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The intersection of the timeless moment

At Dissent, Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, a staff writer at The New Republic, has a piece titled “Why the Left Needs Religion.” The piece itself takes (more or less) a historical look at Christian influences on historically leftist trends, and, thus, comes to a conclusion firmly rooted in history. It seems to us that this is exactly the wrong way to look at it. The Christian critique of capitalism and liberalism—the Christian emphasis on the common good and the human aspects of the market is perhaps a better, more accurate way of phrasing the issue—is a subject of no small interest to us. Accordingly, while we were interested to see Bruenig’s comment (she has become something of a voice for a leftist or left-friendly Christianity in recent years), we were disappointed to see the critique remain so solidly earthbound. The force of the Christian critique of liberalism and capitalism does not depend on reference to specific problems. (Disordered individualism and the all-consuming, convenience-driven drive for profits do not require specific problems, either, to show themselves. The basic reason, of course, is that they are symptoms of a problem as old as Eden.) However, Christianity’s critique, when applied to specific problems, as the Holy Father did brilliantly in Laudato si’, is always timely.

The lost race of men

Gregory DiPippo, recently named editor of New Liturgical Movement, has a very interesting piece about the Neo-Gallican preface for Advent. The preface itself is quite lovely, as we’ll see in a second, but DiPippo gives us a neat summary of the history of the Neo-Gallican liturgical books. In short, the Church in France, especially the Archdiocese of Paris, kept on doing its own thing despite St. Pius V’s Tridentine reforms. The French had various reasons for their innovations, and, as all liturgical innovators do sooner or later, they made some archaizing arguments. But the amazing thing is that this state of affairs continued for hundreds of years after Quod a nobis and Quo primum. Indeed, the preface DiPippo quotes was written for the Parisian Missal of 1738. That is to say that, almost 170 years after Quo primum was issued, Ventimille, the archbishop of Paris, promulgated a new missal with new prefaces.

The preface itself is lovely (this translation was provided by DiPippo, though there are a couple other translations floating around out there):

Vere dignum … Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Quem pérdito hóminum géneri Salvatórem miséricors et fidélis promisisti: cuius véritas instrúeret inscios, sánctitas justificáret impios, virtus adiuváret infirmos. Dum ergo prope est ut veniat quem missúrus es, et dies affulget liberatiónis nostrae, in hac promissiónum tuárum fide, piis gaudiis exsultámus. Et ídeo etc.

Truly…through Christ, Our Lord. Whom in Thy mercy and fidelity Thou didst promise as Savior to the lost race of men, that His truth might instruct the ignorant, His holiness justify the wicked, and His power help the weak. Therefore, since that the time is nigh that He Whom Thou art to send should come, and the day of our liberation should dawn, with this faith in Thy promises, we rejoice with holy exultation. And therefore etc.

We particularly like the reference to the perditum hominum genus—the lost race of men—which points up the gravity of the situation immediately before the Nativity. (This is perhaps something we lose sight of in Advent occasionally.) The three parallel clauses pointing to three different attributes of Christ—whose truth might instruct the ignorant, whose sanctity might justify the unholy, whose strength might help the weak (our translation)—tell us how God is going to save the lost race of men. It’s nothing particularly elaborate or complicated, but it a nice, elegant expression of a fundamental truth: without the Incarnation, mankind would be doomed.

“Þu wysdom þat crepedest out”

A Clerk of Oxford has a fine piece about Middle English renderings of the great O Antiphons, which are said beginning tomorrow, December 17, in both forms of the Roman Rite. We won’t spoil the fun by quoting them. (Except, of course, for the little bit we spoiled with the title.)

One of our (several) idées fixes is that the Church lost something valuable—and probably irreplaceable—when it lost the regular, public celebration of the Divine Office. Part of that loss is the fact that the trajectory of the great seasons of Advent and Lent is shortened and hastened tremendously. We hop along, from one Sunday to another, moving toward Christmas and Easter in a few short weeks. To put it another way, a good deal of the expectation and penitential character of Advent is found in the Office. And the O Antiphons are an example of that expectation, “ancient songs of longing and desire,” as the Clerk puts it.

Neoplatonism and the rose/pink question

Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., takes on the rose/pink distinction that pops up in the Catholic blogosphere, especially the priestly blogosphere, oh, about twice a year. Some bloggers insist that the rose vestments worn on Gaudete Sunday and Laetare Sunday are not pink. But Pater Waldstein ventures through etymology— Antonio Telesio’s short treatise De coloribus, in fact—and historical examples to counter this notion that rose is not now and never has been pink. That’s simply not the case. And he comes to the point: some folks may prefer rose because pink has, well, effeminate connotations that rose doesn’t have. Don’t ask us why, though. If we’re judging things by American notions of masculinity, neither rose nor pink are especially masculine.

We write simply to note a (James) Burkean connection here. Pater Waldstein says this,

Indeed, as soon as one begins to think about the naming of colors, one’s native Platonism begins to give way, and one begins to suspect that there is something to the structuralist argument for the division of reality by naming as being a bit arbitrary. One doesn’t have to swallow de Saussure’s theories whole to see that the imposition of color names involves a certain amount of arbitrary choice. To Homer, after all, the sea was the color of wine.

However, Pater Waldstein strikes an apparent blow for “one’s native Platonism.” As we noted above, he cites the Renaissance poet Antonio Telesio’s De coloribus in support of the argument that rose is simply the mixture of red and white, just like pink. One may note, furthermore, that Telesio’s De coloribus cites, on the cover page no less, Marsilio Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, which, of course, includes a theory of colors. Now, Ficino was a Florentine priest and a driving force behind the resurgence of Neoplatonism during the Renaissance. Ficino prepared, in addition to his enormous Platonic Theology and commentaries on Platonic dialogues, an interesting translation and commentary (in elegant Latin) on Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology and Divine Names. (The I Tatti Renaissance Library, an imprint of Harvard University Press, has, one suspects out of a spirit of altruism that ignores one’s bottom line, brought out a bunch of Ficino works, in handsome bilingual editions. They’re available on Amazon.) Thus, while the shock of the rose/pink debate may shake one’s Platonism, Pater Waldstein’s road back passes through some very heavy hitters, so to speak, in Neoplatonic circles.

Just one of those connections.

He won the war after losing every battle

Yesterday, we published Ottaviani, Döpfner, and Article 33 § 1 of the Ordo Concilii, a note on the selective quotation of the Second Vatican Council’s rules of procedure by progressives during the debate over the schema De Fontibus Revelationis. In short, Cardinal Döpfner, archbishop of Munich, used a selective quotation of one of the rules governing debate to argue that no presumption existed in favor of the official schemata. What happened next is that the debate over De Fontibus Revelationis became so acrimonious that the schema was withdrawn and a commission formed to draft a new schema, which eventually became Dei Verbum. Today, Thomas L. McDonald has a piece at the National Catholic Register celebrating fifty years of Dei Verbum, including Fr. Joseph Ratzinger’s role in the withdrawal of De Fontibus Revelationis. McDonald sees the disastrous debate over De Fontibus Revelationis as a shining moment in the history of the Council, apparently. McDonald notes,

When you look at the history of the Second Vatican Council, the debate about divine revelation pops out as the central conflict of the entire process. It spanned all four years of the Council, and the arguments about its content and meaning threw the divisions between the Curial conservatives and the central European progressives into stark relief.

The Curia submitted a schema (working document) called “On the Sources of Revelation.” It dealt with the central issue of revelation and was greeted with intense disapproval from many of the bishops and their periti (advisers). One 35-year-old periti named Father Joseph Ratzinger was brought into the debate by Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, and he disapproved of the schema.

[…]

Father Ratzinger would later write, “The text was written in a spirit of condemnation and negation which, in contrast with the great positive initiative of the liturgy schema, had a frigid and even offensive tone to many of the Fathers.” Its approach to revelation merely repeated the standard theological manuals many bishops had used in seminary, and the former professors of some of these Council Fathers had written it! This very problem was what the Council had been called to correct, and here they were being asked to rubber-stamp the dry old formulas of the past 50 years.

This vocal rejection of the prepared text led to one of the most dramatic moments of the first session of the Council. In order to set aside the schema on revelation, its opponents needed two-thirds of the vote. The result was 1,368 voting to withdraw the text and 813 voting to keep it: 100 short of the two-thirds needed. It was clear, however, that the will of the Council Fathers was to reject the schema and begin again. Thus, Pope John XXIII set it aside on the following day, creating a commission composed of progressives and conservatives and led by Cardinals Alfredo Ottovani and Augustin Bea. It was a decisive moment in the Council, and the document that emerged from this conflict would come to be considered one of the most important of the entire Council.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is, of course, the progressive narrative. Beginning with the description of the pitched battle between reactionaries in the Curia and the progressive European bishops. Cardinal Ottaviani rammed through neo-Scholastic schemata through his Commissio de Doctrina Fidei et Morum. Only when everything was laid out at the Council was it clear how unsatisfactory Ottaviani’s schemata were, and eventually the Council produced something really, really good.

But McDonald is not quite correct on the particulars. The vote was not exactly “to set aside the schema on revelation,” as he suggests. It was more confusing than that. And these events show clearly that the progressives derailed discussion on De Fontibus Revelationis in order to achieve their broader goals. Dei Verbum might be, as McDonald suggests, a crowning achievement of the Council, but it is only so because the progressives wrecked the Council’s procedures because they did not like De Fontibus Revelationis.

On November 20, 1962, after the disastrous debate in general terms, Archbishop Pericle Felici, the general secretary of the Council, made a stunning announcement,

Post exhaustam disceptationem in universum, circa schema de fontibus revelationis, progrediendum esset ad disceptationem de singulis schematis capitibus. Sed, quia adsunt Patres qui id existimant opportunum non esse, consilio praesidentiae visum est omnium Patrum conciliarium suffragium exquirere. Proinde Patrum conciliarium suffragationi subiicitur dubium quod sequitur: «An disceptatio de schemate constitutionis dogmaticae de fontibus revelationis interrumpenda sit». Qui stat pro interruptione signet in schedula Placet. Qui, e contra, vult continuationem, signet Non placet.

Repeto dubium quod est maximi ponderis. Audiant bene omnes. Dubium hoc est: «An disceptatio de schemate constitutionis dogmaticae de fontibus revelationis interrumpenda sit». Qui stat pro interruptione signet in schedula Placet, qui, e contra, vult continuationem, signet Non placet.

(Acta Synodalia I.3.220.) (Emphasis supplied.) The English version read by Archbishop John Krol, a Council sub-secretary for English speakers, shortly after Felici’s statement was as follows:

Having completed the discussion in general on the schema of the fonts of Revelation, it is in order to proceed to the discussion of the individual chapters of the schema. However, since some of the Fathers consider it inopportune to proceed with the discussion of the present schema, the Council of Presidency has decided to seek an expression of the desire of the Council Fathers in this matter. Wherefore, the following question is being submitted to your vote. The question is: “Should the discussion on the schema, on the dogmatic Constitution de fontibus revelationis be discontinued, terminated?” Those favoring discontinuance, should so signify by marking their ballot in the Placet square. Those opposed to the discontinuance, should so indicate by marking the ballot in the Non placet square.

I repeat. The question is: “Should the discussion of the present schema be discontinued?” Those favoring discontinuance, mark their ballots in the Placet square. Those opposed to the discontinuance, mark their ballots in the Non placet square.

(Acta Synodalia I.3.221–22.) (Emphasis supplied.) Cardinal Döpfner got his way! The Council would hold some kind of vote to express its desire whether or not to continue discussing De Fontibus Revelationis. Not whether to set aside De Fontibus Revelationis. And it was not clear that the Council’s vote would be binding in any way. But Ottaviani’s argument—that the Council was supposed to debate the official schema—was plainly rejected by this action.

In a particularly confusing (or shrewd, we suppose) move, the question was phrased in terms of discontinuation, so, in order to vote to continue discussing De Fontibus Revelationis, a Council father had to vote Non placet. To support the official schema, a Council father had to vote “nay.” Confusing enough. But under article 39 § 1, a two-thirds majority was required. So, if a third of the Council fathers voted Non placet—i.e., to continue discussion on De Fontibus Revelationis—the discussion would continue. In other words, while the formulation of the question favored discontinuation, the rules of the Council permitted a minority of Council fathers to force continuation of the debate. And that’s just what happened. But Pope John personally settled the question, establishing an ad hoc commission to rewrite De Fontibus Revelationis. (Acta Synodalia I.3.259.)

Far from being, as McDonald would have it, a moment when the Council fathers rejected musty neo-Scholasticism in favor of openness or whatever, the battle over De Fontibus Revelationis shows that a committed group of progressives can derail any debate that doesn’t suit them. Henri de Lubac’s Vatican Council Notebooks show that the German bishops were opposed to the deeply Catholic schemata prepared under Ottaviani’s leadership. Karl Rahner, assisted by others, including Joseph Ratzinger, had prepared new drafts upon arriving in Rome. Döpfner’s suggestion of an up-or-down vote on schemata as a whole—unprecedented and based upon a selective quotation of the Ordo Concilii—was taken up by the Council leadership. And when it was put to the Council, the question was phrased in a confusing manner that favored termination of the debate: Council fathers had to vote Non placet continue discussion of De Fontibus Revelationis. Under the Ordo Concilii, two-thirds of the Council fathers had to vote to terminate the debate, and when they failed to achieve the necessary majority, the Pope personally intervened to give them what they wanted.

Maybe it is as McDonald suggests: Dei Verbum returned to an earlier, purer understanding of divine revelation and scripture. And maybe it is true that the neo-Scholastic tendency was a reactionary response to the problems presented by Modernist exegesis. (Though it was a poor response, if so, since the history of the Church shows that the Modernists were not routed in the wake of Vatican I and Pascendi; if anything, they learned how to go along to get along until they could seize power.) But all of that is sort of beside the point: the battle over De Fontibus Revelationis was not an instance where the Council realized how rigid Cardinal Ottaviani and his gang of fanatics were; it is an instance where the progressives complained and obstructed until they got their way.

And, again, this is a lesson that every Catholic—indeed, every person in an organization with traditions—needs to commit to memory.

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning

On December 10, the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews issued “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable,” an explicitly non-magisterial, non-doctrinal “reflection” on the theological questions that have cropped up after Nostra aetate.

Paragraphs 41 through 44 of the reflection have gotten a lot of attention in the press. Essentially, “The Gifts and the Calling” is an institutional expression of the so-called Two Covenant Theory, which holds that the covenant between God and the Jewish people remains in force, notwithstanding the New Law. This idea—which draws upon Paul’s Letter to the Romans—is an awfully complicated question, and a relatively recent development. On the other side of the question, Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, for example, held that the Old Law was abolished in favor of the New Law by Christ’s death on the Cross. (It is unfortunate that the Commission did not address Mystici Corporis and other magisterial documents that preceded Nostra aetate, which would no doubt have been on the Council fathers’ minds as they debated the question.) But all of this is hugely complicated—to say nothing of how sensitive the whole matter is in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust—and well beyond our limited theological knowledge.

However, Father John Hunwicke has been posting and reposting a series of reflections on the Commission’s document and Nostra aetate. One of these reflections makes the very interesting point that Christ’s actions were pointed toward Temple-based Judaism and its strongly sacrificial aspects, and Christianity, as found in Christ’s Church, supersedes that form of Judaism. Fr. Hunwicke quotes Rabbi Jacob Neusner, an eminent scholar who has spent a lot of time thinking about Christian-Jewish relations, who argues the institution of the Eucharist was intended to replace the sin-offerings at the Temple. And, of course, Christ referred to himself as the Temple in John’s Gospel when challenged by leaders of the Jewish community. Thus, when one discusses supersessionism, one must, as Fr. Hunwicke says, be precise about what supersedes what.

All of this is a hugely interesting question, and while the Commission’s document has been criticized harshly for the points made in paragraphs 41 through 44, we think that the document, to the extent that it prompts reflection and discussion—particularly interfaith discussion among scholars who know from what on these matters—on these issues is a valuable contribution to dialogue. Even if it is explicitly non-magisterial and non-doctrinal.

David Bentley Hart on “Laudato si'”

Orthodox writer David Bentley Hart has a piece at First Things this month, wondering why American Catholics of a conservative bent, as he calls them (we tend to say, “Catholics on the American political right,” which we think better captures the phenomenon) have such distaste for the Holy Father, especially his recent social encyclical Laudato si’. He notes,

I suppose that in America, such sentiments [as those expressed in Laudato si’ – pjs] might sound a bit outrageous. We tend to think that all enterprise is of a piece, that the small business that produces a useful product and creates needed jobs exists in some sort of inviolable continuum with global corporate entities of every kind, and that we cannot affirm the former without defending the latter. Even “conservative” Christians who deplore the cultural costs of late modernity treat any critique of its obvious material basis as practically blasphemous. But everywhere else in the world, those same criticisms would simply, and correctly, be described as “true.” They would even be regarded as simply “Catholic.” Laudato Si positively trembles from all the echoes it contains of G. K. Chesterton, Vincent McNabb, Hilaire Belloc, Elizabeth Anscombe, Dorothy Day, E. F. Schumacher, Leo XIII, John XXIII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and (above all) Romano Guardini; its native social and political atmosphere is that rich combination of Christian socialism, social democratism, subsidiarism, distributism, and anti-materialism that constitutes the best of the modern Catholic intellectual tradition’s humane alternative to all the technologisms, libertarianisms, corporatisms, and totalitarianisms that in their different ways reduce humanity to nothing more than appetent machines and creation to nothing more than industrial resources.

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there; it won’t take long. He’s pretty much right, too.

One point where Hart is light is on the history—even the fairly recent history—of American Catholicism’s resistance to the Church’s social teaching. For example, John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra prompted the jibe “Mater si, magistra no.” And, more recently, American Catholics bent over backward either to explain why Benedict didn’t write all of Caritas in veritate or to make the same old (tedious at this point) arguments about how the Church doesn’t have same authority in matters of state and economy as it does in matters of faith and morals. (How Pius IX would have laughed at them! Right before handing them copies of Syllabus.) All this is to say that Francis is not the first pope to encounter resistance to his social teaching from Catholics on the American political right, though he might be the first pope to wade into a debate still very active in American political circles with his social teaching. (Maybe. Quadragesimo anno certainly addressed issues that were very much au courant in 1931.) Indeed, resistance to the Church’s social teaching might be a major characteristic of American Catholicism.

Football and the necessity of immorality

Jamil Smith, at The New Republic, has written on “The Necessity of Football.“ After outlining what is all too clear—many football players have destroyed (and are destroying) their brains, to say nothing of “garden-variety” football injuries—Smith argues,

Every time I’ve thought about leaving the sport behind, I remember my favorite photograph: a black-and-white shot my mother took of me in my football uniform in the eighth grade, standing next to my father and smiling after a win. But nostalgia is a reason to love the game, not a reason to need it. Perhaps, then, this is where I should tell you why—even in the wake of Omalu’s revelations—I feel we still need football. Not to rescue the NFL’s largely black labor force from its humble origins, or to entertain the masses that refuse to let it go in the wake of mounting tragedies. We need it partially because football serves as a kind of fun-house mirror for our national character.

The reflection comes in various forms: social movements, national tragedy, political spectacle, and yes, our sports. And we are a dramatic country, so much so that the volume of theatrics we see in every corner of our lives dulls our senses. We need more, and we need it louder. And in spectator sports, we want to see the best versions of ourselves reflected back at us, or else why would we consider it entertainment? We want to believe that inside that arena, everything will be all right because our men are the strongest, and our fight is the hardest. This is why between 2012 and 2015 the Department of Defense paid 18 NFL teams a total of more than $5.6 million for marketing and advertising, including flying military bombers over stadiums at taxpayers’ expense. It’s also why we watch hit montages week after week, delighting in the crack of the pads or the punch of the music without wondering whether that player just got pushed a bit further toward CTE. Football marries artfulness to brutality, providing the most honest interpretation of American character that we have available, and I enjoy football despite its horrors because I have learned to do the same in my life in America.

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlink omitted.) Read the whole thing there.

For our part, we have already explained why we believe that a good-faith argument could be made that American football (and other extreme sports) is sinful, since it is contrary to the clear injunction of the Fifth Commandment and the Church’s teaching about similar dangerous activities. Moreover, we think that what makes football immoral is inextricably bound up with the positive aspects as Jamil Smith describes them. That is, it is impossible for spectators to watch players striving manfully on the gridiron without those men same heedlessly risking physical injury, either immediately or in the future. Thus, it seems to us that it is impossible to use football as a cultural mirror without embracing what makes football morally illicit. Thus, we are left with the question: is immorality ever necessary? The answer, of course, is no. Paul VI reminded us in Humanae vitae that good ends never justify sinful means.

Further thoughts on the socialist seduction

When we originally commented on Gabriel Sanchez’s piece regarding the “socialist seduction,” we focused on what we identified as two currents in the Church’s thinking about subsidiarity. We did not focus on the broader question. In following up a Twitter conversation on our issue, we noted that Paul VI, in his little-loved 1971 letter Octogesima adveniens, addressed the “socialist seduction” himself. It is worth noting that Paul never quite addressed socialism by name in Populorum progressio, and he made some ambiguous comments in that encyclical that seemed to point toward more aggressive regimes of redistribution that would be entirely consistent with a socialist or Marxist framework. Octogesima adveniens, coming only four years after Populorum progressio, can be seen, then, as an attempt to clarify some of the infelicities and ambiguities in the earlier document.

Addressing the question of socialism broadly (and Marxism specifically), Paul wrote,

Some Christians are today attracted by socialist currents and their various developments. They try to recognize therein a certain number of aspirations which they carry within themselves in the name of their faith. They feel that they are part of that historical current and wish to play a part within it. Now this historical current takes on, under the same name, different forms according to different continents and cultures, even if it drew its inspiration, and still does in many cases, from ideologies incompatible with faith. Careful judgment is called for. Too often Christians attracted by socialism tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated. Distinctions must be made to guide concrete choices between the various levels of expression of socialism: a generous aspiration and a seeking for a more just society, historical movements with a political organization and aim, and an ideology which claims to give a complete and self-sufficient picture of man. Nevertheless, these distinctions must not lead one to consider such levels as completely separate and independent. The concrete link which, according to circumstances, exists between them must be clearly marked out. This insight will enable Christians to see the degree of commitment possible along these lines, while safeguarding the values, especially those of liberty, responsibility and openness to the spiritual, which guarantee the integral development of man.

Other Christians even ask whether an historical development of Marxism might not authorize certain concrete rapprochements. They note in fact a certain splintering of Marxism, which until now showed itself to be a unitary ideology which explained in atheistic terms the whole of man and the world since it did not go outside their development process. Apart from the ideological confrontation officially separating the various champions of Marxism-Leninism in their individual interpretations of the thought of its founders, and apart from the open opposition between the political systems which make use of its name today, some people lay down distinctions between Marxism’s various levels of expression.

For some, Marxism remains essentially the active practice of class struggle. Experiencing the ever present and continually renewed force of the relationships of domination and exploitation among men, they reduce Marxism to no more than a struggle – at times with no other purpose – to be pursued and even stirred up in permanent fashion. For others, it is first and foremost the collective exercise of political and economic power under the direction of a single party, which would be the sole expression and guarantee of the welfare of all, and would deprive individuals and other groups of any possibility of initiative and choice. At a third level, Marxism’ whether in power or not, is viewed as a socialist ideology based on historical materialism and the denial of everything transcendent. At other times, finally, it presents itself in a more attenuated form, one also more attractive to the modern mind: as a scientific activity, as a rigorous method of examining social and political reality, and as the rational link, tested by history, between theoretical knowledge and the practice of revolutionary transformation. Although this type of analysis gives a privileged position to certain aspects of reality to the detriment of the rest, and interprets them in the light of its ideology, it nevertheless furnishes some people not only with a working tool but also a certitude preliminary to action: the claim to decipher in a scientific manner the mainsprings of the evolution of society.

While, through the concrete existing form of Marxism, one can distinguish these various aspects and the questions they pose for the reflection and activity of Christians, it would be illusory and dangerous to reach a point of forgetting the intimate link which radically binds them together, to accept the elements of Marxist analysis without recognizing their relationships with ideology, and to enter into the practice of class struggle and its Marxist interpretations, while failing to note the kind of totalitarian and violent society to which this process leads.

(Emphasis supplied.) There is a lot to unpack here, to be sure. But the crucial insight, as far as we are concerned, is this:

Too often Christians attracted by socialism tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated.

In other words, Christians tend to think of socialism, the Pope tells us, in vague terms. However, the general will toward social justice associated with socialism is inseparable from socialism’s political and ideological aspects. Only when socialism is considered integrally, Pope Paul teaches us, can the Catholic determine whether and to what extent it is possible to follow socialist paths toward the broader goals of social justice. While the Pope does not come out and say so, one gets the sense that he is suspicious of what he calls socialist currents. He is even more acutely suspicious of the Marxist hermeneutic. Marxist analysis, Pope Paul argues, carries the bacillus of Marxism, and the bacillus of Marxism always results in grave, if not fatal, disease.

But—but!—Pope Paul does not exclude absolutely participation in socialist currents. The question is one of proper understanding of what Paul sees as essentially a sequential path: the broad social-justice aims of socialism lead to the political structures of socialism, which in turn lead to the ideological tenets of socialism. At a certain point, that becomes unacceptable in Paul’s view, given the broadly materialistic and totalitarian aspects of socialist ideology. But there is some distance between that point and sympathy, though for different reasons, with broader objectives of social justice. One imagines, therefore, that Paul sees the process of insight and engagement as (1) knowing the general course of development from social-justice goals to socialist ideology and (2) knowing when to stop and say “no farther.” And that is the tricky thing.