Well, it's been a hell of a ride, laying rubber all over the road for the past decade. But it's time to call it a day and park the Rogue in the garage. Effective today, I am shutting down my blog to focus my attention on other endeavours. My thanks to the more than 2.7 million people who regularly joined me on these sojourns through news stories over the years that dealt with the places with issues of religion and faith intersecting with public affairs. May God bless you with a continuing desire to learn about and help disseminate the issues of faith throughout the public square. Happy trails in your continuing travels! Fr. Tim Moyle, p.p. Diocese of Pembroke
Reflections from the pastoral ministry of an Evangelical Catholic Priest.
In this modern world, would you rather live in a secular state or a theocracy. But the catch is you don't get to pick the religion that is controlling the theocracy.
ReplyDeleteMichael: Clearly a liberal secular state is the best milieu for religious and non-religious adherents. However, that's not the point of the article. The question it tries to answer is that old saw about exclusively secular states never starting a war. Clearly there are lots of examples even from within our lifespan where this has been disproven.
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I think the distinction should be made for dogmatically driven states. For a secular state that started a war one need look no further back than the US invading Iraq. While W may have had some theological reasons to invade Iraq (He told the French president that Gog and Magog were afoot in the Middle East causing what I'm sure was the first emergency call to a French theologian at 2:00 in the morning).
DeleteLeaving aside the US because they are different in so many ways it remains that liberal secular democracies like the modern Scandanavian countries, France, UK, England and even Canada are extremely unlikely to start a war.
If one were to list the countries likely to start a war today (again excluding the US, especially with TRump), they would all be religious countries.
Michael: You have a short view of history. Germany and France went to war three times over a 75yr period spanning the late 19th to mid 20th centuries. They were secular states at the time. The UK and Argentina went to war as well in the late 20th century; both secular countries. It really isn't very hard to find quite a few examples where your logic fails. All this said, I do very much agree with your premise that it is much less likely to get involved in a war if one lives in a modern liberal secular state - exempting the US from the equation. Personally I am very happy to carry a Canadian passport. Thank God we won the War of 1812, eh?
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