Who's Your Daddy? The State!

          "We are normally obliged to live for another entity which imposes itself on us - that means for the powers that be (the mother-father power, the husband-wife power, the boy-girl power, the power of the teacher, the power of the police, the power of the great economic potentates, the Power). Power - this is the enemy of the eyes and of the heart and of the lips that express the heart in words. There is no alternative: either we ourselves choose the other, which means still choosing ourselves, (and we will be submerged in the abyss of our insubstantiality), or the choice will be imposed upon us, and that means we are the slaves of power; or - and this is the right way - we live for another who by the nature of his being is ontologically the means, the road to our destiny. And  Only One Other said: "I am the Way". He did not say: "I will show you the way". Luigi Giusani,  He is if He Changes, pp.21, 22

Good to see that Msgr. Giussani included Big Business in his list ("great economic potentates"). I was wondering why he didn't include the State in his listing. Maybe because quite often Big Business is the force behind government. Here in the USA the power of the State is becoming Sovereign, removing the Church from the Public Square, all in the guise of being Beneficent Big Brother to us needy people who have to be taken over for their own good. People don't see how they are manipulated by the cliches and slogans from both political parties. So they don't get all that excited about the absence of the Church from society and culture. All they hear is about the fearsome dangers that result when the wall of separation between Church and State is violated. With the Church, there is still a chance we can come to see that ever act has a moral dimension, every financial transaction, every political policy decision. With the Church there is still a voice that speaks up for the rights of the poor, the dignity of human life, the fair and just distribution of wealth, the Social Justice Gospel in all its dimensions, especially the inalienable rights placed in each individual by the Creator.  Without the Church, with the Sovereign State as the only authority, totalitarianism in one form or another is the inevitable result.  The State makes itself into the god we serve and live for. That means Mammon, Money, becomes the Economic Potentate that rules our lives.