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It was possible indeed for Peter to be a subject of Nero in things pertaining to Caesar; but how could that be possible to Peter's successor when the Kingdom of Christ which he ruled on earth had become a Supra-national Society to which the nations of the earth looked for guidance? The phrase he had just heard ran in his mind. "An Italian for the sake of Italy and his own existence in Rome.
"We need a new orientation which shall deliver democratic thought from national restrictions, and from the sinister contemporary trend towards the reign of material force." True democracy, supra-national democracy, must take its stand against "imperialism masquerading as democracy." The New Education. This lengthy discussion leads up in the end to practical conclusions.
Though ostensibly fervid nationalists, they are ill at ease with their re-founded and re-found nation-states. The identity of the denizens of these parts is more regional than national and evolving towards the supra-national. People are from this or that city, or district, or village. And they aspire to become citizens of Europe and the great experiment of the European Union.
No opportunity, in view of the necessity of insuring the harmonious development of the Faith, should be ignored, which its potential enemies, whether ecclesiastical or otherwise, may offer, to set forth, in a restrained and unprovocative language, its aims and tenets, to defend its interests, to proclaim its universality, to assert the supernatural, the supra-national and non-political character of its institutions, and its acceptance of the divine origin of the Faiths which have preceded it.
Don't you see that the one thing, humanly speaking, absolutely necessary if the world was to have confidence in the Church, was that the Pope should be really supra-national?
If any number of States agree to observe a common set of international laws, they have, in fact, set up a sovereign authority or supra-national government, the end of which, like that of all governments, is the good of mankind; and the possession of as much freedom by each State, as is consistent with the attainment of that end.
And it finds its immediate field of action in the deepening and extension of the obligations of citizenship among the peoples of the great, free, just, peace-loving, supra-national Commonwealths whose patriotism has been built up, not by precept and doctrine, but on a firm foundation of older loyalties. The principle of the Commonwealth is not a European principle: it is a world-principle.
Thus the supra-national society is continually in danger of returning to the state of nature, in which contracts are void; and the possibility of this contingency justifies a government in restricting the liberty of its subjects in many ways that would otherwise be unjustifiable. Finally, with respect to the advancement of science and art.
But difficulties arise when they come to consider the policy which Switzerland should in particular pursue. "What are we entitled to speak of as peculiarly and primitively Swiss?" A beginning is made by defining the political essence of Switzerland, stress being laid, first upon the basic neutrality of the country, and secondly upon its supra-national character.
The very thesis amazed the man, for the absolute necessity of an authoritative supra-national Church, with supernatural sanctions, seemed assumed as an axiom of thought, not merely by these Catholics, but by the entire world, Christian and un-Christian alike. More than once the phrase "It is conceded by all men" flashed out, and passed unrebuked, in support of this claim.
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