Getting rid of illusions

A thoughtful reader of MOJ sent me the following:

"[With respect to] your outrage that the U.S. Army has placed the Catholic Church alongside al Qaeda....isn't the Army, actually, right? That is, once you realize that, from the perspective of the State, the issue is not whether the Church and al Qaeda are morally equivalent, but whether they are able and willing to contest the State's pursuit of its own interests, then of course the Church and al Qaeda are equivalent.

 

"I actually take pleasure in the Army's slip of tongue, as it were, since it helps us get rid of the illusion that our State has any conception of justice that does not reduce to the pursuit of its own economic and political advantage. In any case, perhaps it will awaken certain Catholics from their dream that the somewhat militarist civil religion of America is compatible with what the claims of Catholicism actually entail.

 

"So be of good cheer! George Bernanos saw this coming, what, sixty years ago?"

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My correspondent (whom I do not know personally) makes a profound point.  Our current predicament was not only predicable but, in fact, predicted.

At the risk of being told again to "dial it down," I am reminded of something Pope St. Pius X wrote in "Notre Charge Apostolique" (1910):

"Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO." 

There is no surprise in the fact that our government, at whatever level, cannot think straight, least of all about the Church.