Social justice

Another project of ressourcement

Following up on our piece about Leonine ressourcement, it occurs to us that someone could very profitably write a concise (if not brief) introduction to Aristotelian-Thomistic politics, aimed toward a popular audience. Certainly there are already essays pointing in this direction, such as Pater Edmund Waldstein’s introduction to the common good and Coëmgenus’s “Theses and Responses on Antiamericanism.” (Both are at The Josias.) Both essays are excellent, though both presume a certain level of knowledge about Aristotelian-Thomistic politics in their readers. However, we have in mind something considerably more basic.

For example, it is far from clear to us whether there is widespread understanding of the proposition that a law is a dictate of practical reason shaped to the common good. And we are certain that few people understand that the purpose of law is to make citizens good simpliciter (cf. ST Ia IIae q.92 a.1 co. & ad 1). It seems to us, as you, dear reader, may have deduced from our piece on Leonine ressourcement that we think it is a problem that so few Catholics are conversant with their own tradition of political thought. As we said, the liberal order appears to be at an inflection point, if not a point of crisis. Of course, as we did not observe in our original essay, this could be but a simple pause in the development of liberalism, a moment while liberalism is adjusted to take into account the rising ethnic and class-based resentments currently affecting the political order of the west. But such a thought is very depressing. Instead, we prefer to think that this is a moment when Catholics can challenge the liberal order meaningfully, by drawing on their political tradition and the social teaching of the Church.

We think a list of theses, much like the essays linked above, would be a wonderful format for an introduction to Aristotelian-Thomistic politics, though with plenty of citations to authorities, so that readers will be able to run down the sources themselves. And, of course, it will be necessary to draw upon the magisterium to clarify some points. For example, there are certain contradictions between the Leonine magisterium and Aristotelian-Thomistic notions of the state and rights. (Compare Leo’s treatment of the priority of the family to the state in Rerum novarum with Aristotle’s argument in Politics 1, for example.) Given the Church’s authority to interpret and defend the natural law, conferred by divine ordinance, these contradictions must be identified, explored in some detail, and resolved. Ultimately, such an introduction would serve as a resource for Catholics thinking about what comes next.

Perhaps such a handy introduction does exist and we have simply missed it. But, again, we would want to reduce the principles to their simplest possible form.

Leonine radicalism and ressourcement

I.

It is high time for Catholics to rediscover the magisterium of Leo XIII. There is a sense, we think, that the modern, liberal order is at a point of inflection, if not a point of crisis, and the cleverer among us are beginning to think about “what’s next.” Likewise, Leo’s pontificate, beginning in 1878 and continuing to 1903, took place during a similar moment of crisis—essentially between the revolutions of 1848 and 1870 and the First World War. And in this atmosphere, Leo taught often and at great length about the rightly ordered civil state, correct relations between the Church and states, and the duties of Christians in civil society. His lessons, however, have been forgotten, particularly as the Church itself has acceded, perhaps merely as a prudential decision, to the postwar liberal order.

Leo has not been forgotten, however, with his encyclical Rerum novarum considered the beginning of the Church’s social teaching. Yet even Rerum novarum is dragged into the service of the liberal order and construed as a great support for free-market capitalism. It is, of course, anything but. It is of a piece with Leo’s other great encyclicals on social matters, including Immortale Dei, Libertas praestantissimum, and Diuturnum illud. Throughout Leo’s social encyclicals, including the encyclicals about the constitution of the state, so to speak, he articulated what we would today call integralism. The state, no less than the individual, has duties to God, and the State is at least indirectly subordinated to the Church, since the end of the Church is much, much more excellent than the end of the state. This is profoundly illiberal thought.

But it is thought in keeping not only with the teaching of the Church but also the broader philosophical underpinnings (i.e., Aristotle) of that tradition. In other words, it poses none of the risks of other, no less illiberal ideologies that are in the air right now, including nationalism. It is, we think, time for a ressourcement of the Leonine magisterium. Catholics should return to Leo’s thought to see what the first principles of a rightly ordered state are. Obviously, such a project will have to be undertaken by individual Catholics or Catholics in groups, as the post-Conciliar amnesia of tradition applies to no one more strongly than Leo XIII. However, if this is an inflection point for liberalism, it will be necessary, we think, to be prepared to right the sinking ship of modern life. And that requires, ultimately, Christian principles of society.

Of course, the Leonine magisterium has a reputation for being conservative, not to say reactionary. For example, subsequent treatments of his magisterium, like St. Pius X’s syllabus Fin dalla prima nostra, tended to present it in a very conservative light. And to be sure, Leo was concerned with maintaining, if not the then-existing order, then respect for rulers and majesty, which seemed to him, correctly, to be in peril. However, it is, we think, a mistake to try to force Leo’s teachings into narrow political terms. Not least because some of his teachings were, to modern liberal eyes, quite radical. That is not to say that they are remotely controversial in doctrinal terms; simply that a modern liberal subject would likely consider them radical. And a project of Leonine ressourcement must include a fair assessment of even these teachings.

II.

To give an example of “Leonine radicalism,” we turn to the question of when a Christian must disobey the law. One may assume that a supposed conservative like Leo would, of course, hold, as the Church has taught from St. Paul down to the present day, that Christians have an obligation to obey the law. Leo emphasizes, however, that this is not absolutely true. We shall see that a Christian may have a positive duty to disobey the law, and, moreover, this duty is not inconsistent with the obligation of a Christian to obey the civil authorities. We begin with  his 1890 encyclical “On Christians as Citizens,” Sapientiae Christianae:

Hence, they who blame, and call by the name of sedition, this steadfastness of attitude in the choice of duty have not rightly apprehended the force and nature of true law. We are speaking of matters widely known, and which We have before now more than once fully explained. Law is of its very essence a mandate of right reason, proclaimed by a properly constituted authority, for the common good. But true and legitimate authority is void of sanction, unless it proceed from God, the supreme Ruler and Lord of all. The Almighty alone can commit power to a man over his fellow men; nor may that be accounted as right reason which is in disaccord with truth and with divine reason; nor that held to be true good which is repugnant to the supreme and unchangeable good, or that wrests aside and draws away the wills of men from the charity of God.

Hallowed, therefore, in the minds of Christians is the very idea of public authority, in which they recognize some likeness and symbol as it were of the Divine Majesty, even when it is exercised by one unworthy. A just and due reverence to the laws abides in them, not from force and threats, but from a consciousness of duty; “for God hath not given us the spirit of fear.”

But, if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition; for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused, but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, venerable brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who, in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are “to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word,” at once adds: “And to be ready to every good work.” Thereby he openly declares that, if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner, the Prince of the Apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: “If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes omitted.) Consider the radicalism of the idea that it is a duty to resist an unjust law—more on that in a moment—and a crime to obey. And not merely a crime against God, but also a crime against the state. Now, there is some room for prudential discussion about what it means to “resist” or to “obey” an unjust law. However, that is a secondary issue.

We note that Sapientiae Christianae was not Leo’s sole treatment of civil disobedience. For example, in Diuturnum illud, his 1881 encyclical “On the Origin of Civil Power,” he taught,

The one only reason which men have for not obeying is when anything is demanded of them which is openly repugnant to the natural or the divine law, for it is equally unlawful to command to do anything in which the law of nature or the will of God is violated. If, therefore, it should happen to any one to be compelled to prefer one or the other, viz., to disregard either the commands of God or those of rulers, he must obey Jesus Christ, who commands us to “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” and must reply courageously after the example of the Apostles: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” And yet there is no reason why those who so behave themselves should be accused of refusing obedience; for, if the will of rulers is opposed to the will and the laws of God, they themselves exceed the bounds of their own power and pervert justice; nor can their authority then be valid, which, when there is no justice, is null.

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes omitted.) This is a capsule summary of the treatment, as we see it, in Sapientiae Christianae. Thus, we may say comfortably that Leo’s magisterium includes as a major theme the duty to resist unjust laws and the compatibility of such a duty with obedience to the civil authorities.

Of course, Leo’s notion of the power in law is profoundly Thomistic. This is, really, no surprise, given the importance that Leo placed on Thomas’s thought. Looking at this question in his Treatise on Law in the Summa, the Angelic Doctor taught:

Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived, according to Prov. 8:15: “By Me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things.” Now laws are said to be just, both from the end, when, to wit, they are ordained to the common good—and from their author, that is to say, when the law that is made does not exceed the power of the lawgiver—and from their form, when, to wit, burdens are laid on the subjects, according to an equality of proportion and with a view to the common good. For, since one man is a part of the community, each man in all that he is and has, belongs to the community; just as a part, in all that it is, belongs to the whole; wherefore nature inflicts a loss on the part, in order to save the whole: so that on this account, such laws as these, which impose proportionate burdens, are just and binding in conscience, and are legal laws.

 On the other hand laws may be unjust in two ways: first, by being contrary to human good, through being opposed to the things mentioned above—either in respect of the end, as when an authority imposes on his subjects burdensome laws, conducive, not to the common good, but rather to his own cupidity or vainglory—or in respect of the author, as when a man makes a law that goes beyond the power committed to him—or in respect of the form, as when burdens are imposed unequally on the community, although with a view to the common good. The like are acts of violence rather than laws; because, as Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5), “a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all.” Wherefore such laws do not bind in conscience, except perhaps in order to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right, according to Mt. 5:40,41: “If a man . . . take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him; and whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two.”

Secondly, laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, “we ought to obey God rather than man.”

(ST Ia IIae q.96 a.4 co.) (emphasis supplied). However, Leo seems to go beyond Thomas’s teaching, however (and not for the only time). Thomas observes that laws at variance with the common good, essentially, do not bind in conscience, though a subject may make a prudential decision to submit to the law to avoid scandal or disturbance. In other words: violence. But human laws at variance with the divine law specifically cannot be obeyed at all, violence or no violence. Leo, on the other hand, teaches that human laws at variance with the divine or natural law are null and void, and that man must obey God’s laws rather than man’s in case of conflict.

This apparent extension can, we think, be explained by the Thomistic concept of natural law; that is, the natural law is the participation in the eternal law by reason (ST Ia IIae q.91 a.2 co.). Now, Thomas’s treatment of natural law is broader and more complex, especially as the natural law relates to virtue and vice versa, but this is a good enough statement of the law, so to speak. If, then, the natural law is our participation in the eternal law, then a violation of the natural law has consequences in the realm of the eternal law. To hold otherwise would be to introduce a division between the natural law and the eternal law, and Thomas himself repudiates the notion that the natural law and the eternal law are somehow separate (ST Ia IIae q.91 a.2 ad 1). Thus, a law that violates the natural law violates also the eternal law.

It is also worth observing, perhaps idly, that Thomas also taught that just laws flow from the natural law (ST Ia IIae q.95 a.2 co.). In particular, there are two ways this works. One, the lawgiver may draw conclusions from the premises of the natural law. Two, the lawgiver, acting as a craftsman, may give a particular shape to this or that idea inherent in the natural law. All this explains, in part, why there is a diversity of human laws, instead of one set of implementations of the natural law (ST Ia IIae q.95 a.2 obj. 3 & ad 3). It also gives us some pause about adopting a too-ferocious attitude about what is or is not consistent with the natural law. In the words of Thomas Gilby, O.P., the natural law is not “a kind of grid that could be laid on the plan of human life; it is the first stage in the working out of the living idea in divine government for incompletely intelligent and loving creatures, moving them to their fulfillment” (Blackfriars Summa v.28 appx. 6, p. 178). Gilby also makes manifest the connection between the natural law and the common good (ibid.). In some instances, it will be readily obvious that a human law contravenes the natural law. Take the laws on abortion in many western countries as an example. But, in other cases, it will not be so obvious that the law violates the natural law or harms the common good. In these cases, careful reasoning is required.

However, to a modern mind, or, indeed, even a particularly patriotic mind, there is a bigger problem than whether Leo goes beyond St. Thomas or whether there is an apparent difference between a law that violates the eternal law and a law that merely violates the natural law. There appears to be a serious contradiction between a duty to resist and a duty to obey. In part, this is due to liberalism, which rejects the idea that a law contrary to the eternal or natural law is no law; instead, the will of the sovereign, however that is defined, is sufficient to provide authority to law. It is also due to a disordered concept of the state, which tends toward positivism. Nevertheless, there may appear to be a contradiction between a duty to disobey unjust laws and true obedience to the state. But such a contradiction may be resolved, we think, by the profound resonances between this treatment in Sapientiae Christianae and a very interesting passage in Au milieu des sollicitudes, Leo’s 1892 ralliement encyclical. There, the pope taught, after condemning revolutionary activity generally:

it must be carefully observed that whatever be the form of civil power in a nation, it cannot be considered so definitive as to have the right to remain immutable, even though such were the intention of those who, in the beginning, determined it.… Only the Church of Jesus Christ has been able to preserve, and surely will preserve unto the consummation of time, her form of government. Founded by Him who was, who is, and who will be forever, she has received from Him, since her very origin, all that she requires for the pursuing of her divine mission across the changeable ocean of human affairs. And, far from wishing to transform her essential constitution, she has not the power even to relinquish the conditions of true liberty and sovereign independence with which Providence has endowed her in the general interest of souls… But, in regard to purely human societies, it is an oft-repeated historical fact that time, that great transformer of all things here below, operates great changes in their political institutions. On some occasions it limits itself to modifying something in the form of the established government; or, again, it will go so far as to substitute other forms for the primitive ones—forms totally different, even as regards the mode of transmitting sovereign power.

And how are these political changes of which We speak produced? They sometimes follow in the wake of violent crises, too often of a bloody character, in the midst of which preexisting governments totally disappear; then anarchy holds sway, and soon public order is shaken to its very foundations and finally overthrown. From that time onward a social need obtrudes itself upon the nation; it must provide for itself without delay. Is it not its privilege—or, better still, its duty—to defend itself against a state of affairs troubling it so deeply, and to re-establish public peace in the tranquillity of order? Now, this social need justifies the creation and the existence of new governments, whatever form they take; since, in the hypothesis wherein we reason, these new governments are a requisite to public order, all public order being impossible without a government. Thence it follows that, in similar junctures, all the novelty is limited to the political form of civil power, or to its mode of transmission; it in no wise affects the power considered in itself. This continues to be immutable and worthy of respect, as, considered in its nature, it is constituted to provide for the common good, the supreme end which gives human society its origin. To put it otherwise, in all hypotheses, civil power, considered as such, is from God, always from God: “For there is no power but from God.”

(Footnotes omitted and emphasis supplied.) In other words, Leo distinguishes between the civil power itself and its political form or mode of transmission. The government, so to speak, exercises and transmits the civil power, but it is not the civil power itself. Now, one can—and no less an authority than Roberto de Mattei has—criticize Au milieu and ralliement for a variety of reasons. Perhaps there is a tension between Leo’s illiberal—that is to say, Christian—politics and his embrace, likely for prudential reasons, of ralliement.

However, as we said, it seems to us that there are resonances between Sapientiae Christianae and Au milieu. That is, the division between the civil power and the political government explains—considered in addition to the authority of Holy Writ—the apparent contradiction between a duty to disobey unjust laws and a simultaneous claim to obedience. The civil power, constituted by God “to provide for the common good,” would not—cannot—be at variance with the divine or natural law, for the divine and natural law are the common good in a meaningful way. However, political governments, made up of men, can be at variance with the divine or natural law, insofar as man considered individually may sin. The political government, when it is at variance, ceases to exercise the civil power in that instance. The government, in purporting to promulgate an unjust law, has lost its divine sanction. But recall that it is not the civil power; it is simply the political form and means of transmission. Thus, the Christian obeys the true civil power while rejecting the invalid act of the political government. The duty to resist is thereby harmonized with true obedience.

It seems to us that Catholics have lost this sense of higher obedience. Instead, they have adopted the dreary liberal notion that the laws must be respected, right or wrong. The Catholic’s sole recourse in the case of a bad law is to pursue change of the law through the designated channels. Of course, it is perhaps unlikely that a government that implemented a bad law would leave open meaningful channels for Catholics to agitate for change. To resist the law more openly is, for many, sedition. Leo explains that this simply is not the case, and it is in the context of these erroneous attitudes that Leo’s teaching may be called “radical.” It is, as Leo explains, true obedience to the civil power to resist unjust laws. The political form of government is not the civil power. This does not create a sanction for revolutionary activity, of course, as Leo’s discourse in Au milieu is in the immediate context of condemning revolution, but neither does it require a sort of fatalistic quietism. It is a crime to obey an unjust law. Worse than that, by promulgating an unjust law, the political government has lost, at least in the scope of the law, its divine sanction to rule.

The Christian, then, confronted with a government that has abdicated its divine sanction to rule, must remain obedient to the immutable civil power, which is from God, which may include obedience to the government where it rules justly. In other words, the contradiction between a duty to resist unjust laws and obedience to civil authorities is only apparent. With a correct understanding of what the civil authorities are—and are not—the contradiction disappears. One may resist a government without resisting the civil power if the government has ceased to exercise the civil power justly, which is to say altogether.

III.

You may, dear reader, object for whatever reason to the sort of analysis we have engaged in here. However, our point, even if we are wrong in our assessment of the Leonine magisterium on this question, is that the Leonine magisterium must be recovered by Catholics attempting to navigate this political moment. We submit, perhaps not quite as humbly as we ought, that this analysis is an example of what Catholics ought to be doing: returning to sound authorities and reconstructing a notion of politics in accordance with right reason. Leo’s teachings open up a vista onto other authorities, such as St. Thomas and Aristotle, who are themselves necessary to construct this politics. A politics, as it were, worthy of the name.

 

Another comment on current events

We were struck by passages in President Donald Trump’s inaugural address this afternoon, especially the ode to solidarity. One imagines that Stephen Bannon, one of Trump’s close advisers and a student of sorts of the Church’s social doctrine, was responsible for that argument. It seems, however, like a good moment to recall what Leo XIII said in Au milieu des sollicitudes (the “Ralliement encyclical”):

First of all, let us take as a starting-point a well-known truth admitted by all men of good sense and loudly proclaimed by the history of all peoples; namely, that religion, and religion only, can create the social bond; that it alone maintains the peace of a nation on a solid foundation. When different families, without giving up the rights and duties of domestic society, unite under the inspiration of nature, in order to constitute themselves members of another larger family circle called civil society, their object is not only to find therein the means of providing for their material welfare, but, above all, to draw thence the boon of moral improvement. Otherwise society would rise but little above the level of an aggregation of beings devoid of reason, and whose whole life would consist in the satisfaction of sensual instincts. Moreover, without this moral improvement it would be difficult to demonstrate that civil society was an advantage rather than a detriment to man, as man.

Now, morality, in man, by the mere fact that it should establish harmony among so many dissimilar rights and duties, since it enters as an element into every human act, necessarily supposes God, and with God, religion, that sacred bond whose privilege is to unite, anteriorly to all other bonds, man to God. Indeed, the idea of morality signifies, above all, an order of dependence in regard to truth which is the light of the mind; in regard to good which is the object of the will; and without truth and good there is no morality worthy of the name. And what is the principal and essential truth, that from which all truth is derived? It is God. What, therefore, is the supreme good from which all other good proceeds? God. Finally, who is the creator and guardian of our reason, our will, our whole being, as well as the end of our life? God; always God. Since, therefore, religion is the interior and exterior expression of the dependence which, in justice, we owe to God, there follows a grave obligation. All citizens are bound to unite in maintaining in the nation true religious sentiment, and to defend it in case of need, if ever, despite the protestations of nature and of history, an atheistical school should set about banishing God from society, thereby surely annihilating the moral sense even in the depths of the human conscience. Among men who have not lost all notion of integrity there can exist no difference of opinion on this point.

(Emphasis supplied.)

Eagleton and traditionalism

An earlier version of this post misidentified Eagleton’s new book. The post has been edited to include the correct title of the book. –pjs

At Commonweal, there is an essay by Terry Eagleton, which appears to be an excerpt from his recent book, Materialism, about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s politics. While interesting reading on its own, Eagleton makes a point we thought worth sharing with you:

What is the secret of the seeming contradictions in Wittgenstein’s politics? How can one be suspended in this way between Marx and Nietzsche? There seems little doubt that this fastidious traditionalist did indeed hold a range of left-wing views. Perhaps some of these faded in later years. But it may also be that his sympathy for Marxism sprang in part from what Raymond Williams has called “negative identification.” As a conservative, culturally pessimistic critic of middle-class modernity, Wittgenstein felt able to link arms in some respects with his Communist colleagues while repudiating their convictions in others. It is a case of adopting one’s enemy’s enemies as one’s friends; or, if one prefers, of the landowner’s secret rapport with the poacher, as against the petty-bourgeois gamekeeper. The traditionalist, after all, has a fair amount in common with the socialist. Both camps think in corporate terms, as the liberal individualist or free-marketeer does not. Both regard social life as practical and institutional to its core. Both view human relations as the matrix of personal identity, not as an infringement of it. Both seek to chastise a rationality that has grown too big for its boots, returning it to its proper place within social existence as a whole.

(Emphasis supplied.) We encourage you to read the whole thing, and not just for this interesting and provocative observation.

But since the observation is so interesting and provocative, we encourage you to consider, for example, this passage from Pius XI’s great Quadragesimo anno:

It follows from what We have termed the individual and at the same time social character of ownership, that men must consider in this matter not only their own advantage but also the common good. To define these duties in detail when necessity requires and the natural law has not done so, is the function of those in charge of the State. Therefore, public authority, under the guiding light always of the natural and divine law, can determine more accurately upon consideration of the true requirements of the common good, what is permitted and what is not permitted to owners in the use of their property. Moreover, Leo XIII wisely taught “that God has left the limits of private possessions to be fixed by the industry of men and institutions of peoples.” That history proves ownership, like other elements of social life, to be not absolutely unchanging, We once declared as follows: “What divers forms has property had, from that primitive form among rude and savage peoples, which may be observed in some places even in our time, to the form of possession in the patriarchal age; and so further to the various forms under tyranny (We are using the word tyranny in its classical sense); and then through the feudal and monarchial forms down to the various types which are to be found in more recent times.” That the State is not permitted to discharge its duty arbitrarily is, however, clear. The natural right itself both of owning goods privately and of passing them on by inheritance ought always to remain intact and inviolate, since this indeed is a right that the State cannot take away: “For man is older than the State,” and also “domestic living together is prior both in thought and in fact to uniting into a polity.” Wherefore the wise Pontiff declared that it is grossly unjust for a State to exhaust private wealth through the weight of imposts and taxes. “For since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man’s law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal.” Yet when the State brings private ownership into harmony with the needs of the common good, it does not commit a hostile act against private owners but rather does them a friendly service; for it thereby effectively prevents the private possession of goods, which the Author of nature in His most wise providence ordained for the support of human life, from causing intolerable evils and thus rushing to its own destruction; it does not destroy private possessions, but safeguards them; and it does not weaken private property rights, but strengthens them. 

(Emphasis supplied.)

Some political meditations

We do not delude ourselves: our discussing endlessly the interpretation and consequences of Amoris laetitia must be tiring for you, dear reader. And, if we are being honest, it is tiring for us at times. Likewise, reading the tea leaves of every Vatican political development is likely to grow tiresome for you, even if we find it evergreen. Though do yourself a favor and read Michael Brendan Dougherty’s shocking piece at The Week about certain moves afoot to withdraw jurisdiction over priest sex abuse cases from the efficient, severe judges of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and transfer it back to the less efficient, less severe judges of the Congregation for Clergy and the Roman Rota. This is important stuff. But there are other important things to think about. And, therefore, to give ourselves and you, dear reader, a break from the drumbeat of doctrinal crisis and ecclesiastical politics, we have thought about them. We have thought, we note with some pride, about civil politics. And we thought about them primarily in the context of the Church’s teaching. So perhaps it is not as big a difference as we might have first hoped.

This is still Semiduplex, after all.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, we have seen, elsewhere, many people running to join radical political groups. Some of these people are Catholic. On one hand, good for them. The Democrats decided that the appropriate response to Trump was Hillary Clinton. This was a credibility-destroying move on their part. Despite the Democrats’ attempts to blame Russia, FBI Director James Comey, the Electoral College, or any number of other factors, most people acknowledge that a major problem in Hillary Clinton’s campaign was Hillary Clinton. But at no point has Donald Trump given especially strong or especially credible indications that he intends to govern especially justly or especially in line with the common good. All indications is that he will form another standard Republican government. Perhaps he will push back a little bit against the Republican orthodoxy regarding free markets, but it is unlikely that he will get far. And other aspects of his administration will be, we fear, much less good. So, for many people there is a natural desire to resist Trump.

But such a purely negative view—i.e., forming a politics on the basis of resistance—is not really a proper basis for politics. Indeed, the proper basis for politics is to form a virtuous populace. Aristotle tells us at the very end of Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics,

it is difficult to get from youth up a right training for excellence if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for they will not be painful when they have become customary. But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention; since they must, even when they are grown up, practice and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking to cover the whole of life; for most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than what is noble.

(1179b32–1180a5, Barnes ed.) Aristotle goes on to argue:

if (as we have said) the man who is to be good must be well trained and habituated, and go on to spend his time in worthy occupations and neither willingly nor unwillingly do bad actions, and if this can be brought about if men live in accordance with a sort of intellect and right order, provided this has force,—if this be so, the paternal command indeed has not the required force or compulsive power (nor in general has the command of one man, unless he be a king or something similar), but the law has compulsive power, while it is at the same time an account proceeding from a sort of practical wisdom and intellect. And while people hate men who oppose their impulses, even if they oppose them rightly, the law in its ordaining of what is good is not burdensome.

(1180a14–24, Barnes ed.) Most modern liberals would reject the notion that the law is supposed to be a teacher of virtue. At most, they would say that the law is a framework that permits those who are inclined to pursue virtue. We will not bore you with a recitation of Aristotle’s definition of virtue, which you probably know already, but the bottom line is that to frame laws to point citizens toward virtue means that careful, prudential choices must be made. These choices are entirely incompatible with the studied agnosticism of liberalism. One cannot permit all ideas to compete for support on one hand and on the other hand map out a course of virtue for one’s citizens. Moreover, with virtue rightly conceived in mind, it is obvious that the choices pointing toward virtue cannot be made from a position of mere opposition; at some point one has to begin moving in a positive direction.

The Church, of course, has long been aware of these home truths. Consider, for example, what Leo XIII says in his great encyclical, Immortale Dei:

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is, of course, a clear continuation of Thomas Aquinas’s project of rescuing Aristotelian philosophy from its pagan roots and applying it in the context of Christ and the New Law. Now, the New Law is no insignificant thing in this context. We know, of course, that Christ committed to His Church the special authority to interpret and defend the natural law, what Aristotle perhaps wrongly called “a sort of practical wisdom and intellect,” and, therefore, the Church becomes inextricably linked with politics. Again, before Dignitatis humanae and some of the other documents of the Second Vatican Council, these were not especially provocative propositions among Catholics.

The natural law being what it is, of course, most people have an innate sense that politics cannot be founded upon mere opposition. And this is ultimately why many people, including some Catholics, have sought out radical political groups in the wake of Trump’s election. They have a sense, probably rightly, that Trump will not further the common good and that “not Trump” is not coherent. And radical political groups, especially those groups on the left, usually offer something like a coherent positive philosophy upon which they propose to govern. These days, regardless of how they characterize themselves, these groups tend to be focused on social justice, fairly broadly described. Given the nastier elements that attached themselves to Trump—seemingly to Trump’s amusement, if not with his encouragement—social justice as a cause appeals to many people. Certainly no one is really interested in coddling racists or treating foreigners shabbily. We do not mean, of course, the sort of political correctness most popular on university campuses that masquerades as social justice. Often times these groups will describe themselves as socialist.

Now, a word on cooperation with socialists generally. We have written about this before, so we will not bore you with a full rehearsal of the question, especially after trying your patience with Aristotle and Leo XIII. Bl. Paul VI, in his apostolic letter Octogesima adveniens, teaches us that Catholics may, with careful discernment, cooperate with socialists. Of course, “socialism” may be said in many ways, and papal condemnations of “socialism” generally ascribe specific ideological content to the term. (Cf. Leo XIII, Quod apostolici muneris nos. 2, 5–9.) For example, the popes never condemn simply supporting a juster distribution of private property or a just wage, even though in modern American political discourse, such positions would be undoubtedly “socialist.” And Paul recognizes this point, acknowledging that, “[d]istinctions 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” (Octogesima adveniens no. 31.) The issue, as Paul explains, requires some discernment between those levels of expression, but that is politics more generally. Of course, Pius XI reminds us in Quadragesimo anno that socialists really ought to become Catholic if they are truly interested in these shared goals, since it is ultimately the Church that furthers them. (He also says that socialism and communism would not have existed if rulers had heeded the Church’s many warnings about justice, but to insist on that point may seem like gloating.) But the interplay between the Church and every conceivable socialist tendency is not ultimately the problem we are interested in. 

The issue we think is that most refugees to radical political groups are ultimately refugees from liberalism. The problems confronting most people most acutely are a function of liberalism, especially the sort of neoliberal economics most popular in the world’s financial centers and central bank boardrooms. Consequently, there is a desire to move beyond liberalism into something that even promises to be better. However, these groups themselves are by no means free from conventional liberal ideology. And first and foremost among their commitments to conventional liberal ideology is their commitment to a “right” to abortion. Indeed, various interactions that we have seen indicate that these supposed radicals are as committed to abortion as any Democratic candidate, and, indeed, many of them seem to believe that commitment to abortion is necessary to adopt meaningful radical politics. For many Catholics, this is enough: the Church has warned us and warned us about collaborating with abortion extremists. But it seems to us that there is another very good reason to reject the radicals who insist upon abortion as a core value of a just society: it undermines fatally the coherence of any claims they might make to advance a positive vision of social justice.

Every claim for social justice is, at its bottom, founded upon solidarity. In Sollicitudo rei socialis, St. John Paul II teaches us that solidarity consists in seeing the other not in purely instrumental terms, but as a neighbor (no. 39). The capitalist must view the worker as a neighbor, not a tool. Likewise, rich countries must view poorer countries as neighbors, not means to ends. This shift in perspective leads to justice and development. (Cf. Bl. Paul VI, Populorum progressio no. 76.) Abortion, however, denies that the unborn other is a person, much less a neighbor, “to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God” (Sollicitudo rei socialis no. 39). The logic of abortion, therefore, is fundamentally the logic of instrumentality, of convenience. The child is reduced to instrumental terms and judged by her convenience vel non to her parents. And the magisterium has made manifest this point in recent years. In Laudato si’, Francis explicitly draws a connection between the compulsion for convenience of a diseased anthropocentrism and abortion (nos. 120, 123). Such logic is incompatible with solidarity.

In Caritas in veritate (no. 28), Benedict XVI makes a more remarkable assertion: “When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good.” Benedict goes on to argue that, “[i]f personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away” (ibid.). In other words, abortion is corrosive to not only to other forms of acceptance but also to the pursuit of the common good itself. With this in mind, Benedict makes explicit the connection between abortion and solidarity:

By cultivating openness to life, wealthy peoples can better understand the needs of poor ones, they can avoid employing huge economic and intellectual resources to satisfy the selfish desires of their own citizens, and instead, they can promote virtuous action within the perspective of production that is morally sound and marked by solidarity, respecting the fundamental right to life of every people and every individual.

(Ibid.) To see the other as a neighbor, as St. John Paul describes solidarity in Sollicitudo rei socialis, necessarily involves respecting the other’s right to life as a person called to the most high dignity of son or daughter of God. Abortion is a flat denial of that right to life. It is plain to see that abortion is inimical to true solidarity. Therefore, no coherent claim for social justice can be articulated without a claim for justice for the unborn.

It is worth dwelling for a moment on a point Benedict made in passing: abortion ultimately causes “other forms of acceptance that are valuable to society” to “wither away” (ibid.) Claims for social justice extend beyond mere economic justice, beyond mere claims for just wages. Frequently, one hears of opposition to racism, sexism, ableism, and violent malice against persons struggling with same-sex attraction. Yet none of these claims are ultimately tenable, Benedict teaches us, if abortion is permitted. The same instrumentality and compulsion for convenience that leads to abortion will lead to racist, sexist, or ableist behavior. One cannot contain such approaches to other persons, or limit them only to one sphere. Indeed, there are intimate connections between racism, sexism, and ableism and abortion itself. For example, one has only to read Margaret Sanger’s bloodthirsty response to Pius XI’s great encyclical on marriage and procreation, Casti connubii, to see the eugenicist, classist roots of the modern abortion and contraception movement.

While Sanger’s response to Casti connubii contains many passages of breathtaking savagery, one example will suffice to make clear my meaning (and turn your stomach):

It is a damaging commentary on our civilization that the rich, with their knowledge of scientific birth control, should have received so little encouragement to make that knowledge available to the poor, that the educated should have been prevented by superstitious and narrow-minded law-makers from providing information to the ignorant. Although the birth control movement has recently made remarkable progress in our country, as will be shown later, there are too many states in which doctors are forbidden to tell their patients about contraception; and the federal laws still prohibit the sending of information and contraceptive materials through the mails. This stand on the part of organized society is both a cruel and a short-sighted policy, because the race is vitiated by the breeding of diseased, defective, badly nourished children.

With such thinking underpinning the movement, can anyone seriously contest Benedict’s point? Can abortion, intended to prevent “the breeding of diseased, defective, badly nourished children” (ibid.), do anything except corrode “other forms of acceptance that are valuable to society” (Caritas in veritate no. 28)? By no means! It is impossible to advocate simultaneously for a juster, more inclusive society and for abortion. You might as well advocate for good health for your parents while poisoning their soup.

With all this in mind, it becomes clear, we think, that support for abortion undermines gravely any attempt to formulate a coherent case for social justice. Abortion is an unspeakable crime, which is always and everywhere not only contrary to the common good but also completely incompatible with solidarity. Returning to John Paul’s terms, one does not reduce one’s neighbor to instrumental terms, and condemn them to death based on questions of convenience. Thus, the very foundation of social justice, solidarity, is undermined by the logic of abortion. More than that, the modern abortion and contraception movement is founded upon explicitly eugenicist, classist rhetoric. There is simply no aspect of abortion that is consistent with society ordered to the common good and any organization that advocates for abortion ultimately sets itself at odds with the common good.

Much of this is not especially news to Catholics, especially Catholics who spend a lot of time thinking about these issues. However, it presents for Catholics an opportunity in this post-Trump moment, which we have previously discussed. Instead of playing the games of liberalism, which anyone with half a brain knows have gotten us into this situation, it might be more useful for Catholics to articulate an authentically Catholic politics. And the first step to doing that is to propose a fundamentally Aristotelian politics, acknowledging, as Leo XIII and Paul VI teach us, that the Church has special competence, granted by Christ Himself, to articulate, interpret, and defend the natural moral law. In other words, Catholics should seize the opportunity to remind their fellow citizens that politics is ultimately about virtue, and the Church is the “true and sole teacher of virtue,” as Leo put it.

The Message for the World Day of Peace and the social-conflict teaching of John Paul II

Today, the Vatican released the Holy Father’s message to the 50th World Day of Peace. It is an interesting document, taking as its theme nonviolence. The Holy Father says:

On this occasion, I would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics for peace. I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.

(Emphasis supplied.) The message goes on to extol the value of nonviolence as, as the Holy Father puts it, “a style of politics.” While not as extensive as an encyclical or even some of the longer addresses that the Holy Father has given, it certainly represents an authentic exercise of the Holy Father’s social magisterium.

But we are troubled, we suppose, by what, exactly, the Holy Father means by nonviolence. While actual violence in the sense of taking up arms and taking to the streets is to be viewed as a last resort, governed carefully by the Church’s clear doctrine on revolt and resisting illegitimate rules, we think the Holy Father means more than mere exclusion of actual violence. He seems to point toward the exclusion of conflict. For example, he says,

Nonviolence is sometimes taken to mean surrender, lack of involvement and passivity, but this is not the case. When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she clearly stated her own message of active nonviolence: “We in our family don’t need bombs and guns, to destroy to bring peace – just get together, love one another… And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world”. For the force of arms is deceptive. “While weapons traffickers do their work, there are poor peacemakers who give their lives to help one person, then another and another and another”; for such peacemakers, Mother Teresa is “a symbol, an icon of our times”. Last September, I had the great joy of proclaiming her a Saint. I praised her readiness to make herself available for everyone “through her welcome and defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded… She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity; she made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crimes – the crimes! – of poverty they created”. In response, her mission – and she stands for thousands, even millions of persons – was to reach out to the suffering, with generous dedication, touching and binding up every wounded body, healing every broken life.

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes omitted.) Francis goes on to say,

This is also a programme and a challenge for political and religious leaders, the heads of international institutions, and business and media executives: to apply the Beatitudes in the exercise of their respective responsibilities. It is a challenge to build up society, communities and businesses by acting as peacemakers. It is to show mercy by refusing to discard people, harm the environment, or seek to win at any cost. To do so requires “the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process”. To act in this way means to choose solidarity as a way of making history and building friendship in society. Active nonviolence is a way of showing that unity is truly more powerful and more fruitful than conflict. Everything in the world is inter-connected. Certainly differences can cause frictions. But let us face them constructively and non-violently, so that “tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and life-giving unity,” preserving “what is valid and useful on both sides”.

(Emphasis supplied.) To some extent, therefore, the Holy Father seems to exclude social conflict altogether. To the extent that he does, he has overlooked an important source of teaching for the question of “frictions” in society: the magisterium of his predecessor, St. John Paul. In some regards, the Holy Father’s Message is consistent with John Paul’s teaching, but in other regards it seems to us that the Holy Father seeks to take a step back from some of John Paul’s really very radical conclusions.

And it may well be a conscious decision to step back. It is not as though the Holy Father does not acknowledge a debt to John Paul. In the Message, he says,

Nor can we forget the eventful decade that ended with the fall of Communist regimes in Europe. The Christian communities made their own contribution by their insistent prayer and courageous action. Particularly influential were the ministry and teaching of Saint John Paul II. Reflecting on the events of 1989 in his 1991 Encyclical Centesimus Annus, my predecessor highlighted the fact that momentous change in the lives of people, nations and states had come about “by means of peaceful protest, using only the weapons of truth and justice”. This peaceful political transition was made possible in part “by the non-violent commitment of people who, while always refusing to yield to the force of power, succeeded time after time in finding effective ways of bearing witness to the truth”. Pope John Paul went on to say: “May people learn to fight for justice without violence, renouncing class struggle in their internal disputes and war in international ones”.

(Emphasis supplied.) It will be seen shortly that there may be something of an equivocation here, since John Paul referred to class struggle in its Marxist sense in Centesimus annus, as distinct from social conflict more broadly conceived. But that aside, reading this passage consistently with the whole message, the Holy Father seems to quote John Paul for the proposition that social conflict was to be deplored totally.

However, a close reading of John Paul’s social magisterium shows that the saint acknowledges not only that social conflict was permissible under certain circumstances but also that, under the right conditions, it could be positive. We begin with his 1991 social encyclical, Centesimus annus, in which John Paul teaches us that:

From the same atheistic source, socialism also derives its choice of the means of action condemned in Rerum novarum, namely, class struggle. The Pope does not, of course, intend to condemn every possible form of social conflict. The Church is well aware that in the course of history conflicts of interest between different social groups inevitably arise, and that in the face of such conflicts Christians must often take a position, honestly and decisively. The Encyclical Laborem exercens moreover clearly recognized the positive role of conflict when it takes the form of a “struggle for social justice”; Quadragesimo anno had already stated that “if the class struggle abstains from enmities and mutual hatred, it gradually changes into an honest discussion of differences founded on a desire for justice”.

However, what is condemned in class struggle is the idea that conflict is not restrained by ethical or juridical considerations, or by respect for the dignity of others (and consequently of oneself); a reasonable compromise is thus excluded, and what is pursued is not the general good of society, but a partisan interest which replaces the common good and sets out to destroy whatever stands in its way. In a word, it is a question of transferring to the sphere of internal conflict between social groups the doctrine of “total war”, which the militarism and imperialism of that time brought to bear on international relations. As a result of this doctrine, the search for a proper balance between the interests of the various nations was replaced by attempts to impose the absolute domination of one’s own side through the destruction of the other side’s capacity to resist, using every possible means, not excluding the use of lies, terror tactics against citizens, and weapons of utter destruction (which precisely in those years were beginning to be designed). Therefore class struggle in the Marxist sense and militarism have the same root, namely, atheism and contempt for the human person, which place the principle of force above that of reason and law.

(Emphasis supplied and footnotes omitted.) Not enough attention has been devoted to John Paul’s teaching on social conflict. It is remarkably rich and deep. And it is surprising. Here, the pope who spearheaded the final battle against the atheistic communism of the Soviet Union, the pope with the highest praise, we are told, for American-style capitalism, teaches us not only that social conflict is not always and everywhere forbidden but also that it is “inevitable” in historical terms. And he roots his conclusion in the magisterium of Leo XIII, who (along with St. Pius X) is often cited for what amounts to a quietism in social questions. Thus, the pope finds support for social conflict stretching back to the very beginning of the Church’s social teaching. But there are clear limits to such conflict. What is forbidden is an amoral, exterminationist view that seeks only the annihilation of one’s class opponents. John Paul (and Pius XI before him) indicate that the goal, as in all political action, ought to be the common good.

Now, one could, as the Holy Father does in his message today, take a minimalist view of social conflict. And it is true—acknowledging again that there may be an equivocation in the use of the term—that John Paul called for an end to class struggle in Centesimus annus. But it must be noted also that John Paul never excluded outright opposition in social questions. Far from it, in fact. In Laborem exercens, his 1981 encyclical on labor, he observes,

Catholic social teaching does not hold that unions are no more than a reflection of the “class” structure of society and that they are a mouthpiece for a class struggle which inevitably governs social life. They are indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice, for the just rights of working people in accordance with their individual professions. However, this struggle should be seen as a normal endeavour “for” the just good: in the present case, for the good which corresponds to the needs and merits of working people associated by profession; but it is not a struggle “against” others. Even if in controversial questions the struggle takes on a character of opposition towards others, this is because it aims at the good of social justice, not for the sake of “struggle” or in order to eliminate the opponent. It is characteristic of work that it first and foremost unites people. In this consists its social power: the power to build a community.

(Emphasis supplied.) To the extent that there is “a character of opposition towards others,” John Paul tells us in both Laborem exercens and Centesimus annus that this is positive when it is opposition aimed toward the common good and social justice. It is when opposition is exalted for its own sake or pursued for the extermination of opponents that the serious moral problems crop up. At any rate, it does not require much imagination to see that there is some range of freedom of means available to those who pursue social justice and the common good.

Here, an especially clever interlocutor might cite St. Thomas, ST IIa IIae q.64 a.2 ad 3, and say, well, when one departs from the order of reason, one loses one’s human dignity and becomes as a beast, so the Pope’s caution against stringent social conflict, which may be more akin to Marxist class struggle, may overstate the matter. One needn’t be a Stalinist to see the consequences of the argument. Certainly, it is a departure from the order of reason to prize a proper good to the common good. Charles de Koninck, in the reply to the first objection in The Primacy of the Common Good Against the Personalists, taking up this question, says,

But the dignity with which the rational creature is invested on account of its end is so dependent upon this end that the creature can lose it as it can lose the attainment of its end. “By sinning, man sets himself outside the order of reason, and consequently, he loses human dignity, as namely man is naturally free and existing for himself, and he places himself in some way in the servitude of animals… For the bad man is worse than an animal.” [this is from ST IIa IIae q.64 a.2 ad 3 – pjs] Far from excluding the ordination of his private good (or his proper good when this is understood as not already including the common good) to the common good, or from making it indifferent to the common good, as though this ordination were purely a matter of freedom of contradiction, the dignity of the intelligent creature involves, on the contrary, the necessity of this ordination. Man fails in his human dignity when he refuses the very principle of that dignity: the good of the intellect realized in the common good. He subjects himself to the servitude of the animals when he judges the common good to be a foreign good. The perfection of human nature is so little an assurance of dignity that it suffices for man to turn himself inward upon his own dignity as upon a sufficient reason and first foundation, in order to fail to attain his being-for-self.

(Emphasis supplied.) Social conflict presupposes either that the common good has not been rightly understood or that someone is not acting in accord with the common good. They then seek to disrupt the ordination of their proper good(s) to the common good and, thereby, lose their dignity as humans. This, then, brings them within Thomas’s sharp statement. To this clever Aristo-Thomisto-Marxist interlocutor, one might say that this is true, but public authority is necessary to implement Thomas’s conclusion. And it is passing hard to imagine that public authority would be present on either side of this situation for the usual reasons. Furthermore, note the precise turn of De Koninck’s argument: anyone who judges the common good to be an alien good loses his human dignity, the personalist and the totalitarian alike. Thus, the Marxist engaged in eliminationist class struggle in the name of an ultimately alien common good has just as serious a fault with his dignity in Thomistic terms as the individualist-capitalist who prefers his proper good to the common good. Enough of this, though. Back to John Paul.

Certainly, merely saying that social conflict is not always and everywhere forbidden is radical. But the radicalness of John Paul’s approach goes beyond that. To appreciate it, one should look to other interventions of the magisterium treating upon Marxism and class struggle. For example, the 1984 Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As everyone knows, at its inception, there were disquieting elements of then-current Marxism present in liberation theology. Because of the admixture of Marxist thought, the Instruction contains sustained magisterial analysis, going far beyond, say, Octogesima adveniens or even Quadragesimo anno, of Marxism. In that document, Cardinal Ratzinger observed:

For the Marxist, the <praxis>, and the truth that comes from it, are partisan <praxis> and truth because the fundamental structure of history is characterized by <class- struggle>. There follows, then, the objective necessity to enter into the class struggle, which is the dialectical opposite of the relationship of exploitation, which is being condemned. For the Marxist, the truth is a truth of class: there is no truth but the truth in the struggle of the revolutionary class.

The fundamental law of history, which is the law of the class struggle, implies that society is founded on violence. To the violence which constitutes the relationship of the domination of the rich over the poor, there corresponds the counter-violence of the revolution, by means of which this domination will be reversed.

The class struggle is presented as an objective, necessary law. Upon entering this process on behalf of the oppressed, one “makes” truth, one acts “scientifically”. Consequently, the conception of the truth goes hand in hand with the affirmation of necessary violence, and so, of a political amorality. Within this perspective, any reference to ethical requirements calling for courageous and radical institutional and structural reforms makes no sense.

The fundamental law of class struggle has a global and universal character. It is reflected in all the spheres of existence: religious, ethical, cultural and institutional. As far as this law is concerned, none of these spheres is autonomous. In each of them this law constitutes the determining element.

In particular, the very nature of ethics is radically called into question because of the borrowing of these theses from Marxism. In fact, it is the transcendent character of the distinction between good and evil, the principle of morality, which is implicitly denied in the perspective of the class struggle.

(Emphasis supplied and paragraph numbers omitted.) To borrow an old Marxist chestnut, John Paul stands the Marxist approach to class struggle on its head. Recall that John Paul acknowledges that social conflict is inevitable in historical terms (but not the fundamental law of history) and that Christians are called upon to take sides in the conflict. But John Paul denies completely the concept that social conflict is truth. Instead, he teaches that social conflict takes place in the framework of truth. The framework of truth includes the moral and juridical considerations John Paul holds to be objective and absolute. And these moral and juridical considerations exclude the exterminationist, total-war approach condemned by Leo, Pius, and John Paul. Thus, the pernicious consequences of class struggle—political amorality, the denial of morality itself—identified by Cardinal Ratzinger are avoided. In other words, John Paul saves social conflict from the errors of Marxist class struggle as the Church identified them.

We will lay aside the question of whether or not the magisterial characterization of Marxism in the Instruction (or in Centesimus annus or Laborem exercens) is accurate for each and every instantiation of Marxism. It probably is not, as Marxism may be said in many ways and Marxists frequently disagree with each other about the precise contours of Marxist thought. However, it is plain that the Church’s understanding, complete or not, of Marxist class struggle up to 1991 was very much on John Paul’s mind when he wrote Centesimus annus, and that understanding is important to understand just how far John Paul was willing to go to in support of positive social conflict. To put it another way: it is not hugely important whether or not the Instruction categorizes the spectrum of Marxist thought, what is important is that it reflects the Church’s understanding of class struggle in the Marxist sense during the first part of John Paul’s reign.

What, therefore, do we have in John Paul’s magisterium? Several things. We have a statement that social conflict is, in historical terms, inevitable. Groups in society will inevitably come into opposition. When that happens, Christians have a duty to choose sides. This conflict can take on the character of opposition, provided that the opposition is pointed toward the common good and social justice. Opposition in these circumstances is positive, to use John Paul’s phrase. It is when the opposition takes on the character of total war, of seeking to annihilate one’s opponents at any cost without reference to objective moral and juridical norms, that social conflict becomes impermissible.

On one hand, therefore, the Holy Father’s message today reflects John Paul’s thinking. Recall that he says,

It is a challenge to build up society, communities and businesses by acting as peacemakers. It is to show mercy by refusing to discard people, harm the environment, or seek to win at any cost. To do so requires “the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process”. To act in this way means to choose solidarity as a way of making history and building friendship in society. Active nonviolence is a way of showing that unity is truly more powerful and more fruitful than conflict. Everything in the world is inter-connected. Certainly differences can cause frictions. But let us face them constructively and non-violently, so that “tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and life-giving unity,” preserving “what is valid and useful on both sides”.

(Emphasis supplied.) He recognizes, we think, the aspects of social conflict that John Paul recognizes, notably that, as a historical fact, it is inevitable. He also recognizes that the total-war approach to social conflict is impermissible; one simply may not seek to win at any cost. As we have seen at length above, these are key points in John Paul’s teaching on social conflict.

Another brief digression, if you’ll bear with us. We probably do not have room here to unpack the Holy Father’s meaning when he talks about solidarity as “a way of making history.” But it is a particularly interesting phrase, given what we have seen so far. Perhaps we are predisposed to seeing it this way, but the expression seems to be a literal negation of the Marxist concept of history as class struggle. Furthermore, while John Paul did not speak in terms of making history through solidarity, one could read numbers 39 and 40 of Sollicitudo rei socialis in these terms, especially as John Paul saw solidarity as the key toward moving away from the “politics of blocs” and the collapse of imperialism, two major features of politics in the 20th century in his view. Whether or not the Holy Father intended to point in this direction and toward the famous “end of history” discussed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union is an open question, which we will ultimately lay aside, too. However, it is an interesting and evocative phrase that probably does merit exploration.

However, returning to the matter at hand, we think that the Holy Father, in promoting nonviolence as a “style of politics,” takes a step back from the radical conclusions John Paul reached. Motivated by the common good and keeping in mind the limits imposed by morality, opposition is sometimes necessary. When properly understood, opposition can be positive. Now, we do not mean to underplay the importance of the limits articulated by John Paul. They are serious limitations that must be considered very carefully, but neither should they be seen as marking out a space that cannot be inhabited. For his part, the Holy Father seems to resist the conclusion that social conflict may be permissible in his message today, instead promoting small-scale solidarity and “diversified and life-giving unity,” however that is to be understood.

It would be perverse, it is safe to say, to spend a lot of time talking about the circumstances under which social conflict is permissible in a message for a World Day of Peace. At the same time, it seems strange to present an approach to resolving inevitable conflicts in society that minimizes opposition as a viable option. Certainly every effort should be made to resolve these inevitable conflicts through solidarity on a personal level and through efforts to achieve unity, but some conflicts require one party or the other to take on the character of opposition. The solution, of course, is to base politics on the common good, remembering that the common good of the state is peace. This, ultimately, is the insight John Paul brings to his discussion of social conflict. (Unsurprisingly, Pius XI left it there for him to develop.)

We have devoted a lot of space to the dubia submitted by Cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra, and Meisner to the Holy Father regarding Amoris laetitia, and we will not bore you with a rehearsal of that issue, except to note that it is John Paul’s magisterium that is in question there. Especially his major intervention on moral theology, Veritatis splendor. We are in the midst, it seems, of a great forgetting of John Paul’s pontificate. That one might overlook this or that document or speech or event is understandable. Between 1978 and 2005, John Paul produced a staggering amount of stuff, magisterial and otherwise, and it is likely that only John Paul was able to keep it all straight in his head. However, it is less understandable that major interventions of his pontificate, including Centesimus annus, Laborem exercens, and Sollicitudo rei socialis, are forgotten or mentioned briefly. Especially when they treat in detail a particular question, such as social conflict. Now, one can talk about broader trends in moral theology and traditional doctrine, but one has a much harder time getting around John Paul in the social magisterium, since, given the relative newness of the Church’s teachings and John Paul’s lengthy reign, he accounts for rather a lot of it.

Perhaps, as we go forward, the Holy Father’s comments, as with this message, will spark a ressourcement of John Paul’s teaching. It has gone from being misrepresented to being forgotten. Maybe in the next iteration, it will simply be followed.

Catholics and liberalism in the Trump moment

Donald Trump has been elected the forty-fifth president of the United States, defeating, to the surprise of many, not least her supporters, Hillary Clinton. Clinton had been strongly favored to win this election, but by the evening of November 8, it was obvious to all observers that Clinton’s candidacy was in serious trouble. Mortal peril, it turns out.

Already there has been the usual routine following a presidential campaign, especially one with a surprise ending. Trump’s supporters are overjoyed (they thought they’d lose); Clinton’s are devastated (they were entitled to victory). And already the narrative is shaping up that the 2016 election was really about class and economic anxiety. This explains why voters rejected in key “Rust Belt” states the shopworn combination of dreary liberal policies and identity politics that Clinton seemed to prefer to meat-and-potatoes proposals for improving their lives. Of course, there was likely more to it than that, and Clinton’s supporters aren’t completely wrong when they decry bigotry among Trump’s supporters.

The bottom line is that Trump has won and Catholics now have to figure out what to do in the Trump moment.

This will not be easy. Trump has been particularly vexing for serious Catholics since he declared his candidacy. His policy proposals, his personal life, and his demeanor all troubled, though in different dimensions and to different extents, Catholics considering pulling the lever for Trump. We note, to take one brief example, that many of Trump’s signature policies are reconcilable with Catholic doctrine only with great difficulty. Pius XII condemned, in Exsul Familia, the absolutist attitude toward immigration that Trump adopted, identifying instead a natural right of migration that must be respected by nations. And Trump, occasionally calling for measures best described as economic populism, nevertheless hewed fairly closely to conservative American orthodoxy on some economic points, which, despite the protestations of some Catholics in the media, is reconcilable with Catholic doctrine not at all. This is all in addition to the darker side of Trump’s candidacy. It cannot be denied that Trump brought out bigoted elements of society. Everyone knows that he demonized immigrants from Mexico and Latin America and promised to build a wall to keep them out. This led to some nasty elements—racists, for lack of a more decorous word—latching on to Trump. And Trump, ever the showman and entertainer, flirted with those elements. Many Catholics, acknowledging the Church’s teachings about xenophobia, disordered nationalism, and racism, objected vehemently to Trump on these grounds.

But, at the same time, there was strong support for Trump among Catholics. In fact, Trump snapped a long trend of a majority of Catholics voting for the Democratic nominee. (Before Trump, according to the Pew study we just linked, the last Republican in recent years to win a majority of Catholic votes was George W. Bush in 2004.) Part of this was, of course, the deep Catholic antipathy for Hillary Clinton, who marked herself out long ago as a staunch opponent of the Church’s positions on abortion and contraception. Clinton made her radical pro-choice positions such a central part of her platform that Trump started out with an advantage among many Catholics. And she went far beyond previous Democratic candidates by promising to repeal the lifesaving Hyde Amendment, for example. On the other hand, given Trump’s promises to rescind some of Obama’s executive orders, including the anti-clerical contraception mandate, and to appoint pro-life judges to the federal judiciary, it is understandable that his initial advantage carried through to the polls. But we suspect that Trump’s message of economic populism also resonated with many Catholics, many of whom no doubt come from Rust Belt states with long traditions of organized labor, all of which have suffered greatly under the neoliberal policies of the last thirty years.

Whatever the reason, in the end, Catholics did pull the lever for Trump.

All of this meant that Trump was, perhaps rightly, an extraordinarily divisive figure in Catholic circles. Consider the First Things crowd as one example of many. Rusty Reno and Mark Bauerlein, the bosses of the publication, came out, eventually, for Trump. George Weigel and Robert George, two longtime contributors, on the other hand, were strongly opposed to Trump during the campaign. Even the dismissal of Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher from the National Catholic Register seemed to be a function of some of the division that the Trump candidacy caused among Catholics. And this is without discussing the enthusiastic Trumpists in the clergy, including, for example, Fr. Frank Pavone, who managed to create a serious controversy with a pro-Trump infomercial he made over the corpse of an aborted child. Of course, perhaps all of this is a function of the general politicization of Catholic life. Conservatives read the Register; liberals read the Reporter. Conservatives support Republicans enthusiastically; liberals support Democrats enthusiastically. So on, so forth. At any rate, it does not appear from the early reactions that Trump will be any less divisive now among Catholics than he was during the campaign, especially as Catholics begin to figure out how to navigate the Trump moment.

Consider, if you’ll bear with us, some of the early comments from Catholic media. At the National Catholic Register, Edward Pentin has a long interview with Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, a prelate no doubt well known to readers of Semiduplex, about the election. Cardinal Burke articulates a fairly sunny view of Trump’s election. A selection:

Your Eminence, what is your reaction to the news of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president?

I think that it is a clear sign of the will of the people. I understand that the voter turnout was stronger than usual, and I think that the American people have awoken to the really serious situation in which the country finds itself with regard to the common good, the fundamental goods that constitute the common good, whether it be the protection of human life itself, the integrity of marriage and the family or religious liberty. That a candidate like Donald Trump — who was completely out of the normal system of politics — could be elected is an indication that our political leaders need to listen more carefully to the people and, in my judgment, return to those fundamental principles that safeguard the common good that were so clearly enunciated at the foundation of the country in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution.

(Italics in original; emphasis supplied.) The Cardinal goes on to say,

Some are calling this a golden opportunity for the Church, particularly because of Trump’s position on life issues and religious freedom.

Exactly; what he has said about pro-life issues, family issues and also issues regarding religious freedom shows a great disposition to hear the Church on these matters and to understand that these are fundamentally questions of the moral law, not questions of religious confession. They are questions of the moral law, which religion in the country, as the Founding Fathers understood from the start, is meant to support and to sustain. The government needs the help of religious leadership in order to hold to an ethical norm.

(Italics and hyperlink in original; emphasis supplied.) The whole interview, however, is well worth reading. Cardinal Burke is not one of these clerical Trumpists who trade their birettas for their Make America Great Again caps; he acknowledges that it will be the duty of Catholics to speak up against any of Trump’s policies that are incompatible with the true faith. But, on the whole, it is apparent that Cardinal Burke is supportive of Trump as he conceives of him.

It is unfortunate, however, that Cardinal Burke embraces so wholeheartedly the idea that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution enunciate principles that safeguard the common good. (Don’t worry, dear reader, we are not wasting your time; this will all be relevant shortly.) They simply do not, insofar as the Declaration and Constitution deny the truth about God and man’s duty to profess the true religion, as reason and revelation make it intelligible to him. In point of fact, they articulate an erroneous liberalism, as they attempt to create a neutral sphere in which individuals exercise free choice without constraint. This is unacceptable from a Catholic standpoint. In Immortale Dei, Leo XIII clearly articulated the principle that,

[T]he State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion — it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.

(Emphasis supplied.) One may find similar principles articulated in Diuturnum illud and Libertas praestantissimum. One sees, therefore, that the Declaration and the Constitution are in some meaningful way opposed to this truth, and, insofar as they are opposed, the extent to which they serve the common good is debatable. Perhaps one could argue that they further the common good defined as the highest natural good, and that that is somehow sufficient, though such an argument would be contrary to the teaching of Immortale Dei. (The common end of the polity is peace, we note.) It would also be nonsensical, since the state would conceivably pursue the common good through natural reason, but St. Paul and Dei Filius teach us that natural reason is sufficient to learn of the existence of God and the dictates of natural religion. At that juncture, one becomes responsible for learning what God has revealed, St. Pius X teaches in Pascendi. The bottom line, however, is that Cardinal Burke’s comments reveal the extent to which liberalism has penetrated into conservative Catholic circles. There is no other way to characterize the Declaration and Constitution. They are fundamentally liberal documents. And that is a problem for a Catholic.

We’ll come back to this in a few minutes.

There are other takes on Trump from the Catholic world, not so rosy as Cardinal Burke’s. At America, of all places, C.C. Pecknold calls Trump “America’s biggest gamble.” And there are still more critical views of Trump to be found. For example, at the Catholic Herald, Marc Barnes writes,

Despite the general disappointment that the United States has just elected an incompetent, immoral buffoon to embarrass us before the nations, there are several reasons for American Catholics to celebrate a Trump victory. By “celebrate”, I mean “to quietly, timidly, and ironically shrug thy shoulders skyward”, for these are not victories guaranteed or even strongly assured. They are the campaign promises of a business mogul with no reputation for heartfelt sympathy with the moral concerns of Catholics. Nevertheless, we’ve been promised a conservative Supreme Court nominee, a pro-life leader, and the protection of religious freedoms. Insofar as we can genuinely hope to get them, we can allow ourselves a smile.

There. We smiled. Now it is time to frown. The main argument made by conservative Catholics pulling their eyebrows out over who to vote for was that, in comparison with Clinton, “Trump is the lesser of two evils.” Very well: We have elected an evil. If we have an elected an evil then an active Catholic celebration of Donald Trump would be disingenuous in the extreme. At the very least, it would show that all this “lesser of two evils” talk was just that – talk – and that conservative Catholics who so argued are wedded to conservatism; flirting with Catholicism.

(Emphasis supplied.) The thrust of Barnes’s argument is that Trump’s prescriptions for improving the lives of ordinary, working class Americans are, by and large, drawn from the basic Republican playbook. He says,

We cannot mindlessly assent to the capitalism that Trump offers up as our salvation – it is not individual self-interest and market competition, but a genuine pursuit of the common good, that will make America great again. We are still called to agitate (with Leo XIII, Pius XI, Benedict XVI, Francis, and all the rest) for a just wage for labourers, a wage “sufficient to lead a life worthy of man and to fulfil family responsibilities properly” (Pope John XXII, Mater et Magistra). A Catholic economy is not a liberal economy any more than a Catholic morality is a conservative morality. It is time to make the distinction.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is, of course, a hugely important insight. Just as a Catholic, following Immortale Dei and Diuturnum illud, cannot profess without reservation to support the fundamentally agnostic order enshrined in the Declaration and Constitution, neither can a Catholic, following Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, and Caritas in veritate, profess without reservation to support the liberal economic order. Indeed, it must be observed that the religious agnosticism and economic liberalism are bound up inextricably in a broader liberal ideology that is fundamentally opposed to the Church. That is, there is one doctrine that contradicts both Immortale Dei and Rerum novarum, and that doctrine is liberalism. Insofar as Trump proposes mere liberalism to solve the economic problems confronting many Americans, Catholics should be chary at best. Remember Henri Grenier’s lesson that liberalism is corrosive of society itself (3 Thomistic Philosophy no. 1154), as we have all observed over recent years.

This is, of course, where we must, very regretfully, part ways with Cardinal Burke. To the extent that the Cardinal sees Trump as a return to the liberalism enshrined in the Declaration and the Constitution, we cannot see that Trump’s victory is a good thing. Indeed, given his aggressive postures on so many issues, it seems like the worst possible thing. The liberalism of the Obama government, though implacably opposed to the Church, was at least bloodless and technocratic. Liberalism dressed up in populism and intolerance would be a significantly worse outcome than four more years of Obama-style liberalism. Of course, one may distinguish the good liberalism of the Founders from the bad liberalism of Obama; however, finding the principled basis to make such a distinction is harder than it seems. Liberalism is liberalism, and it is always ultimately corrosive to orderly society.

But one silver lining to a Trump presidency is the effect that Trump’s victory has had on liberalism, especially in the context of global trends. Matthew Schmitz, best known as an editor at First Things, has a piece at the Spectator, in which he argues:

In her concession speech, Clinton said her goal had been ‘breaking down all the barriers that hold any American back from achieving their dreams’. This is the dream of liberalism, which seeks freedom from any social or economic constraint. Elites like Clinton feel confident that they can navigate a deregulated society in which class, gender, and race are all fluid. They support deregulated markets as well, confident that free trade and open borders will serve their own interests in the near term and the whole country’s in the longer term. 

The rest of America isn’t so sure. The people who put Trump into office want security and solidarity, not creative destruction. They look askance at the Trans-Pacific Partnership and transgender rights. They do not want broken barriers and shattered ceilings, they want four walls of adobe slats and a roof over their heads. 

In mild and radical ways, people across the world are turning away from a liberal belief in open borders, open markets, and the ability of formal procedures to ward off debate over fundamental questions. We can see this in the choice of British citizens to vote for Brexit; in the fact that France’s leading presidential candidate is Marine Le Pen. In Austria, the anti-immigrant Freedom Party has entered the run-off for the presidential race. In Hungary, Viktor Orban has moved the country toward Christian nationalism and an alliance with Russia. The Law and Justice party, socially conservative and economically interventionist, has moved Poland away from the liberal consensus of free-market secularity. 

(Hyperlinks in original; emphasis supplied.) Schmitz goes on to conclude:

Voters sense the need for a deeper solidarity and a higher order than liberalism can give them. They don’t want to shatter ceilings if it means they have no roof in a storm. Trump offers protection to some Americans but leaves others out in the cold. Who will articulate a politics that is hospitable to all?

(Emphasis supplied.) Knowing Schmitz’s body of work, we suspect that we know who he has in mind—Catholics. Especially those Catholics who have come to realize what we have briefly sketched out above: it is impossible to be a good Catholic and a good liberal.

To implement this solution, obviously, Catholics must present clearly and firmly the Church’s economic teachings, but to whom? In the first place, it is a part of the Catholic mission to remind politicians that the Church, which has a divine mandate to interpret and protect the natural law, has pronounced upon these matters. Maybe some politicians will listen. Barnes points to the speech Bernie Sanders gave at the Vatican during the Democratic primaries as an example of a more thorough engagement with Catholic social teaching. And it is hard to disagree with that point. Sanders’s speech is an example of a politician who has at least made an effort to engage with the Church’s economic doctrine (or deputed a staffer to do it). It is nothing groundbreaking or especially insightful, but it is a fair reading from a place of engagement:

The essential wisdom of Centesimus Annus is this: A market economy is beneficial for productivity and economic freedom. But if we let the quest for profits dominate society; if workers become disposable cogs of the financial system; if vast inequalities of power and wealth lead to marginalization of the poor and the powerless; then the common good is squandered and the market economy fails us. Pope John Paul II puts it this way: profit that is the result of “illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people . . . has not justification, and represents an abuse in the sight of God and man.” (Para43).

We are now twenty-five years after the fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. Yet we have to acknowledge that Pope John Paul’s warnings about the excesses of untrammeled finance were deeply prescient. Twenty-five years after Centesimus Annus, speculation, illicit financial flows, environmental destruction, and the weakening of the rights of workers is far more severe than it was a quarter century ago. Financial excesses, indeed widespread financial criminality on Wall Street, played a direct role in causing the world’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

(Emphasis supplied.) Certainly, politicians who take the time to engage with the social teaching of the popes are bound to find new approaches to the questions presented by the modern age, approaches set forth with authority. Yet, Barnes notes that Sanders was a hopelessly conventional Democratic politician on the questions of abortion and contraception. No doubt, Sanders would seek to sever the Church’s economic teachings from her teachings about morality and the proper course of life.

But any attempt to divorce, say, the Church’s economic teaching from the Church’s teaching about the right ordering of society or the Church’s moral teaching is doomed to failure from the outset. In fact, it is ultimately liberalism. Recall Schmitz’s point that liberalism seeks to break down barriers and make all things fluid. Grenier would say that this is because liberalism atomizes society and makes the individual the measure of all things. Whatever the pathology, the answer is clear: one cannot propose the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics but attempt to claim no room for the Church on the state’s obligations to God or the right ordering of economic life, and one cannot call for a just wage as demanded by the good and holy popes of modernity without also calling for the state to recognize and foster the true faith of Christ, handed down by His Church.

To demand that the Church leave any one arena is to give science or philosophy of one sort or another supremacy over the Church. This is what liberalism demands, because liberalism, being fundamentally agnostic, requires science and philosophy to support its conclusions. Thus, the liberal has to privilege science and philosophy over Catholicism in order to achieve his desired result. This is, however, St. Pius X explains, the favored method of the Modernists:

This becomes still clearer to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In the writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate now one doctrine now another so that one would be disposed to regard them as vague and doubtful. But there is a reason for this, and it is to be found in their ideas as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Hence in their books you find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they write history they pay no heed to the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechise the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between theological and pastoral exegesis and scientific and historical exegesis. So, too, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, when they treat of philosophy, history, criticism, feeling no horror at treading in the footsteps of Luther, they are wont to display a certain contempt for Catholic doctrines, or the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be rebuked for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, guided by the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly criticise the Church because of her sheer obstinacy in refusing to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, after having blotted out the old theology, endeavour to introduce a new theology which shall follow the vagaries of their philosophers.

(Emphasis supplied.) But it cannot be denied that a true liberal switches back and forth between sound Catholic doctrine and liberal economics and history with ease. And why shouldn’t he? Liberalism tells him that he is the judge of all things, and liberalism the only verdict worth reaching. But Christ’s Church tells Catholics that it doesn’t work that way. One cannot have everything both ways. In other words, a Catholic cannot stop at proposing the Church’s economic teaching to politicians; a Catholic must propose all of the Church’s teachings to a politician, lest he fall into the trap of liberalism and Modernism.

And, of course, a Catholic must propose the Church’s teaching to his or her fellow Catholics. It is plain, as we can see, that liberalism holds a strong grip on the minds of many Catholics, including high prelates. As the Holy Father’s Year of Mercy comes to an end, we must recall that it is a spiritual work of mercy to instruct one’s brothers and sisters in Christ in the true doctrine of Christ’s Church, which is the pure apostolic faith, protected and handed down over the centuries. Correcting them when they profess liberalism, which is incompatible with the Catholic faith, is a great work of mercy. No Catholic should be content to see a fellow Catholic mired in liberalism and Modernism. It is also a prudent political decision, since more Catholics demanding that politicians retreat from the social and spiritual poison of liberalism will surely garner more attention from politicians.

There is, of course, the possibility of progress under a Trump administration. Perhaps Trump will dismantle, even in part, the legal support for abortion in the United States by appointing judges committed to upholding the natural law. Perhaps Trump will rescind the anticlerical decrees of the Obama government. And perhaps Trump will attack the foundations of economic liberalism in the United States. He has said he will do all this. But it is equally possible that Trump will articulate immigration policies that have been roundly rejected by the Church. He has said he will do this. It is possible that he will encourage racist and xenophobic behavior. He has done this. And it is possible that, despite his promises, he will fail to appoint pro-life judges. And it is possible that his solution for the economic failures that swept him into office is little more than more economic liberalism. Certainly, no one would accuse him of being hugely consistent. The bottom line is that, where Trump is serious about governing consistently with the Church’s teachings, Catholics ought to support him, if from a distance. And where he contradicts the Church’s teachings—especially on immigration and racism—Catholics ought to resist him.

But above this, Catholics in the Trump moment ought to strengthen one another’s faith in Christ and one another’s understanding of the teachings of the Church. Catholics ought to also propose to politicians and our countrymen the fullness of Catholic teaching. Not only will this be to their spiritual advantage but it will also be to the nation’s material advantage. Let us be realistic: Donald Trump is a human politician. The best-case scenario is that he will disappoint Catholics one way and other. All politicians do. And, to be even more realistic, we know him well enough by now to know that the best-case scenario is a reach. But, though Trump will probably disappoint, Catholics must recognize that the forces that brought him to power are not going to disappear simply because he is an ineffective or inconsistent leader. People will still be dissatisfied with all the corrosive effects of liberalism. And, if (when?) Trump drops the ball, Catholics ought to be ready to step into the void to tell the politicians and voters who supported Trump—as well as the people who shared some of their concerns, but could not look past Trump’s evident flaws as a candidate—that there is another way to fight liberalism.

One needs only to look to Peter.

Women’s ordination and Anglican orders

As we mentioned yesterday, the Holy Father has poured a measure of cold water on the hopes of the progressives in the Church who wish to see women ordained to the priesthood. Responding to a question during one of his famous in-flight press conferences, the Holy Father stated that St. John Paul’s Ordinatio sacerdotalis is the final word on the question. This has provoked the all-too-predictable outrage from progressives. Read the comments here, for a taste.  Generally, despite the Church’s clarification that Ordinatio sacerdotalis is infallible, even if it is not an ex cathedra exercise of the extraordinary papal magisterium (though one might argue that it is such an exercise), the progressives argue, for a variety of reasons, that John Paul got it wrong. Now, this is based in a faulty understanding of the Church and the deposit of faith; progressives (and some conservatives) see the Church as a political entity with the choice to define its doctrine.

With this ecclesial vision firmly in mind, the progressives’ argument proceeds as it often does; that is, on grounds of fairness and inclusion. So far, they hold, the Church has chosen to define its doctrine to “unfairly” “exclude” women from the priesthood. If this sounds like the recent argument over admitting bigamists to Holy Communion, it’s because the progressives don’t have a very deep bench, in terms of arguments. But, of course, we know better, dear reader. The Church is not a political entity and the Church does not get a choice in its doctrine. The Church must obey the apostolic mandate—indeed, a mandate arguably founded in divine law—to hand on what it received, and to do so faithfully, neither adding to nor subtracting from the deposit of faith. This is why the universal ordinary magisterium is so important, especially when it is specifically confirmed by a pope, who is the visible sign of the unity of the Church.

But if the progressives are right and the magisterium is just a political choice, what other choices have the popes gotten wrong? Consider Leo XIII’s Apostolicae curae, for example, which declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void.” The question of the validity of Anglican orders was hotly litigated until Leo settled the question. But some have noted that, ultimately, the decision to issue Apostolicae curae was based upon the “politicking” of Herbert Cardinal Vaughan, then the archbishop of Westminster, an opponent of early ecumenical efforts between Catholics and Anglicans. This, then, ought to be in the progressives’ wheelhouse. Indeed, the argument that Leo issued Apostolicae curae for purely political reasons is stronger than the argument that John Paul issued Ordinatio sacerdotalis for political reasons. Thus, by the progressives’ standards, it is no less likely that Leo XIII got it wrong when he said that Anglican orders were “absolutely null and utterly void” than it is when John Paul II said that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood of the New Testament.

A brief aside. Though we hope that our faint humor—very faint, most likely—is obvious enough, we emphasize here that we are joking. Certainly men and women of good will can disagree about the circumstances that led to Apostolicae curae, or whether subsequent developments in the Church of England have affected the applicability of the bull. On with the joke.

Progressives may decide, therefore, that Leo XIII did get it wrong and that Anglican orders are valid. There are, then, any number of churches or ecclesial communities or whatever that have preserved apostolic succession and the sacraments. Certainly, the Catholic Church has done so, but the Orthodox and the Anglicans have, too. And one might argue that anyone in communion with the Anglicans has, but we needn’t go that far down the path. So, we can return to their original problem, which is that the Catholic Church teaches that women may not be ordained to the priesthood of the New Testament as a matter of divine law. They think St. John Paul II got it wrong when he confirmed the universal ordinary magisterium by a definitive act. But another ecclesial community, the Church of England (and many other Anglican groups), holds that women may be ordained to the priesthood of the New Testament. Indeed, the Anglicans ordain women not merely to the presbyterate but also to the episcopate. And, remember, we have already decided that the Anglicans have valid orders and apostolic succession because we have already decided that Leo XIII whiffed his big decision, too.

The question, then, is why do the progressives stay formally in communion with Rome? Once you decide that the magisterial acts of this or that pope are subject to review and contradiction—indeed, once you decide that they are merely political acts of the head of a political organization—you can read yourself into all sorts of interesting ideas. The entire world opens up before you, almost as if you are standing on the pinnacle of the Temple or on a high mountain, to take two places entirely at random. The foregoing exercise is entirely reasonable from their standpoint. You can read yourself into ultramontane Anglo-Catholicism that includes the ordination of women, if you want. So why stay in the Church of Rome? Is it simply because they are a disaffected wing of a political party, waiting for more propitious circumstances at the next party conference? Certainly that is how many progressives have acted since well before the Council, and why so many of them clamor for a new council that will, at long last, make the Church as vibrant as the Presbyterians or the liberal Lutherans. But could it be something deeper, a sense that, despite dreary progressive theology and drearier progressive politics, there is something True at the heart of the Church, which cannot be cast aside so lightly as all that?

 

The Holy Father pours cold water on women’s ordination?

Like many readers, we follow the Holy Father’s in-flight press conferences closely, since they appear to be, if not an action of his papal magisterium, then a means of communication close to his heart. Following the Holy Father’s recent trip to Sweden, he was asked a question about women’s ordination. You may recall that he recently established a commission to explore the historical aspects of deaconesses. While Benedict XVI’s Omnium in mentem severed in some way—or, more precisely, concretized finally a process of severing that began with Lumen gentium—the diaconate from the episcopate and the presbyterate, it has nevertheless been seen by many that the push for deaconesses is but the thin end of the wedge for women’s ordination into the presbyterate and episcopate. This is, obviously, one of the great dreams of progressives in the Church today. But the Holy Father appears to draw a bright line under St. John Paul II’s Ordinatio sacerdotalis, which teaches infallibly that women may not be ordained.

Here is Hannah Brockhaus’s coverage at the National Catholic Register:

During a press conference Tuesday aboard the papal plane from Sweden to Rome, Pope Francis said the issue of women priests has been clearly decided, while also clarifying the essential role of women in the Catholic Church.

“On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the final word is clear, it was said by St. John Paul II and this remains,” Pope Francis told journalists Nov. 1.

The question concerning women priests in the Church was asked during the flight back to Rome after the Pope’s Oct. 31-Nov. 1 trip to Sweden to participate in a joint Lutheran-Catholic commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

(Emphasis supplied.) Brockhaus goes on to note that the Holy Father has been clear on this point previously, citing Ordinatio sacerdotalis repeatedly:

In a press conference returning from Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5, 2013, he answered the same question: “with reference to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says, ‘No.’ John Paul II said it, but with a definitive formulation. That is closed, that door.”

He said that on the theology of woman he felt there was a “lack of a theological development,” which could be developed better. “You cannot be limited to the fact of being an altar server or the president of Caritas, the catechist … No! It must be more, but profoundly more, also mystically more.”

On his return flight from Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families Sept. 28, 2015, the Pope again said that women priests “cannot be done,” and reiterated that a theology of women needs to “move ahead.”

“Pope St. John Paul II after long, long intense discussions, long reflection said so clearly,” that female ordination is not possible, he said.

(Emphasis supplied.) However, it is unclear to us the extent that the Holy Father sees the question of deaconesses as inextricably tied up with the broader question of women’s ordination, which he apparently views as settled by Ordinatio sacerdotalis.

As we noted at the time, some members of the Holy Father’s deaconess commission are known to be advocates for the ordination of women at least to the diaconate. The argument of Phyllis Zagano, for example, is that while Ordinatio sacerdotalis (probably, she would say) settles the question of ordination to the presbyterate and, a fortiori, the episcopate, it does not settle the question of ordination to the diaconate. In other words, the question of deaconesses is not connected to the questions answered by Ordinatio sacerdotalis. Of course, such an argument likely creates disunities within Holy Orders and immediately serves to create two tiers of ordained ministers. Which is the next step in the argument from the advocates for women’s ordination, to be sure. At least, it has always been the argument.

So, while it is greatly cheering to hear the Holy Father reaffirm simply and directly the infallible pronouncement of John Paul II, we are left wondering what his overall picture of the situation is. Does he, like Zagano and her associates, think that Ordinatio sacerdotalis is limited to the episcopate and presbyterate? Or does he think that the diaconate is somehow off to one side? Certainly he would not err if he considered the diaconate somehow different. The fathers of the Second Vatican Council, St. John Paul, and Benedict each considered it as somehow separate from the episcopate and presbyterate. However, the extent of the difference is, we think, an open question.

 

An update from Pius XI

A few days ago, we posted Pius XII and the question of transsexuality, essentially calling for a ressourcement of the magisterium of Papa Pacelli in the light of a recent intervention by Christian Spaemann. A good friend of ours contacted us to remind us, gently, that there was more than one Pius to address this question. In Casti connubii, the towering Papa Ratti briefly touched upon the issue. We quote a longer passage, because Pius XI’s point comes at the very end of his argument about compulsory sterilization:

Finally, that pernicious practice must be condemned which closely touches upon the natural right of man to enter matrimony but affects also in a real way the welfare of the offspring. For there are some who over solicitous for the cause of eugenics, not only give salutary counsel for more certainly procuring the strength and health of the future child – which, indeed, is not contrary to right reason – but put eugenics before aims of a higher order, and by public authority wish to prevent from marrying all those whom, even though naturally fit for marriage, they consider, according to the norms and conjectures of their investigations, would, through hereditary transmission, bring forth defective offspring. And more, they wish to legislate to deprive these of that natural faculty by medical action despite their unwillingness; and this they do not propose as an infliction of grave punishment under the authority of the state for a crime committed, not to prevent future crimes by guilty persons, but against every right and good they wish the civil authority to arrogate to itself a power over a faculty which it never had and can never legitimately possess.

Those who act in this way are at fault in losing sight of the fact that the family is more sacred than the State and that men are begotten not for the earth and for time, but for Heaven and eternity. Although often these individuals are to be dissuaded from entering into matrimony, certainly it is wrong to brand men with the stigma of crime because they contract marriage, on the ground that, despite the fact that they are in every respect capable of matrimony, they will give birth only to defective children, even though they use all care and diligence.

Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects; therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm, or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason. St. Thomas teaches this when inquiring whether human judges for the sake of preventing future evils can inflict punishment, he admits that the power indeed exists as regards certain other forms of evil, but justly and properly denies it as regards the maiming of the body. “No one who is guiltless may be punished by a human tribunal either by flogging to death, or mutilation, or by beating.”

Furthermore, Christian doctrine establishes, and the light of human reason makes it most clear, that private individuals have no other power over the members of their bodies than that which pertains to their natural ends; and they are not free to destroy or mutilate their members, or in any other way render themselves unfit for their natural functions, except when no other provision can be made for the good of the whole body.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is, in capsule form, essentially what Pius XII said in his address to the Italian urologists. Thus, we see that Pius XI and Pius XII are in complete accord on this issue. However, we think it would probably do violence to Pius XI’s argument to prooftext or excerpt the last paragraph without acknowledging the context or the trajectory of the argument. That is, it appears that Pius is arguing that neither by compulsion nor persuasion may a person be sterilized prospectively. (He appears to leave the door open for retributive, penal sterilization or therapeutic sterilization, but he does not explore those possibilities.) In other words, no one has the authority to do this: not the state, not the individual. Does this change the bearing Casti connubii has on Spaemann’s argument? Maybe. But it is worth talking about in any event.

Now, none of this should be taken to imply an answer. Indeed, Pius XI and Pius XII merely get us to the point where we can formulate the question. Too often there is a willingness to approach these questions in an environment more or less sterile from a magisterial standpoint, and, certainly, there is no reason why natural reason may not be invoked in the first place. However, given the Church’s unique role as the authentic interpreter and guard of the natural law, it would be altogether wiser to begin where good and holy popes have left off.