Celebrating the 4th of July

[LausTibiChriste]

I made a Modern Medievalism article for today:

English liberty: the tradition of rebellion, America as it could have been, and America as it should be

I was beginning to wonder where you disappeared to

I've been busy moving. It feels good to post a long article after a disappearance, though.

You left Texas for Philly?! Oh the humanity

[The Harlequin King]

You left Texas for Philly?! Oh the humanity

I'm still figuring out what to think about it all. We don't live in the City proper, though.

[LausTibiChriste]

You left Texas for Philly?! Oh the humanity

I'm still figuring out what to think about it all. We don't live in the City proper, though.

Gonna go see the Pope? 

Get a job there?

[The Harlequin King]

Gonna go see the Pope? 

Get a job there?

No and no. To the former, I'm going to either hole up and play video games, or attend a house party with other like-minded curmudgeonly trads.

[LausTibiChriste]

Gonna go see the Pope? 

Get a job there?

No and no. To the former, I'm going to either hole up and play video games, or attend a house party with other like-minded curmudgeonly trads.

Haha, that sounds like fun

[Penelope]

You left Texas for Philly?! Oh the humanity

I'm still figuring out what to think about it all. We don't live in the City proper, though.

You like it.

Anyway, here's the thing. The Fourth of July is, properly, a celebration of the issuance of one of the founding documents of the United States, a document that captures the values that built this nation's culture and identity--values that echo the French Enlightenment and a spirit of rebellion--values that are antithetical to the Catholic Faith. If this holiday were about celebrating Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, or one half of Niagara Falls, then great. I'd celebrate away. If it were about celebrating the roots of Catholic culture in various pockets throughout the U.S., then I would definitely celebrate. If it were about celebrating whichever people have been truly heroic in this nation's history, then I would celebrate. But it isn't about celebrating those things. So what am I supposed to be celebrating today?

[Hiero of Syracuse]

I could get behind that perspective. We should certainly wish good for our country, but we don't have to celebrate its founding, especially when it was founded on Enlightenment principles which reject Christ.

[INPEFESS]

So what am I supposed to be celebrating today?

I am celebrating my constitutional right to practice my Catholic Faith, even if the reason I am allowed to practice it is based upon Masonic principles.

I am still thankful that I have that right.

[Penelope]

So what am I supposed to be celebrating today?

I am celebrating my constitutional right to practice my Catholic Faith, even if the reason I am allowed to practice it is based upon Masonic principles.

I am still thankful that I have that right.

Fair enough. But that's still not exactly the intended spirit of the holiday.

[INPEFESS]

So what am I supposed to be celebrating today?

I am celebrating my constitutional right to practice my Catholic Faith, even if the reason I am allowed to practice it is based upon Masonic principles.

I am still thankful that I have that right.

Fair enough. But that's still not exactly the intended spirit of the holiday.

Well, celebrate what it means to you, not what it means to them.

I mean, the intended spirit of Christmas--or so they say--was originally the Pagan celebration of the Roman New Year. Christians used it to afford themselves with an opportunity to covertly celebrate their own holiday.

What we learn from Scripture is that God uses evil for good, and so we have the assurance of the moral law that we can celebrate the presence of evil only insofar as we celebrate the good it enables us to derive from it.

In this case, the principle by itself and of itself is evil, but instead of celebrating the principle itself, which is to celebrate all the possible evil applications of it, celebrate the good it affords us, the good we can produce from it, and the specific good application of it that enables us to practice the Faith freely.

Sure, the intended purpose is to celebrate the principles in the abstract, but that doesn't mean you can't "Christianize" the holiday for your own purposes, like the Church has done with other holidays, and celebrate the good derived from a specific application of the principles in the concrete.

[Penelope]

Sure, that makes sense, INP. I mean, it's not like I declined the invitation to the party we attended today. But I also didn't participate in the group reading of the DoI.

[Kaesekopf]

[Gardener]

http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_29061881_diuturnum.html

12. Those who believe civil society to have risen from the free consent of men, looking for the origin of its authority from the same source, say that each individual has given up something of his right,(15) and that voluntarily every person has put himself into the power of the one man in whose person the whole of those rights has been centered. But it is a great error not to see, what is manifest, that men, as they are not a nomad race, have been created, without their own free will, for a natural community of life. It is plain, moreover, that the pact which they allege is openly a falsehood and a fiction, and that it has no authority to confer on political power such great force, dignity, and firmness as the safety of the State and the common good of the citizens require. Then only will the government have all those ornaments and guarantees, when it is understood to emanate from God as its august and most sacred source.

vs

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Forgot to add:

[Bonaventure]

We had some non-safe, non-sane fireworks. It was good for the kids.

[Chestertonian]