Asymmetric Catholic

My most glaring philosophical inconsistency is that I advocate for laissez-faire economics and small, local government while, at the same time, I'm a Catholic in good standing.

Big government and universal, hierarchical religions share some features:

1. They both tend towards the inefficient.
2. They can both be power-hungry and prone to power's corrupting influence; and exclusivist concerning competing philosophies and agencies. The relevant examples are opposition to school vouchers or privatization of any kind for big government types and the Inquisition for Catholicism.
3. They both love their flock while, at the same time, feel that the same people they love would be lost without them. In other words, both big government and the Catholic Church can be elitist and patronizing. As a reference, I'll direct you to Barack Obama for big government and Name of the Rose for a popular portrayal of Church snobbishness (whether true or not).

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) by Umberto Eco

So, why one and not the other? The difference is that, dogmatically, the Church does know better because God says so. Not only "better" but "solely," since there can only be one wholly true Truth. On temporal matters, including tax rates, foreign policy, and Church architecture, the Church is as fallible as anybody and I always take anything they have to say about such things as a guide. The same Church that built Notre Dame constructed the Los Angeles monstrosity and didn't do all it could to deal with the sex-abuse scandal.

Yes, I've seen it up close. Uninspiring.

Since the government, by definition, deals only with practical matters, I'm especially weary of its "solutions" (perpetuations of power) for it has all of a universal Church's faults without its saving grace, so to speak.