Identity and Discernment (2 of 2)
Culture Wars as Obstacle to Understanding CSD and the Signs of the Times
Reminder: readers can view the following post, and dozens of other ones, at the Social Catholicism and a Better Kind of Politics website.
In my previous post on Identity and Discernment (1 of 2): Enabling American Catholics to Read the Signs of the Times, I offered reflections on how Catholics might draw upon some trusted sources from our tradition to renew our identities in a way that helps us to better appreciate Catholic Social Doctrine, and thereby better understand and respond to the signs of our times.
I began with the Christocentric theology and spirituality of St. Paul the Apostle, who articulated how our transformation in Christ—and in virtue—enables us to think with “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16) which is ordered to building the Church through sacrificial service, and to discern what is true and good (Rom 12:2). I built upon this with the spirituality and theology of Henri de Lubac, SJ that is deeply grounded in Pauline thought and contributed significantly to the Christocentrism of the Second Vatican Council. I emphasized how de Lubac’s theological methodology and recovery of the traditional understanding of the vir ecclesiasticus can help us to think with the Church as an aid to discernment, a way of sharing in the mind of Christ.
In the third section, I summarized how some resources from the great synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas can further elucidate the drama of Christian action reflected through these Pauline insights to illumine the place of passions like fear and anger. Being led by these passions—which for St. Paul would reflect living according to “the flesh” as opposed to “the spirit”—can, for St. Thomas Aquinas, hinder our ability to rightly discern the truth. In the fourth section, I pointed briefly to some of the social Catholics I have discussed in previous posts as exemplars with whom to identify. The participative, dialogical, and fraternal socio-political orientation of these social Catholics both followed from the tradition they received, and contributed to its further articulation by the magisterium, illustrating their alignment with the discernment of this teaching office and—in Pauline language—with the mind of Christ. If we want to live the Christian virtues in the world, therefore, we would do well to identify with such social Catholics, so I will continue to reflect upon their lives and work in subsequent posts.
To keep this previous first post on identity and discernment manageable, I have saved the following excursus for what follows in this post.
[Catholic Patrick J Buchannan, who had mainstreamed the culture wars by the 1990s]
Fear and Anger at the Cultural Left and the Failed Reception of Catholic Social Doctrine
A Thomistic understanding of how our passions can hinder the intellect can be an important resource for understanding how some of the most committed American Catholics have been obstructed from not only appreciating the meaning and potential of Catholic Social Doctrine but discerning the signs of the times. In a nutshell, I think this has happened through Catholics being drawn into the socially conservative side of the culture wars in the decades after the Second Vatican Council. This occurred as Catholics responded to the unfolding of the sexual revolution, the deterioration of family structures, and the growing threats to human life at its most vulnerable stages.
I see several reasons why post conciliar American Catholics were vulnerable to being drawn into the culture wars, and away from our social tradition, especially as it emerged from the Council.
First, Catholics wanted to uphold what they understood from their tradition to be the truth about the virtuous life, about the importance of stable families, and about human dignity. They saw these great goods threatened by the sexual revolution, which provoked their fear and anger.
Second, there is a long tradition of Catholics favoring the union of throne and altar, which contributed to the Catholic rejection of the liberal separation between Church and state, especially after the French Revolution. For this reason, it was tempting to blame “liberalism” for the loss of social goods like stable families that were understood to have been better preserved by a premodern social order of feudal Europe.
Third, the Catholic Church had a long history—especially in Europe—of relying on the coercive power of the state for assistance in upholding the moral order, which can be understood as a paternalistic way of fostering the common good. Even if American Catholics did not experience the state helping to uphold Catholic faith and morals, a more traditional order of sexual and marital ethics was largely upheld within a Protestant culture. As the unraveling of this order became clear with the sexual revolution during the years of the Second Vatican Council, some of the more tradition-minded Catholics not only blamed the council but looked back to the paternalistic past for a recovery of order. The first manifestation of such reaction was with the schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of the Society of St. Pius X, whose primary objection to the council centered on its acceptance of religious freedom through the separation of Church and state. Analogous views would later become common among zealous Catholics.
Fourth, whereas the modern tradition of social Catholicism is marked by a fraternal mode of participation in social and political life for the common good, and this became a more common part of Catholic life in the post conciliar years when seemingly every parish had a justice and peace ministry, this broad focus has been considerably reduced in recent decades. This fraternal perspective was exemplified in the “see—judge—act” model developed by Joseph Cardijn and the Young Christian Workers movement, and I will consider this at length in future posts. I have begun to spell out the importance of this distinction between a fraternal socio-political stance and a paternal one in ten previous posts (which can be found by a CNTL-F search from the main web page of this substack) and I will continue to develop this distinction in the future. For now, I will add that this fraternal way of living grows out of what Chase Padusniak describes in an important new essay as the “deep history” of modern Catholic Social Teaching in the medieval guilds, or fraternities.
Fourth, influential American Catholics including William F. Buckley Jr. and Paul Weyrich were strongly opposed to what can be described as the more “social democratic” paradigm of political economy that developed following the 1891 publication of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum: On Capital and Labor. By recognizing the role of the state in securing the common good, this social tradition gradually brought American Catholics into alliance with the social reformers of the Progressive and New Deal eras, in parallel to similar developments elsewhere. Even if these efforts in the United States were led primarily by clergy like Msgr. John A. Ryan (1869-1945), this fraternal participation for the common good continued through the postwar and postconciliar years, especially by those following the see-judge-act model. Inspired by the Second Vatican Council, and the example of visionary lay Catholics like Robert Schuman of France, American Catholic laity increasingly joined together in fraternal collaboration for the common good, often inspired by Cardijn. What came to be called conservatives, on the other hand, sought to restore the pre-New Deal order of something closer to laissez faire economics, and rule by an aristocratic and wealthy class. Such Catholic conservatives—I will emphasize Buckley in some upcoming posts—used their talents and access to wealth to build a network of think tanks and media outlets to promulgate their vision, which eventually came to drown out the authentic social doctrine of the Church. The massive campaign of propaganda to promote this alternative to a Catholic social vision, combined with the fact that there has been no comparable effort to advance an authentically Catholic one, has had devastating results for the Church and world. It has resulted in a situation in which the humanistic, fraternal, and participatory vision of the Second Vatican Council and of Catholic Social Doctrine is largely unintelligible to most American Catholics, including many clergy.
Fifth, adopting the socially conservative political orientation of the “culture wars” that centers in opposing revisionist—and defending traditional—morality tends to engage the irascible passions (like fear and anger) which can distract us from the broader and properly political order of justice and the common good. The point is not that Catholics should abandon the tradition of sexual, marital, of life ethics.1 It is instead that Catholics should should participate in political life focused on the common good as the Church understands it, and recognizing the distinction between the moral law—which rules and measures each human act—and the civil law that is ordered to the common good. By adopting an alternative culture war perspective focused on fighting about a small set of issues, Catholics can be diverted from the charity that should fundamentally move us, as we see in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 social encyclical Caritas in veritate: Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth. It seems to me that the logic of this culture war stance corresponds more to what St. Paul calls the flesh than the spirit. When living in a properly Christian manner—that is, according to the spirit—Paul writes of being “all things to all men in order to save some” (1 Cor 9:22) and gladly suffers a long list of hardships (2 Cor) to exemplify and mediate the saving love of Christ. The logic of fighting the culture wars, on the other hand, seems closer to how Aquinas explains the Gospel image of the broad road that leads to destruction, namely as a life driven by the passions, in contrast to the narrow path of reason and virtue that leads to life. The logic of the culture wars similarly leads to the “us versus them” mindset. In this context, the German Catholic legal theorist Carl Schmitt’s politics of friend versus enemy—which was adopted by the Nazis—is now at least within the “Overton window” of legitimate discussion among some Catholics.
Sixth, when someone identifies with one side of the battle, and engages in that for years, this deeply shapes our character and the way we perceive truth. In my opinion, this illumines why many American Catholics find central characteristics of CSD—especially the participatory, dialogical, and collaborative methodology— to be unintelligible or misguided. It is so because of the threat posed by the cultural left, or by revulsion at transgenderism, for example. To prevent our “enemies” on the left from using the coercive power of the state against “us,” we are justified in making “friends” with aspiring autocrats and oligarchs so “we” can use the coercive power of the state to impose moral “order” on the population.
I think such deep identification of many Catholics with the conservative side of the culture wars helps to explain why they are pleased with the apparent defeat the cultural left in the fall elections. The rationale to justify this pleasure typically includes the claim that at least the current administration is better than the alternative one would have been. This judgment follows from the fact that the new administration will restrict at least some abortions, will stop funding trans surgery, and will oppose the allegedly grave threat of “wokeism.”2 If the postliberal Catholic J.D. Vance becomes President, moreover, the United States could become—according to some intellectuals—a Catholic nation. I have good reason to think that there are a number of intelligent—even learned and accomplished—Catholics whose reading of the signs of the times is not far from what I have just sketched.
I don’t think, however, that informed Catholics would come to such judgments if they understood the common good as the Church does, namely as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.” Nor would they do so if they took seriously—in light of the ongoing destruction of American institutions—Pope Benedict XVI’s programmatic call that we find in no. 7 of Caritas in veritate. Here the great Pope Theologian calls on us to fulfill the “requirement of justice and charity” to “[t]ake a stand for the common good” by being “solicitous for” and availing ourselves of the “institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally.” Nor would such Catholics think this way if they accepted the prohibition of coercion in matters of religion that we find in Dignitatis Humanae: Declaration on Religious Freedom. Nor can they provide a rationale for how their support of this “regime change” justifies the catastrophic global impact of the cancellation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the potential collapse of the postwar liberal order, or the massive transfer of wealth and power that the current Administration is working to effect. Many more examples could be given.
Compare the dystopian future threatened by the empowerment of the illiberal right—to which many Catholics contributed—with the future toward which the alternative of social Catholicism is ordered. Even if the integral and solidary humanism of CSD finds seemingly insurmountable obstacles in a fallen world, it is the way of the gospel, so it is intrinsically ordered toward reconciliation and building a society marked by social friendship. For this reason, Catholics need to live it out, and trust God for the fruits. To the extent we do so, we make visible the realm where God’s rule is breaking-in through the person and work of Jesus Christ, and through the Church that continues his redemptive work in the world.
During the opportunity for a new start that Divine Providence has provided through the pontificate of Leo XIV, we should hope, pray, and work so that more American Catholics will come to appreciate and exemplify the authentic Social Doctrine of the Church.
Of course, there is plenty of room for debate about the meaning and future development of this tradition.
This raises the question of how we assess the threats coming from the illiberal left as exemplified by “wokeism” in comparison to those from the illiberal right, which is another way of assessing the signs of the times. Although I realize that many have suffered from the excesses of the illiberal left, my argument here is that Catholics should be guided by the magisterium.