Father Arnold Trauner of IMBC preaches about the social aspect of human nature. 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen 
 
My dearly beloved in Our Lord, 
 
Last Sunday I have tried to make it clear that social life and human society are a consequence of how God has conceived human nature. 
Unfortunately the “moderns” do not believe in the concept of the nature of things, but they are adepts of evolutionary, ever-moving concepts according to Hegelian dialectics: from a thesis and an anti-thesis – two relative or absolute opposites – a synthesis needs to emerge, which by definition is better than the thesis or the anti-thesis. It is totally perverted thinking which has always been around – think of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who taught that “panta rhei – everything flows” and “polemos pater panton – war is the father of all”. 
Certainly it is true that things keep changing, in and around us. But the nature of things, their essential form or being, does not change! Take for example Joseph Ratzinger’s claim that the “new” and the “tridentine” Mass are two different expressions of the Roman (Latin) Mass; and that they need to influence each other to become something better. It is a masterpiece of Hegelian dialectic, but it remains stupid and false. The “new” Mass is no Mass at all, it is only a parasite living off the true Latin Mass which has its roots with St Peter and Rome. Bishop Guérard des Lauriers, in his study on the “new” Mass (recently published in French), shows that the altered and evil “modern” thinking – voluntarism – has kept everyone, including the traditionalists, from asking the question of the validity of the Montini/Bugnini Machwerk (sorry effort) in a correct manner! 
Thus any discussion between a Catholic and a “modern” man is a dialogue of the deaf. The “modern” man cannot hear nor understand what the Catholic is saying. His evolutionistic thinking keeps him from understanding the concept or idea expressed by a Catholic. 
I said last Sunday that all rights of the human individual stem from and depend on his fulfilling the essential task set by God who created him: To honor, serve and praise God and by that means to save his soul. Any deviation from this set goal which nobody can alter, has no claim to any “right” at all. 
I said that God also directly created the family; but that the civil society or the state is created by God indirectly only, namely in as much as it is necessary so that man can attain his ultimate goal. 
From this follows immediately and necessarily the truth that all human authority takes its legitimacy from complying with the ultimate goal of man. In other words, human authority needs to strive for the common good which is nothing else but the glory of God and the salvation of souls. 
Again, “moderns” cannot properly understand this since they do not discern “legitimate” from “legal”. 
Legitimate means that something is in keeping with the ultimate law, ie. divine and natural law. It is of the ontological or metaphysical order. 
Legal means that something is being declared to be a law by the competent authority. It is of the positive order. 
The legal order, the positive laws, must be legitimate and thus serve the ultimate purpose or goal. Positivism and voluntarism make it that this relationship is set aside and ignored. From thence stem the greatest disorders in the present systems of human social life and communities. They conceive “the state” or “the community” as entities which exist separated from the human beings which constitute them. This is, I have said, incorrect since the state is only an indirect creature. Hence the constant battle between individuals and communities. 
How does a Catholic community or state function? 
It is an organic cooperation of all individuals in view of the common good. It respects the individual as created by God and the family as willed by God. From these rock solid pillars it moves on to relate to each other – individuals and families alike – always in view of assuring and accomplishing the common good (the glory of God and the salvation of souls). 
The next and essential step is that individuals or families relate to each other according to their natural interests and needs. Each individual cannot accomplish or satisfy all its needs, independently from others… each family cannot accomplish and satisfy all its needs, independently from others. - In a Christian state or community this leads to the establishing of professional corporations where all those who exercise the same trade relate to each other; and each corporation relates to the other trades. Thus we can compare it to the structure of the human body or to the mystical body of Christ, the Church where all is structured and ordered in an organic way. 
Beyond the corporations we find the greater community or the state. There are very diverse fashions of how states have been created. Historically they have mostly been of quite manageable size: What is now Germany, has been a patchwork of about 200 entities most of the time. 
There must be certain factors so that a state can last over time -common language, culture etc. Larger states usually did not last for very long if they were the fruit of military occupation. Some big states or empires think of the Roman or the Habsburg empires -~ had a long existence because they fulfilled a special role in Divine Providence. 
 
The relationship between the different parts of society must be impregnated by justice. St Thomas Aquinas distinguishes three forms of justice: legal justice which serves the common good the movement from interiors to superiors; commutative justice which rules all kinds of contracts -the movements between more or less equal parties; and distributive justice which rules what the community does for the individuals the movements from superiors to inferiors. 
 
For a society to function well, the principle of subsidiarity must be respected. It means that each inferior level does, and is left to do, whatever it can achieve by its own means: the individual, the family, the local community, the professional corporation etc. Only if one level of society cannot accomplish, or totally accomplish something, the next higher level steps into action. 
 
You can easily see how little this is respected by our current societies and states, where a multitude of every day features are regulated by laws and where the state interferes in just about anything if it so pleases. The entire tax system of “modern” states cannot stand if judged by the standards of Catholic social doctrine. 
 
The reason for this is, once again, that the starting point, the vision and definition of the goal, of the common good, has been altered: It has shifted from the Christian view, where all things are considered as created by God and for God, to mammon, ie. money meant to produce money, money as the goal of economic activity, debt money or whatever you may call it. 
 
Our Lord, in short, has said to his Apostles, just before he ascended into Heaven: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth” (Mt 28,18). The Popes have made and deposed kings and emperors if necessary. The least a Catholic must believe, is that the spiritual authority that of the Pope has at least an indirect power over the civil authority. Here we see more particularly how far the “modern” system has gone off track. It is entirely on the wrong way, it can neither be saved nor repaired. A French priest, Fr Charles Maignen, published a study in 1892 under the title “The sovereignty of the people is a heresy”. He resumes the teaching of the Church, about a century after the beginning of the downward spiral through revolutions. 
 
That which God has made, cannot be revolutionized! The human body cannot be repaired by replacing sick parts with healthy spare parts, as the daily experience of medicine-gone-crazy sadly proves; those who receive organ transplants are infallibly impaired by having to take heavy medication because naturally the body refuses strange tissues, let alone entire vital organs. Similarly the human society cannot be revolutionized or te-invented --as has been done over the past two centuries without having to su ffer the direst consequences. Declaring something to be legal does not necessarily make it legitimate. Disregarding the divinely established order has always led, and will always lead to the most terrible consequences. 
 
There is not a great deal we can do with regards to the greater picture, given the present Circumstances But we can do our best to set our minds right and straight, and to administer ourselves and our small communities essentially the families in the right and God-willed way. 
 
Our Lord Jesus-Christ, Sun of justice -have mercy on us! 
 
Our Lady, mirror of justice -pray for us! 
 
St Joseph most just - pray for us! 
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