Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: Libertarians in Heaven Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/blessed_libertarian#13543 Post contents: "Maistre the Neocon… I knew that would stir things up. Let me just remind you, the man was a Freemason — at a time when the lines between the Craft and the Church were rather firmly drawn. The Christian faith, as taught by the Catholic Church, was for him not a truth to live by, but a story you tell the peasants to keep them in line. Now is that Leo Strauss, or what?" Frank Purcell That's it? That's your evidence that De Maistre was an early modernist and an early neo-con? He was a freemason from 1774 to 1790, a time when it was by no means so evident that Freemasonry was a movement very dangerous to the Church. This first became evident at the time of the French Revolution. De Maistre supported the earlier reformist activities of the Estates General, but was quick to realize his mistake and ended both his masonry and his sympathy for what in France was fast becoming a revolutionary movement of the most gruesome type. His future writings were all anti-revolutionary. Furthermore, I don't think neo-conservatives can just be across-the-board compared to Masons. Some Masons yes; I've mentioned the Jacobins. But other early Masons were Catholic royalists, seeking to restore the Stuart monarchy and the Catholic faith to England. As far as the charge that De Maistre did not believe in the truths of Christianity but just considered it a story to tell to keep the peasants in line, what evidence to you have of that, Mr. Purcell? Certainly he considered the French Revolution to be the punishment of God on an arrogant monarchy which refused to submit to the Pope but instead tried to establish a national Gallican Church. But that is a long way from contending that Christianity is not true, merely useful for warding off revolutions. One could certainly say that De Maistre was too authoritarian and question his advocacy of making the Pope sort of a temporal ruler over all others in addition to being a spiritual ruler. But I have never heard anyone contend before that De Maistre was not a believing Catholic Christian. Sent at: 2008 09 07