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The Outflanking Manoeuvre: Humanity/the Nation/the Will of “the People”* is more Universal than God/Christians/the Catholic Church*

*(delete as appropriate)

(As this is such a key technique of anti-Catholicism, it is worth providing the following schema for comprehending it. Christian goodness is necessarily “exclusive” – it excludes the acceptance of badness. Liberalism promotes the social co-existence of goodness and badness. It calls this “inclusivity” or, more pretentiously, “Pluralism” or “Relativism”. So, in progressively Liberal Britain, fidelity coexists with infidelity, pregnancy with abortion, palliative care with euthanatic homicide, handicapped people with the killers of handicapped people, and so on. Of course, while one person may choose equally between goodness and badness – and this is the choice that the Liberal himself seeks – from the perspective of our neighbours, goodness is giving, where badness takes away, hence the latter has traditionally been condemned or outlawed. Nevertheless, the temptation to the individual of exercising the “inclusive” Liberal choice is at the heart of the outflanking strategy. “Progressivism” is the label given to the step-by-step legalisation of this choice in more and more different areas in this country, as Christian justice is steadily eliminated by Liberal despotism.

In attempting to combat Liberalism successfully it is important to understand that, in addition to its being an objectionable ideology per se, it does not offer the “universal freedom” it proclaims. It is, on the contrary, essential to the success of Liberalism that those who would wish to lawfully protect themselves and others from their neighbours' bad acts are denied the freedom to do so.) That is, in order to create a society in which it is possible to do wrong, it is necessary to stop those who would resist such evil either through spoken moral condemnation or through legal proscription. Incidentally, because Liberalism combines the desire to do good and bad, it is very capable of advancing its rhetoric by exploiting the psychological phenomenon of associative conditioning.)

This rhetorical tactic has been employed in various ways in various different times and places, but always with the same Liberal aim: rebelling against God and His creation. In '30s Germany, for example, the National Socialists claimed that their ideology had a higher call on people's devotion because it represented the common factor of the nation, rather than the “divisive” categories of Protestant and Catholic. In modern parliamentary regimes the same manoeuvre is employed by actual minority ideologists, such as Humanists, to impose their destructive worldview on majority Christian populations. The argument, which is always structured the same way¹, runs as follows: I am an atheist, while you are a theist, but what unites us is our common humanity, therefore it is only fair that our common laws are informed by (my fabricated ideology of) “Humanism”, which I may call “the General Will” or “the protection of the rights of the minority” (without any concern that I might be contradicting myself, because the only thing that matters is getting the actual social result I want in defiance of God's will). The simple retort to this is: I am a Christian, while you are an atheist, but what unites us is our common creation by the living God, therefore it is only fitting that we should live in a way that gives thanks to our Creator. Unfortunately, the outflanking manoeuvre is one that seems to have seduced the Vatican somewhat, though recently there has been a healthy sign to the contrary.

One can only hope that something was lost in translation when Pope Benedict XVI, at the same time as defending the integrity of the Catholic Faith, recently gave utterance to the clearest possible expression of the outflanking manoeuvre when, as is reported, he said, “religions can be reconciled at the level of a common commitment in an earthly project that exceeds them all” (4/9/06; emphasis added). It is at times like this that it becomes important to remind oneself of the limits of papal infallibility.² In fact, the weakness of will exhibited by Pope Benedict in describing the Koran, which contains sayings of an objective (if debatably culpable) Antichrist, as “the holy book of a great religion”, serves to demonstrate, by force of contrast, the power of the Holy Spirit within the Church. It does so in that the promise of infallibility as regards her teaching on matters of faith and morals has remained true³ despite the relentless onslaught of Liberalism, which that has tamed other, mere human institutions: “For both the greatness of the things given and the weakness of them that receive show His power; in that He not only gave great things, but also to those who are little.”⁴

A healthier statement, regarding the status of Protestantism, is discussed here (10/7/07). This is a timely warning to Anglo-American Catholics who understandably warm to American political conservatism as an umbrella movement for shared Catholic and Protestant values (particularly against Liberalism): Protestantism in fact represents the first choice of the à la carte Liberal⁵ – the rejection of the authority of the Church. Conservatism, ultimately, is another outflanking manoeuvre that would impose a Protestant worldview on a Catholic's way of life.

The Queen's Prime Minister has been criticised recently for effectively stating that “he doesn’t mind if his grandchildren are Muslims” (9/12/06). This may, as the commentator suggests, indicate an irrationality on the part of the ostensibly “Christian” Prime Minister, but the thoughts attributed to him appear to have a pedigree in the belief system of Freemasonry. In his account of Masonry in The Brotherhood, the late Stephen Knight quotes an (“Anglican”) apologist for it as follows:

“As Masons, we believe in God, the Father, Almighty. As Christian Masons we may believe in a symbolical triune essence, and that Jesus Christ is His Son, Our Lord. As Moslem Masons we are equally entitled to believe that Mahomet is His prophet. With these subsidiary and secondary beliefs Masonry has nothing to do, giving her members a perfect liberty to interpret the Godhead as they please.”⁶

Knight goes on to explain that, unbeknown to the majority of Freemasons, “the Masonic God – cloaked under the description Great Architect - has a specific name and a particular nature, which has nothing to do with Christ, Vishnu, Buddha, Mohammed or any other being recognized by the great faiths of the modern world”⁷.

Whether or not the Prime Minister is a Freemason, it is quite possible that his apparent apathy with regard to religious beliefs conceals a conscious attempt to outflank such beliefs by superimposing on them his concept of “intolerance”, a mechanism whereby he arrogates to himself the power to bind and loose the faithful – binding them to such things as the forced societal acceptance of sodomy, and loosing them from such things as injunctions against unborn child-killing.

Variation on the Outflanking manoeuvre – the “Inflanking” manoeuvre

Where it may prove difficult to eliminate Catholicism altogether by outflanking it – owing to popular resistance – a related technique, which we will call inflanking, can often be employed. Briefly, this consists in presenting oneself as a member of the Church by virtue of having received the sacrament of baptism, rather than by adhering to the Rule of Faith, and then attempting to marginalise believers by casting them as belonging to a (usually “extreme”) “wing” of the Church. This is discussed further in footnote 44.

(Return to category headings)

1Take, for example, this statement by a Conservative Party Liberal: “I respect your religion, you respect my religion and we both respect our laws” (6/10/06; the target of this outflanking manoeuvre is actually Mohammedans, but the technique is the same). The use of the word “our” in this statement is purely rhetorical. The difference between the outflanking manoeuvre and the Secularist compromise may be observed by considering this blog posting by a baptised Liberal (6/10/06). The writer presents himself as a Catholic but, rather than faking a commonality of laws, offers instead to submit his religion to the “impartial” rule of “liberal democracy” in order to coexist peacefully with his Mohammedan neighbours. To rule these mutually incompatible religions, however, the Liberal regime would need to govern on the basis that neither of them is true: it would need, in other words, to be an atheist regime. Such a regime involves the “compromise” of surrendering to the strongest wills, as unborn children and the victims of sexual predators can testify (be careful with the links from this last article, one of which shows a disturbing example of a government sex education programme in contemporary Europe).

3It is believed by some, for example, that the Church has recently changed its teaching on the death penalty so that, where once it was considered to be an exception to the prohibition against murder, now this is no longer the case. Re-reading that last sentence, however, it should be readily apparent that such an about-face is not consistent with the immutability of God's law. In fact, when one reads the relevant text in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church it can be seen that the traditional principle remains unchanged: “Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor”. This is consistent with the language of the earlier Catechism of the Council of Trent, whose relevant paragraph opens: “Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent.”

It does appear that the authors of the current Catechism have tried to use the word “effectively” – the minor premiss in the syllogism – to undermine the traditional teaching (the major premiss) as far as possible, without actually overturning it, by adding the following paragraph to the above text: “Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offence incapable of doing harm . . . the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” This inability to overturn tradition, however much the authors may appear to want to do so (compare, for example, this Vatican defence of an admitted mass murderer – 28/12/06 – which, in the context of a country that is said by many to be in a state bordering civil war, flies in the face of even the current Catechism's proviso that a government must be in a strong enough position to render the culpable person “incapable of doing harm” by means other than the death penalty – is a perfect illustration of how Catholic doctrine remains constant regardless of the contemporary opinions (or perspectives) of individual clerics and bishops. (See also here.) The Catechism of the Council of Trent expands on its treatment of the death penalty thus: “The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment- is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord.” Combining the readings from both Catechisms it is possible to extract the same core principle – the legitimacy of capital punishment – from the particular “editorialising” employed in each edition.

26/1/07 – Even in an advanced economy such as Britain's the power of the State to rein in offenders is being severely questioned, presenting a further challenge to the validity of the current Catechism's political judgment.

Home	(Please note: CatholicSchool.org.uk is not responsible for the content of sites linked to from this or any other of its pages.)

	The Outflanking Manoeuvre: Humanity/the Nation/the Will of “the People”* is more Universal than God/Christians/the Catholic Church*
	*(delete as appropriate)
	(As this is such a key technique of anti-Catholicism, it is worth providing the following schema for comprehending it. Christian goodness is necessarily “exclusive” – it excludes the acceptance of badness. Liberalism promotes the social co-existence of goodness and badness. It calls this “inclusivity” or, more pretentiously, “Pluralism” or “Relativism”. So, in progressively Liberal Britain, fidelity coexists with infidelity, pregnancy with abortion, palliative care with euthanatic homicide, handicapped people with the killers of handicapped people, and so on. Of course, while one person may choose equally between goodness and badness – and this is the choice that the Liberal himself seeks – from the perspective of our neighbours, goodness is giving, where badness takes away, hence the latter has traditionally been condemned or outlawed. Nevertheless, the temptation to the individual of exercising the “inclusive” Liberal choice is at the heart of the outflanking strategy. “Progressivism” is the label given to the step-by-step legalisation of this choice in more and more different areas in this country, as Christian justice is steadily eliminated by Liberal despotism.
	In attempting to combat Liberalism successfully it is important to understand that, in addition to its being an objectionable ideology per se, it does not offer the “universal freedom” it proclaims. It is, on the contrary, essential to the success of Liberalism that those who would wish to lawfully protect themselves and others from their neighbours' bad acts are denied the freedom to do so.) That is, in order to create a society in which it is possible to do wrong, it is necessary to stop those who would resist such evil either through spoken moral condemnation or through legal proscription. Incidentally, because Liberalism combines the desire to do good and bad, it is very capable of advancing its rhetoric by exploiting the psychological phenomenon of associative conditioning.)
	This rhetorical tactic has been employed in various ways in various different times and places, but always with the same Liberal aim: rebelling against God and His creation. In '30s Germany, for example, the National Socialists claimed that their ideology had a higher call on people's devotion because it represented the common factor of the nation, rather than the “divisive” categories of Protestant and Catholic. In modern parliamentary regimes the same manoeuvre is employed by actual minority ideologists, such as Humanists, to impose their destructive worldview on majority Christian populations. The argument, which is always structured the same way¹, runs as follows: I am an atheist, while you are a theist, but what unites us is our common humanity, therefore it is only fair that our common laws are informed by (my fabricated ideology of) “Humanism”, which I may call “the General Will” or “the protection of the rights of the minority” (without any concern that I might be contradicting myself, because the only thing that matters is getting the actual social result I want in defiance of God's will). The simple retort to this is: I am a Christian, while you are an atheist, but what unites us is our common creation by the living God, therefore it is only fitting that we should live in a way that gives thanks to our Creator. Unfortunately, the outflanking manoeuvre is one that seems to have seduced the Vatican somewhat, though recently there has been a healthy sign to the contrary.
	One can only hope that something was lost in translation when Pope Benedict XVI, at the same time as defending the integrity of the Catholic Faith, recently gave utterance to the clearest possible expression of the outflanking manoeuvre when, as is reported, he said, “religions can be reconciled at the level of a common commitment in an earthly project that exceeds them all” (4/9/06; emphasis added). It is at times like this that it becomes important to remind oneself of the limits of papal infallibility.² In fact, the weakness of will exhibited by Pope Benedict in describing the Koran, which contains sayings of an objective (if debatably culpable) Antichrist, as “the holy book of a great religion”, serves to demonstrate, by force of contrast, the power of the Holy Spirit within the Church. It does so in that the promise of infallibility as regards her teaching on matters of faith and morals has remained true³ despite the relentless onslaught of Liberalism, which that has tamed other, mere human institutions: “For both the greatness of the things given and the weakness of them that receive show His power; in that He not only gave great things, but also to those who are little.”⁴
	A healthier statement, regarding the status of Protestantism, is discussed here (10/7/07). This is a timely warning to Anglo-American Catholics who understandably warm to American political conservatism as an umbrella movement for shared Catholic and Protestant values (particularly against Liberalism): Protestantism in fact represents the first choice of the à la carte Liberal⁵ – the rejection of the authority of the Church. Conservatism, ultimately, is another outflanking manoeuvre that would impose a Protestant worldview on a Catholic's way of life.
	The Queen's Prime Minister has been criticised recently for effectively stating that “he doesn’t mind if his grandchildren are Muslims” (9/12/06). This may, as the commentator suggests, indicate an irrationality on the part of the ostensibly “Christian” Prime Minister, but the thoughts attributed to him appear to have a pedigree in the belief system of Freemasonry. In his account of Masonry in The Brotherhood, the late Stephen Knight quotes an (“Anglican”) apologist for it as follows:
	“As Masons, we believe in God, the Father, Almighty. As Christian Masons we may believe in a symbolical triune essence, and that Jesus Christ is His Son, Our Lord. As Moslem Masons we are equally entitled to believe that Mahomet is His prophet. With these subsidiary and secondary beliefs Masonry has nothing to do, giving her members a perfect liberty to interpret the Godhead as they please.”⁶
	Knight goes on to explain that, unbeknown to the majority of Freemasons, “the Masonic God – cloaked under the description Great Architect - has a specific name and a particular nature, which has nothing to do with Christ, Vishnu, Buddha, Mohammed or any other being recognized by the great faiths of the modern world”⁷.
	Whether or not the Prime Minister is a Freemason, it is quite possible that his apparent apathy with regard to religious beliefs conceals a conscious attempt to outflank such beliefs by superimposing on them his concept of “intolerance”, a mechanism whereby he arrogates to himself the power to bind and loose the faithful – binding them to such things as the forced societal acceptance of sodomy, and loosing them from such things as injunctions against unborn child-killing.
	Variation on the Outflanking manoeuvre – the “Inflanking” manoeuvre
	Where it may prove difficult to eliminate Catholicism altogether by outflanking it – owing to popular resistance – a related technique, which we will call inflanking, can often be employed. Briefly, this consists in presenting oneself as a member of the Church by virtue of having received the sacrament of baptism, rather than by adhering to the Rule of Faith, and then attempting to marginalise believers by casting them as belonging to a (usually “extreme”) “wing” of the Church. This is discussed further in footnote 44.
	(Return to category headings)