Civilization

Further thoughts on the tyranny of values

Note: Updated to reflect the actual name of the author of the piece, with apologies for the error.

In a recent review of some of Leo Strauss’s books at The Public Discourse, Matthew Franck summarizes an argument from Strauss’s Natural Right and History. He tells us that Strauss explained how “[t]he ideas that the truth about the human condition is radically contingent on history (historicism) and that we can speak rationally only about facts and not at all about ‘values’ or moral principles (positivism) lead inexorably to a failure of all conviction, and ultimately to nihilism, which in turn eventuates (in Strauss’s memorable words) in ‘fanatical obscurantism.’” Franck goes on to draw this thread out of later works by Strauss and James W. Ceaser. The historicism and positivism of the academic discipline of political science, he tells us, leads to irrationality and cynicism about political life.

Franck makes this argument in the context of a critique of cancel culture on university campuses. Because political science—and many other disciplines besides—is in the grips of historicism and positivism, political scientists are incapable of talking rationally about one’s preferences. This results in a fanaticism that, he says, finds expression primarily in the illiberal actions he details. Invitations rescinded, professors hounded, careers ended. Professors, he argues, ought to be resisting the radicalism of their students, offering a moderating influence.

I am not an astute observer of professional political science and the debates that are internal to the profession. However, it is impossible to be unaware of cancel culture, even if figures in regime media would deny its existence. And certainly there is something very real about the “fanatical obscurantism” that routinely tries to enforce a particular mode of thought wherever it goes, whether that’s college campuses or large corporations or school boards. One would be hard pressed to call it rational, too. And certainly one suspects that the academic classes are in some significant part responsible for the emergence of a new Jacobin class.

However, I was struck by the observation that values are opposed to positivism, with the implication that if we could return to talking rationally about values we could escape the crisis. Carl Schmitt, following Max Weber and others, explains how that is almost exactly wrong in The Tyranny of Values. (The pamphlet started as a lecture Schmitt delivered in 1959 at a conference in Ebrach, West Germany. He published it privately in 1960, and then again, in a Festschrift, with a lengthy introduction, in 1967.) In The Tyranny of Values, Schmitt demonstrated precisely that values are a “positivistic ersatz for the metaphysical.” In this, he follows Martin Heidegger. To be sure, in this account, values are opposed to the value-free scientific positivism that Franck seems to have in mind. But, Schmitt tells us, even if values are set in opposition to scientific positivism, they do not provide an escape hatch from irrational fanaticism. They do the opposite, in fact. They plunge individuals into the same abyss of nihilism.

* * *

I have written here and elsewhere on other occasions about The Tyranny of Values. It has gotten some attention, too, in publications such as American Affairs. There, Blake Smith argues that The Tyranny of Values is Schmitt’s final reckoning with Leo Strauss’s critique of The Concept of the Political. The Tyranny of Values is one of the essential texts for the present age. The upshot of Political Theology, an extended meditation on a remark by Donoso Cortés, is obvious to anyone with eyes: political concepts are secularized theological concepts. And they are becoming less and less secularized. Likewise, the friend-enemy distinction discussed in The Concept of the Political plays itself out on small states and large stages alike on an almost hourly basis. Yet in comparison to these texts, The Tyranny of Values, no less powerful in its insight, is relatively obscure.

The positivism of values in Schmitt’s account is, perhaps, where the trouble really begins. Perhaps that is not the most precise way of putting it. Values were a response, and it was by and large a 19th century response, to “causal-legal and, therefore, value-free science” that threatened, according to Schmitt, human freedom and responsibility. How then to maintain that human freedom and responsibility? Schmitt turns from Martin Heidegger to Max Weber here. The perfectly free individual sets values with his decisions about those values. This certainly maintains the free and responsible human being in the face of inexorable causality. But this pure subjectivity leads to the crisis that preoccupies Schmitt for the remainder of the essay, however.

The crisis becomes manifest in the consequences Schmitt draws out of the concept of values. One startling one is that values are only place-values in a value system, assessed from a given standpoint. Even the highest value—Schmitt here uses God as an example, but one can imagine many others—is still a value and has only the value that the system gives it. What matters for the logic of values on Schmitt’s account is that the value is a value first and foremost and only secondarily the highest value. But once something becomes a value and indeed a place-value it is subject to revaluation and readjustment from different standpoints, at different points of attack.

Value logic is an inherently aggressive thing. This is the second important consequence of a philosophy of values. Schmitt begins The Tyranny of Values by observing that “value is not, rather it holds.” Now we know also that a value “only ever hold[s] for something or for someone.” I am lying—to you, to myself, to anyone—if I say that I hold a given value without making it valid, without imposing it on someone or something. More than this, when I set a value, I necessarily devalue, raise in value, declare nonvalues, and valuize. “The compulsion to validity of value is irresistible, and the strife of those who value, de-value, raise in value, and valuize, is unavoidable.” Value logic is, therefore, the “eternal battle of values and of worldviews, a war of all against all . . . .” Values must always and everywhere be made valid, they must be imposed—on someone or on something. Each individual, in perfect freedom and subjectivity, sets values and imposes them.

We have not, with a turn to values and the inevitable war of all against all that the turn entails, escaped scientific nihilism. Schmitt notes that even assertions of objectivity of values do nothing but stoke the conflict. Indeed, Schmitt argues that the promise of tolerance, of subjectivity, of neutrality made by value philosophy converts, immediately, with the flip of a switch, into enmity, and all the vertiginous horror that enmity implies, as soon as the question of making values valid is raised concretely. And it is always raised concretely. The nihilism opposed to human freedom and responsibility emerges where we least expected it—indeed, in the fortress we built against its invasion.

Unsurprisingly Schmitt finds little hope in all this. That is, the philosophy of value was brought to bear as a defense against a scientific positivism, but it is unlikely to achieve that goal. In the 1967 introduction, Schmitt wryly remarks that the “theologians, philosophers, and jurists” who had seen in values “the salvation of their existence as theologians, philosophers, and jurists, namely salvation from an irresistible advancing natural scientificity” would be disappointed. The transformation of the bases of these disciplines, Schmitt holds, into values merely hastens what he calls the general neutralization.

The power of Schmitt’s insight in The Tyranny of Values is precisely his explanation of value logic and his clear-eyed view of the consequences. In the introduction, Schmitt explains that philosophy of values was attractive to jurists, especially in the postwar era, because it was modern and scientific, especially in comparison to the Thomistic and neo-Thomistic natural law jurisprudence that Schmitt identifies as its explicit competitor. Yet it was a “calamitous error” to assume that “goods and interests, goals and ideals” could be saved from “value-free natural scientificity.” Schmitt tells us that “values and value theories are not capable of founding any legitimacy; they can only ever valuize.”

* * *

Values, therefore, are not really the way out of the nihilistic campus conflicts Franck identifies. For one thing, value theories “can only ever valuize” and once something becomes a value, the logic of values takes over. That is to say that the “fanatical obscurantism” that Franck decries is perfectly at home in a system of values. Indeed, it is already at the point of attack, devaluing and revaluing even the highest values. It is already prepared to make its values valid, to impose those values on someone. Schmitt tells us that values open onto the appalling vista of a war of all against all. The question is whether anyone is capable of restraining the unmediated enforcement of values.

One might even ask whether what is happening on college campuses and in large corporations (and in a thousand other places) is not already taking place in a system of values. Every standpoint has a highest value and therefore a highest non-value, and every point of attack strips away the pretended neutrality and relativism of a system of values. The “fanatical obscurantism” might be perfectly at home in a system of values precisely because it is already taking place in a system of values. Insisting on another ranking of values is simply following the logic of values in another direction; it is not, however, escaping that logic. The war of all against all grinds on. Another year, another offensive, everyone stuck in the same stinking trenches.

Perhaps there is another solution, though, which Schmitt hinted at when he identified the Thomistic and neo-Thomistic natural law jurisprudence as the primary competitor to a value jurisprudence. If values are, as Heidegger and Schmitt have it, a positivistic ersatz for the metaphysical, surely a return to Thomism and the natural law (rightly understood) would break out of the crisis. Schmitt tells us, in a roundabout way, that the actions of the Thomistic account are altogether separate from value theory: “[v]irtues one exercises; norms one applies; commands are fulfilled; but values are set down and imposed.” Thomism and the natural law, therefore, break out of the trap set by value philosophy.

A notable new book: Sohrab Ahmari’s “The Unbroken Thread”

I was delighted to receive a copy of Sohrab Ahmari’s new book, The Unbroken Thread. I begin with a confession: I knew people liked his conversion memoir, From Fire, By Water, but I did not read it. I am not a convert or a potential convert to the Faith and, to my great shame, have not cultivated much of an interest in proselytizing or evangelizing or whatever the correct term is these days. Luckily I avoided any social settings where I would be expected to know conversion literature generally or Ahmari’s book specifically, so I was spared the consequences for ignoring the book. One of the benefits, I suppose, of living in southern Indiana.

The Unbroken Thread, however, was immediately more compelling for me, not merely because I got a copy in the mail. It is in short Ahmari’s brief for tradition against the modern age. As a Catholic and occasional participant in debates over Catholic political and legal thought, this is a topic about which I am indeed interested. Everyone is interested in tradition these days, either for or against. One has only to check a trusted (or not) source of news to see that tradition is one of the burning topics of the age.

Ahmari tells us that The Unbroken Thread began its life as an idea to do a book of reporting about traditionalism among the young. This is a popular subject. Matthew Schmitz and Tara Isabella Burton, to take two examples, have drawn a lot of water from the well of upwardly mobile young people who like the traditional Latin Mass or anarchocommunists who own copies of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Ahmari’s agent kiboshed the idea, suggesting that Ahmari really wanted to write the case for traditionalism, which is precisely what Ahmari has done. Thank goodness for Ahmari’s agent. A book about Ivy Leaguers in New York City who own well-thumbed copies of the Liber Usualis or the Antiphonale Monasticum and Das Kapital would have been too much to bear.

And, really, Ahmari has written a much more interesting book than the one he initially wanted to write. He begins by reproaching his youthful exaltation in self-definition and remaking himself. He has found in the west today the same obsession with autonomy and reinvention. With this, Ahmari has gone straight to the heart of the problem with modernity. The French-Canadian theologian Charles de Koninck explained it in his Principle of the New Order. The project of the so-called enlightenment has been to reject the primacy of the speculative and exalt in man’s practical reason. Man turns away from what is best in himself—indeed what may be called superhuman (cf. Metaphysics A, ch. 2; Nicomachean Ethics 10.7)—and finds emancipation through the organs of practical reason: his hands and his tongue.

De Koninck notes that the exaltation of practical reason results in saying and writing things one cannot think. So long as one follows the rules of grammar, one can write or say anything, even if it is deeply irrational. He finds a connected phenomenon: the disconnection of history from prudence. Historical events can be judged “objectively,” in the light of “cold facts,” without the historian needing to make right judgments about human behavior. In this particularly pointed passage, De Koninck notes that this phenomenon allows “the adulterous man to cry out on the public place: this woman was taken in adultery!”

Of course, all this is nonsense. Our Lord tells us, as De Koninck reminds us, that we shall be accountable for all our idle words on the day of judgment (Matt. 12:36). We must, we are told, take the beam out of our eye before we can hunt specks in our brother’s eye (Luke 6:42). Ahmari understands, like De Koninck, that the project is nonsense. It has promised freedom and endless self-invention, but a quick look at cable news or social media suggests that no one feels particularly free. We have made man the measure of all things only to find that humanity is concept harder and harder to comprehend. Ahmari is right to be dissatisfied. Instead, Ahmari finds in the sacrifice of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Franciscan friar who established a monastery in Nagasaki and died in Auschwitz, true freedom and true humanity.

It is against this backdrop—and Ahmari’s understandable anxiety for his young son, Maximilian—that Ahmari sets out to find in tradition the answer to the failed promise of the so-called enlightenment. In tradition, he argues, one finds true freedom and true happiness, as opposed to the shabby substitutes on offer today. To make the case, Ahmari structures his book around twelve questions, such as “Is God Reasonable?” and “How Must You Serve Your Parents?” and “What’s Good About Death?” Each chapter takes a look at the question through the lens of a thinker in the traditions of the world, setting them in their historical context. Ahmari deftly blends history, biography, and philosophy to propose answers to the questions he sets himself. I am reminded of Clive James’s excellent Cultural Amnesia. Both men make serious points about tradition and our culture without becoming pedantic or leaden. In and of itself, this is an accomplishment.

Ahmari is the opinion editor of the New York Post and a regular contributor to First Things among other publications. But The Unbroken Thread suggests that he has a real talent for biography and popular intellectual history. In an age of monumental biographies like Julian Jackson’s De Gaulle, Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin, or John Röhl’s Wilhelm II, there is much to be said for Ahmari’s sketches. Not everything needs to be a spiritual heir to Henri-Louis de la Grange’s Gustav Mahler or Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson. It is altogether possible to give a sense of a man and his thought—and his influence on the most important questions of the age—in less than five thousand pages and a forest of footnotes and endnotes and bibliographies. (Though Ahmari does cite his sources.)

It is worth noting as well that Ahmari does not limit himself to any one tradition. The rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, born in Czarist Poland and working in the United States, sits alongside Seneca, the Stoic philosopher who was Nero’s favorite—for a time. Certainly some of his choices recommend themselves by the sheer extent and force of their influence: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Confucius. But he also draws upon figures who probably are not household names, like the theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman and the philosopher Hans Jonas. And he looks across the political spectrum. One does not necessarily expect to see Andrea Dworkin marshaled in a case for traditionalism, but here she is.

This is important, not least in the context of ongoing political debates in the United States and elsewhere. Tradition, Ahmari reminds us, is not the sole property of the west or of Christians or of the right. There are valuable insights in other traditions. One runs a risk, of course, of turning this into the liberal arts ideology. That is, by exploring all these traditions, you get a set of intellectual skills that allows you to solve modern, meaningful problems. That is to say, these traditions serve mostly to produce a neutral technology that has market value. I do not think Ahmari falls into that trap, since he emphasizes the ultimate ends toward which man is ordered. But I think The Unbroken Thread would have benefitted from a direct response to the liberal arts ideology.

The breadth of Ahmari’s book will appeal first and foremost to a general audience—by design, I imagine. However, aspects of the book cannot help but touch upon narrower debates. For example, Ahmari’s chapter “Does God Need Politics?” goes to the very heart of the ongoing debate in the Catholic (and more broadly Christian) right about the common good. Ahmari is himself in some large part responsible for sparking the debate, along with the Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule. In a First Things essay and a series of debates with David French in 2019, Ahmari called for a reorientation of what is broadly called the culture war.

An aside first, though. While Ahmari has certainly done much to reinvigorate a debate about the goals and means of political Catholicism, The Unbroken Thread is not really a polemic in that debate, except secondarily. While Ahmari sets for himself questions about politics, his scope is not narrowly political. A reader who wants a barn-burning political tract—a rehearsal of the arguments against David French, for example—is probably going to be a little disappointed by Ahmari. To put it another way: it is not a Twitter thread against the libertarians expanded into book form. But a book that argues that one finds happiness and freedom through tradition is going to have political dimensions.

Ahmari called for a renewed focus on the common good, even if it requires state power to establish and promote, in opposition to the broadly libertarian approach taken by French. Vermeule put the case in more concrete legal terms in an early 2020 essay in The Atlantic, calling for a common-good constitutionalism to replace the worn-out judicial philosophy of originalism. This debate has consumed Catholic political thought for the last eighteen months or so. A very recent conference arranged by Ryan T. Anderson at the University of Dallas shows that there is still a lot of energy in this debate.

One of the key issues in the debate is the question of the common good. Liberals, for whatever reason, usually begin by mystifying the concept. What is the common good? What is peace? What is happiness? Who decides? So on and so forth. They hope, I think, that by making the common good an impossibly difficult concept, they can take some of the rhetorical force out of the concept and make it as vague as the concepts they rely on, such as freedom and democracy. In “Does God Need Politics?” Ahmari offers a solution to the problems the liberals raise.

The chapter is a reading of St. Augustine’s life and De civitate Dei. Ahmari turns to Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., and his brilliant reading of Augustine several times throughout the chapter. Though, having played some small part in these debates and being familiar with Waldstein’s work on Augustine, I was less struck by that aspect on my first reading. Instead, I was struck by how vivid Ahmari’s portrait of Augustine was. Certainly everyone knows the broad strokes of Augustine’s life, especially if, as most educated people have, they have read the Confessions. But Ahmari, perhaps finding some special kinship with Augustine (though that is mere speculation), draws a remarkably engaging picture of Augustine and the circumstances under which he wrote De civitate Dei.

At any rate, Ahmari presents Augustine’s vision of Christian politics in this chapter. In Augustine’s critique of Roman politics and society, Christians find for themselves an approach to politics in accordance with reason and the divine law. This is especially true for questions like the common good or peace. Book XIX of De civitate Dei has extended treatments of these questions, which have informed the tradition of Christian political thought for fifteen hundred years. As I have insisted on several occasions here (and elsewhere) these concepts have content that we are not altogether free to provide. When we talk about peace, for example, we are not totally free to redefine it for ourselves: we follow, for example, Augustine’s treatment of peace and those who have followed Augustine.

Ahmari does not provide a definitive, scholarly study on this question—or any of the questions he discusses—and I do not have the sense he is especially interested in doing so. Neither, of course, did Clive James in Cultural Amnesia. What he does do, especially if one is not familiar with the figures he discusses, is urge one to seek the figures out for oneself. Someone who might be familiar with the debate over the common good from Twitter or the various web and print articles at various outlets but who might not have read De civitate Dei may well be inspired to seek out a copy and read Augustine for himself. On this basis, The Unbroken Thread succeeds at its task.

Private property and the common good

On October 3, Pope Francis handed down his second social encyclical, On Fraternity and Social Friendship, already known by its incipit, Fratelli tutti. It is, like Laudato si’ before it, a document of penetrating insight and uncommon clarity. Francis astutely diagnoses most of the problems afflicting neoliberal society and points to potential solutions to these problems. Fratelli tutti is a long document and I am suspicious of anyone who claims to have digested the whole thing in a week. It is, I think, a document that will require time to consider and process adequately, especially in the light of Laudato si’ and his other pronouncements on the social question. However, some of his points have already caused a lot of discussion. One such point, which has attracted a lot of attention, particularly from leftists with more or less Catholic sympathies, is that the right to private property is a “secondary right” (n. 120).

In a sense, Francis says nothing new when he calls property a “secondary right.” Pius XI, in Quadragesimo anno, recognized that, like everything else, private property must be ordered to the common good (n. 49). Francis says essentially the same thing, when he writes that “private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant” (n. 120).

It is clear that Francis, unlike most of his readers on the left, understands Pius’s point: a secondary right is a right, but it cannot be allowed to “displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant.” In this regard, Francis remains squarely in the tradition of Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II. The leftists who take up Francis’s statement as a new charter depart from that tradition. And not merely in the context of property. To say that a secondary right is no right, of course, would be to sweep away, for example, most legal and political procedures, since they are, after all, for the most part only secondary rights. Certainly one does not imagine Francis’s loudest interpreters saying, for example, that a trial by jury may be dispensed with simply because it is a secondary right.

Of course, given the strident criticism in some circles of Ius & Iustitium and the project to recover the classical legal tradition, nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing the recognition, especially in leftist circles, that legal procedures, whether judicial or administrative or penal, are not absolute mandates and ought to be harmonized always with the common good. Indeed, if the misreading of Fratelli tutti leads people to realize that the common good occasionally requires dispensing with norms in favor of substantive action, I cannot complain too much about the misreading. Certainly, on Twitter and elsewhere, there has long been a rejection of private property. It has only been a vestigial liberalism that insists upon positivistic norms even as it demands the abolition of private property.

Setting all of that to one side, there is another dimension to this question, which has not been adequately considered. That is, it is a commonplace to say, with Pius XI and Francis, that private property must be ordered by the political power to the common good. But there is not nearly as much consideration of whether private property is in some meaningful way connected with the common good. In an October 17, 1946 letter to Charles McCoy, Charles de Koninck observes that Aristotle and Aquinas held that communism—even Socratic communism—is perverse and may be resisted by force. That is, for De Koninck, a communistic people does not seek a common good even per accidens and may be resisted by the ruler who always and everywhere must seek the common good. But De Koninck’s analysis in the letter is a little sketchy.

In an interesting dictum, about which I have written briefly previously, Aquinas connects private property with the ability to resist the despotic power (ST Ia q.81 a.3 ad 2). Aquinas distinguishes the despotic power from the politic and royal power. The despotic power rules its subjects as slaves since they have nothing of their own (ibid.). On the other hand, subjects of the politic and royal power are free subjects because they have private property and can thereby resist the orders of the ruler (ibid.). Indeed: it is due to their private property that they can resist the ruler (ibid.).

Now, I concede here that this point is a little tricky, not least because of the development of the discourse in Catholic circles. Much of the current, illiberal moment has been inspired by the insipid free marketeer rhetoric of groups like the Acton Institute. Certainly their presentation of Catholic social teaching as more or less coextensive with right-wing, free-market economics is a distortion of the Church’s thought. It is, therefore, greatly cheering to see Francis emphasizing the Church’s perennial teaching: private property has to be ordered to the common good. But questioning, whether based on Thomas, there may be some connection between the common good and private property ought not to be taken as an endorsement of Actonite economics.

In the De regno, Aquinas observes that a ruler is unjust insofar as he departs from the common good (4.24). An oligarchy, seeking the benefit of a few, is more unjust than a democracy, which seeks the good of the many (ibid.). In a tyranny, the ruler seeks his own good; in this sense, then, a tyrant is maximally unjust (ibid.). A ruler must seek the common good—it is in the nature of being a ruler—and when he stops seeking the common good, he becomes unjust. There is, of course, a spectrum with tyranny being at the terminus.

Aquinas draws his comment in ST Ia q.81 a.3 ad 2 from Aristotle’s Politics, notably Aristotle’s discussion of slavery. There, Aristotle makes the same point: the despotic power is the power of a master over his slaves (In I Pol. L.3, n. 64). The despot is free to pursue his own interests without resistance from his subjects; the despot, therefore, is a tyrant. Aquinas’s connection therefore is radical: a slave has nothing of his own to resist his master. But someone who has something of his own can resist another. This transforms the person into a free citizen, who must be ruled politically (ST Ia q.81 a.3 ad 2).

There is no discord in resisting a tyrant, as a general matter (ST IIaIIae q.42 a.2 ad 3). The connection, therefore, becomes clear. In order to resist the tyrant, Aquinas, following Aristotle, holds that one must have something of one’s own (ST Ia q.81 a.3 ad 2). Otherwise, one is in the condition of a slave, precisely because a slave has nothing of his own to resist his master. That is to say, a citizen cannot resist the tyrant if he does not have something of his own with which to resist the tyrant. (Perhaps one might call this the material basis of resistance.) Private property therefore serves as a bulwark against tyranny.

The connection is apparent in other ways. Elsewhere in the Politics, Aristotle discourses on common property. He makes, in the course of that discussion, a couple of interesting points. First, Aquinas observes that Aristotle holds that common property leads to dissensions among the citizens (In II Pol. L.4, nn.198–99). It is worth observing that discord among the citizens is per se opposed to ordered concord (e.g., ST IIaIIae q.37 a.1). By the same token, Aquinas notes, when citizens are united in concord, they will share their property freely (In II Pol. L.4, n. 201). He also notes that community of property destroys both the natural love of self and the virtue of generosity (In II Pol. L.4, nn. 202, 204). There is no generosity in distributing common property (ibid., no. 204).

Aquinas returns to these points in the Summa theologiae. Certainly he acknowledges that the common destination of goods is in the natural law, and that private property is superadded to this by human law (ST IIaIIae q.66 a.2 ad 1). But he observes that private property is fitting for several reasons (ST IIaIIae q.66 a.2 co.). His second and third reasons are directed to the ordered concord of the citizens (ibid.). His first reason approaches the point he makes in the commentary on the Politics regarding private property and natural love of self (cf. In II Pol. L.4, n. 202). Seen in this light, one follows his argument that the addition of private property to the natural law is a matter of reason—as opposed to mere caprice (ST IIaIIae q.66 a.2 ad 1).

Furthermore, Aquinas also holds that a tyrant encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, so that he may rule over them more securely (ST IIaIIae q.42 a.2 ad 3). One sees therefore an equivalent connection: common property, tending as Aristotle and Aquinas believe it does, to dissensions among the citizens (In II Pol. L.4, nn. 198–99) ultimately achieves the goal of the tyrant, to secure his own rule through discord and sedition. To put it another way: the discord and disorder created by common property is exactly what the tyrant wants, since through that discord and disorder, the tyrant will be able to rule over his subjects more easily.

In other words, one sees that, so far from providing a material basis of resistance to tyranny, common property sets up a dangerous configuration of circumstances. First, it leads itself to dissensions among the citizens, which is precisely opposed to ordered concord (i.e., the common good). Second, common property is opposed to natural self-love and the virtue of generosity. Finally, the dissensions among the citizens it causes are entirely congruent with the tyrant’s strategy of encouraging dissensions to secure his own rule. All of that is to say, common property is attended by several serious vices conducive to tyranny.

Now, certainly, all of this was and is known to Pius XI and Francis (or their assistants), so we must understand it carefully in light of Quadragesimo anno and Fratelli tutti—and the many other pronouncements that amount to the same thing. It is clear Francis no less than Pius XI understands that this is not an on-off distinction: the right to private property, even if only secondary, “has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society.” To reduce a secondary right to no right at all is, even on Francis’s terms, a pernicious error (even if I am happy about it in other contexts). To understand the manner in which it “ought to be reflected in the workings of society,” I think, one has to understand, as Thomas did, the connection between private property and the common good.

I feel great and I support the nation-state

Yoram Hazony’s Edmund Burke Foundation has just sponsored the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. Broadly, it was a collection of conservative thinkers who are more or less disillusioned with the liberal order. There were some interesting-seeming speakers (Tucker Carlson, Sen. Josh Hawley, Michael Anton, Patrick Deneen) and some much less interesting speakers (Rich Lowry, Richard Reinsch, Rusty Reno) and one appalling speaker (“Amb.” John Bolton). On the whole, it appeared to be a very mixed bag. This sense was confirmed by the Twitter coverage of some of the addresses.

For our part, the conference and the coverage has prompted some thoughts about nationalism or national conservatism or whatever one wants to call it. Broadly we are simply suspicious of the movement. For one thing, Brent Bozell’s Letter to Yourselves and Jean Danielou’s Prayer as a Political Problem seem to be more compelling visions of Christian politics than anything on offer at this conference. Bozell’s clarion cry cannot be repeated too often: “The public life is supposed to help a man be a Christian. It is supposed to help him enter the City of God, and meanwhile it is sup­posed to help him live tolerably, even happily, in the City of Man.” How a revived nationalism or national conservatism or whatever one wants to call this idea (if it be an idea) fits into this vision is a little foggy to us.

For another thing, there is room for some really serious thought about “the nation” in Catholicism. One can cite Aquinas on piety toward one’s country (ST II-II q.101 a.1 co.) or Pius XII’s Summi Pontificatus or whatever, but it seems to us that there is still room for coherent thought about the modern nation-state in a Catholic context. Not least since the modern nation-state emerged, in many instances, as a part of liberal opposition to Catholic rule. By no means do we claim to have a coherent idea, other than the sense that it would be good if someone engaged in such thought, taking into account not only Aquinas and the medieval examples but also the recent developments under Pius XI and Pius XII. Perhaps someone is doing that kind of thought, though we are far from clear that it was on offer.

In the meantime, turning back to the question of Hazony’s national conservatism conference, we cannot stop thinking about what Dr. William Marshner, writing in Triumph in early 1976, said:

If you assert the existence of a national spirit that gets into the blood and unfolds itself in the whole life of a people, then you cannot arbitrarily lop off vast cultural complexes (TV, movies, books) plus the whole articulate stratum of society (academics, writers, artists) plus the whole dominant class (liberal establishment) plus the great urban centers and call them all “not the real America”

Marshner is responding to a critic of Triumph at National Review—there was, as you no doubt know by now, a long-running feud between Triumph and National Review—but his point has broader resonance. It’s a really difficult point to answer, in fact. One can point to globalists and neoliberal capitalists, loyal to their class above their country, of no fixed abode despite owning multimillion-dollar apartments in New York, London, and Paris, and suggest that these people are alien to the American spirit. But this doesn’t actually answer Marshner’s point, so much as restate the objection to which he is responding.

Marshner provides the answer, though, to the conundrum:

Well, I’ll take money that throughout F.’s argument the talk about “America” is a front. I suspect it has very little to do with the (extramental) country, the people, the ideal or the national Geist. I suspect that F. is as dubious about the world-historical credentials of the real America — the country that tipped the scales against civilization in World War I and has muffed and squandered great-power hegemony since World War II — as I am. I suspect, therefore, that “America” in his text is a stand-in, and that what it stands in for is “the Conservative Movement.”

The answer is a sort of identification between the conservative movement and America the Nation. We suspect that precisely the same sort of thing is going on with the national conservatism moment today. Perhaps it is not a wholesale transformation of movement conservatism into America, but it certainly seems as though aspects of movement conservatism are attempting to put on a little nationalist shine.

Consider how Marshner reached his conclusion in this case:

Think about it: 1) this is the Movement which, if NR defines, Triumph has deserted. In fact, Triumph was never in it, but the fact was not clear to many people until “Letter to Yourselves.” 2) This is the Movement whose gloss on “Duty, Honor, Country” might indeed create problems for a serious Catholic. In fact, in the case of abortion and Countervalue, it already has. 3) This is the Movement, and the only movement, that explicitly excludes all the things F. says are not America from itself and from its constituency. And let me add 4): this is the Movement that claims, in a sense, to be America. It is, simultaneously, the remnant of the patriots, the champion of liberty (hence guardian of the national raison d’être), the true exponent of the Constitution (hence keeper of the national myth).

The logic here is pretty clear. And it seems to be pretty clear in the case of at least some national conservatives. They certainly exclude some things putatively “not America” and claim to represent a Real America. (This of course goes for any number of nationalist types around the world, lest anyone think we’re picking on the national conservatives.)

But it is still difficult to see an answer to Marshner’s original point: how do you exclude the cultural, political, and capital classes from the Real America and contend that there is some national spirit that animates everyone else? Clearly it does not animate everyone else, otherwise the cultural, political, and capital classes would not have been able to achieve their dominance. Unless, as Marshner suggests, what one means when one talks about the Real America is the faction consisting of the members of this or that political tendency. Consequently, there is considerable cause for caution with respect to the national conservative movement.

Marshner went on to point out at length that the movement conservatives did not care very much whether their beliefs were condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII, who (infallibly, as we never tire of noting) condemned liberalism at great length during their glorious pontificates. And this seems to us to be the fundamental criterion when considering Catholic engagement with any political tendency: is this consistent with the teachings of the Church? There is room for legitimate disagreement about prudential solutions to purely political problems, but there is no room for contradiction of the Church’s teachings in the context of such solutions. And this seems to us to be a serious problem with this new project.

Recall the brief line up we mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Consider individuals like John Bolton, who were keynote speakers at the conference. Is there any doubt that Bolton is simply trying to find some contemporary packaging for the disastrous ideas he has been flogging forever, leading to innumerable human and fiscal catastrophes for the Republic? Consider the ambassadors from National Review at the conference: is there any doubt that, having put out a special issue “Against Trump,” they’re trying to stay current with donors and subscribers, lest their bottom line suffer? Consider Rusty Reno, from First Things: is there any doubt that he is selling what he is always selling, insofar as anyone knows what it is? It is simply true that these people are trying to identify their factions of movement conservatism with the Real America—or simply trying to put new drapes on their very 1980s house.

How many of these speakers are all that interested in conforming to the teachings of the Church of Rome? Even more to the point: how many of these speakers are especially interested in ordering public life in such a way as to make it easier for everyone—especially the poor—to be Christians, to enjoy temporal happiness, and to continue on their way to our heavenly homeland?

The French Condemnation

Sohrab Ahmari, who once described Semiduplex as “a WordPress blog,” has an essay at First Things criticizing National Review writer David French. Or, more precisely, Ahmari criticizes what he describes as French’s strategy for dealing with hostile left-liberals in public spaces. Ahmari’s point is that Christians should adopt the tactics of left-liberals in enforcing their orthodoxy and order; more precisely, Ahmari holds that Christians should, instead of trying to use liberal institutions to carve out breathing room for Christians, use public power to “advance the common good, including in the realm of public morality.” Ahmari also rejects the idea that the battle between right-liberals and left-liberals should be fought in the realm of culture, arguing that that battle depoliticizes fundamentally political questions and does so in a way that favors left-liberals. After all, left-liberals have proven themselves extremely adroit at capturing cultural institutions.

It is cheering to us to see First Things once again expressing skepticism of liberalism. However, Ahmari is far from the first person to speculate on the uses of rightly ordered state power. Gladden J. Pappin, writing earlier this year at American Affairs, made a compelling case for what he calls the party of the state. Pappin, prescinding from personalities and the question of how rude one can be to one’s political rivals, laid out a clear argument in favor of state power in support of the common good. Moreover, Pappin offered some clear advice for people thinking and writing in a post-liberal context. Advise the state on how to use its power, he argued. “For conservatives,” he explained, “this may mean learning to advise on the use of the administrative state rather than plaintive, nostalgic, and counterproductive calls for its abolition.” Pappin’s piece is well worth reading in full, especially if one has qualms about Ahmari’s strategy of framing his argument as a condemnation of one writer.

David French has responded to Ahmari at National Review. French points to his successes as a public-interest lawyer in defending conservative Christian voices on college campuses. He also suggests that Donald Trump would not recognize the Donald Trump that Ahmari briefly sketched in his essay. He then pivots to a pretty standard defense of pluralism, including both the Founders and a parade of horribles. He concludes, “There is no political ’emergency’ that justifies abandoning classical liberalism, and there will never be a temporal emergency that justifies rejecting the eternal truth.” Michael Brendan Dougherty has taken a break from touring in support of his memoir to come to French’s defense, too. Dougherty, an infamously bilious Twitter presence, sort of agrees with Ahmari, but wishes Ahmari could be nicer to French.

I.

Dougherty is in a sense a little more generous than Ahmari. Dougherty points out that Ahmari’s line of attack on French has a genealogy that really goes back to Brent Bozell’s epochal “Letter to Yourselves” in Triumph magazine. It is a shame that no one thought to link to Incudi Reddere‘s presentation of Bozell’s column. In a sense, the Ahmari-French debate is simply moving the clock back to 1969. Bozell stated, “The public life is supposed to help a man be a Christian. It is supposed to help him enter the City of God, and meanwhile it is sup­posed to help him live tolerably, even happily, in the City of Man.” This is not so far removed from Ahmari’s contention that Christians should not shrink from using state power to advance the common good. Bozell acknowledged that “[t]o state the problem in this fashion is to plunge into the Chris­tian dialectic; it is also, given the state and contemporary political theory, to enter a new world,” and to that end he pointed to Jean Danielou’s Prayer as a Political Problem.

Once again, Incudi Reddere proves its value. A while back, the first part of Danielou’s book was posted there. One passage that Bozell doesn’t quote, though it follows passages that he does quote, is this:

It is sufficiently clear that Christians ought to be trying to change the shape and pattern of society so as to make possible a Christian life for the whole of mankind. It is also obvious that such a transformation must in any case be slow and may sometimes be ruled out by circumstances. However that may be, somehow a start has to be made, and this can be done by creating oases in the prevailing secularism where the Christian vocation can develop. This thought inevitably raises the question of those Christian institutions would provide services not of themselves within the church is competence, but which the church might be brought to provide: schools, unions or employers and workers, etc., which bring Christianity into social life not merely at the level of individual witness but at that of a community.

This passage underscores Bozell’s point that a truly Christian politics is different than the liberal politics that has ruled in the west for some centuries now. As Bozell put it,

The first is that Christianity sees the public life, which is the responsibility of politics, as an extension of the interior life. As Danielou puts it, “there can be no radical division between civilization and what belongs to the interior being of man.” Liberal politics, by contrast, is indifferent to the connection. John F. Kennedy became the liberal par excellence by announcing that his religion would not affect his presidency because it was “a private affair.”

As Bozell explains, the consequences of this idea are far reaching. But in the context of the Ahmari-French debate, it is clear that the idea of using liberal institutions to carve out “oases in the prevailing secularism,” as Danielou put it, is only the beginning of a Christian politics.

The other important point is this, and it cuts squarely against French. A Christian politics, at least as Danielou and Bozell understood it, does not seek to divide man into spheres, a temporal man and an eternal man. Indeed, it seeks exactly the opposite: the integration and harmonization of the temporal with the eternal. After all, man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end by reason of the infinitely surpassing excellence of the eternal end. And even if one, per impossibile, sought to make such a division, it would not exclude religion from the life of the temporal man. As Danielou explains:

religion of itself forms part of the temporal common good. Religion is not concerned solely with the future life; it is a constituent element of this life. Because the religious dimension is an essential part of human nature, civil society should recognize it as a constituent element of the common good for which it is itself responsible. Therefore, the state ought to give a positive recognition to full religious freedom. This is a matter of natural law. State atheism, which stifles religious life, and laïcisme, which ignores it, are both contrary to natural law.

Now, we admit that this points to the complex argument about Quanta cura, Leo XIII, and the Second Vatican Council, but we will bracket that argument for another day. The point is simply this: one cannot ignore the question of religion—and the question of right and wrong that necessarily attends religion—in service of making room for competing voices under a theory of liberty. Still less can a Christian, who ought to be striving to make a Christian life possible for all nations, ignore these questions.

Danielou also explains the risks of permitting others to create this division between the temporal and the spiritual:

The Church has an absolute duty to open herself to the poor. This can be done only be creating conditions which make Christianity possible for the poor. Therefore there is laid upon the Church a duty to work at the task of making civilization such that the Christian way of life shall be open to the poor. Today there are many obstacles standing in their way. In a technological civilization men tend to be absorbed in care for material things. Socialization and rationalization leave little room for personal life. Society is so disordered that large numbers have to live in a poverty which makes a personal life impossible. The result of the secularization of society is that God is no longer present in family, professional, or civic life. A world has come into being in which everything serves to turn men away from their spiritual calling.

For Danielou, then, the secularized world becomes not a world in which it is possible for everyone to get something. It is a world “in which everything serves to turn men away from their spiritual calling.” A Christian politics, as Danielou and Bozell conceive of it, rejects the obstacles to the spiritual life imposed by civilization and commits itself to working to overcome them.

Bozell explains that in this concept of politics, there is an antidote to the depoliticization Ahmari complains about:

The second advantage of the Christian conception is that the public life is not confined to what the state does, or what government does. The public life is whatever is not the interior life. This means that Christian politics is free to regard family and school, play and work, art and communication, the order of social relationships and the civil order, as integral parts of a whole: as integral and therefore mutually dependent aspects of civilization. (Which, of course, every reflective man knows they are.) But more: Christian politics is obliged to take this view of the matter, for the sake of the poor. What point is there in encouraging virtue in the family, and having it undermined in the school and on the street? What point in passing on truth by the unadorned word, only to have it repudiated by art? What point in arranging the departments of government to assure concord and liberty, when the arrangements of the social and economic orders forbid concord and liberty? All of the public life is the proper concern of politics because the poor live in all of it and need the support of all of it.

In other words, Christian politics expands its scope to consider all aspects of public life to ensure that no aspect of public life becomes an impediment to the Christian way of life, especially for the poor. This may be what French and other might describe as Christian statism, but it does not appear that French and his defenders have considered the very real possibility that Christian statism is precisely what Christian politics have always required and will always require.

II.

A word about Donald Trump. It seems to us self evident that Donald Trump, whether or not he could articulate his position in these terms, believes that it is possible to use state power to pursue a vision of the good. He is, as others have noted, inconsistent in this. However, it seems as though Trump has a few fixed ideas about what the common good of the United States requires and he is willing to exercise state power to achieve those ends. One can disagree with Trump’s concept of the good or his handful of fixed ideas or his implementations of state power in service of those ideas. But it seems to us beyond dispute that Trump is, in a way most presidents before him since Jimmy Carter have not been, willing to use state power to achieve these goals.

To our mind, then, Trump represents, among many things, the beginning of a return to a vision of state power in American life that was last clearly represented by Richard Nixon. But Nixon’s vision stretches back through Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt all the way to Abraham Lincoln. That is, before Carter, there was a sense that the New Deal consensus permitted the federal government to act to further a vision of the common good. With Carter and then Reagan this sense was replaced by the idea that the last thing the federal government should do was act to further a vision of the common good. Instead, the consensus went, the federal government needed to get out of the way to let the states and private actors work out these problems, ideally in a free-market sort of way.

Catholics routinely bought into and served this consensus, usually by talking about “subsidiarity” and Centesimus annus. In so doing, Catholics forgot the lesson Pius XI taught in Quadragesimo anno, when he articulated the principle of subsidiarity:

The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of “subsidiary function,” the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State.

In other words, the state ought to let subordinate grounds handle “matters and concerns of lesser importance,” which, if it attempted to address them, “would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly.” The state, therefore, will be free to do things it alone can do more effectively. Subsidiarity, then, in Pius XI’s vision is not the same thing as American federalism, and still less is it a call for the government to get out of the way on matters of great importance.

This is to say that Catholics ought not to mourn a return to the vision of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon about the role of the federal government. If the arguments of Bozell and Danielou do not convince, the arguments of Pius XI ought to convince. There are some problems—many problems, in fact—that only the federal government can address meaningfully. Donald Trump seems to have a dim understanding of this reality. Whether he has correctly identified these problems or correctly addressed them is another question for another day.

III.

Finally, French misrepresents the sweep of the American tradition when he suggests in his rebuttal to Ahmari that this content-neutral pluralism is somehow the American tradition. Consider, for example, Abraham Lincoln’s repeated condemnations of Judge Douglas’s liberalism in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. Lincoln repeated the charge that Douglas did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down. In the fifth debate, held on October 7, 1858, at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Lincoln skillfully dissected Douglas’s claim, arguing that it was impossible for Douglas to hold that slavery was wrong and that it did not matter whether a population voted to adopt it or not. To do that would be to profess that the voters had a right to do a wrong. Or, as Lincoln pointed out, maybe Douglas did not think it was wrong. And in the seventh debate, held on October 15, 1858, in Alton, Illinois, Lincoln demonstrated the folly of the rhetoric of the “personally opposed,” which becomes the only rhetoric available under liberalism:

And if there be among you any body who supposes that he, as a Democrat can consider himself “as much opposed to slavery as anybody,” I would like to reason with him. You never treat it as a wrong. What other thing that you consider as a wrong, do you deal with as you deal with that? Perhaps you say it is wrong, but your leader never does, and you quarrel with any body who says it is wrong. Although you pretend to say so yourself you can find no fit place to deal with it as a wrong. You must not say any thing about it in the free States, because it is not here. You must not say any thing about it in the slave States, because it is there. You must not say any thing about it in the pulpit, because that is religion and has nothing to do with it. You must not say any thing about it in politics, because that will disturb the security of “my place.” There is no place to talk about it as being a wrong, although you say yourself it is a wrong.

This, too, is part of the American tradition. Lincoln’s moral clarity about the evil of slavery, his logical clarity about the contradictions inherent in a liberal attitude, and his practical clarity about those who claimed to be personally opposed to slavery while remaining Democrats are all just as much part of the fabric of America’s public life as the Framers and the Declaration of Independence.

Can we say that Lincoln’s points have lost their force with the passage of time? Has it become less incoherent to tolerate something one believes is wrong? More to the point, has Lincoln’s analysis of the effects of such a belief lost any of its force? Can it be said that it is possible to discuss as a wrong certain features of public life today that are incompatible with orthodox Christianity? Even those who are personally opposed to various things today find themselves either “evolving” to the secular orthodoxy or bullied into silence along the lines Lincoln sketches. It is possible that Lincoln and his arguments against Judge Douglas do not get a warm reception in the National Review offices. Yet it cannot be denied that Lincoln’s arguments form a major component of the unwritten constitution of the Republic, and a major component that is wholly consistent with the arguments of Jean Danielou and Brent Bozell. In other words, it is impossible to dodge, as French tries to, the arguments of Danielou and Bozell about the ends of a Christian politics by claiming that America’s founding principles prohibit that sort of political action.

 

The brick through the window

At Public Discourse, the Witherspoon Institute’s online journal of anti-integralist thought, Hillsdale professor Korey Maas warns that, “[i]nsofar as prominent and influential Catholics insist that Catholicism is fundamentally incompatible with the liberal tradition, liberals will feel increasingly justified in reaching the same conclusion.” He goes on to say, “[a]ttempts to convince fellow Catholics that the ‘teaching of the Catholic Church, always and everywhere,’ idealizes the confessional state and sanctions religious coercion will inevitably convince many non-Catholics, liberal and otherwise, that this is indeed the case.” However, Maas’s argument has more to do, we think, with silencing integralists and other Catholics not committed to the Catholic liberalism of the late 20th century than with warning of any impending doom.

This is unfortunate. Instead of coming up with silly arguments for why integralism is dangerous or whatever, liberals like Maas really ought to be doing what illiberal Catholics have been doing: rediscovering their own tradition. And they should cast their gaze on more than the tradition of the United States. The fusion between Catholic liberalism and American conservatism has permanently damaged Catholic liberalism, especially as American conservatism has failed to deliver on its promises. For reasons we will get into in a moment, Maas probably does not care all that much about specifically Catholic liberalism, but that’s neither here nor there. Focusing on policing integralist (or, more broadly, illiberal) rhetoric does not create a compelling case for liberalism. If anything, it reveals that the case for integralism is more compelling than any actually existing case for liberalism.

Maas’s argument goes like this. In the 19th century, America was deeply anti-Catholic. We see today flashes of that old anti-Catholicism in the treatment afforded to Donald Trump’s judicial nominees Amy Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Maas contends that the Church blunted some of that old anti-Catholicism by the Second Vatican Council’s openness to liberalism. This is a sort of skewed view, since there were openings to the postwar liberal-democratic order under Pope Pius XII. But to tell that story would be to take some of the focus away from the United States. At any rate, Maas thinks that the Church’s apparent turn toward liberalism—exemplified by John F. Kennedy’s statements during the 1960 presidential campaign—is what made the proud American tradition of anti-Catholicism seem silly.

After the story of anti-Catholicism, we get the customary parade of horribles. A fellow named Philip Primeau was very 19th century when discussing Jacob Rees-Mogg’s denunciation of any scrutiny of one’s religious views. Maas is aghast that Primeau thinks Rees-Mogg should have stood his ground on truth. Maas is also disturbed that Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen has been so gauche to suggest that actually existing American liberalism may in fact be incompatible with orthodox Catholicism. Naturally, there is the stale lament about how First Things got radical for about two minutes. (Why Ryan T. Anderson, editor-in-chief of Public Discourse, has run so many pieces about First Things is a bit baffling, isn’t it?) Maas mentions, among other things, Fr. Romanus Cessario’s piece on the Mortara affair. He graciously declines to mention that R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, disavowed the piece subsequently. He also wrote at least one or two self-flagellating apologies before he disavowed it. No doubt Dr. Maas wanted to spare Reno from any further pain, though it would have been altogether more honest—even if less delicate—to have said that the Mortara exchange marked the end of First Things‘ flirtation with integralism.

We should be, once again, clear that the Church is fundamentally anti-liberal in its doctrine, no matter how unpleasant this may be to those committed to some flavor of liberalism. Maas cites Semiduplex for the proposition that the teachings of Quanta cura and Syllabus are infallible and irreformable, including the 77th, 78th, 79th, and 80th condemnations of Syllabus. Why he didn’t simply cite John Joy’s brilliant essays is beyond us. But behind John Joy stands the great canonist F.X. Wernz, among others, who argue for the infallibility not only of Pius IX’s teachings but also Leo XIII’s explanations of those teachings. One can also read John Henry Newman’s great anti-liberal writings if one needs a literary and philosophical expansion of the Church’s anti-liberalism. Whether or not this is politic, it is true.

A young Catholic writer and friend is fond of saying that every disagreement about tone (or, we might expand his saying, rhetoric) hides a substantive disagreement. And it is clear, given what we believe to be the clear theological notes of the anti-liberal and integralist teachings of Pius IX and Leo XIII, that Maas’s argument, superficially about the danger of illiberal rhetoric, hides a substantive disagreement. Maas clearly does not believe that the teachings of Pius IX and Leo XIII are infallible and irreformable. Indeed, based on a quick Twitter search, it appears that Maas may be some sort of protestant, maybe even a Lutheran. It would surprise us very much, then, if a Lutheran (or any other protestant, for that matter) believed that these—or any other—teachings were infallible and irreformable. One imagines that the only Catholicism pleasing to Maas is a Catholicism that looks basically the same as Lutheranism or whatever. It would also be altogether more honest just to say that and leave it there.

But of course Maas doesn’t. He does, however, eventually come to his punchline: the rising tide of Catholic illiberalism might be taken seriously by liberals. Maas warns, “[t]he ‘last acceptable prejudice,’ instead of an irrational prejudgment, will increasingly be deemed a warranted conviction based on the rational arguments put forward by Catholic intellectuals themselves.” The old anti-Catholicism, flaring up in the Barrett and Kavanaugh hearings, will take root because the liberals will once again see Catholicism as an enemy. We hate to be so blunt, but this is just about the dumbest thing we could imagine. There is also a sort of sinister note to it, isn’t there? The protestant Korey Maas warning Catholics that if they do not do something about the integralists, there will be trouble. A brick through the window in the dead of night or a mural depicting the heroic Orangemen would be more effective, we suppose, but folks do the best they can.

At any rate, Maas cannot really mean that because of some debates among Catholic professors, writers, and WordPress bloggers, liberals will suddenly realize that Church is doctrinally opposed to liberalism. We are flattered by the idea that Dianne Feinstein and Mazie Hirono read Semiduplex and decided to keep our influence out of the federal judiciary. But we are not so silly as to believe that that’s true. Democrats gave Barrett and Kavanaugh a rough time because Democrats achieved a bunch of policy victories in the federal courts—e.g., Roe, Casey, Windsor, Obergefell—and they are not interested in Donald Trump’s judicial nominees taking them away. Stare decisis is, after all, not in the Constitution. What Harry Blackmun and Anthony Kennedy gave, John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch can take away. That’s what the fight over Trump’s judicial nominees is about, not Quanta cura and the confessional state.

Moreover, it is clear that Catholicism is fundamentally incompatible with the trajectory of modern liberalism, not because Catholicism holds that the confessional state is the ideal or that heretics may be punished by the state, but because modern liberalism is fast going off the rails. Media outlets across the political spectrum report daily of cases where deviation from left-liberal consensus is punished severely. College campuses are unrecognizable, with even once-radical figures like Camille Paglia being shouted down for their problematic views. Major corporations are following the money and implementing the left-liberal consensus in various ways. The Masterpiece Cakeshop case shows that left-liberal activists are willing to weaponize state institutions, like the Colorado civil rights commission, in order to coerce individuals into accepting the views of others. Maas may not realize it, but prominent Catholic thinkers like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule devote a fair bit of time to discussing these trends, too.

In contrast, the spirit of the Second Vatican Council is hopelessly reactionary. Maas might not know this, but even Catholic liberals cannot accept same-sex “marriage” or abortion. (Even Fr. James Martin, SJ, one of the loudest pro-gay voices in the Church today, is a regular, staunch defender of the unborn on social media.) There are no signs that Pope Francis, regularly accused by friend and foe of reinvigorating the spirit of the Council after the perceived setbacks of 1978-2013, intends on retreating in any meaningful way from the Church’s positions on those issues. He also gives few signs of willingness to retreat on the question of women’s ordination—though after the interventions of Paul VI and John Paul II, it is clear that he could not change the Church’s teaching on that, even if he wanted to. Any one of these positions, which are held even by liberals like those at Public Discourse, would be enough to get the Church “canceled” as the kids say. To hold all three? Unforgivable.

And it is simply not clear that defending liberal toleration will achieve even tactical objectives in the current climate. For one thing, the people who are loudest about problematic views on college campuses, on social media, and in various boycott campaigns are simply not all that liberal. They themselves do not recognize a meaningful “right” to profess unacceptable opinions. Indeed, as Professor Paglia recently discovered at the University of the Arts, these unacceptable positions are seen as actual violence. We are simply unconvinced that pleas for liberal toleration will have much success with people who view one’s opinions as actual violence. The anti-Catholicism Maas professes to be worried about is already here, whether it is overt or not, and it is based on issues entirely unrelated to the confessional state and the use of state power to coerce heretics. Just ask the Pennsylvania state legislator who harassed teenagers praying outside a Planned Parenthood. Dollars to donuts, he wouldn’t know integralism from a load of coal.

However, the specter of coming anti-Catholicism is rhetorically useful for Maas. The implicit point of his article is: if things get bad, it will be the integralists’ fault. From here it is only a short step to arguing that integralists must be silenced before they make things get bad. In a sense, Maas’s essay concedes the wild success of integralism in the terms that actually matter (i.e., doctrinal and forensic), and mounts a last-ditch defense by ginning up the specter of anti-Catholicism as a response to Catholic illiberalism. Sure, he cites some of his fellow Public Discourse authors like Robert T. Miller, who have argued gamely and wrongly that integralism does not have the theological note that the integralists think it does. But these pieces have not been all that successful, for a variety of reasons ranging from “They’re not right” to “They’re boring.” There is no sense waiting for the liberals to mass and make a compelling counterattack. Instead, Maas makes the only play available: he retreats to warning about the inherent danger of illiberal Catholicism.

This is a pity! For our part, we believe that the only way liberalism is going to make a comeback among Catholic thinkers is by abandoning the tedious connection with American conservative politics. Instead, it is necessary to argue for the sort of postwar Christian democracy that formed the core of the European project. To be sure, it went wrong like American liberalism. It is awfully hard to see the ideals of the heady days of the 1950s and 1960s in the micromanaging Brussels bureaucracy or the smug condescension of contemporary European leaders like Guy Verhofstadt. Nevertheless, it is in the Christian-democratic project that liberalism’s best hope lays. This will no doubt be a grief to Catholic liberals who have long seen Catholicism and American conservatism as two peas in a pod, but they will be more grieved by far if they continue to see liberalism slide into irrelevance.

The anniversary

There is little left to be said about Humanae vitae. This is not because it is not a rich and fruitful document. It is, of course. Indeed, it is the foundation of the Church’s entire moral position in the modern age. When Paul refused to open the door to birth control, he provided the conceptual framework for John Paul to keep the door barred against abortion and euthanasia. He also provided the orientation toward human life that one finds in Francis’s Laudato si’. On the other hand, no other papal pronouncement has been as controversial the world over as Humanae vitae. It has been cheered and lamented by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Yet it is the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae vitae, and the occasion does, we think, call for a few words.

Foremost among them is the recognition of the fact that we have discussed before. 2018 is the year of Paul VI. We have seen the fiftieth anniversary of the Credo of the People of God, we are marking the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae vitae, and this fall, we shall see him raised to the altars as Saint Paul VI. But the influence of Paul VI in this time extends far beyond some anniversaries and a canonization. There is a sense that the Church has been plunged, since 2013, into some of the debates that raged under Paul VI. After the pause presented by John Paul II and Benedict XVI—and the collapse of the consensus that those popes represented—the dialectic within the Church between tradition and modernity (and, frankly, modernism) has resumed.

We have commented, we think, elsewhere about Gladden Pappin’s argument (following Baudrillard) that, following the pause from 1991 to 2001, history has resumed. Perhaps there is something to be said for this in terms of world history. But it seems clear that, regardless of what has happened in the world at large, history has resumed in the Church. It is natural, therefore, to look back to Paul VI in these times. Paul VI was the last pope to confront—and be forced to judge—the conflict between tradition and modernity. And Humanae vitae is the premier example of Paul confronting and deciding such a conflict. The lessons of Paul’s act of frankly Apostolic courage and clarity still deserve to be considered, along with the other lessons to be drawn from Paul’s complex, often frustrating papacy.

In Humanae vitae, we find the germ of the basic liberal narrative of the Church. After the Council, all things were possible and it looked like the Church was going to enter modernity enthusiastically. Innovations that were opposed fiercely by Pius XII in Humani generis looked tame in comparison to what burst onto the scene after 1965. Then Pope Paul, with a voice that seemed to come from an earlier time, clearly and unambiguously opposed one of the most cherished practices of modern liberalism. Things started to go wrong. For the liberals, 1968 to 2013 was an unmitigated stream of disasters and disappointments. (This is not quite right, but close enough for our purposes.) Ever since Humanae vitae, there is a sense of having lost what could have been. And this sense has become especially acute since Francis’s election.

The story of Humanae vitae is well known by now. Paul set up a commission to study birth control. The bishops and theologians came down almost unanimously in favor of permitting, at least in some circumstances, birth control. It was widely expected—and a draft of an encyclical prepared, if we remember right—that Paul would ratify the decision of the commission. However, the towering prefect of the Holy Office, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, and a handful of others (no doubt, in the standard liberal telling of the story, identified as reactionaries), opposed such an opening. They were able to convince Paul to go against the experts on the commission and reject any opening to birth control. Yet, according to the liberals, this teaching has not been received by the faithful, who contracept in roughly the same proportion as the faithful of the third century professed that the Son was of like substance as the Father, and some future enlightened pope is expected to come and set things straight.

We have mused before whether the deliberations leading to Humanae vitae were on Paul’s mind when he proclaimed his great Credo of the People of God. The basic narrative is, of course, that Paul was dismayed by the Dutch Catechism and other errors and enormities seemingly receiving approval from the hierarchy. He decided, therefore, to confirm his brethren in the Apostolic faith handed down from Peter to Paul VI. Yet we cannot shake the sense that Paul’s creed and Humanae vitae are of a piece. To say that the Paul of Humanae vitae is separate from the Paul of the creed would be to separate him from himself. One reads about Paul’s agonies of conscience during the explosive period following the Council, but one does not read that Paul was unmoored altogether.

We see then that Paul understood acutely the essence of the Petrine ministry. The pope acts as the guardian of the unity of the faith. His refusal to bend to the spirit of the age must be seen as an act touching upon the very essence of the papacy. Over the past five years, especially in the context over the debate of Amoris laetitia, we have had opportunity to read much (and write some) about the vision of the papacy in Pastor aeternus, the First Vatican Council’s great dogmatic decree about the Petrine office. The pope receives the assistance of the Holy Spirit not so that he can propose new doctrines—after all, public revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle—but so that he can guard the faith definitively. To condemn error is, therefore, at the heart of the Petrine office.

In this regard, Paul had for his example Pius XI and his encyclical, Casti connubii. In that document, which may be read as a rejoinder to the Anglicans’ collapse and acceptance of contraception at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, Pius condemned contraception in ringing terms. Terms, in fact, that have been argued invoked the extraordinary magisterium. Indeed, we know because the working papers of Paul’s commission to examine birth control were leaked at the time to try to create pressure on the pope that the irreformability of Casti connubii was hotly debated in the commission. However, it appears that Pius XI and Casti connubii weighed heavily on Paul’s mind.

The pope’s role as guarantor of the unity of faith would be undercut severely if a pope were, per impossibile, to overturn a clear ruling by one of his predecessors in a matter touching upon faith and morals. Once such a thing happened, the rule of faith would be at the mercy of the reigning pope. After all, what one pope does, another pope can undo. Whether or not Paul articulated that sense, we do not know. However, by reaffirming Pius’s clear condemnation of contraception, whether Casti connubii was technically infallible or not, Paul revealed his knowledge of the deeper truth about the papacy.

This was understood, we think, by his contemporaries. The Jesuit-run AARP Magazine supplement, America, has relived its glory days by posting some of its contemporary content about Humanae vitae. One of its early editorials responds to Humanae vitae by placing dissenters in dialogue with Paul himself. Paul’s teaching was not a teaching, according to the editors, but merely one opinion among many, based on reasoning subject to critique. It was, we see, anything except an Apostolic utterance, drawing its authority from Christ’s command to Peter to teach all nations. In other words, the critics of Humanae vitae have to topple the pope from his exalted position and make him just another man on the street with just another opinion. There is no other way to resist Paul on this point.

The demise of the American king

Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement. Every politically aware person in the United States—and recall that man is a political animal—has been waiting for this moment. At American Affairs, Gladden Pappin, following Baudrillard, has argued that history has begun again after its post-1991 hiatus. You can agree or disagree with his argument, but we think it is impossible to deny that Kennedy’s retirement feels like the resumption of history. Prior appointments have not been hugely significant, except to those who watch the Supreme Court. Even the fracas over Scalia’s replacement was ultimately a battle about replacing one “conservative” justice with another “conservative” justice. The storm over Kennedy’s replacement has a historical dimension.  Indeed, it has an apocalyptic dimension.

What is so extraordinary is how quickly the reaction to Kennedy’s retirement has progressed to an acknowledgement by left-liberals that Roe v. Wade, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, and Obergefell v. Hodges are in dire jeopardy. That means, of course, that abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, the two central struts in the modern left-liberal platform, are in dire jeopardy. Indeed, skimming some of the initial reactions on Twitter, it seemed to us that many left-liberals have conceded that Kennedy’s retirement means the end of those precedents and the policies they enshrine. This is a breathtaking sentiment: for left-liberals, one man has been responsible for ordering the American Republic toward the common good as they imagine it. In this vision, Anthony Kennedy has been more than a career federal appellate judge and sometime deciding vote on the Republic’s highest court.

He has been, in effect, a king. This is a cliche by now. Google “Anthony Kennedy philosopher king” and see how many hits you get. As recently as January, Michael Brendan Dougherty, a conservative columnist at National Review, characterized Kennedy as our “philosopher king,” whose decisions give legitimacy to an ever-more-polarized United States and who restrains the excesses of whichever political coalition is ascendant. We doubt that Dougherty finds Kennedy’s decisions, especially his lodestar decisions in Casey and Obergefell, especially congenial. But he makes essentially the same point the left-liberals do. Kennedy was the guarantor of unity and order in the American Republic. The hyper-polarized electorate and the never-ending electoral cycle necessarily lead to dissension and disunity. By drawing firm boundaries, as Dougherty might say, around the edges of what the political coalitions can do to each other, Kennedy guaranteed that the dissension and disunity would not get too bad.

But, of course, in singlehandedly enacting and upholding the core left-liberal agenda, Kennedy stoked the fires of fairly serious dissension and disunity. One could draw a fairly straight line between Kennedy’s decisions in Casey and Obergefell and the toxic nihilism that motivates much of political discourse on the right.

Evangelicals & Catholics in the age of integralism

At The American Conservative, Rod Dreher has a very lengthy post critiquing Matthew Walther’s recent column at The Week arguing that the Catholic alliance with evangelicals has not worked out to the benefit of Catholics. We note by way of parenthesis at the outset that Walther’s column for The Week is consistently one of the most entertaining and provocative columns out there. Anyway, in the context of the imbroglio over Paul Ryan firing and unfiring the House chaplain, Jesuit Fr. Patrick Conroy (hired by John Boehner, a longtime friend of the Jesuits), Walther makes some very pointed remarks about the effects on Catholics of their political alliance with evangelical protestants. We agree with Walther, for the most part, but Dreher doesn’t. Dreher’s point is basically this: so what if American Catholics have gone wobbly on the Church’s social teaching because of this alliance with evangelicals?

It is worth thinking about this exchange because it provides a perfect example of what we have talked about before, and that is what Jake Meador (a protestant) has rightly called a parting of the ways between Catholics and protestants. Both Catholics and protestants are engaged at the moment in a project of ressourcement. Catholics in particular are presently engaged in rediscovering the Church’s anti-liberal, integralist tradition and thinking about how best to implement the anti-liberal, integralist teaching of the Church in American political life. This makes the consensus that made projects like Evangelicals and Catholics Together to name but one less tenable than ever before. Indeed, we have seen in recent regrettable incidents that institutions devoted to the consensus typified by Evangelicals and Catholics Together are hostile to expressions of, for example, the anti-liberal, integralist Catholic tradition. It will be clearer, we think, in short order that Dreher (among others) does not understand this moment in American Christianity as well as he thinks.

Here’s the problem. As Dreher eventually gets around to arguing, the forces of secular liberalism—implacable in their opposition to Christianity—don’t actually see much of a difference between faithful Catholics and faithful evangelicals. Moreover, it is clear that Dreher doesn’t actually see much of a difference, either. Whatever drift there has been in American Catholics’ views, he thinks it was baked in from the beginning. In support of this proposition, he argues (1) that Americans are simply protestantized at a baseline level and (2) that Americans are basically indifferentist. In any event, he does not think it’s all that big of a deal to suggest that Catholics and evangelicals should cooperate on certain issues. What is needed, Dreher concludes, is for Christians to downplay their differences and present a united front in defense of religious liberty.

Even if indifferentism isn’t baked into American religious expression, Americans should adopt it, Joe Carter of the Acton Institute tells us as he weighs in, arguing, based on the thought of 19th-century Dutch protestant and household name around the world Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper, Carter tells us, believed that Catholics and protestants have creedal confession and morals in common. More than that, on the points where secular society is most hostile to Christians, Kuyper argued that Catholics and protestants were in agreement. This is a funny assertion, not least because Catholics and protestants disagree pretty vehemently on articles of all of the creeds of undivided Christendom. Moreover, it is only by equivocation that a Catholic and a protestant can profess belief in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, since it is clear that a Catholic means one thing and a protestant another. On this point, one wonders what response Carter would get from his Southern Baptist brethren if he told them that when they pray the Nicene Creed, they confess the same creed in the same way as St. Pius V or St. Pius X. Levity aside, it seems odd to us that Dreher or Carter would offer what amounts to indifferentism as a way forward.

Part of the reason why indifferentism seems like a strange solution is because it has been what Acton and other institutions have been advancing for some time now, without any appreciable success. In this, we are reminded of Brent Bozell’s “Letter to Yourselves” from an early issue of Triumph. The splendid site Incudi Reddere reprinted the essay yesterday in the context of a Twitter discussion along these lines. Bozell was writing to an audience of conservatives in 1969 in the wake of Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968. After discussing the decision by conservatives to support Nixon despite the fact that Nixon really did not represent the conservative position by 1968, Bozell makes this devastating point:

I think this experience can be described even more sharply. Secular liberalism has lost its war for historical existence, but it has not lost any of the battles it has had with you. On every front where your program has confronted secular liberalism’s, you have been beaten. Consider (against the background of one of Nixon’s press conferences) your campaigns against big government, against Keynesian economics, against compulsory welfare; your defense of states’ rights and the constitutional prerogatives of Congress; your struggle for a vigorous anti-Soviet foreign policy; your once passionate stand for the country’s flag and her honor. Is there a single field which the secular liberals have had to yield to the secular conservatives? That is one side of the coin. The other is that secular liberalism has, nevertheless, died—and for causes apparently unconnected with your ministrations. Some say it succumbed from existential wounds, an inability to cope with reality. Do you deem yourselves sufficiently close students of reality to have helped significantly to inflict the wounds? Others lay the failure to an organic weakness or “sickness,” a self-contained fault of the system. Has your criticism of secular liberalism persuasively diagnosed this sickness? Still others say the basic cause is in the order of ideas. Do you claim to have located the fundamental errors, or to have corrected them? I do not mean, with these questions, to chide you; I concede that men are hard to find in our time who ought to feel any more comfortable with them. The point is simply that, taking both sides of this coin together, it is not surprising you should neither be called, nor offering yourselves, as secular liberalism’s heir—that it is not surprising you are disillusioned.

(Emphasis supplied.) What was true in 1969 remains true in 2018. One might cavil with this assessment and say that Bozell was writing to secular conservatives, not religious conservatives. Okay. How many battles have the religious conservatives won? The most recent major defeat—dealt by the Supreme Court in Obergefell—was so devastating to Dreher that he now proposes anything a sort of strategic regrouping (in its weakest form) to a retreat to the bayou (in its stronger form) for Christians.

This is a painful point for many, not least Dreher. However, when one says that Catholics and evangelicals should put aside their “small differences” to fight the liberal order, one has to point out that they’ve been doing that for a while—and losing. Perhaps this time will be different. It is true that the liberal order is seen to be struggling at this moment, even if the reasons are not always so clear. Christian conservatives have, unlike the secular conservatives, a real ethical and metaphysical critique of liberalism that, in the case of the critique advanced by the Church, carries divine authority. One sees this even today, in Francis’s great anti-liberal encyclical, Laudato si’, which is clearly an authoritative critique of modern liberalism. That counts for something, to be sure. Nevertheless, when a united Christian front for religious liberty is discussed, one ought to hear Bozell intoning, “Secular liberalism has lost its war for historical existence, but it has not lost any of the battles it has had with you.”

This is, we think, Walther’s point. Catholics have made accommodations for the sake of presenting a united front with other Christians on other issues, only to be defeated in each fight. Walther writes,

What has been the result of this abandonment of principles? Forty years of infanticide, economic exploitation, and spoliation of the Earth as the forces of capital and technology disrupt all our settled customs, habits, convictions, and affections, at an increasingly rapid pace. Think tanks have been founded, fellowships have been granted, journals have been founded, and symposiums held. A whole new conception of politics has emerged out of what ought to have been a limited prudential alliance — but the clock has not been turned back a minute. “All that is solid melts into air,” as Marx put it, and Catholics and evangelicals stand together with their paper cups trying to catch a few drops of the precious liquid to put back in their broken refrigerators.

(Emphasis supplied.) One is justified in asking, then: was it worth it? Was it worth setting about half of Centesimus annus and about six paragraphs of Rerum novarum against the rest of Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, Mater et Magistra, Pacem in terris, Gaudium et spes, Populorum progressio, Laborem exercens, Sollicitudo rei socialis, the other half of Centesimus annus, Caritas in veritate, and so on? (To say nothing of the social magisterium beginning with the apostles and the fathers down to Leo XIII!) Was it worth deciding that Dignitatis humanae, Unitatis redintegratio, and Nostra aetate blotted out the Church’s entire thought on its relationship with the state and other faiths?

Moreover, can we say that it was worth it as Catholics are actively engaged in recovering this tradition? As we say, the real problem is that Dreher does not understand this moment in American Christianity. He suggests that the vision of Evangelicals and Catholics Together is dead, right before making basically the argument advanced by that project. Jake Meador, as we have mentioned before, recognizes that both Catholics and protestants are recovering substantial aspects of their respective traditions that make it less and less possible to engage in the sort of ecumenism represented by Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Consider, for example, the ongoing recovery of the Church’s anti-liberal tradition. There is an increasing realization—at least on the Catholic side of the line—that the sense that the Church threw open the doors to liberalism at Vatican II is not quite correct. To be sure, Dignitatis humanae and Gaudium et spes show more openness to liberalism than, say, Syllabus or Leo XIII’s Libertas praestantissimum. But one must be careful not to read more into the documents than is actually there. At The Public Discourse, for example, Professor Joseph Trabbic has a lengthy essay arguing basically that. He demonstrates convincingly that the Church’s normative political position—even today—is that of a Catholic confessional state. We could go on, though we won’t, about the revival of integralism going on today.

The point is this: Catholics and protestants are recovering their traditions. The Church’s tradition is integralist and anti-liberal. Protestants are working on their own traditions, and they are finding their own reasons to be suspicious of the ecumenism Dreher advances. One might say that the only interesting work being done by Christians on the right—which is very nearly the same thing as saying the only interesting work being done by Christians—is being done in this area. This work makes the sort of cooperation that Dreher urges less and less possible. An integralist Catholic is not going to see the political goals advanced by Dreher as all that worthwhile, except as potentially an intermediate step toward a Catholic confessional state, and he is certainly not going to want to make the compromises—even rhetorical—necessary to work with evangelicals toward such a goal. Likewise, the protestants engaged in their own ressourcement are not going to be excited about coalitions with integralist Catholics.

Today, Incudi Reddere posted another piece from Triumph by Brent Bozell. It concludes, in part:

The something else we must do, then, is to be Christians. The first words of Genesis establish the precedence of being over doing: fiat lux. The goal of the Christian tribe, like that of the city which Christians could once hope to build, is to establish temporal conditions hospitable to the Gospel life. But first the tribe must be. It is a matter of consciousness. Am I an American? a Spaniard? an Englishman? Or am I a Christian? It is also a matter of presence. Here and on every other continent Christians must be visible, not in any city disguise, but openly in their apostolic role as teachers sent to the ends of the earth.

We submit that part, a large part, of being a Christian is being an orthodox Christian—that is, a Catholic. We would not deny, however, that protestants are acting in good faith when they say that being an orthodox Christian means being orthodox by the lights of their sect. However, the point is this: there is an emerging sense Bozell is right and the first step toward a political solution is being an orthodox Christian. As this sense emerges, the idea, advanced by Dreher and Carter, that Christians should gloss over significant differences in theology, ecclesiology, metaphysics, and ethics so that they can fight one more losing battle against secular liberalism becomes less and less tenable.

“What is the reality of the situation?”

In the 1970s, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt produced some decks of cards with various questions or statements printed on them. Eno and Schmidt came up with Oblique Strategies, as they called the cards, as suggestions of ways to approach a problem that were not the straight-on approach. They had found, it seems, working separately on their own projects, that they would reach some impasse. The questions or statements were intended to get themselves (at first) out of the jams they found themselves in. The cards, originally released in 1975, were revised in a couple of subsequent editions. The cards and the sayings on them have been a sort of mid level cultural artifact since then, appearing in Richard Linklater’s Slacker. (Indeed, in Slacker, a putative card is “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy,” which isn’t a card in the original sets. The phrase, however, is striking and found its way to R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”) One of the sayings from the first edition (and kept all the way to the third edition) is “What is the reality of the situation?”

This is a question integralist Catholics need to ask themselves right now. We should be clear at the outset that we are aware, though perhaps we should be more aware, that “integralist Catholic” is—or ought to be—a redundancy. Integralism is simply the perennial teaching of the Church, finding its finest expression in Leo XIII’s encyclicals, regarding the relationship of the Church to the state. It is assumed that the Church backed away from this teaching in the Second Vatican Council, especially Dignitatis humanae. However, this assumption is perhaps harder to justify than it might first appear. We will, therefore, use the expressions integralism and integralist simply as convenient shorthand, not least since they are at the moment used in discussions outside Semiduplex. (We were surprised to learn that such things happen, too, dear reader.) They’re not perfect, but they’ll do until perfect expressions are found.

Anyway: the reason why integralists need to ask themselves the question “What is the reality of the situation?” is because, at this moment, integralist Catholics have a little visibility and a little momentum. Much of this comes from a broader suspicion of liberalism that seems more and more justified every day. Consider for example the critique of liberalism in Scott Hahn’s new book, The First Society. Hahn graciously permitted the excerpt to run at The Josias, and you should read it as soon as you can. We haven’t read The First Society, but if the excerpt is any indication it’s probably well worth our attention. We can debate what Hahn says, but what we cannot debate is Hahn’s prominence as a Catholic apologist and writer. Suspicion of the liberal order—especially the compromises the liberal order demands (and demands and demands) of Christians—is in the air. Moreover, integralists have been recovering their own tradition. It only seems like these ideas emerged overnight. In addition to the magisterium and the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and others, there were those thinking about these ideas when liberalism’s reign seemed unquestionable. Consider, for example, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was as disturbed by the assault on the reign of Christ the King as he was by anything else. One consideration in the reality of the situation is the (increasingly dicey) relationship between integralists and liberals and the relative lack of integralist institutions.

Turning to the first point: liberals, even Catholic liberals of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together variety, cannot provide shelter for integralists in liberal institutions. The fundamental claims of liberalism are not compatible with the claims integralist Catholics make. Everyone knows this. Integralists relate to the United States and the American project in a radically different way from liberals, even liberals on the right. Let us drill down on this example for a moment. It is often argued that the American order before recent deformations—let us say, before 1965 or so, though even that date may be too late—provided an opportunity for the Faith to flourish in an environment of ordered liberty. Why, runs the implicit question, do the integralists have a problem? Even acknowledging that there have been moments when American liberalism has benefitted the Church, as Leo XIII did in Longinqua oceani, we must affirm, as Leo XIII also did in the same letter, that the American order is not the ideal order of Church and state. It is that simple. This point, by no means the most controversial point of integralist thought, though perhaps among the most fundamental, means that integralists cannot write prose poems to the “wisdom of the Framers” and the alleged natural-law foundations of the federal Constitution.

Given that liberals on the right—even liberal Catholics–feel constrained to write exactly those prose poems, this alone would result in significant opposition between integralists and liberals. Of course, we know that the opposition is broader than that. The example, however, is an important one. Integralists have a hard time trading even in the hoary cliches that pass with hardly any notice among liberals. Think about that for a moment: if we take Leo in Longinqua seriously, we are free to acknowledge the gains for the Church under the American regime, but we are by no means free to say—against Immortale Dei or Diuturnum or Libertas—that the American regime is ideal. Given the concepts that have been bundled into the idea of the American regime by conservatives, here we are thinking of liberal democracy, free speech, free market ideology, and the rest of it, denying that the American regime is ideal is a significant act. And one liable to leave integralist Catholics in the position either of silence on these issues or radical opposition to liberals.

The bottom line is this: Jake Meador, a while back, talked about a parting of the ways of Catholics and some protestants as both Catholics and protestants delved deeper into their respective traditions and found greater points of incompatibility. The same thing is happening even among Catholics. As integralist Catholics recover the Church’s perennial teaching on its relationship to the state and to non-Catholics, it will be difficult for integralists to maintain the same close relations with liberal Catholics who, by and large, react to integralist Catholicism with anything ranging from polite bemusement to horror. Now, it is impossible for Catholics to part ways from Catholics in the same manner that Catholics are parting ways from protestants. We are, ultimately, bound together in communion with Peter in the Mystical Body of Christ. Nevertheless, it is possible to acknowledge that certain differences make certain forms of cooperation impossible. Liberal institutions simply cannot support—whether out of hostility or not—integralists for any length of time. It is clear, therefore, that integralist Catholics have to begin the laborious work of building their own institutions. This is our second point.

Some institutions already exist—The Josias comes to mind first, followed by a circle of blogs more or less in The Josias‘s orbit, including Semiduplex—but there is room for development. Naturally, one thinks of magazines of theory, criticism, and opinion, broadly along the lines of existing magazines. One may also think of magazines aimed at more popular audiences. Certainly this would solve problems that have crept up in recent weeks and months in existing—liberal—publications. There would be no problem, for example, articulating an authentically Catholic position about the duties of the state toward the baptized, even those baptized in exigent circumstances, at an integralist magazine. Nor would there be problems articulating potential aspects of the penal law in a Catholic state. But to confine one’s thought toward that sort of institution may be a strategic blunder. For one thing: there’s more to life than debates over politics or the effects of baptism in a confessional state, hard as that may be to believe.

Adrian Vermeule has talked, notably, about a strategy of replacement; that is, Catholics take positions in elite institutions and gradually populate those institutions. One can discuss the merits of the strategy another time. We will take it for granted for now. Could not a similar strategy of replacement be appropriate in cultural or artistic institutions? Indeed, might not such a strategy be necessary? And if those institutions are too hardened toward population—infiltration, they would call it—by Catholics, ought not Catholics attempt to create rival institutions? This is an elaborate way of saying that, if the strategy is replacement, then the strategy is replacement across the board. An integralist website for movie reviews or music reviews or book reviews is a component, if not perhaps an essential component, of an integralist strategy. Now, there is, we admit, some difficulty here: what is an integralist movie review? Surely it is not a movie review that assesses the aesthetic merits of a movie on how well the movie represents the correct ordering of state to Church. That would be ridiculous.

This is a point worth pondering. The answer is obviously that it would be a movie review from a broadly Catholic perspective, unafraid of considering modern aesthetic developments, but also unafraid of making moral judgments or comparative judgments. Indeed, one might argue (it has been argued in the past, so we are hardly breaking new ground) that aesthetic judgments require above all a recognition of truth. We will let the aesthetes puzzle it out in greater detail, however. We raise the point simply to highlight the danger of considering integralism a particular tendency requiring a particular set of postures to the exclusion of everything else. (This is a danger we find ourselves susceptible to.) As we have said, one of the central claims of integralism is that it is simply Catholicism. That is, it is what the popes have taught and the faithful have believed, according to their station and education. When it is expressed in the context of politics, it takes the form of integralism. But Catholicism is expressed or informs one’s expression in other contexts, and it is necessary to consider these other contexts, too.

And if you don’t accept the strategy of replacement? Well, it is clear, as we cannot help repeating, that existing liberal institutions are hostile to integralist Catholics. An integralist, regardless of his or her artistic views, is going to have a hard time obtaining and maintaining access to the most notable institutions. There are basically two choices: first, it is possible to decide that integralism is a view that must be kept secret and gain access to liberal institutions as an apparent liberal. Of course, since integralism is merely the political expression of traditional Catholicism, this will require a commitment to keep other things secret. Second, it is possible to decide that the best people to talk about these things with are like-minded people and the best places to talk about them are friendly places.

***

Lately, we have been thinking a lot about L. Brent Bozell’s brilliant, doomed Triumph magazine. At a time when the Church’s bargain with liberalism seems like more and more of a raw deal—and at a time when integralist institutions are increasingly necessary—the story of Triumph is one that ought to be told. Mark Popowski, a professor at Collin College in Texas, published, not too long ago, The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Catholic Magazine, 1966–1976. We suspect this is a revision of his 2008 doctoral dissertation. It is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more about Triumph. There are other resources. A few years ago, Daniel Kelly published a biography of Bozell, and one can get The Best of Triumph and Bozell’s own autobiography. There is also an interesting essay on the topic from John Médaille at Ethika Politika from several years ago.

Many of you probably know the story. Bozell had been with Buckley and others in the early days of National Review. Bozell, a convert to the Church unhappy with the line Buckley and others took (Mater Si, Magistra No!), started Triumph in 1966 with some fanfare to present a staunchly Catholic viewpoint—taking aim at the right and the left alike. This was, however, basically the worst possible moment in history to undertake such a task. (Of course, Bozell might answer that it was, therefore, the most crucial moment in history to undertake the task.) On one hand, the Second Vatican Council initiated a process that saw the Church’s traditional anti-liberal doctrine diminished (if not eliminated) almost overnight, along with other changes, not the least of which was the complete revision of the liturgy between 1964 and 1970. On the other hand, the conservative movement was well on its way to solidifying its free-market ideology by 1966. Bozell found himself, therefore, between a rock and a hard place. Over the next ten years, however, Triumph produced a considerable amount of intelligent, incisive commentary from a Catholic perspective. Unfortunately, the publication diminished over time, ending up as little more than a newsletter before it wound up operations in 1976.

Triumph was not narrowly political, though certainly there was much to discuss politically between 1966 and 1976. But in reading The Best of Triumph, one finds the expression generally of a certain outlook. The sort of publication that would provide the best home for Catholics is a publication that, like Triumph, has a certain outlook that, among other things, expresses itself politically in integralism. There are other lessons to learn from Triumph—and other publications—and Catholics with the skills and motivation to learn those lessons will, we suspect, be capable of building the institutions that are so clearly required.