Light On Dark Water

Two Interesting Notes on Church and Society

First, a piece in the National Catholic Register by Andrew Abela, dean of the School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America: taking his cue from the current and recent popes, he argues for the place of ethics–serious, non-libertarian, Christian ethics–in business; taking the economic system more or less as it is, he argues for the place of “concrete love” within it:

By this [purely profit-oriented] logic, businesses are not expected, nor even allowed, to exercise any form of solidarity, any form of religiously inspired activity: Concrete love is banished from the economy. Too many managers have accepted a belief that any decision made for reasons other than profit is somehow wrong, and so they hesitate to make investments in employee safety or quality improvements beyond those required by law or a short-term return-on-investment calculus…. It seems to me that Pope Francis wants to blow this wide open.

Read the whole thing. (Thanks to Robert Gotcher for pointing this out to me.)

Next, from the always sound Patrick J. Deneen of Notre Dame, in The American Conservative: as good a summary of the two real liberal and conservative camps in American Catholicism as you’re likely to find. (Deneen doesn’t want to use those words, but it’s hard to avoid them.) The crowd generally referred to as liberal is going the way of liberal Protestantism and is on its way out of the Church, he says, and the interesting argument is between those who believe that liberal democracy is reconcilable and salvageable with and by Christianity, and those who believe it is not, that it is poisoned at its root and is irreconcilable and unsalvageable.

It is already evident for anyone with eyes to see that elites in America are returning to their customary hostility toward Catholicism, albeit now eschewing crude prejudice in favor of Mandates and legal filings (though there’s plenty of crude prejudice, too). For those in the Murray/Neuhaus/Weigel school, it’s simply a matter of returning us to the better days, and reviving the sound basis on which the nation was founded. For those in the MacIntyre/Schindler school, America was never well-founded, so either needs to be differently re-founded or at least endured, even survived. The relationship of Catholicism to America, and America to Catholicism, began with rancor and hostility, but became a comfortable partnership forged in the cauldron of World War II and the Cold War. Was that period one of “ordinary time,” or an aberration which is now passing, returning us to the inescapably hostile relationship? A growing body of evidence suggests that the latter possibility can’t simply be dismissed out of hand….

Read the whole thing.

For my part, as anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows, I don’t embrace either view entirely. I suspect that the anti-liberals are right, but I hope they’re not. I think their philosophical analysis is probably correct, but am skeptical of the idea of a Catholic confessional state, which is where their views logically point, so am hopeful–I would like to be able to hope–that liberal democracy can be saved. I’ve written about that a good deal. Seems like I had a post called something like “Can liberal democracy be saved?” but I can’t locate it.

Maclin Horton
,

37 responses to “Two Interesting Notes on Church and Society”

  1. Grumpy

    I am with the liberal democrats. I have never read a word John Courtney Murray wrote, but I am with John Courtney Murray.

    Reply
  2. Mac

    I’m a sympathizer, at minimum, but I’m afraid that view is going to become less tenable over the next 20 years or so.

    Reply
  3. Marianne

    Deneen mentions the latest news about the UN now demanding that the Church change its doctrines with regard to sexuality and abortion. I was actually astounded when I first read that elsewhere yesterday. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Scary times.

    Reply
  4. Mac

    Yes, that was pretty shocking. And yet not. It’s not surprising that they think that, but they may have overplayed their hand. The reaction I’ve seen has been derisive, but it’s mostly been from Catholics. I wonder if or how the liberal press has reacted.

    Reply
  5. Rob G

    A friend of mine who works for the Diocese of Pittsburgh sent Deneen’s piece around to some of us yesterday. One of the things he said in his comments was, “The liberal project could only be successful if the proper anthropological view was at the foundation, and I do not think that is the case.”
    That’s pretty much the rub, methinks. The Enlightenment’s false view of man skews the entire thing in a way that makes it ultimately incompatible with traditional non-Protestant Christianity. While as an Orthodox the idea of a Catholic confessional state makes me a little nervous, I can’t help but think that philosophically the “communio” folks are right.
    I think I may have posted this link a couple weeks ago on another thread, but this piece by Jeremy Beer touches on some similar issues:
    http://anamnesisjournal.com/2013/11/communio-economics-anthropology-liberalism/
    Also, Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation is a must-read for anyone interested in these matters.

    Reply
  6. Mac

    I don’t disagree, in fact I probably agree completely that “philosophically the “communio” folks are right.” But: “The liberal project could only be successful if…” What do we count as success? The liberal project has done pretty well for itself in a whole lot of ways. I wonder if the emphasis on theological correctness as a social foundation is quite as important as we tend to think it is.
    Yes, you did post that link before, and I started to read it but it was a little dense for the moment, and I found myself thinking along the lines above. I’ll give it another shot, though. I think the page is still open in the browser on my computer at home, actually.

    Reply
  7. Rob G

    Here’s my friend’s quote in its context, which was a comment about the idea of religious liberty:
    ~~I think President Obama, because of his fledgling tyranny, has thrown into sharper relief the possible problem of the First Amendment. The “religion” of the First Amendment is a controlled religion, a “reasonable” religion, not one with the radical claims of Catholicism, or for that matter, Islam. The religion that will be free from State encroachment will be religion that “knows its place”. You can worship privately. If you don’t like abortion, “Don’t have one”. You don’t want to sleep around-then don’t (although we’ll be looking for your daughters and sons…) etc… The liberal project could only be successful if the proper anthropological view was at the foundation, and I do not think that is the case. Once the Incarnation has occurred, to ignore Jesus and the Church is to go down the wrong path, however slowly that may be revealed. Jesus is fully God and fully man, therefore the question of grace AND nature are bound up in Him.~~~
    The liberal project doesn’t give full weight (when it gives any at all) to the fact that man is fallen. The rigid anti-Pelagianism of its Protestant forebears has come full circle to a virtually uncontested uber-Pelagianism: not only can man save himself, he really doesn’t need saving. Thus, while liberalism has been materially successful, spiritually it’s been a disaster. And eventually this spiritual error will work itself out materially.

    Reply
  8. Louise

    Apologies if I have posted this before. This is Belloc’s essay on the Church and the modern state. I’d be interested in what you make of it, Maclin.
    http://www.ecatholic2000.com/cts/untitled-491.shtml

    Reply
  9. Louise

    Deneen mentions the latest news about the UN now demanding that the Church change its doctrines with regard to sexuality and abortion. I was actually astounded when I first read that elsewhere yesterday. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Scary times.
    Amazingly, I was not shocked even a tiny bit.

    Reply
  10. Louise

    A friend of mine who works for the Diocese of Pittsburgh sent Deneen’s piece around to some of us yesterday. One of the things he said in his comments was, “The liberal project could only be successful if the proper anthropological view was at the foundation, and I do not think that is the case.”
    I think that could be possible at least in theory, but how would one keep the proper anthropological view?

    Reply
  11. Louise

    Belloc’s opening words from that essay: The thesis that the Catholic Church is incompatible with the Modern State is in part true. Three fundamental reasons are urged to show this incompatibility. The first-that the Catholic section of a state claims the right to destroy all religious bodies in disagreement with it-is unsound, being based on a misconception which can only arise from an ignorance both of Catholic doctrine and of the history of Catholic peoples.
    But the other two reasons given are sound: one is that obedience to an external authority is contrary to that ideal of citizenship, which in the Modern State is based upon two ideas-that each citizen individually forms his decision and that a majority of these decisions binds all; the other is that the claims of the Church tend to conflict with the similar claims of the modern laical, absolute State. Hitherto the truth of these two reasons has been masked by the fact that the bulk of Catholic moral teaching has been retained in non-Catholic states. But this is changing, and conflict will result.

    Reply
  12. Mac

    Rob, I agree with your friend. I’ve been saying similar things about the vacuum at the core of the liberal order for literally decades now. I don’t necessarily think, though, that everything associated with it should and will be swept away. I think it’s reformable, at least in principle, though in practice I’m not very hopeful about that happening.
    More than that, though, I believe pretty strongly that every civilization carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. And I think what always bothers me slightly about the anti-liberal forces is their tendency to sound as if they think everything would be cool if we could just install a different system. That in itself partakes of liberalism. I am anti-revolutionary.

    Reply
  13. Rob G

    Yes, I agree — certain aspects of it are good/positive, and are, as you say, potentially reformable.
    “what always bothers me slightly about the anti-liberal forces is their tendency to sound as if they think everything would be cool if we could just install a different system.”
    Yeah, that’s not me either. I’m very suspicious of anything “poured in from the top.”

    Reply
  14. Mac

    Sorry, I had to shorten my lunch break and can’t reply further right now. More later.

    Reply
  15. Robert Gotcher

    Concerning the Catholic confessional state, there has been an interesting dialogue between Habermas, Pera (Italian politician), and Ratzinger/Benedict about the necessity of grounding public discourse on moral and social issues in terms that come from a religious doctrinal thought structure. Habermas (agnostic) and Pera (atheist) both believe that Western Civ. can’t survive outside of a specifically religious conceptual framework.
    Ratzinger agrees, but goes further to assert that what will really save the West (if it can be saved) is a critical mass of people who have a lived faith, whose whole lives are informed by a personal encounter with the Living God in Jesus Christ within the Church. It isn’t just doctrine, but a personal relationship with Jesus that informs all aspects of life that brings sanity to a society. Here is a video by a friend, Peter Colosi, about the dialogue and its significance.
    Mac (and Daniel): the main thing that attracted me to C&T back in the day was that it seemed to be a movement committed to a whole way of life that reflected the values that “theories” such as Distributism could be lived as expressed in the concrete demands of Benedictine Spirituality, organic gardening, back to the land, etc.. I would skim the long Thomas Storck essays and go right to the Eric Brende Amish journals.
    For what its worth, Daniel, the most memorable of your essays was the one where you talked about the three possible Christian responses to modern culture — the cultural engagement response, the anti-cultural response, and the pseudo-cultural non-response (Christianized imitation of secular forms).
    I, of course, was attracted to the second option. I for the most part have lived the first.

    Reply
  16. Mac

    I wondered in an earlier comment about how the liberal press was reacting to the UN’s attack. Well, here’s the NYT, clearly pleased.

    Reply
  17. Mac

    Catching up, I just read your Belloc quote, Louise. Wow–very prophetic, in the most literal sense. I haven’t read the whole essay yet. I’ll do that within the next day or so.

    Reply
  18. Mac

    Robert, which essay of Daniel’s is that?
    Re the anti-cultural response, back to the land, etc.: I always felt a bit hypocritical in associating myself with that view, because I already knew perfectly well at that time that I was never going to do any such thing, short of some external event forcing me to–collapse of industrial society or something of that sort. For better or worse, I was an average middle-class American.
    And I don’t think any significant number of people are ever going to take up the kind of life we were talking about. That’s the problem with the anti-cultural response. Hardly anybody is willing to make the kinds of sacrifices that would be required, or for that matter competent to live that way. And I don’t see that changing unless things just begin to fall apart and people have no choice.

    Reply
  19. Mac

    “…what will really save the West (if it can be saved) is a critical mass of people who have a lived faith…”
    Yes. A society in which most people are authentically Christian could be reasonably decent regardless of its formal structure, and any formal structure, no matter how promising, can and will become indecent if the people are not reasonably decent.

    Reply
  20. Daniel Nichols

    That essay was in the last issue, Mac.
    I, at my age, no longer wish to disengage so radically, nor to farm. For one thing I have seen most attempts fail utterly, which is not to say that it is not worth doing, even vital.
    But I over time became critical of a lot of what I once believed, which provoked a sort of crisis. Providentially, the election of Francis has shown a new model of lived faith, engaged and open to humanity, but radically rooted in the very heart of the Gospel. And of course, deeply critical of the Empire and all its works and pomps. I think the “Benedict Option”, which we heralded and Dreher popularized, has been displaced by the Francis Option. The flaw with Dreher’s scheme is that the first Benedict did not go into that cave thinking “I am going to spark a monastic renewal and save western civilization”. He went to pray and to save his soul; the rest followed. I have seen umpteen ambitious Catholic projects that failed because they had too big of a vision. Some of these actually were well-funded, bought the land and built the structures than collapsed, not infrequently in scandal, or simply had big empty monasteries, etc. Francis, it seems to me, puts first things first, engaging, even so far attracting, the world, while not yielding a bit on the deep truth of the gospel.

    Reply
  21. Daniel Nichols

    And yup, Maclin, even in the CT days, always said it would never happen short of a collapse of society…

    Reply
  22. Art Deco

    I think Dr. Deneen is likely spinning his wheels, and the matter might better addressed with a sociological inquiry rather than a political/theoretical discussion about ‘liberalism’.
    Theses:
    1. Societies have their orthodoxies. Societies which fancy they do not have orthodoxies not well-articulated. Public discussion takes place within the bounds established by orthodoxies (or attempts to challenge orthodoxies). Orthodoxies are not subject to ready discussion. They are assumed by participants.
    2. Orthodoxies evolve over time and you occasionally have rapid mutations, much as ecosystems flip.
    3. Unarticulated forces exert influence over people’s explicit cogitations, and exceed the force those cogitations exert over behavior (or the direction unarticulated forces take).
    4. You want your orthodoxies to buttress individuals and collectivities in virtuous living.

    Reply
  23. Mac

    Well, thank God you were able to pull out, or be pulled out, of the crisis.
    ‘The flaw with Dreher’s scheme is that the first Benedict did not go into that cave thinking “I am going to spark a monastic renewal and save western civilization”.’
    I think that’s a really important point. Except maybe in extreme cases like victory in battle against a would-be conqueror, I don’t think grand schemes of civilization-saving are likely to work out. As you say, that’s not putting first things first. The gospel may save the modern world, but I don’t think we can.
    I suspect that if we were put down at any place or time in history we would be just about as unhappy with the state of things as we are now. The Franciscans were having problems even while Francis was still alive.
    I’ll re-read that essay when I can make my way to the stash of CetT’s in the loft.

    Reply
  24. Art Deco

    I also think Dr. Deneen is wrong about the life of liberal Catholicism and liberal Protestantism. They are declining, and may expire (see France and Scandinavia), but for now it is congruent with the dispositions of its adherents.
    Neither has much to do with historic Christianity (outside of adhering to a certain idiom and holding up this and that as desirable behavior).

    Reply
  25. Art Deco

    “each is congruent with the disposition of its adherents”.

    Reply
  26. Mac

    I’d have to read what Deneen says again, but I didn’t take him to be saying that they would disappear, but would cease to be much of an intra-Christian factor. The Unitarian Fellowship (I think that’s the official name now?) is still around and seems to meet some kind of need for a rather small number of people.
    Liberal Catholicism is, however, a somewhat different matter. It really should have broken away by now, but it retains enough of a sense of the importance of the institution that it resists doing that; it would in a sense cease to exist if it did. So I suppose it will be more persistent.

    Reply
  27. Robert Gotcher

    To me C&T was never so much about saving the world as keeping the spark of incarnational humanism alive in the life of the Church. I mean, no one was going to live like the Brendes for very long (not even the Brendes), but all of us could do something that incarnated the values more or less, depending on the exigencies of our situation. I may not have a farm, but I can do organic gardening, and home school, and teach my kids the Liturgy of the Hours (which they all love), and join a CSA farm, and make cake from scratch, and play a music instrument as well as listening to a recording, and make my own greeting cards, and go into the bank to talk to a teller rather than use an ATM, and do my own home repair (sort of), and, as Daniel encouraged me to do back in the 1990s, sharpen my own lawn mower blade, and use a reel mower, and, you know, make life more human for myself, my family, and those around me by taking steps to get us all more or lesser closer to nature and closer to God.
    One point that means a lot to me is that the family is the basic unit of society and that the household was traditionally more a unit of production than of consumption. I try to live that way. I think it makes society and the economy more healthy when people live that way. I think that is probably why the communes don’t survive. There are biological and psychological bonds in a family, but not a commune, that often sufficiently mute the forces of disintegration that make communes implode.
    I’m too lazy to farm. Plus I’m stupid about it.

    Reply
  28. Mac

    I’m very much for all those things in principle, but the truth is I really don’t give them any thought any more, and haven’t for some years now. There came a time when I was only concerned with getting by, spiritually and materially (not that I was poor, but after earning a living there just wasn’t much left over for pursuits like gardening). And although we home-schooled for many years I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone else. Works great for some families, not so great for others.
    I’m astonished to hear that your children love the Liturgy of the Hours.

    Reply
  29. Mac

    Louise, I’ve read the Belloc essay now. It is completely brilliant. I’d like to do a post about it but I’m probably not going to have time today. Here’s the link again for anyone else who wants to read it, to save you having to search it out in the comments above:
    http://www.ecatholic2000.com/cts/untitled-491.shtml

    Reply
  30. Louise

    And although we home-schooled for many years I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone else. Works great for some families, not so great for others.
    Yes, I’d agree with that. I don’t think I knew your kids were home-schooled Maclin. I assume they went to school for some of the time, going by this comment.
    I’m so glad you read the essay! I think it’s great, but none of my friends have read it – until now. 🙂

    Reply
  31. Robert Gotcher

    The key phrase is, “depending on the exigencies of our situation.”

    Reply
  32. Louise

    I’m very much for all those things in principle, but the truth is I really don’t give them any thought any more, and haven’t for some years now. There came a time when I was only concerned with getting by, spiritually and materially (not that I was poor, but after earning a living there just wasn’t much left over for pursuits like gardening).
    We are definitely at that point now.

    Reply
  33. Rob G

    “the matter might better addressed with a sociological inquiry rather than a political/theoretical discussion about ‘liberalism’.”
    While the sociology of the thing is no doubt pertinent (and critics such as Deneen, Beer, and Brad Gregory are well aware of it) the errors in question are rooted in a false view of man, which makes the underlying idea of “liberalism” extremely important.

    Reply
  34. Mac

    That’s the discussion we’ve had here before, about whether ideas have consequences–broad philosophical ideas and practical consequences. I think they definitely do.

    Reply
  35. Rob G

    Lawler’s response to Deneen’s piece:
    http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/02/catholic-and-ambiguous-pro-american-and-quirky-about-it

    Reply
  36. Mac

    Just in time for me to read it while I eat lunch.

    Reply
  37. Mac

    That’s really good. I can’t discuss the specifics of the thought of Locke et.al. but as a matter of concrete political views it’s pretty close to me. Interesting that he said exactly the same thing I did about every political order containing the seeds of its own destruction.

    Reply

Leave a comment

Instagram / TikTok / X

Designed with WordPress