Organized, legal theft, promulgated by government, encouraged by (perhaps) a majority of taxpayers, is held here to be an intrinsic evil. Its violation is not only against the 7th commandment’s prohibition of theft, but fosters violations against other commandments as well, most especially the 9th and 10th, in the temptation to covetousness, but also the 1st and 2nd in the temptation to idolatry; the 3rd because the ongoing march of secularism and its singular perception of well-being in the sole realm of the physical here-and-now demands the abandonment of any notion of setting aside one day of every seven for contemplation of our relationship with our Creator God.  The 4th describes disregard for higher, legitimate authority; when expressed toward God, it is blasphemy.  The 5th because taking another person’s life can be, and usually is done in small increments of time; the 6th because it fosters the view that one can be “entitled” to the body of another person merely for his or her own sexual entertainment; and the 8th because we must lie to ourselves and each other in order to perpetrate and justify the immorality.

Regardless, the USCCB defends the government’s taxation/redistribution scheme as if it were the eighth sacrament.  Congressmen attempting to construct a plan to bring solvency, stewardship and economic sanity to our government have been chastised by many bishops for their plans having “failed a moral test” of some sort.  What moral test does the present state of  matters pass?

Pope Benedict XVI has said:   “At the heart of every culture,… perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing.  In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature’s God.  Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity.

“For her part, the church in the United States is called… to proclaim a Gospel which not only proposes unchanging moral truths but proposes them precisely as the key to human happiness and social prospering. … The Church’s defense of a moral reasoning based on the natural law is grounding [sic] on her conviction that this law is not a threat to our freedom, but rather a “language” which enables us to understand ourselves and the truth of our being, and so to shape a more just and humane world.  She thus proposes her moral teaching as a message not of constraint but of liberation, and as the basis of building a secure future.”  Benedict XVI, January 19, 2012, Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the United States of America on their “Ad Limina” Visit.

Lest we mince words, let us refer to those of a writer known as  “cmanion1″ who observes in the Wanderer Forum Foundation (“The Bishops, The Laity and the Budget”, 24 April, 2012), quoting Pat Buchanan,  “the… almost unfathomable corruption in the federal government that… mirrors the sumptuous appetites and smug sense of entitlement in which the Democratic Party leadership wallows.”

Indeed, it is the Democratic party platform which is committed to the taxation/redistribution scheme, as well, as many other aspects of the Culture of Death, described herein previously, as a method of buying votes with the taxpayers’ own money.  From the writer “cmanion1″ again,  “… the bishops’ century-long alliance (some might call it a marriage) with the Democrat party has profoundly damaged both the Church and the country…”  This week’s  Common Lectionary selections include this from Hosea 11:7– “My people are diseased through their disloyalty…”

As Walter Williams reminded recently, stealing from one to give to another is still wrong, even if 200 million of our fellow citizens instruct government to do it.

There is no reason to have any confidence that our protests will be heeded and the evil insanity will stop.  Protest we must, however.  It is what we can do, and we must do what we can.