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Entry: A Meditation for Guy Fawkes Day Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/a_meditation_for_guy_fawkes_day#8415 Post contents: John Ball: Henry VIII repudiated the Pope because he wanted a divorce, Liz I because not to so repudiate would have made her illegitimate, in both the political and familiar meaning. And speaking of legitimacy, I invite Mr. Ball to drink a toast to the true and lawful King of England, Wales, Scotland, and the dominions beyond the sea: the Jacobite Pretender, the current Duke of Bavaria. For some of your issues, see Newman’s <i>Letter to the Duke of Norfolk</i> http://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/index.html Also worthy are his <i>Difficulties of Anglicans</i> and <i>The Development of Doctrine</i> (I prefer the first edition). I needn’t mention his <i>Apologia</i>. These works and reading Dante and Trent got me into the Church. You have a wrong, though common, misunderstanding of Papal Authority. No Pope, indeed no clergyman, as a general rule may tell me how to vote in an election, no more than I can tell them how to celebrate Mass. The Church enunciates and defines general moral principles and theological truth. The job of applying those truths is the job of the laity. She can warn about abuses, or admonish when the laity do a poor job, and in an emergency, step in and deny the sacraments to lawmakers who vote for evil, or to segregationists who practice and preach racialism (the New Orleans case). That’s not the same thing as surrendering conscience. The contents of conscience itself are not a conceptualist given; conscience needs guidance and formation. Sometimes it is formed rather badly. I would add: self-reliance is the most foolish of doctrines. Each ought ask himself, "who has deceived you the most?" The answer is found in a mirror. Truth requires dialogue with the living, with the dead, and even with the future. A tradition that has stood the proverbial test of time might be a good one to dialogue with. Sent at: 2008 07 23