fight against the liberal state usurping the role

429
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:16,440
of the legislature of morality. The usurper seized his power

430
00:28:16,519 --> 00:28:20,119
almost unopposed, and his victorious army did not even bother

431
00:28:20,279 --> 00:28:32,440
to take prisoners. All goes back to that remnant Part three.

432
00:28:32,599 --> 00:28:35,480
Democratic theories, as opposed to liberal ones do not emit

433
00:28:35,559 --> 00:28:38,319
such an obvious critical message about religion, but neither are

434
00:28:38,319 --> 00:28:42,319
they particularly favorable. The basic objection was that the divisions

435
00:28:42,319 --> 00:28:45,759
in the democratic system should be political, which meant that

436
00:28:45,799 --> 00:28:48,839
they should have as their foundation different ideas about how

437
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:52,119
to organize the state and its institutions, and under no

438
00:28:52,279 --> 00:28:56,559
circumstance should they relate to religion. The political parties could

439
00:28:56,599 --> 00:29:01,119
be socialists, liberal, conservative, monarchist or anarchist, but they must

440
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:05,279
not be Catholic or Evangelical or Orthodox, nor could they

441
00:29:05,279 --> 00:29:11,519
be based on ethnicity or race. The democratic state should

442
00:29:11,519 --> 00:29:14,279
provide a place for different ethnic groups, different races, or

443
00:29:14,319 --> 00:29:17,240
different religions, but it could not endorse one race or

444
00:29:17,279 --> 00:29:22,440
religion at the expense of the others. But it can't.

445
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:28,480
What was it that I read the other day that's

446
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,279
been coming out ever since this whole brujaja on Twitter?

447
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:36,440
A six percent of new hires or white males, and

448
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:40,599
that's basically by law. I don't know that the number

449
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:42,599
is by law, but that's the way it's worked out.

450
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:49,200
A democratic man is a citizen of the state, and

451
00:29:49,279 --> 00:29:53,319
citizenship does not differentiate between races, ethnic groups, or religions.

452
00:29:53,799 --> 00:29:57,000
The difference between the so called mature democratic societies and

453
00:29:57,039 --> 00:30:00,359
those societies that have not reached political maturity, whatever the

454
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:03,319
exact meaning of that is to be, is precisely that

455
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,119
in the latter people are not grouped around political parties,

456
00:30:06,119 --> 00:30:13,200
but around tribes, clans, and religious cults. This co this

457
00:30:13,319 --> 00:30:16,640
core of this argument is correct, but its general formulation

458
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,359
can be misleading. In the course of the intellectual and

459
00:30:19,359 --> 00:30:23,480
political history of Europe, Christian religion did influence and significantly

460
00:30:23,559 --> 00:30:27,240
so political programs, including concepts of the state, the duties

461
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:30,880
of the citizen, and the hierarchy of political objectives. Thus

462
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:35,119
one can legitimately speak of Christian political thought, developing system

463
00:30:35,119 --> 00:30:38,119
Middle Ages to modern times, rich in content and diavorse

464
00:30:38,119 --> 00:30:43,039
and implications. It is therefore obvious that political parties may be,

465
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:45,720
and in fact have been, called Christian, although it is

466
00:30:45,759 --> 00:30:50,519
also true that no specific single political system the political

467
00:30:50,559 --> 00:30:56,559
system dostrine can be derived from Christian philosophical and theological heritage.

468
00:30:56,720 --> 00:30:59,160
For more on that, Tom Woods has a book called

469
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:05,119
How the Catholic Church Built the West is triggering as

470
00:31:05,119 --> 00:31:10,400
that may be to some. Removing Christianity from the public square,

471
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,720
be it directly or indirectly, was a decision taken not

472
00:31:13,759 --> 00:31:17,599
only against religion as such, and against this particular religion,

473
00:31:17,799 --> 00:31:20,759
but against certain political ideas having a long and honorable

474
00:31:20,799 --> 00:31:23,759
tradition which could have had a positive effect on the

475
00:31:23,799 --> 00:31:28,599
institutional order and on our thinking about politics. Of course,

476
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:31,319
the primary impulse of the critics was a strong anti

477
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:35,519
Christian bias, not a rational desire to save politics from

478
00:31:35,519 --> 00:31:39,279
what did not properly belong to it. In liberalism at

479
00:31:39,319 --> 00:31:43,119
as it emerged in early modernity. There were additional factors,

480
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:46,160
such as a vehement rejection of medieval philosophy and of

481
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:51,720
scholastics in particular, with which Christianity was often associated. Sometimes

482
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:54,559
a modern philosopher's hostile to Christianity and to the Catholic

483
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,400
Church as they were, had an ambitious plan to find

484
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:01,039
an entirely new theological basis for the political order, with

485
00:32:01,119 --> 00:32:04,440
no reference to previous theories or the classical tradition. Authors

486
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:07,839
such as Hobbes and Locke, nominally Christian, sought a new

487
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:11,319
interpretation of the Christian religion, this time went no links

488
00:32:11,319 --> 00:32:15,720
to existing tradition, which made them, of course automatically anti Catholic,

489
00:32:16,319 --> 00:32:19,640
but congruent with the modern view of rationality. They recognized

490
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,039
the religion, thus transformed and radically deluded, was said to

491
00:32:25,079 --> 00:32:28,880
be free from alleged and anachronisms, and made palatable to

492
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,799
the tastes and needs of modern man. Hobbes devoted half

493
00:32:32,839 --> 00:32:37,079
of his Leviathan to religion, where while not directly denying Christianity,

494
00:32:37,359 --> 00:32:41,880
he interpreted it in the way modern men, without the

495
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:45,319
burden of scholastic philosophy and armed with the achievements of

496
00:32:45,359 --> 00:32:50,480
the new natural sciences, could accept Hobbes told him what

497
00:32:50,559 --> 00:32:53,200
hell and heaven could be in light of reason, and

498
00:32:53,319 --> 00:32:56,480
which parts of Christian teaching were defensible and which were not.

499
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:01,960
Locke's approach was similar in the reasonableness of Christianity. He

500
00:33:02,079 --> 00:33:04,960
explained how a man having locks of views of politics

501
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:08,480
and knowledge should interpret basic teachings to the Christian religion

502
00:33:08,759 --> 00:33:14,480
with the intention to save it for modern times. Such

503
00:33:14,559 --> 00:33:18,359
theoretical exercises were meant to liberate people from the irrationality

504
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:24,599
within which they remained enslaved. Having believed in religions, superstitions, revelations, miracles,

505
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:28,480
magical rights to purify their souls, and fantastic stories about

506
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:32,519
the afterlife. All this entangled those thinkers in a paradox

507
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:38,559
typical of modern thinking, intermingling coercion with liberation. Because religion

508
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,880
was to believe to have pushed man to the phantasmagorias

509
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:46,119
invented by unthinking minds and by authoritarian institutions such as

510
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,960
the Church, the subjection of people to political coercion was

511
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,279
not only an act of liberating them from the yoke

512
00:33:52,319 --> 00:33:56,799
of ignorance and servitude, but also of strengthening their freedom.

513
00:33:58,279 --> 00:34:03,039
The political coercion was, insofar as it limited itself to

514
00:34:03,119 --> 00:34:07,039
self evident goals such as peace and cooperation, which should

515
00:34:07,079 --> 00:34:10,199
clearly be considered as a most natural expectation of every

516
00:34:10,199 --> 00:34:13,440
living creature. This is the reason why John Locke the

517
00:34:13,519 --> 00:34:18,480
Liberal could, without contradicting himself, preach religious tolerance while granting

518
00:34:18,519 --> 00:34:22,599
the state vast prerogatives to control religious practices and ideas,

519
00:34:23,199 --> 00:34:26,280
and to use coercion if these put at risk political

520
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:33,480
peace and social cooperation. Kant made a similar point in

521
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:37,239
his famous essay on the Enlightenment. He started with a

522
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,280
triumphant announcement that the human race had left the stage

523
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:44,559
of adolescence, which for him meant a very precise thing, namely,

524
00:34:44,599 --> 00:34:47,280
that man had freed himself from the influence of religion

525
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,639
and was at last able to use his reason as

526
00:34:50,639 --> 00:34:56,159
the sovereign authority. Kant concluded his essay by praising the

527
00:34:56,199 --> 00:34:59,199
autocratic rule of Frederick the Great as a great victory

528
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:03,159
of freedom. The same argument, albeit in a cartoonish form,

529
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,320
is found in Voltaire, who, in his work on toleration,

530
00:35:06,519 --> 00:35:11,199
was depicting with a predictable with a predictably obsessive monotony

531
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,360
that he thought to be the persistently harmful influence of

532
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:20,400
Christianity on every society and epoch. While bashing Christians, he

533
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:24,800
shamelessly justified various autocrats and tyrants in the history of

534
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,320
Europe and Asia. He commended, for example, the Romans for

535
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,119
their repression of Christians, in which he saw an act

536
00:35:31,159 --> 00:35:35,760
of toleration, and criticized the repressed Christians, who, as he said,

537
00:35:36,039 --> 00:35:41,880
provoked the Romans with their intolerant religious zeal. The most

538
00:35:41,960 --> 00:35:44,719
radical version of making religion a servant of politics we

539
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:47,960
owe to Jean Jacques Rousseau, notably in his concept of

540
00:35:48,039 --> 00:35:51,559
civil religion, which was intended as the bedrock of the

541
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:55,480
deep emotional cohesion of a society. The new type of

542
00:35:55,519 --> 00:35:58,480
religious belief was to supersede the earlier forms, of which

543
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:03,119
he enumerated three. A religion exclusively internal, a religion of

544
00:36:03,159 --> 00:36:07,920
traditional societies based on social mores and rituals. And a

545
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:13,360
religion most bizarre, which for him was Christianity, primarily Catholic,

546
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:20,159
but partly Protestant too. What was bizarre about it about

547
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:24,000
it was its being both otherworldly and this worldly, the

548
00:36:24,079 --> 00:36:27,440
combination of which was politically pernicious because it undermined the

549
00:36:27,559 --> 00:36:30,559
unity of a community and subverted the sovereign power of

550
00:36:30,599 --> 00:36:34,679
the state. The new religion he proposed was an artificial construction,

551
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:37,559
events it solely to serve a political purpose, but it

552
00:36:37,599 --> 00:36:40,760
contained elements from other religions, the existence of a powerful

553
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:44,039
and compassionate deity, the sanctity of life, and the belief

554
00:36:44,039 --> 00:36:46,559
in the afterlife, where the righteous are rewarded and the

555
00:36:46,559 --> 00:36:50,800
wicked are punished. The function of the civic civil religion

556
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:54,239
resembled that of an ideology, giving a society deprived of

557
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:57,480
old loyalties, a new identity and a new sense of belonging.

558
00:36:58,119 --> 00:37:01,800
The imposition of the civil religion was primarily a political operation,

559
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:04,800
with implications similar to those that were later to be

560
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:09,679
seen in highly ideological regimes. The sovereign could get rid

561
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,960
of non believers and even punish with death those who

562
00:37:13,039 --> 00:37:19,440
betrayed the new religious dogmas. The anti Catholic and anti

563
00:37:19,559 --> 00:37:22,679
church attitude was something that from the beginning permeated the

564
00:37:22,679 --> 00:37:25,960
liberal notion of politics. Because the majority of the liberal

565
00:37:26,039 --> 00:37:30,400
thinkers were or were or were born Protestants, the anti

566
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,159
despotic edge of their theory found in the Catholic Church

567
00:37:33,199 --> 00:37:37,639
an obvious villain. Their religious background and their theories reinforced

568
00:37:37,679 --> 00:37:41,840
each other, with the monarchies weakening or turning into constitutional

569
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:46,320
parliamentary systems, the Church and her religion remained unabashedly and

570
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:54,559
ostentatiously at the nonliberal position as a deliberately provoked as

571
00:37:54,599 --> 00:37:58,440
if deliberately provoking all liberal critics to use all the

572
00:37:58,519 --> 00:38:05,079
polemical artillery. Nineteenth century socialism, with its hostility to religion, is,

573
00:38:05,119 --> 00:38:07,880
in a way of version of a similar attitude. The

574
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,360
Church and Catholicism represented an old order that long ago

575
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:15,760
outlived its usefulness and deserved to perish. The twentieth century

576
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:19,280
version was, of course, rhetorically and in practice far more deadly.

577
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:23,719
The architects and helmsmans of the communist system were convinced

578
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,320
that when fighting religion, whatever the means, they did humanity

579
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:31,480
a great service by contributing to its liberation. The more

580
00:38:31,599 --> 00:38:35,519
radical the coercive means applied, the nearer they thought was

581
00:38:35,559 --> 00:38:38,800
the time when man became his own master. Do you

582
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:43,039
know how many communists I know who don't think they're communists.

583
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:47,079
The fact that the anti religion policies of the Communists

584
00:38:47,079 --> 00:38:49,159
were so much more brutal than those of the liberal

585
00:38:49,159 --> 00:38:53,119
and democratic states is of course crucial and should never

586
00:38:53,159 --> 00:38:56,119
be forgotten or minimized. But it remains true that their

587
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:00,840
views on religion and on Christianity and in particular, converge

588
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:03,960
too often. Not only do they not know that they

589
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:10,000
are communists, but they're also liberal. I no, I guess

590
00:39:10,039 --> 00:39:12,320
they can pick which one they want. It's kind of

591
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:16,800
hard to run away from it. When in the early

592
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:21,199
nineteen twenties Bertrand Russell, after having visited Bolshevik Russia, wrote

593
00:39:21,199 --> 00:39:23,400
a book on the theory and practice of Bolshevism, He

594
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:26,480
and no uncertain words, expressed both his admiration for the

595
00:39:26,519 --> 00:39:29,760
general idea of the system and his equally strong distaste

596
00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:32,480
for the means used. He finished his book on the

597
00:39:32,519 --> 00:39:35,880
relatively optimistic note that the Communist program, once freed from

598
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:40,280
the Asian like barbaric heritage so powerfully present in Russia,

599
00:39:40,519 --> 00:39:44,599
would remain a great hope of mankind. The Communists were

600
00:39:44,599 --> 00:39:47,559
indeed aware that such worthy feelings of the liberal minded

601
00:39:47,559 --> 00:39:50,760
Western elites, and wishing to ease the criticism of their

602
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:55,440
brutal policies, willingly presented themselves as continuing the Western secular

603
00:39:55,440 --> 00:40:00,760
and anti Christian tradition. This tactic proved most proved quite effective,

604
00:40:01,199 --> 00:40:05,519
as it gave the Communists an image of splendidly daring modernizers.

605
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,280
After all, both the Communists and the Western liberal progressives

606
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:13,599
shared an assumption that religion, unless itself radically modernized, was

607
00:40:13,639 --> 00:40:17,199
an impediment to modernization. Both shared a similar vision of

608
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:19,239
a better world to come, in which there would be

609
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:21,760
no religion at all, or, if it was to survive,

610
00:40:22,159 --> 00:40:25,400
it would be entirely subservient to the ideas and institutions

611
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:29,199
of the new society. Neither the communists nor liberal progressives

612
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:31,960
could ever imagine religion to be a carrier of wisdom

613
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,320
and a valuable corrective force that was necessary to challenge

614
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:39,159
the dogmas of the grand plan of modernization. To accept

615
00:40:39,159 --> 00:40:43,119
this authority, if only partially, would have been as unthinkable

616
00:40:43,159 --> 00:40:44,840
to them as it would have been for Kant to

617
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,679
argue that man, after having matured, should go back to

618
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:53,960
the state of adolescence. The notion that to be for

619
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:58,119
freedom and modernity presumes being also anti Christian has imprinted

620
00:40:58,239 --> 00:41:01,159
itself on the European mind and as as strong today

621
00:41:01,159 --> 00:41:04,920
as it was in the past. An anti and anti

622
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,440
Christian rhetoric in the media and in politics, and in

623
00:41:08,519 --> 00:41:13,320
anti Christian art, including paintings, installations, plays, novels, films, articles

624
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:17,400
and slogans fills the public space today, making the Christian religion,

625
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,880
its institutions, and its articles of faith objects of endlessly

626
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:27,840
multiplying derisions and accusations. Homosexual activists seek Christianity as the

627
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:31,719
original source of homophobia, and feminists as the foundation of patriarchy.

628
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:38,519
Countless intellectual is accused of totalitarianism, reactionary sexual ethics, pedophilia,

629
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,920
an inquisition like mentality which hunts anti Semitism and the Holocaust,

630
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:52,039
intellectual infantilism, a morbid fascination with guilt, and numerous other sins.

631
00:41:54,599 --> 00:41:56,760
On the one hand, there is an ever present feeling

632
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,400
of satisfaction that Christianity has been in retreat for some time,

633
00:42:00,639 --> 00:42:04,239
being driven back by a victorious wave of secularization. On

634
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:08,199
the other, is invariably seen as an evil that miraculously

635
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:12,079
resurrects itself and continues to cast its ominous shadow over

636
00:42:12,119 --> 00:42:16,599
the Western civilization. The participation of Christians in public life,

637
00:42:16,639 --> 00:42:19,559
even as paltry as it is now, revives the usual

638
00:42:19,599 --> 00:42:24,639
suspicions and resuscitates the old anti Christian stereotypes. The crusade

639
00:42:24,639 --> 00:42:28,239
against Christianity verges on the absurd. Liberals continue to make

640
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:31,599
new conquestions to colonize more and more areas of human life,

641
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:35,559
leaving practically no territory outside their control, and the more

642
00:42:35,599 --> 00:42:39,280
they grab, the latter They ran against Christianity, flogging it

643
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:45,159
with new accusations, invectives, and blasphemies. The analogy to what

644
00:42:45,199 --> 00:42:48,559
was happening under the communist rule seems irresistible in the

645
00:42:48,599 --> 00:42:51,400
countries where as a result of brutal repressions by the

646
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:57,000
Communist regime, sometimes induced by historical and cultural peculiarities, Christianity

647
00:42:57,079 --> 00:42:59,320
was believed to be on the wane, and where the

648
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:03,480
forces of sectism trans triumphed to the satisfaction of the

649
00:43:03,519 --> 00:43:08,000
apostles of the communist ideology, the anti Christian warriors did

650
00:43:08,039 --> 00:43:11,159
not lay down their arms. They continued to fight, as

651
00:43:11,159 --> 00:43:14,639
if fearing the Christian Canity's death was temporary and that

652
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,880
the religion reborn again, was soon to resume its sinister

653
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:21,199
role as a major obstacle to the march of modernity.

654
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:24,320
In a sense, the communists were right. Much of the

655
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:28,119
resistance that finally led to the disintegration of the Communist

656
00:43:28,159 --> 00:43:32,000
system came from religious groups and from religion itself. At

657
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:33,599
the end of the day, it turned out that the

658
00:43:33,599 --> 00:43:36,719
fear of religion was justified. The pope had indeed far

659
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,119
more troops than the communist dictators. It is quite possible

660
00:43:40,159 --> 00:43:43,880
that the anti Christian crusaders of today are haunted by

661
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:49,440
a similar fear. I don't know what to comment on this.

662
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:56,800
It all speaks for itself, so let us continue Part four.

663
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:01,599
In today's liberal democ or see the anti Christian attitude

664
00:44:01,599 --> 00:44:05,840
has been slightly modified. An authoritarian rhetoric willingly used in

665
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:08,679
the past by even the most renowned tolerationists such as

666
00:44:09,119 --> 00:44:13,679
Locke and Bail disappeared. The public space, including public language,

667
00:44:13,679 --> 00:44:16,440
has been for some time governed by two formal rules.

668
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:20,079
These rules, long present and liberal thinking, are now included

669
00:44:20,119 --> 00:44:22,840
in the legal and constitutional systems and are believed to

670
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,119
have settled once and for all the problem of religion

671
00:44:25,199 --> 00:44:30,159
and politics. First, religious freedom is recognized as a fundamental

672
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:34,039
human right, and second, the state must be ideologically neutral.

673
00:44:34,639 --> 00:44:38,800
In real terms. The first rule entails that no religious

674
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:42,039
group can be prevented from practicing their religion. The second

675
00:44:42,039 --> 00:44:44,440
asserts that the state must be free from any religion

676
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:47,480
and is not allowed to support any. Theoretically, the solution

677
00:44:47,639 --> 00:44:51,199
is clear, but despite appearances, the old problems did not vanish.

678
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:57,239
The allegedly formal rules turned out to be substantive. First

679
00:44:57,239 --> 00:44:59,559
of all, what these rules legitimized was an assumption that

680
00:44:59,639 --> 00:45:03,039
christian should be treated like other religions, and that there

681
00:45:03,159 --> 00:45:05,599
was no reason why it should have a superior status.

682
00:45:07,559 --> 00:45:09,920
Such an assumption would be inconceivable to most of the

683
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:15,639
old tolerationists. Even Voltaire, clearly loathing Christianity, explicitly rejected this

684
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:19,440
view in his Treatise on Toleration, admitting that the position

685
00:45:19,519 --> 00:45:22,679
of this religion in Europe was exceptional and therefore privileged.

686
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:27,199
The new rules were in the intentions of the liberals universalists,

687
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:32,599
and thus allowed no except either allowed no exceptions either

688
00:45:32,679 --> 00:45:39,039
on the historical or philosophical grounds. This universalism the Liberals

689
00:45:39,079 --> 00:45:42,559
are particularly proud of, because they saw it in manifestation

690
00:45:42,679 --> 00:45:46,440
of their neutrality. They, however, disregarded an obvious fact that

691
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:51,039
in practice what they called neutrality had irrevocably dethroned Christianity

692
00:45:51,079 --> 00:45:53,840
from the position it had had for many centuries, and

693
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:58,400
thus led to redefining the nature of European civilization. As

694
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:00,840
one can see The rules in question, although intended to

695
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:03,960
be formal, were easily adapted to the prevailing ideology and

696
00:46:04,119 --> 00:46:06,960
soon became a part of it. Today, they are among

697
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,760
the standard inventory of those who assumed the irrelevance of

698
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,840
Christianity for the identity of Western civilization, or, stating it

699
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,840
more mildly, who assumed the post Christian nature of this

700
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:22,920
civilization in which Christianity is a fortunately closed chapter. The

701
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,719
view that the modern world is essentially non Christian, only

702
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:29,039
timidly uttered a few decades ago, is now widely accepted,

703
00:46:29,559 --> 00:46:33,920
articulated explicitly and loudly by philosophers, political scientists, and writers.

704
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:37,280
It has penetrated public opinion and become a sort of

705
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:42,480
uncontested axiom of social wisdom. A reference to Christianity as

706
00:46:42,519 --> 00:46:45,159
an important part of European identity in the preamble of

707
00:46:45,199 --> 00:46:49,039
the EU Constitutional Treaty provokes such an angry reaction that

708
00:46:49,119 --> 00:46:52,559
had to be dropped as allegedly incongruent with what the

709
00:46:52,599 --> 00:46:59,400
EU calls European values. Even acknowledging the historical role of

710
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:03,440
the Christian heritage is now thought too extravagant to be tolerated.

711
00:47:04,599 --> 00:47:07,519
All these manifestations of an anti Christian sentiment are not

712
00:47:07,599 --> 00:47:12,320
a trifling matter. They illustrate the triumph of the ideological thinking,

713
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:16,440
whose distinguishing feature is a reorganization and quite often a

714
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:19,679
falsification of the past in order to put at the

715
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:24,239
service of the contemporary political project. Who controls the past

716
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:29,159
controls the future. As orwell accurately observed in his dissection

717
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:33,440
of totalitarianism, the communist did on a large scale. The

718
00:47:33,519 --> 00:47:36,800
EU and its effort to build a new European identity

719
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,880
is doing something quite similar, though on a smaller scale,

720
00:47:41,159 --> 00:47:44,840
paralyzed by their chrysophobia. To use Joseph H. H. Wiler's

721
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:47,519
well known expression, the European Union as well as the

722
00:47:47,559 --> 00:47:50,760
European governments do not react to the brutal persecution of

723
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:54,000
Christians and other continents, and if they do, their reaction

724
00:47:54,119 --> 00:47:57,119
is low key. This is all the more shameful that

725
00:47:57,159 --> 00:47:59,679
the Christians are, and it must be repeated over and

726
00:47:59,679 --> 00:48:02,639
over again, the most persecuted religious group in the world.

727
00:48:03,199 --> 00:48:06,719
It seems almost unthinkable that the EU of today would

728
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:11,360
take a more resolute standby, for instance, asserting that due

729
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:14,159
to the special role of Christianity in the history of Europe,

730
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,599
Europeans have an obligation to defend the Catholics, Protestants and

731
00:48:17,679 --> 00:48:22,000
Christians of other denominations and other continents who were imprisoned, expelled,

732
00:48:22,079 --> 00:48:28,239
tortured and massacred. More outspoken statements condemning the persecution are

733
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,079
rare and written in a universalist language in which Christians

734
00:48:31,079 --> 00:48:34,239
are mentioned alongside other groups, as if the EU were

735
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:39,320
afraid to be too committal. It is significant that in

736
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:42,800
the famous case Lasi versus Italy, where the first verdict

737
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:45,679
by the European Court of Human Rights decided that crucifixes

738
00:48:45,719 --> 00:48:49,360
in schools were unacceptable, most other European governments did not

739
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:52,639
support the Italian government, which appealed the ruling and failed

740
00:48:52,719 --> 00:49:03,239
to act as amicus cure curia. Those that did are Meenia, Bulgarias, Vipris, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Romania,

741
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:06,960
Russia and San Marino, or either secondary players within the

742
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,639
EU or like Russia, outside of it. None of the

743
00:49:10,679 --> 00:49:15,760
major European countries sided with the Italians. Neither did neither

744
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:18,719
did I am ashamed to say Poland under the Civic

745
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:22,719
Platform government, the Polish government, sensitive to what the big

746
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,840
guys might think about it, decided not to get involved.

747
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:29,800
The coldness to the plight of Christians and Christianity is

748
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:34,119
concealed by the language of universalistic egalitarianism, which is in

749
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:38,320
its ostentatious generosity, is supposed to express concern for all

750
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:41,800
religions and all religious groups. But the principle of equality

751
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:44,599
and its two rules equal freedom of all religions and

752
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:48,679
neutrality of the state, are anything but generous. Under the

753
00:49:48,719 --> 00:49:51,559
banner of equality, the religion that has been of paramount

754
00:49:51,559 --> 00:49:54,480
importance is being equalized with the religions that had no

755
00:49:54,559 --> 00:49:59,400
importance at all. In concrete terms, equalization means that Christianity

756
00:49:59,519 --> 00:50:03,280
must be rastically devalued, while other religions a little impact

757
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:08,440
on European identity are given a tremendous boost. That's what

758
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:15,599
we call replacement. The nonsense of this new and you know,

759
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:21,320
you know Thomas makes the argument that you know you

760
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:26,000
would rather be what would you rather do? Would you

761
00:50:26,079 --> 00:50:34,119
rather be persecuted physically or just have your whole identity removed?

762
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,280
Where not only is it stripping you of who you are,

763
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:39,000
but it's stripping you of who you were and who

764
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:41,559
your family was, and who everyone in your line was,

765
00:50:41,639 --> 00:50:47,079
and who everyone in the future will be most people

766
00:50:47,199 --> 00:50:54,639
just concentrate on the material. In concrete terms, equalization means

767
00:50:54,639 --> 00:50:57,960
that Christianity must be drastically devalued, while other religions a

768
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:01,039
little impact on European identity or given a tremendous boost.

769
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,440
The nonsense of this new perspective leaps to the eye.

770
00:51:05,599 --> 00:51:08,440
For example, some of the British bishops and politicians played

771
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,519
with an idea of introducing elements of Sharia law into

772
00:51:11,559 --> 00:51:14,559
the British legal system in areas with a large Muslim population,

773
00:51:14,679 --> 00:51:17,119
so that Muslims could feel better in a Christian environment.

774
00:51:17,599 --> 00:51:20,480
Those who came with this generous offer seemed to forget

775
00:51:20,519 --> 00:51:24,559
that British society had already effectively eliminated Christianity, and what

776
00:51:24,599 --> 00:51:27,559
they suggested would be would amount to making Britain more

777
00:51:27,639 --> 00:51:31,800
Muslim while pushing Christianity further aside. Another example is a

778
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:35,199
law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols. While it originally

779
00:51:35,599 --> 00:51:38,599
targeted Muslims, it has in fact become a legal major

780
00:51:38,679 --> 00:51:42,000
legal measure to eliminate from the public presence to Christian

781
00:51:42,119 --> 00:51:45,280
symbols after two millennia have been an integral part of

782
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:49,519
Western civilization. Such actions are reminiscent of the wars against

783
00:51:49,599 --> 00:51:53,119
religious symbols waged by the communist government against religious communities,

784
00:51:53,119 --> 00:51:56,360
and the pretexts that these symbols violated the secular character

785
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:00,039
of state institutions. The communist authorities had not tall the

786
00:52:00,079 --> 00:52:02,960
rate crucifixes in schools were irritated when the citizens of

787
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:06,480
the communist state were wearing them in a too conspicuous manner.

788
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:09,639
If the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights

789
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,599
in the case of Latzi versus Italy had been upheld

790
00:52:12,599 --> 00:52:14,920
in the Grand Chamber, the Italian schools and in the

791
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,559
end probably also the schools in other countries, would have

792
00:52:17,599 --> 00:52:20,440
been similar to those in the communist countries, where the

793
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:23,400
presence of crosses in classrooms or holy metals around the

794
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:29,239
next of students would be extirpated by law. In the

795
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:31,920
first case, the censure would have been enforced by the

796
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:34,679
European Court of Human Rights and in the other by

797
00:52:34,719 --> 00:52:39,199
the system of communist justice, but the practical consequences for

798
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:42,039
the Christians would have been the same. It is also

799
00:52:42,119 --> 00:52:45,159
worth remembering that most communist countries, after the brutal attempts

800
00:52:45,159 --> 00:52:48,639
to annihilate religion had failed, also upheld the two rules

801
00:52:48,639 --> 00:52:52,440
of freedom of religious worship and the ideologically and the

802
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:56,639
ideological neutrality of the state. The Communists were perfectly happy

803
00:52:56,639 --> 00:52:58,599
to accept these rules as long as they meant that

804
00:52:58,639 --> 00:53:01,280
religious communities were not all allowed to make non religious

805
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:05,840
public statements other than those that supported the regime. The

806
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:10,280
Polish communist authorities also willingly resorted to those rules whenever

807
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,800
they thought it expedients to reduce the significance of Catholicism.

808
00:53:14,559 --> 00:53:16,639
Then they took the pose of a neutral arbiter and

809
00:53:16,639 --> 00:53:18,519
in the name of what they called fairness, gave a

810
00:53:18,559 --> 00:53:23,400
disproportionately well publicized hearing to various representatives of small churches,

811
00:53:23,679 --> 00:53:28,599
particularly those that were conditioned unconditionally endorsed in the Communist Party,

812
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:31,840
having been sometimes infiltrated by the secret police, and were

813
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:35,719
eager to take part in any anti Catholic action. The

814
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:38,559
decision about the public presence of religion based on the

815
00:53:38,599 --> 00:53:43,039
two mentioned rules is, let me reiterate to a large

816
00:53:43,039 --> 00:53:47,280
degree of substantive not formal, and the substance depends on

817
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:52,159
the ideological interpretation given to it by governing bodies in themselves.

818
00:53:52,199 --> 00:53:55,239
These principles do not determine much, but the intention of

819
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:58,639
the interpreters, pushes them in one direction or another, and

820
00:53:58,679 --> 00:54:03,199
gives them a substance of character. The rules stated out

821
00:54:03,199 --> 00:54:07,719
of any context include too many components, vague or unsaid.

822
00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:11,440
Freedom of religion is never absolute. Religious communities never limit

823
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:14,840
themselves to religious matters. The state is never neutral and

824
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:19,480
has its own ideological preferences, etc. Under Communism, the government

825
00:54:19,559 --> 00:54:22,880
hated religion and use both rules to eliminate Christianity from

826
00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:26,679
the public square and ultimately from the people's hearts and minds.

827
00:54:27,639 --> 00:54:31,440
The Communist Constitution, of course, guaranteed equality of religions and

828
00:54:31,519 --> 00:54:34,559
religious freedom. There was an article added to its stipulating

829
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:36,800
that this freedom must not be used to attack the

830
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:41,840
socialist system. The article was completely superfluous, with or without

831
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:44,639
its policy of the Communist party toward the Church and

832
00:54:44,679 --> 00:54:47,599
the Catholics would have been the same when read in

833
00:54:47,639 --> 00:54:50,719
the context of the liberal democratic rules. The article did

834
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:54,440
not say anything shocking. Liberal democracy takes for granted that

835
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:56,880
the churches do not attack the political system in which

836
00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:00,599
they live, that is, the system of liberal democracy. If

837
00:55:00,639 --> 00:55:03,960
they do, they are in trouble. In the United States,

838
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:06,559
that is, in a country where one could speak of

839
00:55:06,599 --> 00:55:09,239
the real separation of church and state. The power, at

840
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:11,519
least until the nineteen sixties, was in the hands of

841
00:55:11,559 --> 00:55:15,239
the Christian majority, mostly Protestant, who interpreted the rules of

842
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,440
freedom of religion and neutrality of the state in a

843
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:20,880
way that allowed for a strong presence of religion in

844
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:24,280
the public square, to the extent that American society could

845
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:28,599
be accurately called the society of the Book. In today's

846
00:55:28,599 --> 00:55:31,880
post communist Poland, Catholicism has been the subject of constant

847
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:34,719
attackses to the moment the old regime collapsed, but the

848
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:37,360
Church still retains an important position in the life of

849
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:40,719
the country, which comes not from constitutional provisions, but her

850
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:44,000
political and historical role in the nation's history and the

851
00:55:44,039 --> 00:55:47,480
existence of a large Catholic community. In today's Europe, the

852
00:55:47,519 --> 00:55:49,599
power has been in the hands of the political class

853
00:55:49,639 --> 00:55:53,239
hostile to Christianity, and this class, supported by the elites

854
00:55:53,280 --> 00:55:56,800
and by large segments of society, have been interpreting the

855
00:55:56,840 --> 00:56:02,000
two rules with complete impunity, in a manner inappropriate to

856
00:56:02,119 --> 00:56:08,840
its anti Christian prejudice. That's it, Part nine. We'll come

857
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:12,599
back and finish. We'll finish part chapter five, and then

858
00:56:12,639 --> 00:56:18,440
we'll read the summary. And yeah, if you Thomas and

859
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:23,599
I just dropped a review of the nineteen thirty five

860
00:56:24,199 --> 00:56:29,360
movie documentary Triumph of the Will by Lenny Riefenstahl. If

861
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:32,039
you go to freemanbyon Thewall dot com forward slash Movies,

862
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:35,320
you'll see a link to it there. And we do

863
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:38,840
movies every month, movie reviews every month, watching reviews, and

864
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,840
there's also a year you can subscribe for a year.

865
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,239
There there's a link so you can also check out

866
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:48,440
the movies we've done in the past. Anyway, we'll be

867
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:50,639
back in a couple of days and we'll finish us up.

868
00:56:51,039 --> 00:56:53,239
Thank you very much for tuning in. Take care,