Catholic Anarchism

We found this interesting. Dorothy Day on anarchist government:

The state is government by representation (when it is a democracy) but there is no reason why a Catholic must believe that people must be governed by representatives --the Catholic is free to believe one way or the other, as is evident from St. Thomas' of law in the Summa Theologica. In question 90, Art. 3, St. Thomas:

'A law, properly speaking, regards first and foremost the order to the common good. Now, to order anything to the common good belongs either to the whole people, or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people. Hence the making of the law belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care for the people; for in all other matters, the directing of anything to the end concerns him to whom the ends belongs.'

Anarchists believe that the whole people composing a community should take care of what governing is to be done rather than have a distant and centralized State do it".

You can see from the quotation from St. Thomas that there is nothing heretical about such a belief. It certainly is possible for a Christian to be an anarchist.

As to government proceeding from sin, St. Augustine distinguishes between coercive government and directive government. The former he says is the results of sin. The latter is not, as (the human person) is a social being. It could be said that anarchists advocate directive government (mutualaid) but reject coercive government (the State).

Link. Thanks to Thomas Woods at Lew Rockwell's Blog for the link.