Civilization

Cardinal Zigliara on “liberty of conscience”

At The Josias, Timothy Wilson’s translation of excerpts from Cardinal Zigliara’s Summa philosophica is being rolled out. Hopefully, you’ve bookmarked The Josias to keep up with this fascinating series. Today, an especially important excerpt on the liberty of conscience. A brief, edited selection:

Liberty of conscience, considered in itself, is entirely impious. And indeed, man, by a most strict duty of nature, is held to think rightly of God, and of those things which look to religion, both speculative and practical (33, II). But voluntarily to make resistance to a most strict duty is license, not liberty; and if the discussion, as in our argument, is concerned with the voluntary transgression of a duty toward God, the aforementioned license is an impiety. Since, therefore, through liberty of conscience, a right is given to man of thinking of God as it more pleases him, this liberty, this right is a true impiety.

[…]

It is founded in political atheism alone. And indeed, as has been said in the preceding number, liberty of conscience is a right, conceded to individuals, of thinking of God as they should please, or of submitting those things which are of God and religion, and the duties following from these, to the definition and arbitration of individual conscience, which thus is constituted as the criterion of religion.

(Emphases in original.) Strong medicine, especially today, when we hear so much about liberty of conscience and the other foundational doctrines of the modern liberal state.

I decided to improve my social station

Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., has a very interesting piece about his Studentenverbindung, KAV Sanctottensis. Our attention was drawn to the piece because he cites our comment, “And he carries the reminders,” which touched briefly on German academic dueling. For the reasons set forth in that piece, Catholic Studentenverbindungen rejected academic dueling, and got sideways with other German associations, which, in the years of Kulturkampf, were not so bothered by Catholic teaching on bodily harm. But the piece is more broadly interesting than that.

At almost every four-year college in the United States, Greek-letter social fraternities and sororities are major institutions. (We exclude from this discussion Greek-letter honorary and professional fraternities, such as Phi Beta Kappa or Phi Delta Phi.) In fact, at most schools, fraternities and sororities are practically school-sanctioned entities, with the schools owning the houses, collecting dues and other bills, and providing physical-plant maintenance. Yet, despite this symbiotic relationship between colleges and Greek-letter fraternities, fraternities are almost always controversial. We will not review the controversies associated with fraternities in great detail; suffice it to say that critics allege all manner of licentious, sinful conduct against fraternities.

As an aside, we wonder whether Catholics are enjoined from joining Greek-letter social fraternities. The masonic origins of some of these societies is beyond dispute, though the extent to which freemasonry serves as the basis for their rituals and doctrine is, of course, up for debate. Thus, to that extent, one wonders if canon 1374, as clarified by the 1983 Declaration on Masonic Associations of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, applies. Moreover, one notes that these societies often involve elaborate, dreadful oaths of secrecy, which protect certain rituals and doctrine. One notes that secret societies have long been held in suspicion, to say the least, by the Church when one reviews Leo XII’s Quo graviora (which quotes Clement XII’s In eminenti and Benedict XIV’s Providas Romanorum at great length), to say nothing of Leo XIII’s Humanum genus. Thus, we wonder whether these Greek-letter fraternities are wholly consistent with the Church’s teaching about such organizations. However, that inquiry is best left to the moral theologians.

At any rate, Pater Waldstein’s post presents his Studentenverbindung in quite an appealing light:

The Sanctottensis organizes many different sorts of events throughout the year— some only for members, others where guests too are welcome. All of them are meant to promote the four principles of the CV: religio, patria, scientia, and amicitia. There are processions and Masses, academic lectures, political discussions, poetry readings, croquet matches, and especially there are the elaborate ceremonies of the Kneipe and the Commers. 

The Sanctottensis, being based in Heiligenkreuz, consists mainly of theology students, and is thus particularly suited to bringing solid theological thought into the wider ÖCV. Membership in a Studentenverbindung is life-long, and so the ÖCV is a an organization with something of the character of the Knights of Columbus in U.S.A. (not to mention certain fraternal organizations of active during the Enlightenment…), engaging in charitable and political action.

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlink omitted.) Given this background, it seems to us that Catholic students in the United States would do well to consider imitating the Catholic Studentenverbindungen.

Too often, Catholics are left to their own devices at universities and colleges, especially if the schools are not Catholic (even nominally). Certainly, the Newman Center or the university parish might provide some fellowship and the opportunity to deepen one’s faith. But not every college has a Newman Center or a university parish, and those that do may not have especially interesting or edifying programming. And, more than that, in our experience, the Newman Center does not always offer the sort of hearty fellowship that young men and young women enjoy. The Catholic Studentenverbindung as Pater Waldstein describes it, however, appears to offer not only spiritually edifying activities but also hearty fellowship. (But not so hearty that a Cistercian monk would feel uncomfortable!)

A few observations on Christ the King

Gabriel Sanchez has, at Opus Publicum, a very good piece, explaining the differences between the Feast of Christ the King as Pius XI originally intended it and as it exists today. In short, the collect was rewritten substantially, the hymns were hacked apart, and the selections from Quas primas at Matins were replaced with a reading from Origen of Alexandria on the Adveniat regnum tuum from the Pater Noster. The rewrite goes beyond that, in fact: the readings for the first nocturn of matins in the 1960 Breviary are taken from the first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, verses 3–23. This has been replaced in the Liturgia Horarum with a composite selection from Revelation. And, of course, the feast was moved from the last Sunday of October to the last Sunday in Tempus Per Annum (i.e., the end of the Church’s year). The upshot of all these changes is to emphasize strongly the eschatological aspect of Christ’s kingship. In other words, the Feast of Christ the King serves to remind us today that at the end of time, Christ will reign as king. Just what Pius XI intended when he gave us Quas primas, no?

No. In Quas primas, Pius answered the suggestion that Christ’s kingdom was purely spiritual (and eschatological):

It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia.

(Emphasis added.) In other words, Christ’s kingship extends to the civil realm, even to this moment in this place. And the sooner we recognize that, the happier we will be:

When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. “You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.” If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.

(Emphasis supplied and footnote omitted.) This is, of course, hugely interesting and hugely significant. Pius argues that if we accept Christ as our king here and now, the entire political order changes fundamentally. Rulers rule in Christ’s name, and subjects obey not flawed, partisan men, but Christ the King himself. This is what they might call in another context a “game-changer.” Given the exhausted, exhausting political scene in the United States (and many other countries, frankly) today, can anyone say that the blessings that flow from the proper ordering of the state would be unwelcome? Can anyone say that they prefer partisan hacks pursuing narrow, political objectives, while disgruntled subjects protest almost constantly? Of course not.

But it goes beyond that. Pius XI makes it clear that proclaiming Christ the King will be good medicine against what he calls anti-clericalism—a definite problem in the 1920s and 1930s—and what today could be called the soft, liberal indifferentism so popular in the educated West these days:

 If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God’s religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

(Emphasis supplied.) Good medicine, indeed.

Cardinal Zigliara on political atheism

The Josias has made available a selection from Tommaso Maria Cardinal Zigliara’s Summa philosophica, dealing with political atheism. Timothy Wilson, a fine Latinist with a deep interest in the (now largely forgotten) scholastic and manualist tradition, translated the selection for publication. Cardinal Zigliara, a Dominican, was a noted Thomist of the late nineteenth century. A close collaborator of Leo XIII, Cardinal Zigliara was a contributor to Leo’s encyclicals Aeterni Patris, which restored the Common Doctor to his place of preeminence among the theologians, and Rerum novarum. This is the first of five selections, according to The Josias, and we will be following the series with great interest.

By the way, if you have not been following The Josias, you have been missing out. In addition to regular essays from the perspective of the Church’s traditional social teaching, the site makes available many important documents that have long been unavailable for linguistic reasons. For example, earlier this year, The Josias published a translation of Pius IX’s Maxima quidem, an allocution that ultimately served as the basis for several propositions condemned in his wonderful Syllabus Errorum. It is well worth checking from time to time.

“Il diritto della famiglia ad uno spazio vitale”

We have mentioned before that Pius XII’s 1941 radio address, La solennità della Pentecoste, is the missing link in the chain of the Church’s social teaching. (For now. We suspect that Benedict’s great Caritas in veritate, falling between John Paul’s Centesimus annus, so favored by those who contend, loudly if not convincingly, that John Paul was an American-style capitalist, and Francis’s Laudato si’, is going to be a missing link, too. Only time will tell.) Notwithstanding its incipit, La solennità is actually a speech marking the fiftieth anniversary of Rerum novarum. One point that the great Pius made was this:

Il nostro pianeta con tanti estesi oceani e mari e laghi, con monti e piani coperti di neve e di ghiacci eterni, con grandi deserti e terre inospite e sterili, non è pur scarso di regioni e luoghi vitali abbandonati al capriccio vegetativo della natura e ben confacentesi alla coltura della mano dell’uomo, ai suoi bisogni e alle sue operazioni civili; e più di una volta è inevitabile che alcune famiglie, di qua o di là emigrando, si cerchino altrove una nuova patria. Allora, secondo l’insegnamento della Rerum novarum, va rispettato il diritto della famiglia ad uno spazio vitale. Dove questo accadrà, l’emigrazione raggiungerà il suo scopo naturale, che spesso convalida l’esperienza, vogliamo dire la distribuzione più favorevole degli uomini sulla superficie terrestre, acconcia a colonie di agricoltori; superficie che Dio creò e preparò per uso di tutti. Se le due parti, quella che concede di lasciare il luogo natio e quella che ammette i nuovi venuti, rimarranno lealmente sollecite di eliminare quanto potrebbe essere d’impedimento al nascere e allo svolgersi di una verace fiducia tra il paese di emigrazione e il paese d’immigrazione, tutti i partecipanti a tale tramutamento di luoghi e di persone ne avranno vantaggio: le famiglie riceveranno un terreno che sarà per loro terra patria nel vero senso della parola; le terre di densi abitanti resteranno alleggerite e i loro popoli si creeranno nuovi amici in territori stranieri; e gli Stati che accolgono gli emigrati guadagneranno cittadini operosi. Così le nazioni che danno e gli Stati che ricevono, in pari gara, contribuiranno all’incremento del benessere umano e al progresso dell’umana cultura.

(Hyperlink omitted and emphasis supplied.)

Given recent events, we wonder whether it is time to expand on Pius’s concept of the right of the family to living space.

As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped

Fr. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., at his always-excellent blog, Sancrucensis, has a wonderful post today, “‘Reasoning Is Worse than Scolding.” In short, he uses Dickens’s David Copperfield to come to this conclusion,

As Fr Hunwicke recently remarked, “Anti-intellectualism is a stance people very often adopt when they propose to do something irrational,” and it is even more the stance that people adopt one when they do not want to have the unpleasantness of being rationally strict with others. But in the long run such a stance always leads to misery. Happiness can only come from conforming human life to right reason, and a cowardly and infantile refusal of the demands of reason leads to misery in this life, and eternal punishment in the next.

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlink omitted.) Read the whole thing there. It’s enough, by the way, to convince us that we have been perhaps unjust to David Copperfield, preferring A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House.

We perhaps state the obvious when we say say that one cannot hope to live a virtuous life without constant application of reason—we note that Aristotle says as much. Moral excellence, Aristotle tells us, “is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.” (Ethic. II.6, 1106b36–1107a2 [emphasis supplied], Barnes ed. p. 1748.) But everyone knows this instinctively. (Cf., e.g., ST Ia IIae q.91 a.2 co. & ad 2–3.) It makes sense, intuitively, that you can’t know how to be good without reason, since being good involves regular application of reason. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff. But the upshot is this: Fr. Waldstein is right when he identifies an intrinsic connection between reason and happiness.

Or he would have been right for pretty much the entire history of the West. Whether he is right today seems to be a different question. Certainly, there are any number of movements at large today that hold that happiness is contingent upon fundamentally irrational things. (We will omit, for our sensibilities as much as yours, naming them.) In other words, people insist that they will be happy only if they do something irrational. And the thing is, few people seem to object on this basis; they may object on other bases, but they do not insist that the thing the people want is irrational.

We have written a little bit about the Church’s process of losing things—for example, the Church seems to have lost a sense that the Divine Office ought to be part of her public worship—and it seems to us that society is on the verge of losing the ability to think in terms of reason and unreason. That is, we don’t criticize various ideas and proposals as being irrational. We criticize them as immoral or impractical or expensive or unbiblical or any of a whole host of things. But none of those criticisms is quite the same thing as the criticism that something is irrational.

At any rate, check out Fr. Waldstein’s post.