The Gospel and Human Dignity

Catholicism and Liberalism in Dialogue

In this post, I will introduce an essay entitled “The Gospel and Human Dignity: Catholicism and Liberalism in Dialogue,” by the late Drew Christiansen, SJ which is included in Social Catholicism for the 21st Century? Volume 1: Historical Perspectives and Constitutional Democracy in Peril.

As indicated by the title, the essay illustrates the fruitful dialogue and collaboration between Catholicism and the key principles of the liberal political tradition, especially in its Anglo-American forms.

The Catholic Rapprochement with Liberalism

In the first of three parts, Christiansen treats the Catholic rapprochement with liberalism, with the decisive event being the 1963 publication of St. John XXIII’s social encyclical Pacem in terris: Peace on Earth (PT). Christiansen describes PT as bringing down the curtain on Catholicism’s “long 19^th century” that began with the French Revolution. He describes it as “the first encyclical to amply embrace modernity and in particular to subscribe to several tenets of Liberalism: human rights, constitutional government, democratic participation, the self-determination of peoples, and the equality of persons, especially women.”

Christiansen explains how PT stands not only as “the threshold between … the church that defined itself by its alliance to the ancien régime, and the church as a community of faith in dialogue with the modern world, the post-Vatican II church.” Even more:

it is also a master plan for the church’s engagement with the world in which human rights advocacy has played a leading part. PT is the foundational text of modern Catholic political theology. Besides elaborating a doctrine of human rights, it presents a model of responsible, limited political authority, articulates for the first time the architectonic political norm of the universal common good, offers a new vision of the role of the church in politics and society, and embraces its call to be an instrument of peace for the one human family.

Christiansen explains how the postwar Church was able to cross this threshold by building on the four key sources of insight. The first came through “the anti-fascist struggles” of thinkers like “Jacques Maritain and Pietro Pavan.” The second came through the founding of what would become the European Union by leaders educated in Catholic Social Teaching including the Frenchmen Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, the German Konrad Adenauer, and the Italian Alcide de Gasperi. The third came through the postwar experience of the Christian Democracy these Catholic political leaders helped to build. A fourth source of insight was the experience in Catholic Action by the young priests who would become Popes John XXIII and Paul VI.

I would argue that is precisely the failure to appreciate such insights that leads influential contemporary Catholics to depart from the wise discernment of the magisterium as reflected in Catholic Social Doctrine to pursue the alternative strategy of postliberal integralism. Building on what I have treated in previous posts on Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler, Fr. Felix Varela, Msgr. John A. Ryan, Maurice Blondel, and Yves Simon, we should note that fraternal participation in efforts to build a more just world has been a distinctive characteristic of those who have helped the Church develop and advance the Social Doctrine that enables Catholics to be “salt and light” in the world (Mt 5:13-14). As we have begun to see in the examples of Louis Billot SJ, Pierre Descoqs SJ, and Reginald Garrigou-Legrange OP, however, others instead take a defensive stance toward the threats from the modern world, which combines with a Catholicism that prioritizes metaphysical speculation to the point of neglecting or denigrating fraternal participation in societal efforts toward the common good. Without the other four sources of insight, these emphases risk blinding one to the Catholic way of living charity in the modern world as indicated by the Social Doctrine of the Church. Because the magisterium has guided the Church by such insights, such a predominantly defensive and intellectualist stance further risks fostering alienation from not only society but from the discernment of the magisterium and thus from the communion of the Church.

Christiansen summarizes how this new socio-political stance of the Church builds on the work of John Courtney Murray SJ and Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae: Declaration on Human Liberty. He follows this with a brief discussion of “religion in public life,” which recognizes the legitimate concerns of those scholars who have increasingly rejected the American experiment. He draws upon Pope Francis, however, to criticize their misguided and “escapist sectarianism that turns its back on a sorely afflicted world.” Christiansen judges that “the Church’s integral ecology is inconsistent with today’s anti-liberal Christian movements,” and that the quest of such thinkers for small communities may not “cohere with the political-moral expression of Catholicism, …its sense of responsibility to the world community and to the institutions needed to serve humanity at a global level.”

Consistent with Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to foster the reception of the Council, Christiansen discusses how this pontiff “gave tribute to the Anglo-American tradition,” and “acknowledged [that] Catholics and liberal secularists …open to Christianity shared many values,” while also affirming that “seekers and believers …must move toward one another with greater openness.” Although Benedict XVI has been misleadingly presented to American conservatives through the lens of his remarks against “the dictatorship of relativism,” this lens is inadequate to the subject matter. Benedict’s most authoritative articulation of his socio-political views is found in his 2009 social encyclical—Caritas in veritate: On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth. This document clearly shows that he stands firmly in the tradition of Christian humanism and the Second Vatican Council.

[Image Courtesy of Easy-Peasy AI]

As I have discussed in previous posts, this kind of openness to broad collaboration with others in society has enabled social Catholics to collaborate with those holding different views on the most deeply held matters of faith and morality. This does not represent a capitulation to the spirit of the age, but is better understood as motivated by a respect for the human dignity of our fellow citizens, by an understanding of Christian charity as calling for a kind of social friendship, and by an understanding of the Church as an instrument of unity and peace.

Cosmopolitanism, Community and Culture

In his second main section, Christiansen discusses how the cosmopolitanism that is intrinsic to Catholicism explains why our Social Doctrine insists on the universal scope of the common good. Recognizing this, the Church has supported the “Liberal International Order” which includes institutions that address those aspects of the common good that reason dictates should be addressed at an international level, corresponding to the principle of subsidiarity.

In contrast to the anti-institutionalism that characterizes the contemporary American right—which is now more populist and libertarian than conservate in the sense of preserving institutions—Christiansen discusses “the institutional principle” that corresponds to the Catholic and classical appreciation of the social and communal dimensions of human existence. He does so by drawing upon a programmatic text from the introduction to Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical Caritas in veritate, which is especially prescient given today’s populist and oligarchic impulse to “burn down” the institutions that shape the contemporary world. This prescient text is found in no. 7, which encourages us to instead “take a stand for the common good” by taking the “institutional” and “political path of charity,” which is “no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly.”

In another subsection, Christiansen treats “globalism and local culture,” giving insight into the unique Catholic perspective that can not only recognize the subsidiary role of “a universal public authority,” but also the authentic values deserving protection in a wide variety of local cultures.

Human Rights and Religious Liberty

Christiansen’s third main part addresses human rights and religious liberty. As with his whole essay, my primary goal here is to encourage readers to carefully engage the whole text. I will enumerate a few key points. First, he discusses the Council’s affirmation of human rights and religious liberty and warns that “These convictions are at odds in recent years with illiberal populist movements and overly zealous advocates of religious liberty.” In particular, he warns that “religious freedom, though essential, is not a super-right, but like all rights is open to balancing with the rights of others and with the common good. From the perspective of the human person, such judgments are matters of conscience.”

Christiansen concludes his essay by emphasizing the importance of the authentically Catholic ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. He remarks that, on the one hand, critics of the Church’s embrace of liberalism seem to think that “Church teaching on morality ought always to be inscribed in public [law].” This is to overlook the fundamental distinction between the moral law that rules and measures every human act and the civil law that is ordered to the common good.

On the other hand, these critics seem to anachronistically hold “the imperial church model of late antiquity and the high Middle Ages” according to which the “the spiritual authority of the Church is and ought to be superior to that of secular political authority.” They similarly hold the “the seventeenth century juridical paradigm of the church as “a perfect society,” a model from the age of monarchial absolutism.” In so doing, they “ignore the Council’s abandonment of a single template for the notion of the Church as a mystery, only partially discernible through images that capture the reality of the Church in limited ways.” He explains, instead:

For Lumen gentium, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the primary image is the Church as Sacrament. For the [Gaudium et spes: The] Pastoral Constitution [on The Church in the Modern World], the underlying image is Church as Servant, the servant of humanity. These two images, Church as Sacrament and Church as Servant, provide the keys to discerning the future of Catholicism’s engagement with the world and with the Liberal political tradition.

As sacrament, the Church is the efficacious sign and instrument of God’s saving and unifying presence and action in the world. As servant, the Church promotes unity and peace through fostering the human rights consistent with human dignity, thereby acting as leaven in the world and manifesting the presence of God’s love in Christ.