Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
At 07:56 PM 4/25/03 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
I don't think so, not a lot of elections held
in the Catholic Church,
How did you think they select popes, then?
The only electors are the red-robed "princes of the church".
while there is
a lot of discussion, a priest or bishop who deviates on
certain points is soon in serious trouble.
For values of "trouble" that, to a nonbeliever, translate as "may lose
his
job if he continues to disagree publicly with his employer." I realize
that
this is a serious matter to a believer--but nobody is required to
belong to
this organization, and the pope has no prisons. Yes, there's an official
newspaper, but the church does not have the authority to stop the
publication of dissenting publications: L'Osservatore Romano has the
same status as Ari Fleischer's public statements, not as Pravda in
the bad old days [1].
The church essentially lost effective temporal power in 1870. There was
a dispute in the Vancouver area a few years ago when a Catholic school
fired a teacher because in her personal life she was living with somone
out of wedlock. At least that much power continues to be wielded. And
what could be more authoritarian than the church's attitude on abortion
rights where any criticism is seriously discouraged?.
In these declining years of the church the threat of excommunication
does not have the power that it once had. Religions tend to maintain a
hold on people that is impervious to reason. If a person has been a
true believer for many years, expulsion from the religious community can
be very traumatic.
Whatever the
defects of the
United States the situation differs markedly.
If George Bush decides I am a threat to US security, I can be imprisoned
indefinitely without trial. If Karol Wojtyla decides I am a threat to
the Catholic
Church, he can say so publicly, and I can go about my normal occasions.
Yes, the situation differs markedly, but maybe not in the way you're
trying to
suggest.
"Democracy" is often nothing more than a thin veneer that power elites
suffer as a means of controlling the masses.
Bottom line,
words have
established meanings to most of us. Everything isn't the same, some
institutions are relatively democratic, some are relatively
authorititarian
and may fairly be so described.
And now you're saying "relatively"; are you proposing an article that
describes China as "relatively authoritarian", and if so, do you plan
to give a scale from 0 to 100, with notes of where other nations fall on
that scale?
To say that China is "relatively" authoritarian is an improvement for
Fred over simply saying "China is authoritarian" It opens up the
possibility of comparison with some other state. That's a small
positive step toward understanding just what "authoritarian" means.
I do have more of a problem with his "words have established meanings
to most of us." The "established meanings" that most of us have are
not the smae, and that gives us problems. The thought that the meaning
of a word would somehow be established democraticly makes me shudder.
Once such a democratic result has been achieved do we then apply de
Tocqueville's Tyranny of the Majority to enforce it. Fred's view of
language does not appear to be very sophisticated.
Eclecticology