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Vatican Prerogatives, the Papal Presidency, and US Grand Strategy: Convergent Structures of Folly and Deceit
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ABSTRACT
One of the paradoxes of revolutions is that they so frequently disclose
their consequences as the opposite of what was originally intended when the struggle against the old regime was undertaken: the Protestant Reformation, for example, began as a religious overturning and yet over time generated both secularism and a scientific revolution antithetical to the beliefs of those who effected it. This paper argues that a similar inversion has taken place in the United States and, while it is evident in the current Bush administration, it was in the ascendant long before 2001. Thus, it will be argued that the increasing willingness of successive Administrations to adopt prerogatives inimical to a republic and more closely identified with the worst excesses of the romanita -- the confessional imperialism of Rome -- by legislation, admonition, and fiat -- sustained throughout by magisterium, auctoritas, potestas -- the office, the authority, and the power to use them both. In terms of a broader political and social understanding, however, it is a form of atavism, a re inscription of an ancient habit of “prescribing a juridical solution to every human dilemma, and then stamping every solution with a sacred character under the seal of the magisterium." By any comprehension it is a return to rule by a form of political absolutism. Accordingly, it raises questions of the most serious nature for contemporary and future global political dynamics.
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| | Authors: McKinley, Michael. |
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2
ABSTRACT
One of the paradoxes of revolutions is that they so frequently disclose
their consequences as the opposite of what was originally intended when the
struggle against the old regime was undertaken: the Protestant Reformation,
for example, began as a religious overturning and yet over time generated
both secularism and a scientific revolution antithetical to the beliefs of those
who effected it. This paper argues that a similar inversion has taken place in
the United States and, while it is evident in the current Bush administration, it
was in the ascendant long before 2001. Thus, it will be argued that the
increasing willingness of successive Administrations to adopt prerogatives
inimical to a republic and more closely identified with the worst excesses of
the romanita -- the confessional imperialism of Rome -- by legislation,
admonition, and fiat -- sustained throughout by magisterium, auctoritas, potestas
-- the office, the authority, and the power to use them both. In terms of a
broader political and social understanding, however, it is a form of atavism, a
re inscription of an ancient habit of “prescribing a juridical solution to every
human dilemma, and then stamping every solution with a sacred character
under the seal of the magisterium." By any comprehension it is a return to
rule by a form of political
absolutism. Accordingly, it raises questions of the most serious nature for
contemporary and future global political dynamics.
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