I hearby declare Citadel’s statement on Church and State to be neoreactionary canon.
A lot of neoreactionaries are Christian adherents of organized religion – or wish they could be Christian – or wish they could be adherents of some organized religion or other. I suppose all of us wish that.
Trouble is that today’s Roman Catholicism and the rest are heretical, satanic, and are committing institutional suicide as fast as possible. The pope wants “speaking ex Cathedra” to become yet another letterhead of Acorn, the Vatican to become a museum run by Havard with tour guides giving spiels written by Ivy Leaguers explaining how stupid and wicked things were in the bad old days, and the Church buildings where once Catholics met to receive the Eucharist to become Marxist Lesbian bookstores, as most of the Churches in San Francisco already have.
Speaking as a believer, Citadel argues the same conclusion I have less convincingly argued as an unbeliever, that I argued less convincingly because an unbeliever. The Church should be subordinate to the good state as a woman should be subordinate to her husband.
The Church inevitably succumbs to the state religion. See the Pope kiss Harvard’s feet. And back when the Church arguably had some independence, and real earthly power, when the Holy Roman Empire had lost all power, but the Church had gained far too much earthly power, we got indulgences and Chaucer’s summoner. Henry the Eighth was doubtless a bad man, but you got no indulgences from his church, and his summoners were subject to discipline.
The worst of the Roman Catholic Church was not the pornocracy, when Popes were succeeded by the sons of their mistresses. Hereditary priesthood is an excellent system, and normatively celibate priesthood a horrible mistake. The Church was great, faithful, orthodox, glorious, and virtuous under the pornocrats and under the Holy Roman Emperors. The worst of the Church was indulgences and corrupt summoners.
