Patrick J. Deneen: "Why Liberalism Failed"

"Why Liberalism Failed"
by Patrick J. Deneen
Yale University Press (January 2018).

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Reviews and Related Articles

• Did Liberalism Fail? [Panel discussion]
• We Still Need Liberalism, by Christian Alejandro Gonzalez. National Review 06/22/18. "Patrick Deneen’s critique of liberalism exhibits an undue nostalgia for the past and ingratitude for the virtues of the present."
  
• An Autopsy: Why Liberalism Failed, by Daniel McCarthy. National Interest 06/14/18.
  
• In Defense of Full-Spectrum Liberalism, by Richard M. Reinsch. National Review 02/18/18.
• Why Liberalism’s Critics Fail, by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey. Modern Age
  
• Against the Deformations of Liberalism, by David Corey. American Affairs
  
• Has Liberalism Failed?, by Patrick Lee Miller. Quillette 02/12/18.
  
• Liberalism's Failure - and It's Success, by David French. National Review 02/05/18: "As a critique of the godless libertinism of the modern West, Deneen’s book is devastating. As a critique of the American Founding, it’s far less convincing."
  
• Patrick Deneen Explains Why Liberalism Failed, by Jerry D. Salyer. Crisis Magazine 11/16/17.
  

Pope Benedict XVI on 'Church and State'

The relationship between church and state and their proper jurisdictions have figured heavily in the remarks of Pope Benedict in the first year of his pontificate, as well as in his very first encyclical Deus Caritas Est. The Holy Father has advocated "a healthy secularism of the state," yet he has defended the legitimate role of religion in the moral and cultural development of the nation and the Church's role as a voice of moral conscience, reminding the state of its obligations to the common good.

Writing in his former capacity as Cardinal, the Pope has stated "the Christian is always Someone who seeks to maintain the state in the sense that he or she does the positive, the good, that holds states together." At the same time, in a lesson rooted in his childhood experience of National Socialism, he has commented on the dangers of a totalitarian state -- a state which presumes itself to be "the whole of human existence [and] the whole of human hope," insisting that "the first service that Christian faith performs for politics is that it liberates men and women from the irrationality of the political myths that are the real threat of our time."

What follows is a brief compilation of some of our Holy Father's remarks on this pertinent issue:

Pope Benedict and Alexis de Tocqueville

A Tocquevillian in the Vatican, by Dr. Samuel Gregg.^* According to Dr. Gregg, the publication of Deus Caritas Est reveals not only the influence of St. Augustine upon Benedict, but that of the nineteenth-century French social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville:

Upon being inducted into the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France in 1992, then-Cardinal Ratzinger remarked that Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America has always made a strong impression on me.”

Describing Tocqueville as “le grand penseur politique,” the context of these remarks was Ratzinger’s insistence that free societies cannot sustain themselves, as Tocqueville observed, without widespread adherence to “des convictions éthiques communes.” Ratzinger then underlined Tocqueville’s appreciation of Protestant Christianity’s role in providing these underpinnings in the United States. In more recent years, Ratzinger expressed admiration for the manner in which church-state relations were arranged in America, using words suggesting he had absorbed Tocqueville’s insights into this matter.

What has this to do with Deus Caritas Est? The answer is that Benedict XVI has taken to heart Tocqueville’s warnings about “soft-despotism.”

* * *

Recently added to the archives of Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club we find two earlier writings of Cardinal Ratzinger:

• Biblical Aspects of the Question of Faith and Politics A homily that was delivered on 26 November 1981 in the course of a service for Catholic members of the Bundestag in the church of St. Wynfrith (Boniface) in Bonn. (LewRockwell.com):

  Christian faith has destroyed the myth of the divine state, the myth of the state as paradise and a society without domination. In its place it has put the objectivity of reason. But this does not mean that it has produced a value-free objectivity, the objectivity of statistics and a certain kind of sociology. To the true objectivity of men and women belongs humanity, and to humanity belongs God. To genuine human reason belongs the morality that is fed by God’s commandments. This morality is not some private affair; it has public significance. Without the good of being and doing good there can be no good politics. What the persecuted Church laid down for the Christian as the core of its political ethos must also be the core of any active Christian politics; it is only when good is done and recognized as good that a good human social existence can thrive. To bring to public acceptance as valid the standing of morality, the standing of God’s commandments, must be the core of responsible political activity.

• Why Church and State Must Be Separate excerpt from "Theology and the Church’s Political Stance" in Church, Ecumenism and Politics (NY, Crossroads, 1987). Ratzinger notes that "the origin and the permanent foundation of the Western idea of freedom" lies in the "separation of the authority of the state and sacral authority":

  From now on there were two societies related to each other but not identical with each other, neither of which had this character of totality. The state is no longer itself the bearer of a religious authority that reaches into the ultimate depths of conscience, but for its moral basis refers beyond itself to another community. This community in its turn, the Church, understands itself as a final moral authority which however depends on voluntary adherence and is entitled only to spiritual but not to civil penalties, precisely because it does not have the status the state has of being accepted by all as something given in advance.

  Thus each of these communities is circumscribed in its radius, and on the balance of this relation depends freedom. . . .

  Benedict goes on to suggest something which might be brought to bear on the recent attempt to establish constitutional democracy in the Middle East and the necessity of preserving the Christian foundations of Europe:

  The modern idea of freedom is thus a legitimate product of the Christian environment; it could not have developed anywhere else. Indeed, one must add that it cannot be separated from this Christian environment and transplanted into any other system, as is shown very clearly today in the renaissance of Islam; the attempt to graft on to Islamic societies what are termed western standards cut loose from their Christian foundations misunderstands the internal logic of Islam as well as the historical logic to which these western standards belong, and hence this attempt was condemned to fail in this form. The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom, presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing. In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom.

  Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church is done away with as a public and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of a sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system is unavoidable.

* * *

Some Remarks in the First Year of Pope Benedict XVI's Pontificate

• Back in September 17, 2005, Zenit News Service published an article on Benedict XVI on Religion and Public Life, which included his June 2005 remarks to Italian President Carlo Ciampi on church-state relations.

• On October 17, 2005, in a letter to the president of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera (with whom he co-authored Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam), Pope Benedict expressed his support for a "healthy secularity of the state" -- or that which guarantees "to each citizen the right to live his own religious faith with genuine freedom, including in the public realm" and includes "a commitment to guarantee to all, individuals and groups, respect for the exigencies of the common good, [and] the possibility to live and to express one own religious convictions."

  The full text of the letter can be found here.

• On November 19, 2005, Benedict XVI conveyed the Catholic Church's respect for civil authority:

  Benedict XVI explained to the bishops of the Czech Republic that in her work of evangelization, the Church doesn't seek to meddle in the sphere of public authority.

  "The Christian community is a grouping of people with their own rules, a living body that, in Jesus, exists in the world to bear witness to the strength of the Gospel," the Holy Father told the bishops in Rome for their five-yearly visit.

  "It is, therefore, a group of brothers and sisters who have no goals of power or selfish interest, but who joyfully live the charity of God, which is Love," he added.

  "In such a context, the state should have no difficulty in recognizing in the Church a counterpart that in no way prejudices its own function at the service of citizens."

---

Dr. Samuel Gregg is Director of Research at the Acton Institute and an Adjunct Professor at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family within the Pontifical Lateran University. He is author of several books on Catholic social doctrine including Challenging the Modern World: Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and the Development of Catholic Social Teaching (2003) and On Ordered Liberty (2003), a critique of 'the liberal tradition' in its many forms.

On "Liberalism" - Discussion w. Chris Burgwald

Chris Burgwald picks up on the conversation begun at La Nouvelle Theologie with the first in a series of posts elaborating on the reasons for disagreement with Michael Novak (together with Fr. Neuhaus, George Weigel, and Fr. Sirico). The first of these posts to Veritas is on the proposition: "The death of God for our times, for our culture, for us, is Liberalism".

The 'liberalism' which is condemned by Chris and David Jones (and those whom I'll refer to as 'The Schindler camp') is "characterized by the autonomy of the individual, which results in the individual as the primary focal point of every form of discourse: political, social, cultural, religious, etc," citing as an example the inordinant emphasis on "rights talk" in public discourse, on unrestrained human autonomy or individualism.

At the risk of stating the obvious, but there is nothing to be deplored in the mere affirmation of human rights -- George Weigel has recounted a story from the early 1980's, when Sir Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, suggested in a conversation that there had been two great twentieth-century revolutions: the first the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 (culminating in failure); the second the ongoing "evolution of the Catholic Church into the world's premier institutional defender of human rights," especially under the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.

In Memory and Identity, Pope John Paul II -- no shrinking violet when it comes to criticism of liberalism -- praised as "the positive fruit of the Enlightenment" the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity, and a better understanding of human rights: the rights of man as well as of nations, "to maintain their own culture and exercise political sovereignty." He oberves the significant proximity of the French Revolution (July 14, 1789), the proclamation of the Polish constitution (May 3, 1791) and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (July 4, 1776), and the "stimulating synthesis of the relation between Christianity and the Enlightenment" as found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

So, I think it is important to note the recognition of legitimate human rights by the contemporary Catholic Church, even as these are distinguished from the illusory rights born of a false notion of human autonomy (the disasterous judicial reasoning behind Roe v. Wade comes readily to mind).

Chris goes on to add that "individualism is not the only feature of liberalism: the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre is well-known for his critique of what he calls "the Enlightenment project."

MacIntyre uses this term to describe the attempt by Enlightenment philosophers to construct a 'public morality' accessible to reason alone, i.e. without any reference whatsoever to religion and acceptable to anyone with the basic ability to think. (MacIntyre convincingly demonstrates how such a project is an ultimately futile one.) This, too, tends to define liberalism broadly understood.

In "Beyond Liberalism: Human Dignity, the Free Society, and the Second Vatican Council" (pp. 29-58. Catholicism, Liberalism, and Communitarianism, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995) Kenneth L. Grasso reminds us that if we understand liberalism in the broad sense to consist of that which is "supportive of constitutionalism, limited government, the rule of law, etc., over and against absolutism," it would not be inappropriate to describe the political teaching of the Second Vatican Council as liberal -- what John Courtney Murray described as "a political commmitment, however discrete, to constitutional government" -- a "preferential option" for constitutional democracy (Grasso, p. 30).

But the other kind of liberalism -- that which emerged in the seventeenth century and became constitutive of modern Western thought, which Grasso summarizes as "that theory of man and society that combines a methodological rejection of teleology with an emphatic rejection of any notion of natural or God-given goals," is rightly to be condemned. It is this form of liberalism that is characterized by "a view of human beings as essentially sovereign wills ["unencumbered selves"], subject to no order of obligations not of their own creation, subject to no order of human ends that obligate independent of, and prior to, an act of free consent to strive for these ends." (Grasso, p. 45).

Chris goes on to note that liberalism in the sense he describes it "encompasses the vast majority of political discourse in our country today; virtually all of those people who describe themselves as liberal and conservative are actually liberals in this broad sense." He explains why it is considered the 'death of God' in modern times:

Now, why is liberalism understood in this sense the death of God for our times? Because of its amazing capacity to create and sustain (false) antagonistic dualisms, e.g. faith and reason; body and soul; church and state; religion and life. Note well: I'm certainly not denying that each element of each pair of terms is distinguishable from the other -- that's obviously true. My point here is that liberalism doesn't merely distinguish between (for example) faith and reason: rather, it puts them in opposition to one another at a fundamental level.

What we're talking about here is secularism: the view that denies religion's intrinsically pervasive nature. Secularism tries to create the "naked public square," i.e. to make religion a purely private matter without bearing and impact on the public life of a nation. I would argue that secularism is one of the logical consequences of liberalism, in spite of the fact that some liberals (e.g. conservative liberals) might themselves be vociferous opponents of secularism. In other words, there is a logic of liberalism which inexorably works itself out, whatever the positive and good intentions of individual liberals.

I find that definitions are key to this discussion. "Liberalism," as Fr. Neuhaus wryly notes in his response to Dr. Schindler, "is a wonderfully pliant term." It runs the gambit from the the laissez-faire economic liberalism (condemned by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum) to the libertarianism "which remains in the largest part a thought experiment for college sophomores of all ages" -- and one has only to take a survey of the many varieties of liberalism through the ages to notice the distinctions between them.

A number of the sources I have mentioned this past week in the context of our discussion here and at La Nouvelle Theologie concern those scholars who demonstrate that the thought of our founding fathers on the interaction of 'faith and reason', 'church and state,' 'religion and life' is a far cry from the secularism of contemporary liberals. While the experience of strife between religions motivated them to establish a boundary between 'church and state', their writings reveal that they did not see them in mutual opposition. (Indeed, they would likely be rolling in their graves at the antics of the ACLU). Likewise, they demonstrate that the founding principles of this nation have far more in common with Catholic tradition than some today would care to admit.

Among such resources cited are: Fr. Hunter ("Catholics and the Republic"), Fr. John C. Rager ("Catholic Sources of the Declaration"), the reflections of Fr. John Courtney Murray, the contemmporary research of Michael Novak (On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding), and -- thanks to David Jones for the introduction -- Scott McDermott (on the person of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence). Novak's On Two Wings stands out as one of the best compilations of the founders' real thought on religion in public life -- one that he "wanted to write for some forty years," if not for his ignorance, "convential (but mistaken) wisdom" and the many "erroneous perceptions . . . unconsciously drunk from public perception." I heartily recommend it.

* * *

There are two articles by Fr. Neuhaus which were written in response to the criticism of Dr. Schindler in Heart of the World:

• Schindler's Complaint First Things 74 (June/July 1997): 68-86.
• The Liberalism of John Paul II First Things 73 (May 1997): 16-21.

In the latter post, Neuhaus expresses a concern with the sweeping condemnation of liberalism and its implications for Catholic engagement in the public square:

"The burden of the present book," he writes, "is to suggest that liberalism cannot so easily claim the moral authority of Catholicism, and, at the same time, to indicate why an increasing liberal hegemony throughout the world should be viewed not altogether with favor but, on the contrary, with a certain alarm." Well, yes, if, like Schindler, one puts the worst possible construction on liberalism' meaning the American founding, liberal democracy, and market economics. And that is what Schindler tends to do. Liberalism is condemned tout court as a dogmatic system premised upon radical individualism, the autonomous self, calculated self-interest, and human creativity as opposed to receptivity to God's grace. In sum, Schindler starts out by agreeing with those who construe the liberal tradition -- and its chief historical instantiation, the American experiment -- along rigorously secularist and un-Christian (maybe anti-Christian) lines. Those of us who defend the "Murray Project" might easily turn around and charge Schindler with selling out the American store to the enemies of the faith. I am not about to join him in giving up the argument and letting Laurance Tribe or the ACLU define the meaning of liberal democracy.

Both essays are well worth reading, addressing the conflicting understandings of liberalism and the Catholic Church's engagement with the liberal tradition in the thought of John Paul II (particularly in Centesimus Annus (which Neuhaus rightly points out is not so much a document on economic questions as it is about the nature of the free society).

As there is too much in Neuhaus' dual response to simply recount in the space of this blog, I recommend reading them with Chris Burgwald's post in mind, along with the recent discussions with David Jones and company.

Next Post: Religious Convictions in Public Discourse

Briefly: Recommended reading on 'Christianity and Democracy'

W. Lindsey Wheeler comments on my blog:

"How absurd is this:

[Citing Neuhaus]: "Democracy is a relative good, but it is superior to other orders because: 1) it is the form of government that, under the conditions of modernity, best accommodates the Christian understanding of human dignity;"

And then Chris you agree. Show me in Scripture where democracy is approved. Scripture approves only two forms of government--monarchy and mixed goverment (a republic, politeia).

I can not believe what I am reading. Why doesn't the church teach from its own Religious Divinely Inspired Writings?

Chris please Plato saw democracy as a disease of men. When their character becomes corrupt, democracy is the sign of that corruptness. Democracy breaks down righteousness and is the product of egalitarianism.

After constantly posting this Link: The Classical definition of a republic, is it all for nought?

Here is the scripture:

"...remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth (Politeias) of Israel,..." New Testament, Eph., 2.12

"But our commonwealth (Politeuma) is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,..." New Testament, Phl., 3.20

Tell me what is going on? Democracy is sign of the degeneracy of the people? Is not the Catholic Church about teaching the TRUTH? Why do you Chris continue to advocate democracy????? Why?

First, as to the distinction btw/ 'republic' and 'democracy', I refer you to I. Shawn McElhinney's post , on the oft-quoted remark by Benjamin Franklin, in which he observes that the structure of our government is moreso that of a republic than a strict democracy. I'll also wager that Fr. Neuhaus, for his talk of democray, is certainly aware of this distinction as well.

Second, there is more to Catholic tradition than an appreciation of Plato, and in matters of politics and economics (as well as other issues of morality) the Church isn't necessarily confined to a reading of the Scriptures, but the breadth of Catholic tradition over the centuries and the teaching authority of the Church.

To observe what Catholic tradition has to say with respect to constitutional democracy, I'd refer you to the many authors found on this website, among them George Weigel, Kenneth L. Grasso, Father John Courtney Murray (but of course), the relevant documents of the Second Vatican Council and papal encyclicals.

Among the readings the following might be worthwhile:

• Centesimus Annus: on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum Pope John Paul II, May 1, 1991.
• 'The Catholic Human Rights Revolution' and "Religious Freedom: The First Human Right"; "Catholicism and Democracy, the Other Twentieth Century Revolution" (pp. 7-50, Freedom and its Discontents: Catholicism Confronts Modernity;
• "Catholicism and Democracy: Parsing the Other Twentieth Century Revolution"; "Centesimus Annus: the Architecture of Freedom" and "Veritatis Splendor: Moral Truth and the Democratic Prospect" - Chapters 6-8, Soul of the World: Notes on the Future of Public Catholicism (Eerdmans, 1996).
• Liberalism, Democratic Capitalism, and the Catholic Human Rights Revolution, by Kenneth L. Grasso (a good articulation of John Paul II's criticism of secular liberalism as expressed in Centesimus Annus, if any). Faith and Reason Winter 1991.
• The Liberalism of John Paul II, Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus. First Things 73 (May 1997): 16-21.
• Christianity and Democracy formal statement of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).

I am confident that my readers will be able to provide numerous additional recommendations on this topic as well.

* * *

Elsewhere in the comments W. Lindsey Wheeler wonders:

. . . the author does not respond and nobody else does either--why is that because we know we are promoting error? or are we too cowardly to address the situation? Or are we too high and mighty (too elitist) to respond?

I get between 12-20 commments a day on my various blogs, as well as various petitions of this or that nature. I work a vigorous day job and have much to occupy my evenings besides the internet, including a good amount of reading. Consequently, the time I do spend is particularly precious, and my friends' blogs generally receive preferential treatment. However, as my fellow readers know, if they find W. Lindsey Wheeler's comments worthy of response they are certainly invited to do so -- commenting on this blog is, of course, open to all save that they do so in civil fashion.

(A word of advice: call it the 'Fr. O'Leary Syndrome', but posting as many as 10 verbose comments in succession to a single post is a good indication that one might avail himself of a wonderful new device that is the fruit of modern technology: the blog). =)

The Church & Democracy: from "hostility" to "internal critique"

The Church's encounter with democracy, from the days of Gregory XVI and Pius IX to the present, can be described as a process of transition from hostility (Gregory XVI and Pius IX) to toleration (Leo XIII and Pius XI) to admiration (Pius XII and John XXIII) to endorsement (Vatican II and John Paul II), and now, in the late 1990's, to internal critique. Prior to the Council, the Church was speaking to democracy from "outside"; since the council, the Church has, in a sense, spoken to democracy from within the democratic experiment as a full participant in democratic life, commited, through its own social doctrine, to the success of the democratic project.

To describe the relationship in these terms is by no means to subordinate the Church to politics; it is to note, however, that as the Church's understanding of democracy has evolved, so has the Church's understanding of itself vis-a-vis democracy. Because of the teaching of the Council and John Paul II, an "exterior" line of critique has given way to an "interior" critique. Far from being a neutral observer, and without compromising its distinctive social and political "location," the Church now believes that it speaks to democracy from "within" the ongoing democratic debate about the democratic prospect.

John Paul II developed this "internal line" of analysis -- which now constitutes the world's most sophisticated moral case for, and critique of, the democratic project -- in a triptych of encyclicals: Centesimus Annus (1991), Veritatis Splendour (1993) and Evangelium Vitate (1995).

* * *

If a single sentence could sum up the main thrust of this new "internal critique" of democracy in the social magisterium of John Paul II, it might be this: Culture is "prior" to politics and economics. In this sense, John Paul II is a "postmodern" pope. Since Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, he has become markedly less interested in the old structural questions of politics and economics (democracy vs. ancien regime vs. totalitarianism, capitalism vs. socialism vs. the "Catholic third way"). Those questions, the Pope seems to suggest, have been largely answered. If, under the conditions of modernity, you want a free and prosperous society that protects basic human rights while advancing the common good, you choose democracy and the market (or, in the Pope's preferred phrase, the "free economy"). The really interesting and urgent questions today have to do with culture: with the habits of the heart and mind that make democracy and market work to promote genuine human goods.

George Weigel, Soul of the World: Notes on the Future of Public Catholicism (Eerdmans, 1996). p. 120. (Chapter 6: "Catholicism and Democracy: Parsing the Twentieth-Century Revolution" pp. 99-125 charts in greater detail the development of the Church's relationship and critique of liberal democracy described above. Regretfully it is not available online).

The religious challenge of "exporting democracy"

Those who missed the Spring 2004 Issue of the Public Interest -- devoted to "Religion in America" -- should take a look at the few articles available online (or order the back issue itself). In the "The Unraveling of Christianity in America", Clifford Orwin shares his trenchant analysis of mainline ("evangelical") Christianity and it's struggle against the "Bobo" -- Bourgeois Bohemian -- faith of the postmodern liberal upper class (coined by David Brooks' amusing Bobos in Paradise).

Mr. Orwin concludes his essay by observing the quandary the Bush administration has placed itself in by its attempt to "export democracy" to far off shores, with the hope that it might take root in other than Judeo-Christian soil:

By its deeds, not merely its words, [The Bush Administration] has exceeded all previous ones in rejecting the dependence of democracy on Christianity. It has adopted the premise that just as Confucianism, historically anything but liberal or democratic, has posed no insuperable obstacle to the democratization of East Asia, so Islam will pose none to that of the Middle East.

This position is so far from that of the Christian Right as to place the administration squarely on the wrong side of the cultural divide. The conservative Christian view is that America has become and remained free only insofar as it has remained Christian, that the Christian backdrop to republicanism is a matter not of historical chance but of vital necessity. . . .

I'm not suggesting that the Christian Right is likely to abandon Bush. On many domestic issues—not least that of "faith-based initiatives"—it has every incentive to continue to collaborate with him. Nor is it likely to overlook that, of all Republican presidents since McKinley, Bush appears to be the most concerned with living a Christian life. All the more ironic, then, that in the most important policy and riskiest gamble of his presidency, Bush has embraced willy-nilly the view that liberal democracy is one thing, Protestant Christianity (or Christianity of any sort, or even Judeo-Christianity) entirely another. He has chosen to present America to the world not as the Christian nation for which his religious supporters take it, but as the universal sponsor of liberal democracy, which as such is impartial in principle as between Christianity and Islam.

Thus must Bush present America not just to the world but to itself. . . . However trying the struggle with Islamism may prove, whatever sacrifices it may demand, he cannot revive Lincoln's appeal to Christianity, no matter how nondenominational that appeal would be. His religious rhetoric must be "inclusive," anodyne, and sterile. His administration must become America's first genuinely Methodist Taoist Native American Quaker Russian Orthodox Buddhist Jewish (and Muslim) one. And so the challenge of Islamic terror will collaborate with other forces to drive official America to ever greater lengths of secularism or syncretism.

For an extensive review of this issue of The Public Interest, see Fr. Neuhaus' column in the June issue of First Things.

Challenging the "Democratic Faith" of Jacques Maritain

I read a rather provocative article today by Thaddeus J. Kozinski on "Jacques Maritain's "Democratic Faith": Heretical or Orthodox?" -- in which he criticizes Maritain's philosophy of "personalist democracy," reflecting an idealistic faith which has been rendered passe in light of America's moral degeneration. Kozinski argues that the proper attitude one should adopt in this day and age would be that of the ultramontane English Catholic, William George Ward ("Towards the prevailing national spirit ., . . our only reasonable attitude is one of deep jealously and suspicion; because it is charged with principles which, for the corruption of human nature, are sure to be more false than true, and from which we should keep ourselves entirely free, until we have measured them by their only true standard, the Church's voice").

According to Kozinski, Maritain's believed that in spite of our diverse cultural and religious backgrounds mankind, in reaction to the horrible experience of Facism and Nazism, could come together in agreement on the existence of the protection of certain goods ("truth and intelligence, human dignity, freedom, brotherly love, and the absolute value of moral good.") ¹ According to the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, "What Maritain wished to affirm a modern version of Aquinas' thesis that every human being has within him or herself a natural knowledge of divine law and hence of what every human being owes to every other human being." But MacIntyre disagrees, contending that while those engaged in such discussion employ the same terminology ("freedom", "justice", "human rights", et al.) the intended meaning would be contingent upon one's philosophical background and worldview.

As MacIntyre has shown, rationality itself is a "practice" that takes its shape in a particular, lived-tradition of rationality, informed by religious, philosophical, anthropological, epistemological commitments that in turn inform the precise manner in which that rationality is practiced by the individuals habituated into a particular tradition. For MacIntyre, then, the post-World-War II consensus on the goods constituting the democratic charter was not really a consensus at all, even though the consenters evinced a common lexicon of "human rights" and "democratic values"; for, it was built on sand, on entirely disparate understandings of that lexicon in virtue of their disparate traditions of rationality: Thomist, Humean, Kantian, Rousseauian, Nietzchean, Deweyean, etc.. But even if all the consenters had indeed been rooted in the same tradition (perhaps as the children of a dysfunctional Enlightenment family!), it was not rooted in that one tradition of rationality without which, Maritain insisted, the particular goods of the democratic order would have never even been recognized, let alone become attainable, the scholastic tradition of Christian rationality. ²

Kozinski argues that in this day and age it is no longer possible to maintain any kind of democratic concensus on such matters as envisioned by Maritain. A prevalent example is the way our society (and our courts) have redefined human persons in a similar manner as the Nazis, so as to justify murder of the unborn, "all under the banner of the "freedom" and "rights" afforded by the democratic charter." He also argues, along with Dr. David Schindler, that the practical, secular consensus of liberal democracy and "neutrality" towards religion displays a tendency "to undermine the priority, in first public and then private life, of supernatural or spiritual reality, and even to invert the proper subordination of the mundane to the spiritual."

As it is impossible for one to serve both God and mammon, what would happen to a religious believer who attempts to serve a democratic faith that requires the sacrifice of the public, temporal significance of his religious faith? It would be perfectly natural for him to interpret his obligatory devotion to the publicly celebrated, legally enforced, and socially respectable democratic faith as less important than his voluntary devotion to his publicly neglected, legally ignored, and socially eschewed religious faith. The consequence of prolonged habituation in such a regime is obvious. It is not possible, without a heroic amount of grace, effort and vigilance, to hold both the "theologically-neutral" theological premise of the democratic charter and the theologically charged premises of a Christian political theology. For this reason we should be very hesitant to accept the purported neutrality of even Maritain's Christ-inspired democratic charter. Maritain, of course, would never had wanted any part of such a trivialization of Christian belief -- on the contrary, he explicitly called for a new Christendom! But one mustn't ignore the possibility that he may have promoted this very obsoletion when he denied the need for truth as a basis for social order in the modern world.

I have not read enough of Maritain's political philosophy to sufficiently respond to Kozinski's indictement at this point in time, although I question whether Maritain was truly dismissive of the need for truth as a basis for social order. (In fact, Kozinski himself admits towards the end that he may be off-base in his reading of Maritain, simplifying his thought to make his critique easier). In any case, I may address his points later after I have read some more of Maritain's work.

One more thing that I would like to touch on is the matter of Kozinski's proposed remedy to the "imminent dangers of pluralism":

The American spirit, in spite of its original goodness, has now been taken over by evil forces, forces that can not be exorcised by anything other than an unadulterated, vigorous, politically-relevant faith in Jesus Christ and the Church that He founded, a Church that must be, for the sake of both the Church's honor and the temporal common good, the publicly recognized guide for men in both individual and social life. And for the latter to occur, we need to work for a nationwide conversion to the Catholic faith.

Kozinski's proposal for the establishment of a visible "Kingdom of Christ" and the physical subordination of all mankind to the Church is widely held and advocated by "traditionalist Catholics". However, it is also one that many Catholics would disagree with. Being the first article I'd ever read by Mr. Kozinski, I decided to research him further and came across this brief correspondence with Fr. Neuhaus in First Things. ³ Fr. Neuhaus's responds to Kozinski on "the distinction between the ideal and what is prudentially judged to be possible or desirable" and directs him to his article on The Liberalism of John Paul II (First Things May 1997) for further explication. ⁴

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1. See Christianity and Democracy, an address at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in New York on Dec. 29, 1949.

2. See Macintyre's Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Dec. 1989). Also, Edward T. Oakes' introduction: The Achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre First Things August/September 1996.

3. Responding to Neuhaus' three part column "Proposing Democracy Anew," October-December 1999, which I have added to our archive.

4. Cardinal Dulles' article Religious Freedom: Innovation and Development (First Things Dec. 2001) is also of relevance.

Neuhaus and the "reappropriation of the liberal tradition."

With respect to theology the neoconservatives and the 'Communio' school are largely in agreement with each other. Both are strong supporters of Pope John Paul II and steadfast in their commitment to the orthodox Catholic faith. As Neuhaus says, the debate between them boils down to the neoconservatives' support of 'The Murray Project' -- square Catholic teaching with the American democratic experiment [and free market capitalism] -- and the conservative critics like David Schindler who "accuse Murray and those like him of selling out authentic Catholic teaching to a desiccated and desiccating liberalism."

Neuhaus clarifies some points in his dispute with David Schindler in his article The Liberalism of John Paul II (First Things 73, May 1997). The article is a response to Schindler's book Heart of the World, Center of the Church, in which Schindler summarizes his argument in three points: 1) to "challenge the regnant liberalism which would claim that it (alone) is empty of religious theory in its interpretation of the First Amendment and indeed of Western constitutionalism more generally"; 2) to "seek a truly 'Catholic Moment' in America" -- after the teachings of John Paul II against John Courtney Murray; and 3) to "expose the con game of liberalism which enables it, precisely without argument, to privilege its place in the public order." Of course, Schindler and others believe Neuhaus & Novak to be implicit in this "con game of liberalism."

In an interview with David Schindler blogged earlier, he had said of self-interest: "Of course we can't suppress that impulse forcibly; if we try, we end up in totalitarianism. But that doesn't mean we should bless it as a virtue of necessity. The call to sanctity requires a transformation of self-interest and its replacement, insofar as possible, with love." One reader of this blog (Hank_F_M) challenged Schindler's conflation of self-interest with selfishness and greed:

Thomas Sowell (not a Catholic, but an influential neocon economist) in his book Knowledge and Decisions approaches [self interest] as each individual choosing the interest he serves and thus makes decisions on it. While the decision may be greed, it is often to do what is necessary to fulfil ones proper duties to family and society, and perhaps in some cases to altruistically serve the community beyond ones duties. (That is my summery of a key idea in the book)

This reduces the dichotomy that Schindler points out. If we are making decisions to respond to the call of sanctity and love in imitation of Christ then the economic and social systems should operate in a manner much more in a much more human manner. It also allows for intelligent decisions in the face of the fact others will not act accordingly and without imposing a totalitarian an unacceptable regime on them.

Neuhaus criticizes Schindler for having engaged in a similar reduction of "liberalism", putting

the worst possible construction upon the liberal tradition, and on the American cultural, legal, and political expression of that tradition. In doing so, . . . [handing] an undeserved victory to those who interpret the liberal tradition in ways that we all deplore. With John Courtney Murray, I suggest that our task is to contend for an interpretation of liberalism that is compatible with the fullness of Catholic truth. ¹

Liberalism, says Neuhaus, is "a very pliable term." Of the varieties that exists he notes the laissez-faire economic liberalism condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum & John Paul II, the libertarianism of a political minority in American culture ("a thought experiment for college sophomores of all ages"), the "republican liberalism of virtue" and the "communitarian liberalism of Tocquevillian civil society".

Clarification of what one means by "liberalism" is imperative in this discussion, if not only because Neuhaus & his colleagues would actually agree with Dr. Schindler's critique of a certain kind of liberalism, or even that "Christian thinkers have been too ready to trim the Christian message in order to accommodate the ruling cultural paradigm of liberalism." Of the many criticisms of liberalism raised by Schindler and others -- that it is 'purely procedural', excluding a consideration of ends (and thus its claim to 'neutrality' inherently anti-religious); that it is premised entirely on self-interest, excluding consideration of transcendent truth or divine law; that it is "inextricably tied to the dynamics of capitalism" and condusive to a culture of rampant material consumerism -- Neuhaus maintains that these are not no much an indictment of liberalism per se but distortions of liberalism, and that he, Novak, Weigel and others are "contending for the soul of liberalism." This struggle is absolutely crucial, because

There is no going back to reconstitute the American order on a foundation other than the liberal tradition. A great chasm has opened between the liberal tradition and what today is called liberalism. That is why some of us are called conservatives. Conservatism that is authentically and constructively American conservatism is conservatism in the cause of reappropriating and revitalizing the liberal tradition.

Neuhaus devotes the latter part of his article to a proper understanding and appreciation of individualism in light of Pope John Paul II's teaching in Centesimus Annus (recommended as an "invaluable guide" to the revitalization of the liberal tradition). ² Noting that individualism developed in frequent tension and even conflict with the Catholic Church (perceiving it as radically anti-clerical and anti-Christian), Neuhaus credits John Paul II with having "replanted the idea of the individual and of freedom in the rich soil of Christian truth."

Concerning the human person, John Paul II cites an earlier encyclical Redemptor Hominis: "[the] human person is the primary route that the Church must travel in fulfilling her mission . . . the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption", to which is appended: "This, and this alone, is the principle which inspires the Church's social doctrine." (53) For Neuhaus, CA's recognition that man recovers and attains his dignity in responding to the call of God ("to transcendent truth"), can lead Catholics in America to appreciate individualism, properly understood and articulated in 'The American Experiment':

This is not individualism in the pejorative sense, but it is commensurable with the modern achievement of the idea of the individual. It is commensurable with the constituting ideas of the American experiment, in which the state is understood to be in the service of freedom, and freedom is understood as what the Founders called "ordered liberty"—liberty ordered to the truth. And there are, as the Declaration of Independence declares, "self-evident truths" that ground such freedom and direct it to the transcendent ends of "Nature and Nature's God."

Theistic references in the Declaration are not merely superficial allusions to appease the public; they are essential to the Founder's argument "that this constitutional order is premised upon moral truths secured by religion." As we can see in the numerous writings by Michael Novak, George Weigel and Fr. Neuhaus, re-discovering the religious vision of the Declaration and other writings of our founding fathers is a critical element of the Catholic re-appropriation of the liberal tradition. ³

Neuhaus' article is worth reading in full, as there are too many points to cover here. Altogether it is an excellent explication of Centesimus Annus and the specific goals of those 'neoconservatives' engaged in 'The Murray Project.'

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1. Referring to our very first blog, Fr. Zieba contended that "there is liberalism and there is liberalism", the former distinguished by relativism and a radical autonomy free of moral constraints, the latter distinguished by an appreciation of freedom's relation to and dependance upon absolute truth. "The Liberalism That We Need", First Things 40 (Feb. 1994).

2. Those interested in Fr. Neuhaus' reading of Centesimus Annus might appreciate his Doing Well & Doing Good: The Challenge to the Christian Capitalist (Oct. 1992), or Michael Novak's The Catholic Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism, both of which focus on the Pope's encyclical.

3. See, for example, Michael Novak's The Faith of the Founding (First Things April 2003), or his recent book: On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (Encounter Books April 2003). See also "Christianity and Democracy", a formal statement written by Fr. Neuhaus in 981for the Institute on Religion & Democracy, "to set forth the Christian case for, and stake in, the liberal democratic order."

Fr. Maciej Zieba: "The liberalism that we need"

This post is a summary and thoughts on the essay "The Liberalism We Need" [First Things 40, Feb. 1994: 23-27], by Maciej Zieba, a Polish priest who, like many others residing in post-Communist nations, are "attempting to sort out the different meanings of liberalism."

He begins with a critique of Milton Friedman, "a classical liberal of the libertarian persuasion", who is wary of Pope John Paul II's insistence on the relationship between freedom and truth (as articulated in Centesimus Annus). Like many liberals, Milton perceives the Church's claim on absolute truth as an infringement upon liberal democracy, smacking of the Spanish Inquisition. Fr. Zieba questions whether liberal democracy is contingent upon such a denial of absolute truth, asking whether free society (such that he and his fellow Poles are striving to attain) can be sustained without it.

This kind of liberalism goes hand in hand with the affirmation of pluralism, which asserts that claims on truth is "culturally relative" or "socially constructed" and consequently nobody can really know what is objectively true. Fr. Zieba points out the inherent contradition in such a claim:

Radical pluralism-intellectual and moral pluralism-seems to be the only truth. Pluralism is thus presented as the fundamental principle of reality, the Absolute. Absolute truth is denied in the name of an absolute truth claim that eludes rational challenge and assumes the character of a religious faith. It is not too much to say that pluralism is the operative religion of at least one stream of liberal theory and practice.

While many proponents of radical pluralism are reticient with respect to the Absolute, they do not hesitate to expound on human nature. Fr. Zieba lists the basic tenets of this 'anthropology of pluralism':

. . . that all people are equal, that all people are good (or at least that evil is nonexistent), and that the human condition is fundamentally solitary. Since people and cultures are equal, it is the individual who must decide for himself. This becomes the chief, sometimes the only, meaning of freedom. And it is, of course, a "negative freedom," that is to say, it is delineated by minimal interference by anyone or anything that might restrict my right to choose.

Such a philosophy of radical autonomy offers little in the way of sustaining civil society. This is because liberalism of this nature "has no principled criteria by which to draw that line. It moves only in one direction: it can effectively eliminate abuses of oppressive community, but it cannot create or protect the communities required to make and keep life human." Fr. Zieba cites Karl Popper's observation that the vehement insistence on the non-existence of truth is in itself but a thinly-veiled authoritarianism, "the right of the clenched fist".

Pope John Paul II points out the very the same in Centesimus Annus:

"IIf there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. . . . the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others. People are then respected only to the extent that they can be exploited for selfish ends." [p. 44]

This, of course, does not bode well for those who wish to reside in a civil society. "In the absence of communal bonds and shared meanings related to truth," says Fr. Zieba, "society simply atrophies. Liberal theory and practice cannot explain or sustain a liberal society."

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According to Fr. Zieba, liberalism was a rational reaction to the social circumstances of the eighteenth century. The Church played no small part in the terrible wars of religion which, in turn, provoked the "aggressive anticlericalism of the Enlightenment", and which also turned its hostility toward the state, "insofar as the state had absolutist aspirations that monarchs sought to realize by an alliance of throne and altar." However, says Fr. Zieba, we should also understand that the Church's general condemnation of modern liberalism (as expressed in Pope Pius IX' Syllabus of Errors) was, under the circumstances, also justified: "If in 1864 Pius IX felt besieged, it was because he was besieged."

Fr. Zieba contends that liberalism's opposition to religion was in fact misplaced -- that the real opponent is ideology:

By ideology I mean an all-comprehending explanation of social reality that is premised upon an uncritical notion of the true and the good and is in the service of creating or preserving a particular social order. Not truth, but the ideological deployment of truth, is the threat to freedom. Religious faith necessarily involves a commitment to absolute truth, and indeed to the Absolute, who is God. But the religious person should know that this truth cannot be deployed for our own purposes; the truth is not something that we "possess" in the sense of having it at our disposal. When truth is viewed as something that is in our service, rather than our being in the service of truth, it is very easy for religious faith to degenerate into ideology. This can happen despite the best of intentions, and there is no need to deny that Christians have at times attempted to advance their faith in the form of ideology.

We have already mentioned the dangers that a principle of radical autonomy poses to the health of civil society. But is the liberalism that Zieba has examined the only kind that is available to us?

There is available to us another liberalism, however, one that is rooted in the Anglo-Saxon and, more particularly, in the American tradition. In this liberalism, freedom is not separated from the existence of absolute truth; freedom can be oriented to truth. In this tradition, there is no need to pretend to have the only correct solution to all social problems. Freedom is like the magnetic needle of a compass, never immobile, always pointing to something beyond itself.

The "liberal package" (economic, political, cultural) has been regarded with suspicion by the Church, chiefly on account of the dangers posed by a liberalism marked by radical individualism and moral relativism. However, Zieba believes that "a liberalism that is respectful of community and open to absolute truth is becoming an exceedingly important part of Catholic social thought". Zieba sees the Church's appreciation of a new kind of liberalism both in the documents of Vatican II (particularly the treatment of freedom in Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium Et Spes) and the encyclicals of Pope John Paul II. It is in the Pope's encyclical Centesimus Annus that Fr. Zieba sees "the Church challenging liberalism to reconstitute itself on a more adequate conception of human freedom", which he describes as nothing less than a Catholic version of liberalism.

I selected this article because I think it contains a good starting point to the discussion -- I find especially valuable Fr. Zieba's contention that "there is liberalism and there is liberalism", the liberalism distinguished by relativism and radical autonomy and the 'Catholic liberalism' of Pope John Paul II, distinguished by an appreciation of freedom's relation to and dependance upon absolute truth. It is a point I find often unrecognized by secular critics of the Church and "anti-liberal" Catholics within the Church, and something to keep in mind as we begin this investigation.