A Way to Make California a Good-Government State!
So, California's recall election is an illegitimate assault on the elective process because it's been instigated by people who disagree with California's liberal elite. Likewise, if the election replaces Gray Davis with a Republican or conservative Republican governor, it's a foregone conclusion that the result will be illegitimate because of electoral procedures which, though perfectly legal to get Gray Davis elected, are now abhorrent to California's liberal elite.
Why don't we just clean that state up and create hereditary fiefdoms for its liberal elite!
Certainly California would be happier if it were ruled by Duchess Feinstein of Moonbeamia, Don Bustamante of Marijuana, and Earl Waxman of Gayshire? Al Franken could make a good living as a court jester, and with Gene Robinson ensconced in the Cathedra Trumana Capote (the papacy will, of course, relocate to Venice Beach), the new kingdom would never suffer from civil-religious discord!
I really think I'm on to something here, I really do . . . . . .
Monday, August 11, 2003
Notes on Traditionalist Views of the Ordinary Magisterium
I. Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum recently invited some commentary on a note by Mr. Ian Palko discussing the supposed limits on Catholic responses to statements and instructions by members of the ordinary magisterium. Mr. Palko's comments were part of a larger discussion between Shawn and a Mr. Kevin Tierney -- their debate can be found, by way of the debate's last installment, here. The discussion Shawn invited us to have with Mr. Palko is a sort of "sidebar" discussion to the McElhinney/Tierney debate, involving a limited dialogue about the nature of the Church's magisterium and the Catholic response to it. I had penned a brief reply that largely tracked Mr. Timothy Ouillette's thoughts, which were blogged at Rerum Novarum. So I took the opportunity to expand my response, bringing in some other perspectives and thoughts which have been occupying my thinking about Traditionalism. Mr. Ouilette's reply can be found
here. As I cannot find Mr. Palko's entire selection, which Shawn emailed to me, I will I reproduce it in the notes section of this essay as it was sent to me, without corrections.
I should say at the outset that I have begged a large part of the question about what "Traditionalism" is, and not undertaken to precisely define the meaning of the term, which is itself subject to no small amount of debate. The "Traditionalism" to which I refer below isn't defined by love or preference for the Mass of St. Pius V, nor by disagreement with certain directions and actions of the hierarchy in or since the Second Vatican Council. It is, rather, embodied in the idea that one's conscience must choose between an inauthentic sham Catholicism and a real Catholicism which requires thinking and worshiping as though the Second Vatican Council did nothing which could oblige the conscience of a Catholic. That idea runs throughout all "camps" or "groups" of Traditionalists, sometimes found only in the individual opinion of several members, sometimes manifesting itself as the unexpressed gestalt of the whole, and sometimes even serving as the acknowledged institutional raison d'etre of an entire movement.
That idea, or rather the intellectual underpinnings of the idea, is the focus of my short essay. It's my belief that while the adherents of this idea may be apparently more Catholic by reason of lacking visible or notable distinctions between themselves and the Church before 1962, their fundamental conception of Catholicity is more or less inauthentic, more or less "not really Catholic at all." I do not claim a good deal of experience in discussing things with Mr. Palko, and I admit that his name figures in my essay largely because his own statement was simply the occasion for writing my own essay. I do not think I have made any inapt judgments, but if I am wrong and have misrepresented Mr. Palko I beg his pardon beforehand and express my willingness to correct myself.
Mr. Palko correctly notes that not all Catholic teachings are dogmatically equal because the Church has both an ordinary and extraordinary magisterium. I agree with Mr. Palko that many Catholics don't understand the difference between these "magisteriae" and that this causes no end of confusion among and between them when they're discussing the state of Catholic theology. But while Mr. Palko should be applauded for his attempt at precision, he must be disagreed with on the direction his thinking has taken him as to the authority of Catholicism's magisterial facets. Mr. Palko presents us with the idea that we, personally, must test statements made within the ordinary magisterium against what he calls "the Faith" proclaimed by the extraordinary magisterium and, if an inconsistency is detected, immediately reject the ordinary magisterial statements as an inauthentic (and probably dangerous) novelties. There are several problems with this thesis,
Mr. Palko has, no doubt unintentionally, declared a kind of retroactive jihad against the very idea of a magisterium. It's true Mr. Palko argues only that his conscience is immune from magisterial inconsistencies; he is entitled to say his liberty of conscience doesn't prohibit anyone from engaging in the development of doctrine within or by means of the ordinary magisterium. But the conflict between his views and the magisterial custody of doctrine doesn't turn on the liberty of conscience (or lack thereof) allowed to Catholics regarding statements made within the ordinary magisterium. The conflict arises because Mr. Palko, in order to facilitate the comparative process he urges on us, has enshrined a given quanta of theological knowledge as "The Faith." If Mr. Palko is entitled to say that his views don't preclude others from engaging in theological speculation, we are entitled to ask him whether "The Faith" imposes any limits on such speculation. If orthodoxy is to have any meaning within Catholicism -- and, indeed, if Mr. Palko is to get any use out of his own theory -- he must agree that "The Faith" sets immutable boundaries against some new ideas (or iterations of old ideas) proposed by people who are entrusted with the ordinary magisterium.
We may then point out to Mr. Palko that if these limits are to be observed, the fund of theological knowledge he's pleased to call "The Faith" must be capable of (a) finally determining the orthodoxy of every statement made by a member of the ordinary magisterium, and (b) being identified so that it can form the basis of that comparison. With respect to the latter criterion there are, so far as I can discern, only two possible ways to identify "The Faith" -- categorical and chronological. So Mr. Palko can be justly called on to tell us either (i) the date on which "The Faith" was complete, or to identify (ii) the precise doctrines which "The Faith" contains. The problems with engaging in these classifications are horrendous. On December 7, 1854, the day before Pope Pius IX issued Ineffabilis Deus, the Immaculate Conception was a teaching of the ordinary magisterium. When Pope Pius IX retired to his bedchamber that evening, his own belief in the Immaculate Conception had some doughty opponents. It was explicitly denied by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, and implicitly denied by St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil. Now if "The Faith" praised by Mr. Palko was constituted on December 7, 1854, either by virtue of these saintly opponents' antiquity, or by virtue of their theological integrity, by what alchemy was the Immaculate Conception transformed on the following morning from an inauthentic (and possibly dangerous) disagreement with fathers and doctors of the Church into a holy truth committed to the Apostles by Christ Himself?
It's conundrums like this which tempt men into becoming Protestants, for Protestantism is zealously committed to the false but clear idea that since "God is not the author of confusion" (1 Cor. 14:33), the true faith cannot give any occasion for mental difficulty. That is, in fact, one of the reasons why Protestants believe they can disprove Catholicism by insisting that we perform the task Mr. Palko has made an essential element of Catholic life -- showing how the "The Faith" has been universally present, in an explicitly-witnessed entirety, from the days of the Apostles. When a Catholic foolish enough to accept the challenge as a valid test struggles, as he must, on the high slopes of theological deduction and historical judgment, the Protestant claims vindication because the True Faith would not be so difficult, the True Faith would empower a man to leap to the mountaintop with a single verse. It is not to my point to rehearse the sheer foolishness of this sort of argument. But it is to my point that Mr. Palko has implicitly accepted the presuppositions of our Protestant critics (though not their conclusions) by proposing exactly that kind of universally-explicit, continuously-identifiable orthodoxy as the rule by which Catholics should regularly scrutinize "what the Pope says" in terms of "The Faith."
Mr. Palko may wish to reply that my example is inapt because the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed via Pius IX's charism of infallibility and is thereby an indubitable teaching of the extraordinary magisterium which cannot be challenged by a Catholic who is truly practicing "The Faith." But I think that might be a very unwise point to make. Understanding the charism of infallibility without accepting conscientious liceity (and even conscientious obligations) for antecedent "novelties" is only half an understanding of the charism. Peter was not given the keys "only" to extirpate heresy; he was given the keys so that we might know what is bound and loosed in Heaven. (Matthew 16:19). Unless we keep this communicative, affirmative role of infallibility in mind we can't even hope to understand how the extraordinary magisterium may teach new things without having first invented them. Even more to the point, this aspect of the charism is essential to salvation, to theosis itself, because it is a signal means by which the limitations and fallibility of men are not insuperable obstacles to unity with the unlimited perfection of God. Infallibility provides Holy Mother Church with the suppleness appropriate to a living body, enabling men to follow -- or be obliged to follow -- apparent "novelties" in good conscience, knowing either that (i) the "novelty" may only be apparent because earlier human conceptions of the matter were not all they could have been, or (ii) the novelty may be real, but obedience to the decisions of a legitimate authority is still desired by God, who can preserve His truth through human fallacy just as He manifests His glory through human weakness. Men may act with the comfort that, however the case may turn out, the supreme verdict does not belong to them individually, and they are not obliged to decide at every turn whether they ought to be at odds with their bishops because their bishops are in schism from "The Faith." Men on either side of the affair may act conscientiously -- even obeying and respecting one another -- because they realize that the supreme judgment rests with the Church of Christ, the only seat of infallible judgment known on this earth. This is why infallibility isn't just necessary for the Church to lead men. It is also necessary if men are to follow the Church.
If we are going to envision "The Faith" as Mr. Palko's views require it to be envisioned we would have to go where so many of our Protestant brothers have logically gone, into an imaginary world dominated by an adamantine gnostic basilisk whose stare instantly transforms fallacy into blasphemy. Either Mr. Palko's concept of "The Faith" is already a sure and certain litmus test for every possible action or statement by a bishop, pope, or Roman congregation or it is not. If it is not, there's little point in Mr. Palko's rule of faith because investigations into the "consistency" of a recent statement or action can't produce a sure and certain result. But if it is possible for "The Faith" to be that universal template, there's really no reason for bishops, popes, or Roman congregations to do anything but preach an unchanging litany of truisms to an "amen corner." Thus does orthodoxy become convention, and convention become prejudice, and the living faith become ossified into a formulaic rote that cannot address unfamiliar challenges or new opportunities. So the Reformers became Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans; the Southern Baptists consigned their Northern coreligionists to Gehenna; the Anglicans banished the Wesleys; and a thousand Christian families rend themselves over the disciplina arcani of "pre-trib," "post-trib," and "mid-trib" Raptures. Our Christian brothers who have forsaken the living magisterium flail for their footing like overturned beetles simply because Sanger and Pincus discovered a new use for estrogen, because Watson and Crick identified a valid model for DNA. Their pitiable ruin came from pulling down the pillar and bulwark of a living magisterium in favor of what appeared to be surer, firmer, less prone to novel manipulations -- "The Faith", that comfortably-suicidal blindness to God's fulfilling His will "in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
Mr. Palko suggests that suspicions of heterodoxy in the Church are either uniquely, or at least uncommonly, warranted: "It seems in the past 40 years we have heard things which at least on their face seem much more inconsistent than in the earlier years of last century and the previous one." This hesitant quavering ill-becomes his argument which, after all, proceeds from his own claim that we have a common ability to clearly distinguish inauthentic novelty from "The Faith." But Mr. Palko's "schism" from his own theory isn't very surprising; "The Faith" can be a very hard thing to identify, much harder than Mr. Palko apparently assumes it to be. There was a time when the Immaculate Conception, a miracle whose definition is within the grasp of every Catholic school child, was a matter of outrageous scandal and tumultuous controversy that rivals modern Traditionalist hyperventilation over Assisi I and II:
It would be no use to Mr. Palko to distinguish his position from the preachers condemned by Sixtus IV on the grounds that his views only involve the giving or withholding of obedience, not arrogating to himself the role of judging the theological truth of a matter proposed for assent. He could try it, but only if he then wants to argue that the Catholics who make the comparative judgments he urges between "The Faith" and statements of members of the ordinary magisterium, and who conscientiously decide to withhold their assent from such statements, are morally entitled to refuse assent because they have absolutely no good reason for doing so. We are, after all, speaking about our consciences, and our consciences know only two directions -- one which leads us towards God, and the other which leads us away from Him. If Mr. Palko can outline a case in which a Catholic should conscientiously refuse the ordinary magisterium on grounds which have nothing to do with good or ill, faith or folly, he is too modest in quoting Johnny Cochrane; for it would then be more appropriate if Mr. Cochrane went about quoting Mr. Palko.
At this point it becomes useful to say a word about "private judgment." Discussions between Traditionalist and non-Traditionalist Catholics generally feature such accusations, with Traditionalists being portrayed as the unwitting dupes of Protestant thinking. Often these accusations are overdrawn, and sometimes they're right on the money, and other times it's difficult to tell which is the case. It is, for example, exceedingly difficult to understand how Mr. Palko's "comparative Catholicism" can operate without using private judgment in the fullest Protestant sense of the term. On the other hand, it's difficult to distinguish the broad outlines of his thesis from what we all do whenever we listen seriously to a member of the ordinary magisterium. For example, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says in Dominus Iesus that other Christian communities cannot be called "sister Churches" because it suggests either a unity which does not exist or a licit diversity which God has not willed. I do in fact read the document, and automatically begin thinking of it in light of what I know from my studies and instruction -- Unam Sanctam, Cantate Domino, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, Lumen Gentium, the Gospels, etc. -- and say to myself, "yes, nothing really shocking here, quite right, and darn useful instruction, too." When My Bishop writes an article in the Diocesan newspaper that says one doesn't "fully" participate in communion unless one receives both the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, I compare it to the Council of Trent and the sorry career of Jan Hus and say to myself, "Hmmm. Dicey business, this, and if it's not heterodoxy it's damn well susceptible to a heterodox interpretation." We all evaluate statements made by the ordinary magisterium according to what we know, or think we know, and entertain private opinions about the wisdom, accuracy, or even orthodoxy of what we read. If that's private judgment, then to paraphrase Nixon, "we're all Lutherans now."
But, of course, we're not Lutherans because what we're doing isn't "private judgment." It's just obeying God's commandment to love Him with our minds. It seems to me that there's a difference between the Protestant idea of "private judgment" and the simple human process of judging, but that the difference doesn't depend on acts of understanding, reconciling, quarreling, noting consistencies, observing distinctions and departures, or forming one's opinion about a statement's truth or propriety. Protestants, of course, are so habituated to the vice of private judgment that they don't believe there can be such a difference. That's why they so often speak as though Catholics must either be ignorant lemmings or incipient Protestants, and are so eager to believe the canard that the Church "hid" Scripture from the people; Scripture being the object on which their vice of private judgment is most consistently and habitually inflicted, it seems entirely plausible to them that a Church which condemns private judgment would bar men from the most fertile occasion for indulging in it. As with all Protestant doctrines which are nominally described in terms of Scripture, "private judgment" really has far less to do with Scripture than with Protestant ideas about authority and community. That's where the difference really lies, and focusing instead on whether someone thinks about the world misses the mark.
Christian truth has always identified communion in terms of a shared life: "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." John 17:23 (KJV). Heresy and schism are sins because, and to the extent that, they attack this unity; they force men into an unnatural, irreconcilable separation from one another:
"Private judgment" is to this sort of non-Christian Christianity what pride is to all sin. It is the amphitheater in which the spectacle occurs, the stage on which the actors fret and strut. When men use their minds to come to an understanding of the faith which preserves their shared life, they are not engaging in private judgment. They are, in their own pale and humble way, following our Lord, who condescended to "increas[e] in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Luke 2:52 (KJV). But when they use their minds to scrutinize candidates for Christian fellowship, hoarding themselves lest they be contaminated by policies or decisions which they think are beneath their own excellence, then they are following the path of the Reformers. If there is one verse of Scripture which judges the SSPX and Archbishop Lefebvre, it is this: "And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions." Mark 10:22 (KJV). The Mass of St. Pius V is a great possession, as is the spiritual, liturgical, and theological civilization of Catholicism as it existed before the Second Vatican Council. Weren't they given to us by God? Of course they were, just as the rich man's possessions were given to him by God. If the Church decrees that the Novus Ordo shall replace the Mass of St. Pius V then so it must be, no matter how treasured a possession the old rite has become. Private judgment does not consist in a belief that the old rite is being unnecessarily discounted, nor does community require the belief that the Novus Ordo is the best liturgy known to man. Private judgment consists in the belief that the Church may not compel an obedience which merely, as Mr. Palko describes it, "seem[s] horribly scandalous." It is not part of a Christian's baptismal birthright to receive a custody of "The Faith" that is superior, or even equal, to that exercised by the very apostles who are entrusted with explaining and implementing that faith.
A man who judges privately is a man who thinks himself capable of ruling the whole Church, presuming that heresy and defection exist wherever he believes them to be. Private judgment is Luther instructing his Pope about "The Faith"; had the Blessed Virgin been afflicted with the vice, Luke's Gospel would recount her lecturing Gabriel on reproductive biology and the injustice of subjecting her to village calumnies or the suspicions of Joseph. The difference between individual faith and private judgment is the difference between "How can this be . . . Behold the handmaid of the Lord" and "It is incredible that something like that [Assisi I] could have ever taken place in the Church, in the eyes of the whole Church —how humiliating! We have never undergone such a humiliation!"[1] Shared life presents many occasions for humiliation, self-abnegation, and trusting in moments when one's whole being screams out for reserve. A man who believes himself capable of containing the whole of life can't really share anything, he can only demand that everyone else live up to his own standards:
It's interesting to apply these views to heresy generally, and to Protestantism in particular. Anyone who knows devout Protestants realizes they're not generally indulging in personal vainglory when they submit themselves to the discipline and teaching of their communions -- however heretical those may actually be. They often follow the teachings of their sect at great personal inconvenience and cost to themselves. They will even submit themselves entirely to the decisions of a ruling body, such as a council of elders or a synod, even if those decisions contravene their own personal beliefs. There are, after all, conservative Episcopalians who remained Episcopalians even when their bishop became a bishopess, just as there were conservative Anglicans who remained Anglican after Lambeth. Catholics mischaracterize Protestant life when they describe it as a constant state of Brownian anarchy, but Protestants also misstate affairs when they claim their communities are living creations of sola scriptura and conscientious private judgment. Within each Protestant communion, life does indeed resemble the community familiar to Catholics because it is produced by the same horror of private judgment entertained by Catholicism. Within their communities, Protestants are not indulging in private judgment because they are instead following the private judgments originally made by the founders of their sects. This is not altogether surprising; no Christian community, not even a heretical one, can survive the constant exercise of private judgment because the very nature of private judgment keeps men from forming viable communities in the first place. If Protestant communities are to survive, they must honor sola scriptura and private conscience in the breach. Which, in fact, they do by indulging in them only when a collision of theological cultures produces enough pressure to trigger fission.
So I think it might be wrong to leave all criticism of Traditionalists to charges of Protestantism, proto-Protestantism, crypto-Protestantism, etc. The position of the vast majority of modern Protestants actually has far more integrity than that of some Traditionalists. Deitrich Bonhoeffer never stood before a Pope he had already acknowledged before God and man as the spiritual father of all Christians, and judged that Pope as having so departed from Bonheoffer's infallible knowledge of "The Faith" as to become Antichrist. Luther did that, because his ambition and private judgment could not tolerate communion with a rival mind. Bonhoeffer merely followed the never-to-be-acknowledged magisterial traditions handed to him by his forefathers and followed them at the price of his own life, a price Luther thought himself too important to risk paying. Vanity, not contrary opinion, is the hallmark of private judgment:
Once one looks at schism and obedience in this way, it becomes clear that an authentic Catholic response to members of the ordinary magisterium cannot be derived by a naive application of rights-based paradigms borrowed from secular positive law. I fear this is the basic operating model Mr. Palko, like many Traditionalists, has adopted. To be sure, constructions and habits of constitutionalism and positive law have their place in Church life. One of the central meanings of the eye's inability to say to the hand "I have no need of thee," is that neither of them is dispensable and that each has its proper role; constitutionalism and positive law are necessary expressions of their reciprocal functions in the life of the Church. It is not right that my priest command me to disobey my bishop, a council of bishops require me to ignore Rome, or that a marriage tribunal grant annulment on grounds of "personal incompatibility" -- canon law and dogmatic constitutions are indispensable ways to curb the normal tendency of every person or institution to indulge in inaccurate ideas or to undergo simple "mission creep." They are necessary and indispensible, yes, but they remain only partial expressions of life in the Body of Christ. When they become total expressions, whether on a collective or individual level, a schismatic perspective is bound to arise.
The fundamental presupposition of secular theories of constitutionalism is a permanent state of justifiable, antagonistic suspicion between rulers and ruled. It runs throughout the entire era during which Western culture began to elaborate constitutional structures of government; Locke, Rousseau, the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalists are rife with it. Enlightenment constitutionalism rests upon the "policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives," a policy that the framers generally believed "might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public." FEDERALIST PAPERS, No. 51. As public virtue has waned, and the despair of public virtue has waxed, modern social and political regimes have taken this hostile formalism to its most perfect figure. No misfeasance, no error may be detected without there arising the simultaneous conviction that dark motives are afoot. Bill Clinton perjured himself about cheating on his wife, because he was frightened and angry at the domestic and political odium which would attend a truthful statement. He succumbed to temptations which haunt the breast of every unfaithful husband, every ambitious man, but sin is instantly made into something more -- an Evil Plot to Subvert the Republic, Treasonous Perjury Most Vile, a Depraved Stab into the Heart of Our Way of Life, complete with impeachment proceedings and pious mutterings about the total sanctity of law and its ability to serve as the sovereign remedy for civil ills. Our adherence to fundamentally Protestant paradigms of life, as filtered through the Enlightenment, has made the recognition of simple sin intolerable; we cannot allow men to be sinners, for if good men sin then the policy of supplying their moral wants through the opposition of rivals will become a shambles leading only to more sin. Sin must be abolished. Only treason may be recognized, for only treason can fit comfortably within our belief that we shall detect and thwart treason ex opere operato, by the "opposite and rival interests" of a true vanguard who knows "The Faith", not by humiliating patience, inward sanctity, or imperceptible virtue. While the public character of "The Faith" bequeathed to us by our Protestant framers has been leeched of its Christian content, it has not lost its character as an adamantine gnostic basilisk whose stare instantly transforms fallacy into blasphemy.
I cannot help but think that many Traditionalists have simply brought this suspicious, antagonistic paradigm into their Catholicity. It would not be an astounding thing if it were true. Only the conversions of saints have been fully accomplished. The rest of us former moderns are rather like the barbarians of old: We need reminding that the Triune God isn't Wotan, that consecrated Hosts shouldn't be given to sick livestock, and that Marx's atheism wasn't his only intellectual fault. Our educations, entertainments, habits of thought -- all that goes into making the man, have been thoroughly secular, or secularized. God help us, but these paradigms have even infiltrated the Church herself; who hasn't seen a bishop or priest confront recalcitrance or ignorance with an attitude that has more in common with Andrei Vyshinsky and Joe McCarthy than St. Philip Neri or St. Alphonsus Ligouri? When we look at a man we don't see the imago Dei, macrocosm in microcosm; we see only an intellectual symbol, a party member, the manifestation of an Hegelian principle. A bishop burbles heresy and we fly into revolutionary conniptions, certain that the "The Faith" of the Vanguard is being Treasonously Ravished by an Insidious Plot. Bishops have been burbling heresy for millennia. We're promised the Holy Spirit only to ensure that an episcopal mind's inability to grasp doctrinal nuances will not be the ruin of the Church -- we're not granted the Holy Spirit to be spared the unpleasantness of seeing a dumb bishop stick his foot in his mouth. If we really do have the Holy Spirit, the correct response to the USCC's Reflections on Covenant and Mission is a host of derisive broadsides, not dark theories about an Insidious Jew-Modernist Dolchstoss a la Robert Sungenis. The former response, which maintains community within discourse, can subsist within a shared life. The latter response, with its add-water fatwas and microwavable jihads against the Infidel, cannot.
Here, as in every other way of life, the Catholic paradigm contradicts the world's -- the world may operate on the assumption that all novelty is betrayal and all error sin, but Catholics must operate on the assumption that novelty is apparent and that even if it is actual, it may be merely error and not wilful disloyalty to "The Faith." The world may turn custody of "The Faith" into a bone of revolutionary contentiousness between a proletarian laity and a capitalist clergy, but Catholicism must grant "The Faith" to all alike within a shared life that cannot be irretrievably sundered -- and must be maintained -- despite anyone's fault. The brute application of The Federalist Papers, and the entire culture of which it is only a part, to the problems and daily maintenance of Church life dispenses with all of this, throwing the victory to the world even as it simultaneously claims a triumph for "The Faith." The law has its place in the Church -- indeed, law is the Church's gift to the world, but the Traditionalist's use of law, like his modern use of "ideology", leaves much to be desired. He gives us a perspective that is rank with the kind of rights-based morality that is poisoning modern life to the point where lawyers have to review holiday cards to ensure they're not "offensive." He makes an aggressive use of law against everything, perpetually suspecting and challenging imminent "violations" of his right to define himself. In other words, he uses the law as a sword against every attempt to require his participation in a shared life without prior guarantees that its future development will please him.
Traditionalists think the law and "The Faith" are lambs' blood to be smeared on the lintels of the soul in protection against the pestilential influence of living bishops, priests, and popes. They do not understand that the Lamb's blood is given to all of them as well, vivifying drink for members of the same Body, giving those living priests, bishops, and popes a share in his own life. If the Church were only the corruptible human polity envisioned by Hamiton, Locke, Madison and the rest Traditionalists would have the safer view. In such a polity, it behooves every man to hoard his life, befriending only those worthy of his own excellence or aspirations to excellence. For this reason Christians who live in such polities are expressly told not to give what his holy unto dogs, and to seek a shared life only with one another. But the Church is an incorruptible polity, prophesied from the ages. In the Church, it behooves every man to pour out his life in vulnerability and humility, befriending all and treating them with cheerful regard. For this reason Christians are told to shout from rooftops and invite everyone into a brighter, more perfect community where the transforming Lamb's Supper is celebrated. In this we have the sublime spectacle that only Catholicism may offer -- the spectacle of grace perfecting nature.
Like most vices, the Traditionalist perspective is not wrong for what it is, but for what it lacks. It is not wrong to love "The Faith", but it is wrong to lack humility about one's idea of "The Faith." It is not wrong to remonstrate with a bishop, but it is wrong to dispense with the bishop by regarding him as being superfluous to one's own spiritual welfare. It is not wrong to hold an opinion, but it is wrong to ostracize disagreeable opinions from the balance of one's own judgment. It is not wrong to have orthodoxy, and to cling to it presumptively, but it is wrong to lack the bravery required to acknowledge that even a saint's idea of orthodoxy occasionally requires a modification or two. It is not wrong to love oneself, but it is wrong to love oneself so much that one's spiritual comfort becomes the highest and universal good. Finally, it is not wrong to know one's limits, to know the places where one cannot go, without losing the faith; but it is wrong to conclude that everyone else has the same limits, and that no one else may go to such places without abandoning a common faith. The Traditionalist flaw is not "negativity" or "exclusion" -- it is an unhealthy and envious poverty. "And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions." Mark 10:22 (KJV).
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[1] Archbishop Lefebvre, Consecration Sermon, delivered June 30, 1988. The text can be found here.
[2] Id.
WHAT IS THE MAGESTERUIM?
- by .
IAN PALKO
I. Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum recently invited some commentary on a note by Mr. Ian Palko discussing the supposed limits on Catholic responses to statements and instructions by members of the ordinary magisterium. Mr. Palko's comments were part of a larger discussion between Shawn and a Mr. Kevin Tierney -- their debate can be found, by way of the debate's last installment, here. The discussion Shawn invited us to have with Mr. Palko is a sort of "sidebar" discussion to the McElhinney/Tierney debate, involving a limited dialogue about the nature of the Church's magisterium and the Catholic response to it. I had penned a brief reply that largely tracked Mr. Timothy Ouillette's thoughts, which were blogged at Rerum Novarum. So I took the opportunity to expand my response, bringing in some other perspectives and thoughts which have been occupying my thinking about Traditionalism. Mr. Ouilette's reply can be found
here. As I cannot find Mr. Palko's entire selection, which Shawn emailed to me, I will I reproduce it in the notes section of this essay as it was sent to me, without corrections.
I should say at the outset that I have begged a large part of the question about what "Traditionalism" is, and not undertaken to precisely define the meaning of the term, which is itself subject to no small amount of debate. The "Traditionalism" to which I refer below isn't defined by love or preference for the Mass of St. Pius V, nor by disagreement with certain directions and actions of the hierarchy in or since the Second Vatican Council. It is, rather, embodied in the idea that one's conscience must choose between an inauthentic sham Catholicism and a real Catholicism which requires thinking and worshiping as though the Second Vatican Council did nothing which could oblige the conscience of a Catholic. That idea runs throughout all "camps" or "groups" of Traditionalists, sometimes found only in the individual opinion of several members, sometimes manifesting itself as the unexpressed gestalt of the whole, and sometimes even serving as the acknowledged institutional raison d'etre of an entire movement.
That idea, or rather the intellectual underpinnings of the idea, is the focus of my short essay. It's my belief that while the adherents of this idea may be apparently more Catholic by reason of lacking visible or notable distinctions between themselves and the Church before 1962, their fundamental conception of Catholicity is more or less inauthentic, more or less "not really Catholic at all." I do not claim a good deal of experience in discussing things with Mr. Palko, and I admit that his name figures in my essay largely because his own statement was simply the occasion for writing my own essay. I do not think I have made any inapt judgments, but if I am wrong and have misrepresented Mr. Palko I beg his pardon beforehand and express my willingness to correct myself.
Mr. Palko correctly notes that not all Catholic teachings are dogmatically equal because the Church has both an ordinary and extraordinary magisterium. I agree with Mr. Palko that many Catholics don't understand the difference between these "magisteriae" and that this causes no end of confusion among and between them when they're discussing the state of Catholic theology. But while Mr. Palko should be applauded for his attempt at precision, he must be disagreed with on the direction his thinking has taken him as to the authority of Catholicism's magisterial facets. Mr. Palko presents us with the idea that we, personally, must test statements made within the ordinary magisterium against what he calls "the Faith" proclaimed by the extraordinary magisterium and, if an inconsistency is detected, immediately reject the ordinary magisterial statements as an inauthentic (and probably dangerous) novelties. There are several problems with this thesis,
Mr. Palko has, no doubt unintentionally, declared a kind of retroactive jihad against the very idea of a magisterium. It's true Mr. Palko argues only that his conscience is immune from magisterial inconsistencies; he is entitled to say his liberty of conscience doesn't prohibit anyone from engaging in the development of doctrine within or by means of the ordinary magisterium. But the conflict between his views and the magisterial custody of doctrine doesn't turn on the liberty of conscience (or lack thereof) allowed to Catholics regarding statements made within the ordinary magisterium. The conflict arises because Mr. Palko, in order to facilitate the comparative process he urges on us, has enshrined a given quanta of theological knowledge as "The Faith." If Mr. Palko is entitled to say that his views don't preclude others from engaging in theological speculation, we are entitled to ask him whether "The Faith" imposes any limits on such speculation. If orthodoxy is to have any meaning within Catholicism -- and, indeed, if Mr. Palko is to get any use out of his own theory -- he must agree that "The Faith" sets immutable boundaries against some new ideas (or iterations of old ideas) proposed by people who are entrusted with the ordinary magisterium.
We may then point out to Mr. Palko that if these limits are to be observed, the fund of theological knowledge he's pleased to call "The Faith" must be capable of (a) finally determining the orthodoxy of every statement made by a member of the ordinary magisterium, and (b) being identified so that it can form the basis of that comparison. With respect to the latter criterion there are, so far as I can discern, only two possible ways to identify "The Faith" -- categorical and chronological. So Mr. Palko can be justly called on to tell us either (i) the date on which "The Faith" was complete, or to identify (ii) the precise doctrines which "The Faith" contains. The problems with engaging in these classifications are horrendous. On December 7, 1854, the day before Pope Pius IX issued Ineffabilis Deus, the Immaculate Conception was a teaching of the ordinary magisterium. When Pope Pius IX retired to his bedchamber that evening, his own belief in the Immaculate Conception had some doughty opponents. It was explicitly denied by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, and implicitly denied by St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil. Now if "The Faith" praised by Mr. Palko was constituted on December 7, 1854, either by virtue of these saintly opponents' antiquity, or by virtue of their theological integrity, by what alchemy was the Immaculate Conception transformed on the following morning from an inauthentic (and possibly dangerous) disagreement with fathers and doctors of the Church into a holy truth committed to the Apostles by Christ Himself?
It's conundrums like this which tempt men into becoming Protestants, for Protestantism is zealously committed to the false but clear idea that since "God is not the author of confusion" (1 Cor. 14:33), the true faith cannot give any occasion for mental difficulty. That is, in fact, one of the reasons why Protestants believe they can disprove Catholicism by insisting that we perform the task Mr. Palko has made an essential element of Catholic life -- showing how the "The Faith" has been universally present, in an explicitly-witnessed entirety, from the days of the Apostles. When a Catholic foolish enough to accept the challenge as a valid test struggles, as he must, on the high slopes of theological deduction and historical judgment, the Protestant claims vindication because the True Faith would not be so difficult, the True Faith would empower a man to leap to the mountaintop with a single verse. It is not to my point to rehearse the sheer foolishness of this sort of argument. But it is to my point that Mr. Palko has implicitly accepted the presuppositions of our Protestant critics (though not their conclusions) by proposing exactly that kind of universally-explicit, continuously-identifiable orthodoxy as the rule by which Catholics should regularly scrutinize "what the Pope says" in terms of "The Faith."
Mr. Palko may wish to reply that my example is inapt because the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed via Pius IX's charism of infallibility and is thereby an indubitable teaching of the extraordinary magisterium which cannot be challenged by a Catholic who is truly practicing "The Faith." But I think that might be a very unwise point to make. Understanding the charism of infallibility without accepting conscientious liceity (and even conscientious obligations) for antecedent "novelties" is only half an understanding of the charism. Peter was not given the keys "only" to extirpate heresy; he was given the keys so that we might know what is bound and loosed in Heaven. (Matthew 16:19). Unless we keep this communicative, affirmative role of infallibility in mind we can't even hope to understand how the extraordinary magisterium may teach new things without having first invented them. Even more to the point, this aspect of the charism is essential to salvation, to theosis itself, because it is a signal means by which the limitations and fallibility of men are not insuperable obstacles to unity with the unlimited perfection of God. Infallibility provides Holy Mother Church with the suppleness appropriate to a living body, enabling men to follow -- or be obliged to follow -- apparent "novelties" in good conscience, knowing either that (i) the "novelty" may only be apparent because earlier human conceptions of the matter were not all they could have been, or (ii) the novelty may be real, but obedience to the decisions of a legitimate authority is still desired by God, who can preserve His truth through human fallacy just as He manifests His glory through human weakness. Men may act with the comfort that, however the case may turn out, the supreme verdict does not belong to them individually, and they are not obliged to decide at every turn whether they ought to be at odds with their bishops because their bishops are in schism from "The Faith." Men on either side of the affair may act conscientiously -- even obeying and respecting one another -- because they realize that the supreme judgment rests with the Church of Christ, the only seat of infallible judgment known on this earth. This is why infallibility isn't just necessary for the Church to lead men. It is also necessary if men are to follow the Church.
If we are going to envision "The Faith" as Mr. Palko's views require it to be envisioned we would have to go where so many of our Protestant brothers have logically gone, into an imaginary world dominated by an adamantine gnostic basilisk whose stare instantly transforms fallacy into blasphemy. Either Mr. Palko's concept of "The Faith" is already a sure and certain litmus test for every possible action or statement by a bishop, pope, or Roman congregation or it is not. If it is not, there's little point in Mr. Palko's rule of faith because investigations into the "consistency" of a recent statement or action can't produce a sure and certain result. But if it is possible for "The Faith" to be that universal template, there's really no reason for bishops, popes, or Roman congregations to do anything but preach an unchanging litany of truisms to an "amen corner." Thus does orthodoxy become convention, and convention become prejudice, and the living faith become ossified into a formulaic rote that cannot address unfamiliar challenges or new opportunities. So the Reformers became Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans; the Southern Baptists consigned their Northern coreligionists to Gehenna; the Anglicans banished the Wesleys; and a thousand Christian families rend themselves over the disciplina arcani of "pre-trib," "post-trib," and "mid-trib" Raptures. Our Christian brothers who have forsaken the living magisterium flail for their footing like overturned beetles simply because Sanger and Pincus discovered a new use for estrogen, because Watson and Crick identified a valid model for DNA. Their pitiable ruin came from pulling down the pillar and bulwark of a living magisterium in favor of what appeared to be surer, firmer, less prone to novel manipulations -- "The Faith", that comfortably-suicidal blindness to God's fulfilling His will "in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
Mr. Palko suggests that suspicions of heterodoxy in the Church are either uniquely, or at least uncommonly, warranted: "It seems in the past 40 years we have heard things which at least on their face seem much more inconsistent than in the earlier years of last century and the previous one." This hesitant quavering ill-becomes his argument which, after all, proceeds from his own claim that we have a common ability to clearly distinguish inauthentic novelty from "The Faith." But Mr. Palko's "schism" from his own theory isn't very surprising; "The Faith" can be a very hard thing to identify, much harder than Mr. Palko apparently assumes it to be. There was a time when the Immaculate Conception, a miracle whose definition is within the grasp of every Catholic school child, was a matter of outrageous scandal and tumultuous controversy that rivals modern Traditionalist hyperventilation over Assisi I and II:
Although the Holy Roman Church solemnly celebrates the public feast of the conception of the immaculate Mary ever Virgin, and has ordained a special and proper office for this feast, some preachers of different orders, as we have heard, in their sermons to the people in public throughout different cities and lands have not been ashamed to affirm up to this time, and daily cease not to affirm, that all those who hold or assert that the same glorious and immaculate mother of God was conceived without the stain of original sin, sin mortally, or that they are heretical, who celebrate the office of this same immaculate conception, and that those who listen to the sermons of those who affirm that she was conceived without this sin, sin grievously . . .If one owns a copy of the Enchiridion, or the translation which (praise be to God) has recently been reprinted, one can read the preceding paragraph which is a selection from Sixtus IV's Constitution Cum Praeexcelsa published some seven years earlier, and see that he thought very highly of the Immaculate Conception. Yet he reproved those who thought as he did, as well as those who opposed the doctrine, because they had fallen into the same error Mr. Palko has unintentionally committed. They assumed that they were commonly able to comprehend "The Faith", compare it with statements about the Immaculate Conception made by various members of the ordinary magisterium, and issue judgments which even the Holy See has hesitated to make.
We reprove and condemn assertions of this kind as false and erroneous and far removed from the truth, and also by apostolic authority and the tenor of these present [letters] we condemn and disapprove on this point published books which contain it . . . . [but these also we reprehend] who have dared to assert that those holding the contrary opinion, namely, that the glorious Virgin Mary was conceived with original sin are guilty of the crime of heresy and of mortal sin, since up to this time there has been no decision made by the Roman Church and the Apostolic See.
-- Pope Sixtus IV, from the Constitution Grave Nimis, September 4, 1483. Quoted in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, ¶ 735, trans. DeFerrari, Sources of Catholic Dogma, p. 102.
It would be no use to Mr. Palko to distinguish his position from the preachers condemned by Sixtus IV on the grounds that his views only involve the giving or withholding of obedience, not arrogating to himself the role of judging the theological truth of a matter proposed for assent. He could try it, but only if he then wants to argue that the Catholics who make the comparative judgments he urges between "The Faith" and statements of members of the ordinary magisterium, and who conscientiously decide to withhold their assent from such statements, are morally entitled to refuse assent because they have absolutely no good reason for doing so. We are, after all, speaking about our consciences, and our consciences know only two directions -- one which leads us towards God, and the other which leads us away from Him. If Mr. Palko can outline a case in which a Catholic should conscientiously refuse the ordinary magisterium on grounds which have nothing to do with good or ill, faith or folly, he is too modest in quoting Johnny Cochrane; for it would then be more appropriate if Mr. Cochrane went about quoting Mr. Palko.
At this point it becomes useful to say a word about "private judgment." Discussions between Traditionalist and non-Traditionalist Catholics generally feature such accusations, with Traditionalists being portrayed as the unwitting dupes of Protestant thinking. Often these accusations are overdrawn, and sometimes they're right on the money, and other times it's difficult to tell which is the case. It is, for example, exceedingly difficult to understand how Mr. Palko's "comparative Catholicism" can operate without using private judgment in the fullest Protestant sense of the term. On the other hand, it's difficult to distinguish the broad outlines of his thesis from what we all do whenever we listen seriously to a member of the ordinary magisterium. For example, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says in Dominus Iesus that other Christian communities cannot be called "sister Churches" because it suggests either a unity which does not exist or a licit diversity which God has not willed. I do in fact read the document, and automatically begin thinking of it in light of what I know from my studies and instruction -- Unam Sanctam, Cantate Domino, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, Lumen Gentium, the Gospels, etc. -- and say to myself, "yes, nothing really shocking here, quite right, and darn useful instruction, too." When My Bishop writes an article in the Diocesan newspaper that says one doesn't "fully" participate in communion unless one receives both the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, I compare it to the Council of Trent and the sorry career of Jan Hus and say to myself, "Hmmm. Dicey business, this, and if it's not heterodoxy it's damn well susceptible to a heterodox interpretation." We all evaluate statements made by the ordinary magisterium according to what we know, or think we know, and entertain private opinions about the wisdom, accuracy, or even orthodoxy of what we read. If that's private judgment, then to paraphrase Nixon, "we're all Lutherans now."
But, of course, we're not Lutherans because what we're doing isn't "private judgment." It's just obeying God's commandment to love Him with our minds. It seems to me that there's a difference between the Protestant idea of "private judgment" and the simple human process of judging, but that the difference doesn't depend on acts of understanding, reconciling, quarreling, noting consistencies, observing distinctions and departures, or forming one's opinion about a statement's truth or propriety. Protestants, of course, are so habituated to the vice of private judgment that they don't believe there can be such a difference. That's why they so often speak as though Catholics must either be ignorant lemmings or incipient Protestants, and are so eager to believe the canard that the Church "hid" Scripture from the people; Scripture being the object on which their vice of private judgment is most consistently and habitually inflicted, it seems entirely plausible to them that a Church which condemns private judgment would bar men from the most fertile occasion for indulging in it. As with all Protestant doctrines which are nominally described in terms of Scripture, "private judgment" really has far less to do with Scripture than with Protestant ideas about authority and community. That's where the difference really lies, and focusing instead on whether someone thinks about the world misses the mark.
Christian truth has always identified communion in terms of a shared life: "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." John 17:23 (KJV). Heresy and schism are sins because, and to the extent that, they attack this unity; they force men into an unnatural, irreconcilable separation from one another:
The schismatic, then, attacks the unity of the Church. It is important that he actually has the intention of attacking that unity, or at least of acting in a way which he knows will lead to a break in unity. This means that he must refuse to act as part of the whole in a way which touches the unity of the Church as such.Defective performance and material heresy aren't schismatic because, however unedifying or disastrous they may be, they don't wilfully strike at Christian unity in this way. Ineptness becomes disobedience, and ignorance formal heresy, at that point when they explicitly dispense with the necessity of shared life, when the eye says to the hand "I have no need of thee," or when the head says to the feet "I have no need of you." (1 Cor. 12:21) because men who say such things can't be "perfect in one." Luther and his followers ultimately showed their self-love and concomitant contempt for Christ's Church not by what they wrote or believed, but by their refusal to submit themselves to all those "venial, corrupt, and obnoxious" bishops and, thereby, live a shared life with the rest of Christendom. They did not sin merely because they used their minds to grapple with the challenges of Christian theology and evaluate those teachings of the ordinary magisterium which appeared to be inconsistent with "The Faith." They sinned because they arrogantly told the head and eyes that they were not really needed, perhaps because they truly feared for God's power to preserve His Church even under the pontificates of formidable scoundrels like Alexander VI or sluggish incompetents like Leo X. It always astounds me to hear the Reformers' actions excused by (well-founded) suspicion about their fate at the hands of unfit or malevolent bishops. If that's an excuse, then Peter was right and Christ need not have entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The Christian will lay down his very life in the service of an unfit and venial friend; the schismatic will hoard his life, befriending only those he deems worthy of his own excellence and who, therefore, will not give him occasion for ignominious self-sacrifice.
-- Fr. Aidan Nichols, Rome and the Eastern Churches, pp. 13-14.
"Private judgment" is to this sort of non-Christian Christianity what pride is to all sin. It is the amphitheater in which the spectacle occurs, the stage on which the actors fret and strut. When men use their minds to come to an understanding of the faith which preserves their shared life, they are not engaging in private judgment. They are, in their own pale and humble way, following our Lord, who condescended to "increas[e] in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Luke 2:52 (KJV). But when they use their minds to scrutinize candidates for Christian fellowship, hoarding themselves lest they be contaminated by policies or decisions which they think are beneath their own excellence, then they are following the path of the Reformers. If there is one verse of Scripture which judges the SSPX and Archbishop Lefebvre, it is this: "And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions." Mark 10:22 (KJV). The Mass of St. Pius V is a great possession, as is the spiritual, liturgical, and theological civilization of Catholicism as it existed before the Second Vatican Council. Weren't they given to us by God? Of course they were, just as the rich man's possessions were given to him by God. If the Church decrees that the Novus Ordo shall replace the Mass of St. Pius V then so it must be, no matter how treasured a possession the old rite has become. Private judgment does not consist in a belief that the old rite is being unnecessarily discounted, nor does community require the belief that the Novus Ordo is the best liturgy known to man. Private judgment consists in the belief that the Church may not compel an obedience which merely, as Mr. Palko describes it, "seem[s] horribly scandalous." It is not part of a Christian's baptismal birthright to receive a custody of "The Faith" that is superior, or even equal, to that exercised by the very apostles who are entrusted with explaining and implementing that faith.
A man who judges privately is a man who thinks himself capable of ruling the whole Church, presuming that heresy and defection exist wherever he believes them to be. Private judgment is Luther instructing his Pope about "The Faith"; had the Blessed Virgin been afflicted with the vice, Luke's Gospel would recount her lecturing Gabriel on reproductive biology and the injustice of subjecting her to village calumnies or the suspicions of Joseph. The difference between individual faith and private judgment is the difference between "How can this be . . . Behold the handmaid of the Lord" and "It is incredible that something like that [Assisi I] could have ever taken place in the Church, in the eyes of the whole Church —how humiliating! We have never undergone such a humiliation!"[1] Shared life presents many occasions for humiliation, self-abnegation, and trusting in moments when one's whole being screams out for reserve. A man who believes himself capable of containing the whole of life can't really share anything, he can only demand that everyone else live up to his own standards:
"I have endeavored to read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me . . . and am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterday or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever."It really doesn't matter whether one is inflicting this kind of vanity on St. Paul's Letter to the Romans or upon Pascendi and Lamentabili Sane, the result is the same, a firm conviction that one already understands everything as it is and should be, and that anything to the contrary is therefore inauthentic. It isn't private judgment when one believes that he knows true things truly. Private judgment isn't a necessary act of conscience, or thought. It's an unnecessary act of ambitious vainglory, of elevating oneself to the judgment seat of Christ, making one's own understanding the benchmark of truth. The content of private judgments is irrelevant, the men who make them can proclaim anything from sola fide to Humanae Vitae, and whatever the outward appearance of piety they may display, inwardly they are ravening wolves who would devour the whole of life simply to feed their own vanity.
-- Alexander Campbell, quoted in Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 179. (Campbell, of course, was a founder of the Church of Christ, a/k/a the Disciples of Christ)
It's interesting to apply these views to heresy generally, and to Protestantism in particular. Anyone who knows devout Protestants realizes they're not generally indulging in personal vainglory when they submit themselves to the discipline and teaching of their communions -- however heretical those may actually be. They often follow the teachings of their sect at great personal inconvenience and cost to themselves. They will even submit themselves entirely to the decisions of a ruling body, such as a council of elders or a synod, even if those decisions contravene their own personal beliefs. There are, after all, conservative Episcopalians who remained Episcopalians even when their bishop became a bishopess, just as there were conservative Anglicans who remained Anglican after Lambeth. Catholics mischaracterize Protestant life when they describe it as a constant state of Brownian anarchy, but Protestants also misstate affairs when they claim their communities are living creations of sola scriptura and conscientious private judgment. Within each Protestant communion, life does indeed resemble the community familiar to Catholics because it is produced by the same horror of private judgment entertained by Catholicism. Within their communities, Protestants are not indulging in private judgment because they are instead following the private judgments originally made by the founders of their sects. This is not altogether surprising; no Christian community, not even a heretical one, can survive the constant exercise of private judgment because the very nature of private judgment keeps men from forming viable communities in the first place. If Protestant communities are to survive, they must honor sola scriptura and private conscience in the breach. Which, in fact, they do by indulging in them only when a collision of theological cultures produces enough pressure to trigger fission.
So I think it might be wrong to leave all criticism of Traditionalists to charges of Protestantism, proto-Protestantism, crypto-Protestantism, etc. The position of the vast majority of modern Protestants actually has far more integrity than that of some Traditionalists. Deitrich Bonhoeffer never stood before a Pope he had already acknowledged before God and man as the spiritual father of all Christians, and judged that Pope as having so departed from Bonheoffer's infallible knowledge of "The Faith" as to become Antichrist. Luther did that, because his ambition and private judgment could not tolerate communion with a rival mind. Bonhoeffer merely followed the never-to-be-acknowledged magisterial traditions handed to him by his forefathers and followed them at the price of his own life, a price Luther thought himself too important to risk paying. Vanity, not contrary opinion, is the hallmark of private judgment:
Just recently, the priest who takes care of the [SSPX] priory in Bogota, Colombia, brought me a book concerning the apparition of Our Lady of "Buen Suceso," —of "Good Fortune," to whom a large church in Quito, Ecuador, was dedicated . . . Our Lady prophesied for the twentieth century, saying explicitly that . . . errors would become more and more widespread in Holy Church, placing the Church in a catastrophic situation. Morals would become corrupt and the Faith would disappear. . . . she speaks of a prelate who will absolutely oppose this wave of apostasy and impiety -- saving the priesthood by forming good priests. I do not say that prophecy refers to me. You may draw your own conclusions. [2]Yes, we must draw our own conclusions. It won't accomplish anything if the serpent forces fruit down our throats; to do what is wanted, we must pluck it for it ourselves. "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Lefebvre wasn't a schismatic because he thought the decisions taken at the Second Vatican Council were ill-considered, or even disastrous. He was a schismatic because he, and not the Church, had the ultimate right to determine the content and the future of Catholicism. "Traditionalism" is a confusing name because it implicitly suggests devotion to the glories of a hallowed past, when in fact it is a program for a future as novel as anything it claims to resist -- an imagined future in which the Church Militant has been finally perfected, not by Jesus Christ, but by passage through an Hegelian dialectic.
Once one looks at schism and obedience in this way, it becomes clear that an authentic Catholic response to members of the ordinary magisterium cannot be derived by a naive application of rights-based paradigms borrowed from secular positive law. I fear this is the basic operating model Mr. Palko, like many Traditionalists, has adopted. To be sure, constructions and habits of constitutionalism and positive law have their place in Church life. One of the central meanings of the eye's inability to say to the hand "I have no need of thee," is that neither of them is dispensable and that each has its proper role; constitutionalism and positive law are necessary expressions of their reciprocal functions in the life of the Church. It is not right that my priest command me to disobey my bishop, a council of bishops require me to ignore Rome, or that a marriage tribunal grant annulment on grounds of "personal incompatibility" -- canon law and dogmatic constitutions are indispensable ways to curb the normal tendency of every person or institution to indulge in inaccurate ideas or to undergo simple "mission creep." They are necessary and indispensible, yes, but they remain only partial expressions of life in the Body of Christ. When they become total expressions, whether on a collective or individual level, a schismatic perspective is bound to arise.
The fundamental presupposition of secular theories of constitutionalism is a permanent state of justifiable, antagonistic suspicion between rulers and ruled. It runs throughout the entire era during which Western culture began to elaborate constitutional structures of government; Locke, Rousseau, the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalists are rife with it. Enlightenment constitutionalism rests upon the "policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives," a policy that the framers generally believed "might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public." FEDERALIST PAPERS, No. 51. As public virtue has waned, and the despair of public virtue has waxed, modern social and political regimes have taken this hostile formalism to its most perfect figure. No misfeasance, no error may be detected without there arising the simultaneous conviction that dark motives are afoot. Bill Clinton perjured himself about cheating on his wife, because he was frightened and angry at the domestic and political odium which would attend a truthful statement. He succumbed to temptations which haunt the breast of every unfaithful husband, every ambitious man, but sin is instantly made into something more -- an Evil Plot to Subvert the Republic, Treasonous Perjury Most Vile, a Depraved Stab into the Heart of Our Way of Life, complete with impeachment proceedings and pious mutterings about the total sanctity of law and its ability to serve as the sovereign remedy for civil ills. Our adherence to fundamentally Protestant paradigms of life, as filtered through the Enlightenment, has made the recognition of simple sin intolerable; we cannot allow men to be sinners, for if good men sin then the policy of supplying their moral wants through the opposition of rivals will become a shambles leading only to more sin. Sin must be abolished. Only treason may be recognized, for only treason can fit comfortably within our belief that we shall detect and thwart treason ex opere operato, by the "opposite and rival interests" of a true vanguard who knows "The Faith", not by humiliating patience, inward sanctity, or imperceptible virtue. While the public character of "The Faith" bequeathed to us by our Protestant framers has been leeched of its Christian content, it has not lost its character as an adamantine gnostic basilisk whose stare instantly transforms fallacy into blasphemy.
I cannot help but think that many Traditionalists have simply brought this suspicious, antagonistic paradigm into their Catholicity. It would not be an astounding thing if it were true. Only the conversions of saints have been fully accomplished. The rest of us former moderns are rather like the barbarians of old: We need reminding that the Triune God isn't Wotan, that consecrated Hosts shouldn't be given to sick livestock, and that Marx's atheism wasn't his only intellectual fault. Our educations, entertainments, habits of thought -- all that goes into making the man, have been thoroughly secular, or secularized. God help us, but these paradigms have even infiltrated the Church herself; who hasn't seen a bishop or priest confront recalcitrance or ignorance with an attitude that has more in common with Andrei Vyshinsky and Joe McCarthy than St. Philip Neri or St. Alphonsus Ligouri? When we look at a man we don't see the imago Dei, macrocosm in microcosm; we see only an intellectual symbol, a party member, the manifestation of an Hegelian principle. A bishop burbles heresy and we fly into revolutionary conniptions, certain that the "The Faith" of the Vanguard is being Treasonously Ravished by an Insidious Plot. Bishops have been burbling heresy for millennia. We're promised the Holy Spirit only to ensure that an episcopal mind's inability to grasp doctrinal nuances will not be the ruin of the Church -- we're not granted the Holy Spirit to be spared the unpleasantness of seeing a dumb bishop stick his foot in his mouth. If we really do have the Holy Spirit, the correct response to the USCC's Reflections on Covenant and Mission is a host of derisive broadsides, not dark theories about an Insidious Jew-Modernist Dolchstoss a la Robert Sungenis. The former response, which maintains community within discourse, can subsist within a shared life. The latter response, with its add-water fatwas and microwavable jihads against the Infidel, cannot.
Here, as in every other way of life, the Catholic paradigm contradicts the world's -- the world may operate on the assumption that all novelty is betrayal and all error sin, but Catholics must operate on the assumption that novelty is apparent and that even if it is actual, it may be merely error and not wilful disloyalty to "The Faith." The world may turn custody of "The Faith" into a bone of revolutionary contentiousness between a proletarian laity and a capitalist clergy, but Catholicism must grant "The Faith" to all alike within a shared life that cannot be irretrievably sundered -- and must be maintained -- despite anyone's fault. The brute application of The Federalist Papers, and the entire culture of which it is only a part, to the problems and daily maintenance of Church life dispenses with all of this, throwing the victory to the world even as it simultaneously claims a triumph for "The Faith." The law has its place in the Church -- indeed, law is the Church's gift to the world, but the Traditionalist's use of law, like his modern use of "ideology", leaves much to be desired. He gives us a perspective that is rank with the kind of rights-based morality that is poisoning modern life to the point where lawyers have to review holiday cards to ensure they're not "offensive." He makes an aggressive use of law against everything, perpetually suspecting and challenging imminent "violations" of his right to define himself. In other words, he uses the law as a sword against every attempt to require his participation in a shared life without prior guarantees that its future development will please him.
Traditionalists think the law and "The Faith" are lambs' blood to be smeared on the lintels of the soul in protection against the pestilential influence of living bishops, priests, and popes. They do not understand that the Lamb's blood is given to all of them as well, vivifying drink for members of the same Body, giving those living priests, bishops, and popes a share in his own life. If the Church were only the corruptible human polity envisioned by Hamiton, Locke, Madison and the rest Traditionalists would have the safer view. In such a polity, it behooves every man to hoard his life, befriending only those worthy of his own excellence or aspirations to excellence. For this reason Christians who live in such polities are expressly told not to give what his holy unto dogs, and to seek a shared life only with one another. But the Church is an incorruptible polity, prophesied from the ages. In the Church, it behooves every man to pour out his life in vulnerability and humility, befriending all and treating them with cheerful regard. For this reason Christians are told to shout from rooftops and invite everyone into a brighter, more perfect community where the transforming Lamb's Supper is celebrated. In this we have the sublime spectacle that only Catholicism may offer -- the spectacle of grace perfecting nature.
Like most vices, the Traditionalist perspective is not wrong for what it is, but for what it lacks. It is not wrong to love "The Faith", but it is wrong to lack humility about one's idea of "The Faith." It is not wrong to remonstrate with a bishop, but it is wrong to dispense with the bishop by regarding him as being superfluous to one's own spiritual welfare. It is not wrong to hold an opinion, but it is wrong to ostracize disagreeable opinions from the balance of one's own judgment. It is not wrong to have orthodoxy, and to cling to it presumptively, but it is wrong to lack the bravery required to acknowledge that even a saint's idea of orthodoxy occasionally requires a modification or two. It is not wrong to love oneself, but it is wrong to love oneself so much that one's spiritual comfort becomes the highest and universal good. Finally, it is not wrong to know one's limits, to know the places where one cannot go, without losing the faith; but it is wrong to conclude that everyone else has the same limits, and that no one else may go to such places without abandoning a common faith. The Traditionalist flaw is not "negativity" or "exclusion" -- it is an unhealthy and envious poverty. "And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions." Mark 10:22 (KJV).
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[1] Archbishop Lefebvre, Consecration Sermon, delivered June 30, 1988. The text can be found here.
[2] Id.
- by .
IAN PALKO
Mr. Tierney's responses to Mr. McElhinney bring up a word often used and misunderstood by many folks, from the general Catholic public, to those of us a bit more educated and versed in the Faith, from the Novus Ordo and Traditional Circles alike. I though it a proper and decent idea to set down a definition of the Magesterium, to aid those of us who have some erronious ideas of what it actually is.
The Catholic Encyclopaedic Dictonary, Imprimatur and Nihil obstat obtained in 1930 defines the Magesterium as such:
MAGISTERUIM (Lat. magister, a master).
The Church's divinely appointed authority to teach the truths of religion, "Going therefore, teach ye all nations ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matt. xxcii, 19-20). This teaching is infallible: "And behold I am with you all days, even to the conummation of the world" (ibid). The solemn magisterium is that which is exercised only rarely by formal and authentic definitions of councils and popes. Its matter comprises dogmatic definitions of oecumenical councils or of the popes teaching ex cathedra, or of particular councils, if their decrees be universially accepted or approved in solemn form by the pope; also creeds and professions of faith put forward or solemnly approved bythe pope or oecumenical councils. The ordinary magisterium is continually exercised by the Church especially in her universal practices connected with faith and morals, in the unanimous consent of the Fathers (q.v.) and theologians, in the decisions of Roman Congregations concerning faith and morals, in the common sense of the Faithful, and carious historical documents, in the faith is declared. All these are founts of a teaching which is whole and infallible. The have to be studied separately to determine how far and in what conditions each of them is an infallble source of truth.
So let's summarize a bit. The Extrordinary or Solemn Magesterium is the dogmatic decrees of the popes (e.g. Definition of the Assumption, The Real Presence, etc.) and dogmatic councils (e.g. Trent, Vatican I, etc.) or decrees of non-dogmatic councils or non-dogmatic decrees of dogmatic councils then solemnly approved by the pope.
The ordinary magesterium is the teachings of the pope, bishops, and Sacred Tradition including the Immemorial Traditions. However, all of the teachings of these are not automatically part of the ordinary magesterium. The must be wxamined. If a teaching is not consistent with the Faith and what is already part of magesterial teachings, it cannot be a magesterial teaching.
This is why traditional Catholics are so critical of the pope and bishops in modern times. While they do have that teaching authority, whatever they teach which is not consistent with the two millennia of authentic, faithful and accurate Magesterial teachings is simply not a magesterial teaching. It seems in the past 40 years we have heard things which at least on their face seem much more inconsistent than in the earlier years of last century and the previous one.
Are traditional Catholic being "proto-Protestants" in exercising our "private judgment"? Hardly. In times where the leaders of the Church, are wishy-washy on issues of extreme importance, and it seems more concerned with their own "ecumenical" ventures than correcting the seemingly heretical forays of the more liberal priests and bishops, it falls to traditional priests, bishops and, yes, even the faithful, to remain faithful to what we know are authentic Magesterial teaching. God willing we will have one day a Pope that is very solid and clear on what is to be practiced and not, but while this Pope and Bishops say and do things that seem horribly scandalous, we need to hold fast to those things we know are Catholic and wait for another leader like Popes St. Pius V and St. Pius X, Gregory the Great and other Saintly Bishops, like Athanasius, Basil the Great and many others, to help us define what, out of all the mess we have since the Second Vatican Council, is and is not Magesterial and Catholic.
Simply put: If the decree is inconsistent with Traditional teachings, it is not part of the Magesterium and does not obligate us to follow it.
As Johnny Cochran might have said: "It does not make sense ... If the decree don't fit, you must acquit."
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
Part VIII of our serialization.
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part VIII:
Why Only Roman Catholicism Can Protect Liberty
The Roman Catholic religion, then, is necessary to sustain popular liberty, because popular liberty can be sustained only by a religion free from popular control, above the people, speaking from above and able to command them, -- and such a religion is the Roman Catholic. It acknowledges no master but God, and depends only on the divine will in respect to what it shall teach, what it shall ordain, what it shall insist upon as truth, piety, moral and social virtue. It was made not by the people, but for them; is administered not by the people, but for them; is accountable not to the people, but to God. Not dependent on the people, it will not follow their passions; not subject to their control, it will not be their accomplice in iniquity; and speaking from God, it will teach them the truth, and command them to practise justice. To this end the very constitution of the church contributes. It is catholic, universal; it teaches all nations, and has its centre in no one. If it was a mere national church, like the Anglican, the Russian, the Greek, or as Louis XIV in his pride sought to make the Gallican, it would follow the caprice or interest of that nation, and become but a tool of its government or of its predominating passion. The government, if anti-popular, would use it to oppress the people, to favor its ambitious projects, or its unjust and ruinous policy. Under a popular government, it would become the slave of the people, and could place no restraint on the ruling interest or on the majority; but would be made to sanction and consolidate its power. But having its centre in no one nation, extending over all, it becomes independent of all, and in all can speak with the same voice and in the same tone of authority. This the church has always understood, and hence the noble struggles of the many calumniated popes to sustain the unity, catholicity, and independence of the ecclesiastical power. This, too, the temporal powers have always seen and felt, and hence their readiness, even while professing the Catholic faith, to break the unity of Catholic authority, for, in so doing, they could subject the church in their own dominions, as did Henry VIII, and as does the Emperor of Russia, to themselves.
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Tomorrow, Part IX: The Limits of Catholicism's Superiority
Part VIII of our serialization.
Why Only Roman Catholicism Can Protect Liberty
[In yesterday's installment Brownson set out his view that democratic liberty cannot survive in a culture whose main religious influence is Protestant. In this installment Brownson contrasts Catholicity's superior ability to provide a stable foundation for democratic government.]If Protestantism will not answer the purpose, what religion will? The Roman Catholic or none. The Roman Catholic religion assumes, as its point of departure, that it is instituted not to be taken care of by the people, but to take care of the people; not to be governed by them, but to govern them. The word is harsh in democratic ears, we admit; but it is not the office of religion to say soft or pleasing words. It must speak the truth even in unwilling ears, and it has few truths that are not harsh and grating to the worldly mind or the depraved heart. The people need governing, and must be governed, or nothing but anarchy and destruction await them. They must have a master. The word must be spoken. But it is not our word. We have demonstrated its necessity in showing that we have no security for popular government, unless we have some security that the people will administer it wisely and justly; and we have no security that they will do this, unless we have some security that their passions will be restrained, and their attachments to worldly interests so moderated that they will never seek, through the government, to support them at the expense of justice; and this security we can have only in a religion that is above the people, exempt from their control, which they cannot command, but must, on peril of condemnation OBEY. Declaim as you will; quote our expression, -- THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE A MASTER,-- as you doubtless will; hold it up in glaring capitals, to excite the unthinking and unreasoning multitude, and doubly to fortify their prejudices against Catholicity; be mortally scandalized at the assertion that religion ought to govern the people, and then go to work and seek to bring the people into subjection to your banks or moneyed corporations through their passions, ignorance, and worldly interests, and in doing so, prove what candid men, what lovers of truth, what noble defenders of liberty, and what ardent patriots you are. We care not. You see we understand you, and, understanding you, we repeat, the religion which is to answer our purpose must be above the people, and be able to COMMAND them. We know the force of the word, and we mean it. The first lesson to the child is, obey; the first and last lesson to the people, individually or collectively, is, OBEY; -- and there is no obedience where there is no authority to enjoin it.
The Roman Catholic religion, then, is necessary to sustain popular liberty, because popular liberty can be sustained only by a religion free from popular control, above the people, speaking from above and able to command them, -- and such a religion is the Roman Catholic. It acknowledges no master but God, and depends only on the divine will in respect to what it shall teach, what it shall ordain, what it shall insist upon as truth, piety, moral and social virtue. It was made not by the people, but for them; is administered not by the people, but for them; is accountable not to the people, but to God. Not dependent on the people, it will not follow their passions; not subject to their control, it will not be their accomplice in iniquity; and speaking from God, it will teach them the truth, and command them to practise justice. To this end the very constitution of the church contributes. It is catholic, universal; it teaches all nations, and has its centre in no one. If it was a mere national church, like the Anglican, the Russian, the Greek, or as Louis XIV in his pride sought to make the Gallican, it would follow the caprice or interest of that nation, and become but a tool of its government or of its predominating passion. The government, if anti-popular, would use it to oppress the people, to favor its ambitious projects, or its unjust and ruinous policy. Under a popular government, it would become the slave of the people, and could place no restraint on the ruling interest or on the majority; but would be made to sanction and consolidate its power. But having its centre in no one nation, extending over all, it becomes independent of all, and in all can speak with the same voice and in the same tone of authority. This the church has always understood, and hence the noble struggles of the many calumniated popes to sustain the unity, catholicity, and independence of the ecclesiastical power. This, too, the temporal powers have always seen and felt, and hence their readiness, even while professing the Catholic faith, to break the unity of Catholic authority, for, in so doing, they could subject the church in their own dominions, as did Henry VIII, and as does the Emperor of Russia, to themselves.
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Tomorrow, Part IX: The Limits of Catholicism's Superiority
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
Part VII of our serialization.
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part VII:
Why Protestantism Is Uniquely Dominated by Secular Influences
Here, then, is the reason why Protestantism, though it may institute, cannot sustain popular liberty. It is itself subject to popular control, and must follow in all things the popular will, passion, interest, ignorance, prejudice, or caprice. This, in reality, is its boasted virtue, and we find it commended because under it the people have a voice in its management. Nay, we ourselves shall be denounced, not for saying Protestantism subjects religion to popular control, but for intimating that religion ought not to be so subjected. A terrible cry will be raised against us. "See, here is Mr. Brownson," it will be said, "he would bring the people under the control of the Pope of Rome. Just as we told you. These Papists have no respect for the people. They sneer at the people, mock at their wisdom and virtue. Here is this unfledged Papistling, not yet a year old, boldly contending that the control of their religious faith and worship should be taken from the people, and that they must believe and do just what the emissaries of Rome are pleased to command; and all in the name of liberty, too." If we only had room, we would write out and publish what the anti-Catholic press will say against us, and save the candid, the learned, intellectual, and patriotic editors the trouble of doing it themselves; and we would do it with the proper quantity of italics, small capitals, capitals, and exclamation points. Verily, we think we could do the thing up nearly as well as the best of them. But we have no room. Yet it is easy to foresee what they will say. The burden of their accusation will be, that we labor to withdraw religion from the control of the people, and to free it from the necessity of following their will; that we seek to make it the master, and not the slave, of the people. And this is good proof of our position, that Protestantism cannot govern the people, -- for they govern it, -- and therefore that Protestantism is not the religion wanted; for it is precisely a religion that can and will govern the people, be their master, that we need.
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Tomorrow, Part VIII: Why Only Roman Catholicism Can Protect Liberty
Part VII of our serialization.
Why Protestantism Is Uniquely Dominated by Secular Influences
[In yesterday's installment Brownson explained in greater detail his argument that Protestantism cannot check the passions and ignorance of men, because it places religious truth under popular dominion. In this installment Brownson recapitulates and summarizes his conclusion.]Protestantism is insufficient to restrain [the popular passions for gain and material wealth], for it does not do it, and is itself carried away by them. The Protestant sect governs its religion, instead of being governed by it. If one sect pursues, by the influence of its chiefs, a policy in opposition to the passions and interests of its members, or any portion of them, the disaffected, if a majority, change its policy; if too few or too weak to do that, they leave it and join some other sect, or form a new set. If the minister attempts to do his duty, reproves a practice by which his parishioners "get gain," or insists on their practising some real self-denial not compensated by some self-indulgence, a few leading members will tell him very gravely, that they hired him to preach and pray for them, not to interfere with their business concerns and relations; and if he does not mind his own business, they will no longer need his services. The minister feels, perhaps, the insult' he would be faithful; but he looks at his lovely wife, at his little ones. These must be reduced to poverty, perhaps to beggary, -- no, it must not be; one struggle, one pang, and it is over. He will do the bidding of his masters. A zealous minister in Boston ventured, one Sunday, to denounce the modern spirit of trade. The next day, he was waited on by a committee of wealthy merchants belonging to his parish, who told him he was wrong. The Sunday following, the meek and humble minister publicly retracted, and made the amende honorable.
Here, then, is the reason why Protestantism, though it may institute, cannot sustain popular liberty. It is itself subject to popular control, and must follow in all things the popular will, passion, interest, ignorance, prejudice, or caprice. This, in reality, is its boasted virtue, and we find it commended because under it the people have a voice in its management. Nay, we ourselves shall be denounced, not for saying Protestantism subjects religion to popular control, but for intimating that religion ought not to be so subjected. A terrible cry will be raised against us. "See, here is Mr. Brownson," it will be said, "he would bring the people under the control of the Pope of Rome. Just as we told you. These Papists have no respect for the people. They sneer at the people, mock at their wisdom and virtue. Here is this unfledged Papistling, not yet a year old, boldly contending that the control of their religious faith and worship should be taken from the people, and that they must believe and do just what the emissaries of Rome are pleased to command; and all in the name of liberty, too." If we only had room, we would write out and publish what the anti-Catholic press will say against us, and save the candid, the learned, intellectual, and patriotic editors the trouble of doing it themselves; and we would do it with the proper quantity of italics, small capitals, capitals, and exclamation points. Verily, we think we could do the thing up nearly as well as the best of them. But we have no room. Yet it is easy to foresee what they will say. The burden of their accusation will be, that we labor to withdraw religion from the control of the people, and to free it from the necessity of following their will; that we seek to make it the master, and not the slave, of the people. And this is good proof of our position, that Protestantism cannot govern the people, -- for they govern it, -- and therefore that Protestantism is not the religion wanted; for it is precisely a religion that can and will govern the people, be their master, that we need.
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Tomorrow, Part VIII: Why Only Roman Catholicism Can Protect Liberty
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
We continue with Part VI of our serialization of Brownson's essay.
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part VI:
Three Stages of Protestantism
The second stage in Protestantism is to reject, in matters of religion, the authority of the temporal government, and to subject religion to the control of the faithful. This is the full recognition in matters of religion of the democratic principle. The people determine their faith and worship, select, sustain, or dismiss their own religious teachers. They who are to be taught judge him who is to teach, and say whether he teaches them truth or falsehood, wholesome doctrine or unwholesome. The patient directs the physician what to prescribe. This is the theory adopted by Protestants generally in this country. The congregation select their own teacher, unless it be among the Methodists, and to them the pastor is responsible. If he teaches to suit them, well and good; if he crosses none of their wishes, enlarges their numbers, and thus lightens their taxes and gratifies their pride of sect, also well and good; if not, he must seek a flock to feed somewhere else. . . . But this view will no more answer our purpose than the former; for it places religion under the control of the people, and therefore in the same category with the government itself. The people take care of religion, but who takes care of the people?
The third and last stage of Protestantism is individualism. This leaves religion entirely to the control of the individual, who selects his own creed, or makes a creed to suit himself, devises his own worship and discipline, and submits to no restraints but such as are self-imposed. This makes a man's religion the effect of his virtue and intelligence, and denies it all power to augment or to direct them. So this will not answer. The individual takes care of his religion, but who or what takes care of the individual? The state? But who takes care of the state? The people? But who takes care of the people? Our old difficulty again.
It is evident, from these considerations, that Protestantism is not and cannot be the religion to sustain democracy; because, take it in which stage you will, it, like democracy itself, is subject to the control of the people, and must command and teach what they say, and of course must follow, instead of controlling, their passions, interests, and caprices.
Nor do we obtain this conclusion merely by reasoning. It is sustained by facts. The Protestant religion is everywhere either an expression of the government or of the people, and must obey either the government or public opinion. The grand reform, if reform it was, effected by the Protestant chiefs, consisted in bringing religious questions before the public, and subjecting faith and worship to the decision of public opinion, -- public on a larger or smaller scale, that is, of the nation, the province, or the sect. Protestant faith and worship tremble as readily before the slightest breath of public sentiment, as the aspen leaf before the gentle zephyr. The faith and discipline of a sect take any and every direction the public opinion of that sect demands. All is loose, floating, -- is here to-day, is there to-morrow, and, next day, may be nowhere. The holding of slaves is compatible with Christian character south of a geographical line, and incompatible north; and Christian morals change according to the prejudices, interests, or habits of the people, -- as evinced by the recent divisions in our own country among the Baptists and the Methodists. The Unitarians of Savannah refuse to hear a preacher accredited by the Unitarians of Boston.
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Tomorrow, Part VII: Why Protestantism Is Uniquely Dominated by Secular Influences
We continue with Part VI of our serialization of Brownson's essay.
Three Stages of Protestantism
[In yesterday's installment Brownson contended that Protestantism cannot serve as a bulwark against the passions and worldly avarice of men, because it places itself wholly within their care, and therefore cannot serve as the solidifying and restraining force required to protect democratic liberty. In this segment, Brownson examines what he calls the three "stages" of Protestantism, each of which illustrates his contention.]The first stage of Protestantism was to place religion under the charge of the civil government. The church was condemned, among other reasons, for the control it exercised over princes and nobles, that is, over the temporal power: and the first effect of Protestantism was to emancipate the government from this control, or, in other words, to free the government from the restraints of religion, and to bring religion in subjection to the temporal authority. The prince, by rejecting the authority of the church, won for himself the power to determine the faith of his subjects, to appoint its teachers, and to remove them whenever they should teach what he disapproved, or whenever they should cross his ambition, defeat his oppressive policy, or interfere with his pleasures. Thus was it and still is it with the Protestant princes in Germany, with the temporal authority in Denmark, Sweden, England, Russia, -- in this respect also Protestant, -- and originally was it the same in this country. The supreme civil magistrate makes himself sovereign pontiff, and religion and the church, if disobedient to his will, are to be turned out of house and home, or dragooned into submission. Now, if we adopt this view, and subject religion to the civil government, it will not answer our purpose. We want religion, as we have seen, to control the people, and through its spiritual governance to cause them to give the temporal government always a wise and just direction. But, if the government control the religion, it can exercise no control over the sovereign people, for they control the government. Through the government the people take care of religion, but who or what takes care of the people? This would leave the people ultimate, and we have no security unless we have something more ultimate than they, something which they cannot control, but which they must obey.
The second stage in Protestantism is to reject, in matters of religion, the authority of the temporal government, and to subject religion to the control of the faithful. This is the full recognition in matters of religion of the democratic principle. The people determine their faith and worship, select, sustain, or dismiss their own religious teachers. They who are to be taught judge him who is to teach, and say whether he teaches them truth or falsehood, wholesome doctrine or unwholesome. The patient directs the physician what to prescribe. This is the theory adopted by Protestants generally in this country. The congregation select their own teacher, unless it be among the Methodists, and to them the pastor is responsible. If he teaches to suit them, well and good; if he crosses none of their wishes, enlarges their numbers, and thus lightens their taxes and gratifies their pride of sect, also well and good; if not, he must seek a flock to feed somewhere else. . . . But this view will no more answer our purpose than the former; for it places religion under the control of the people, and therefore in the same category with the government itself. The people take care of religion, but who takes care of the people?
The third and last stage of Protestantism is individualism. This leaves religion entirely to the control of the individual, who selects his own creed, or makes a creed to suit himself, devises his own worship and discipline, and submits to no restraints but such as are self-imposed. This makes a man's religion the effect of his virtue and intelligence, and denies it all power to augment or to direct them. So this will not answer. The individual takes care of his religion, but who or what takes care of the individual? The state? But who takes care of the state? The people? But who takes care of the people? Our old difficulty again.
It is evident, from these considerations, that Protestantism is not and cannot be the religion to sustain democracy; because, take it in which stage you will, it, like democracy itself, is subject to the control of the people, and must command and teach what they say, and of course must follow, instead of controlling, their passions, interests, and caprices.
Nor do we obtain this conclusion merely by reasoning. It is sustained by facts. The Protestant religion is everywhere either an expression of the government or of the people, and must obey either the government or public opinion. The grand reform, if reform it was, effected by the Protestant chiefs, consisted in bringing religious questions before the public, and subjecting faith and worship to the decision of public opinion, -- public on a larger or smaller scale, that is, of the nation, the province, or the sect. Protestant faith and worship tremble as readily before the slightest breath of public sentiment, as the aspen leaf before the gentle zephyr. The faith and discipline of a sect take any and every direction the public opinion of that sect demands. All is loose, floating, -- is here to-day, is there to-morrow, and, next day, may be nowhere. The holding of slaves is compatible with Christian character south of a geographical line, and incompatible north; and Christian morals change according to the prejudices, interests, or habits of the people, -- as evinced by the recent divisions in our own country among the Baptists and the Methodists. The Unitarians of Savannah refuse to hear a preacher accredited by the Unitarians of Boston.
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Tomorrow, Part VII: Why Protestantism Is Uniquely Dominated by Secular Influences
Friday, August 08, 2003
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
Continuing with our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay on democracy and religion, here is part V:
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part V:
How Protestantism Is Inferior to Catholicity as a Guarantor of Virtue
We do not pretend that Protestants say this in just so many words; but this, under the present point of view, is their distinguishing characteristic. What was the assumption of the reformers? Was it not that Almighty God had failed to take care of his church, that he had suffered it to become exceedingly corrupt and corrupting, so much so as to have become a very Babylon, and to have ceased to be his church? Was it not for this reason that they turned reformers, separated themselves from what had been the church, and attempted, with such materials as they could command, to reconstruct the church on its primitive foundation, and after the primitive model? Is this not what they tell us? But if they believed the Son of Man came to minister and not to be ministered unto, that Almighty God had instituted his religion for the spiritual government of men, and charged himself with the care and maintenance of it, would they ever have dared to take upon themselves the work of reforming it? Would they ever have fancied that either religion or the church could ever need reforming, or, if so, that it could ever be done by human agency? Of course not. They would have taken religion as presented by the church as the standard, submitted to it as the law, and confined themselves to the duty of obedience. It is evident, therefore, from the fact of their assuming to be reformers, that they, consciously or unconsciously, regarded religion as committed to their care, or abandoned to their protection. They were, at least, its guardians, and were to govern it, instead of being governed by it.
*****
Tomorrow, Part VI: The Three Stages of Protestantism
Continuing with our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay on democracy and religion, here is part V:
How Protestantism Is Inferior to Catholicity as a Guarantor of Virtue
[In yesterday's installment Brownson contended that the preservation of democratic liberty requires religion, which is the only force that allows men to live so virtuously and intelligently that they can deny their own passions, ambitions, and prejudices on behalf of the common good. In this segment, Brownson offers his thoughts on whether Catholicity or Protestantism is better suited to accomplishing that task]But what religion? It must be a religion which is above the people and controls them, or it will not answer the purpose. If it depends on the people, if the people are to take care of it, to say what it shall be, what it shall teach, what it shall command, what worship or discipline it shall insist on being observed, we are back in our old difficulty. The people take care of religion; but who or what is to take care of the people? We repeat, then, what religion? It cannot be Protestantism, in all or any of its forms; for Protestantism assumes as its point of departure that Almighty God has indeed given us a religion, but has given it to us not to take care of us, but to be taken care of by us. It makes religion the ward of the people; assumes it to be sent on earth a lone and helpless orphan, to be taken in by the people, who are to serve as its nurse.
We do not pretend that Protestants say this in just so many words; but this, under the present point of view, is their distinguishing characteristic. What was the assumption of the reformers? Was it not that Almighty God had failed to take care of his church, that he had suffered it to become exceedingly corrupt and corrupting, so much so as to have become a very Babylon, and to have ceased to be his church? Was it not for this reason that they turned reformers, separated themselves from what had been the church, and attempted, with such materials as they could command, to reconstruct the church on its primitive foundation, and after the primitive model? Is this not what they tell us? But if they believed the Son of Man came to minister and not to be ministered unto, that Almighty God had instituted his religion for the spiritual government of men, and charged himself with the care and maintenance of it, would they ever have dared to take upon themselves the work of reforming it? Would they ever have fancied that either religion or the church could ever need reforming, or, if so, that it could ever be done by human agency? Of course not. They would have taken religion as presented by the church as the standard, submitted to it as the law, and confined themselves to the duty of obedience. It is evident, therefore, from the fact of their assuming to be reformers, that they, consciously or unconsciously, regarded religion as committed to their care, or abandoned to their protection. They were, at least, its guardians, and were to govern it, instead of being governed by it.
*****
Tomorrow, Part VI: The Three Stages of Protestantism
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
We continue with the fourth installment of our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay.
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part IV:
Why Only Religion Can Sustain Liberty
"On Education," answer Frances Wright, Abner Kneeland, Horace Mann, and the educationists generally. But we must remember that we must have virtue and intelligence. Virtue without intelligence will only fit the mass to be duped by the artful and designing; and intelligence without virtue only makes one the abler and more successful villain. Education must be of the right sort, if it is to answer our purpose; for a bad education is worse than none. The Mahometans are great sticklers for education, and, if we recollect aright, it is laid down in the Koran, that every believer must at least be taught to read; but we do not find their education does much to advance them in virtue and intelligence. Education, moreover, demands educators, and educators of the right sort. Where are these to be obtained? Who is to select them, judge of their qualifications, sustain or dismiss them? The people? Then you place education in the same category with democracy. You make the people through their representatives the educators. Whether they educate mediately or immediately, they can impart only what they have and are. Consequently, with them for educators, we can, by means even of universal education, get no increase of virtue and intelligence to bear on the government. They people may educate, but where is that which takes care that they educate in a proper manner? Here is the very difficulty we began by pointing out; but who or what is to take care of the people, who need taking care of quite as much as either education or government? -- for, rightly considered, neither government nor education has any other legitimate end than to take care of the people.
We know of but one solution of the difficulty, and that is to be RELIGION. There is no foundation for virtue but in religion, and it is only religion that can command the degree of popular virtue and intelligence requisite to insure to popular government the right direction and a wise and just administration. A people without religion, however successful they may be in throwing off old institutions, or in introducing new ones, have no power to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome working of any institutions. For the people can bring to the support of institutions only the degree of virtue and intelligence they have; and we need not stop to prove that an infidel people can have very little either of virtue or intelligence, since, in this professedly Christian country, this will and must be conceded us. We shall, therefore, assume, without stopping to defend our assumption, that religion is the power or influence we need to take care of the people, and secure the degree of virtue and intelligence necessary to sustain popular liberty. We say, then, if democracy commits the government to the people to be taken care of, religion is to take care that they take proper care of the government, rightly direct and wisely administer it.
************
Tomorrow, Part V: How Protestantism Is Inferior to Catholicity as a Guarantor of Virtue
We continue with the fourth installment of our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay.
Why Only Religion Can Sustain Liberty
[In yesterday's installment Brownson contended that the preservation of democratic liberty requires a force that enables men to become sufficiently virtuous and intelligent as to deny their own passions, ambitions, and prejudices on behalf of the common good. In this segment, Brownson examines -- and rejects -- the secular proposals for creating such a powerful and virtuous influence.]The press makes readers, but does little to make virtuous and intelligent readers. The newspaper press is, for the most part, under the control of men of very ordinary abilities, lax principles, and limited acquirements. It echoes and exaggerates popular errors, and does little or nothing to create a sound public opinion. Your popular literature caters to popular taste, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and errors; it is by no means above the average degree of virtue and intelligence which already obtains, and can do nothing to create a higher standard of virtue or tone of thought. On what, then, are we to rely?
"On Education," answer Frances Wright, Abner Kneeland, Horace Mann, and the educationists generally. But we must remember that we must have virtue and intelligence. Virtue without intelligence will only fit the mass to be duped by the artful and designing; and intelligence without virtue only makes one the abler and more successful villain. Education must be of the right sort, if it is to answer our purpose; for a bad education is worse than none. The Mahometans are great sticklers for education, and, if we recollect aright, it is laid down in the Koran, that every believer must at least be taught to read; but we do not find their education does much to advance them in virtue and intelligence. Education, moreover, demands educators, and educators of the right sort. Where are these to be obtained? Who is to select them, judge of their qualifications, sustain or dismiss them? The people? Then you place education in the same category with democracy. You make the people through their representatives the educators. Whether they educate mediately or immediately, they can impart only what they have and are. Consequently, with them for educators, we can, by means even of universal education, get no increase of virtue and intelligence to bear on the government. They people may educate, but where is that which takes care that they educate in a proper manner? Here is the very difficulty we began by pointing out; but who or what is to take care of the people, who need taking care of quite as much as either education or government? -- for, rightly considered, neither government nor education has any other legitimate end than to take care of the people.
We know of but one solution of the difficulty, and that is to be RELIGION. There is no foundation for virtue but in religion, and it is only religion that can command the degree of popular virtue and intelligence requisite to insure to popular government the right direction and a wise and just administration. A people without religion, however successful they may be in throwing off old institutions, or in introducing new ones, have no power to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome working of any institutions. For the people can bring to the support of institutions only the degree of virtue and intelligence they have; and we need not stop to prove that an infidel people can have very little either of virtue or intelligence, since, in this professedly Christian country, this will and must be conceded us. We shall, therefore, assume, without stopping to defend our assumption, that religion is the power or influence we need to take care of the people, and secure the degree of virtue and intelligence necessary to sustain popular liberty. We say, then, if democracy commits the government to the people to be taken care of, religion is to take care that they take proper care of the government, rightly direct and wisely administer it.
************
Tomorrow, Part V: How Protestantism Is Inferior to Catholicity as a Guarantor of Virtue
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
We continue with the fourth installment of our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay.
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part IV:
Why Only Religion Can Sustain Liberty
"On Education," answer Frances Wright, Abner Kneeland, Horace Mann, and the educationists generally. But we must remember that we must have virtue and intelligence. Virtue without intelligence will only fit the mass to be duped by the artful and designing; and intelligence without virtue only makes one the abler and more successful villain. Education must be of the right sort, if it is to answer our purpose; for a bad education is worse than none. The Mahometans are great sticklers for education, and, if we recollect aright, it is laid down in the Koran, that every believer must at least be taught to read; but we do not find their education does much to advance them in virtue and intelligence. Education, moreover, demands educators, and educators of the right sort. Where are these to be obtained? Who is to select them, judge of their qualifications, sustain or dismiss them? The people? Then you place education in the same category with democracy. You make the people through their representatives the educators. Whether they educate mediately or immediately, they can impart only what they have and are. Consequently, with them for educators, we can, by means even of universal education, get no increase of virtue and intelligence to bear on the government. They people may educate, but where is that which takes care that they educate in a proper manner? Here is the very difficulty we began by pointing out; but who or what is to take care of the people, who need taking care of quite as much as either education or government? -- for, rightly considered, neither government nor education has any other legitimate end than to take care of the people.
We know of but one solution of the difficulty, and that is to be RELIGION. There is no foundation for virtue but in religion, and it is only religion that can command the degree of popular virtue and intelligence requisite to insure to popular government the right direction and a wise and just administration. A people without religion, however successful they may be in throwing off old institutions, or in introducing new ones, have no power to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome working of any institutions. For the people can bring to the support of institutions only the degree of virtue and intelligence they have; and we need not stop to prove that an infidel people can have very little either of virtue or intelligence, since, in this professedly Christian country, this will and must be conceded us. We shall, therefore, assume, without stopping to defend our assumption, that religion is the power or influence we need to take care of the people, and secure the degree of virtue and intelligence necessary to sustain popular liberty. We say, then, if democracy commits the government to the people to be taken care of, religion is to take care that they take proper care of the government, rightly direct and wisely administer it.
************
Tomorrow, Part V: How Protestantism Is Inferior to Catholicity as a Guarantor of Virtue
We continue with the fourth installment of our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay.
Why Only Religion Can Sustain Liberty
[In yesterday's installment Brownson contended that the preservation of democratic liberty requires a force that enables men to become sufficiently virtuous and intelligent as to deny their own passions, ambitions, and prejudices on behalf of the common good. In this segment, Brownson examines -- and rejects -- the secular proposals for creating such a powerful and virtuous influence.]The press makes readers, but does little to make virtuous and intelligent readers. The newspaper press is, for the most part, under the control of men of very ordinary abilities, lax principles, and limited acquirements. It echoes and exaggerates popular errors, and does little or nothing to create a sound public opinion. Your popular literature caters to popular taste, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and errors; it is by no means above the average degree of virtue and intelligence which already obtains, and can do nothing to create a higher standard of virtue or tone of thought. On what, then, are we to rely?
"On Education," answer Frances Wright, Abner Kneeland, Horace Mann, and the educationists generally. But we must remember that we must have virtue and intelligence. Virtue without intelligence will only fit the mass to be duped by the artful and designing; and intelligence without virtue only makes one the abler and more successful villain. Education must be of the right sort, if it is to answer our purpose; for a bad education is worse than none. The Mahometans are great sticklers for education, and, if we recollect aright, it is laid down in the Koran, that every believer must at least be taught to read; but we do not find their education does much to advance them in virtue and intelligence. Education, moreover, demands educators, and educators of the right sort. Where are these to be obtained? Who is to select them, judge of their qualifications, sustain or dismiss them? The people? Then you place education in the same category with democracy. You make the people through their representatives the educators. Whether they educate mediately or immediately, they can impart only what they have and are. Consequently, with them for educators, we can, by means even of universal education, get no increase of virtue and intelligence to bear on the government. They people may educate, but where is that which takes care that they educate in a proper manner? Here is the very difficulty we began by pointing out; but who or what is to take care of the people, who need taking care of quite as much as either education or government? -- for, rightly considered, neither government nor education has any other legitimate end than to take care of the people.
We know of but one solution of the difficulty, and that is to be RELIGION. There is no foundation for virtue but in religion, and it is only religion that can command the degree of popular virtue and intelligence requisite to insure to popular government the right direction and a wise and just administration. A people without religion, however successful they may be in throwing off old institutions, or in introducing new ones, have no power to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome working of any institutions. For the people can bring to the support of institutions only the degree of virtue and intelligence they have; and we need not stop to prove that an infidel people can have very little either of virtue or intelligence, since, in this professedly Christian country, this will and must be conceded us. We shall, therefore, assume, without stopping to defend our assumption, that religion is the power or influence we need to take care of the people, and secure the degree of virtue and intelligence necessary to sustain popular liberty. We say, then, if democracy commits the government to the people to be taken care of, religion is to take care that they take proper care of the government, rightly direct and wisely administer it.
************
Tomorrow, Part V: How Protestantism Is Inferior to Catholicity as a Guarantor of Virtue
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
I'm Still Right!!!!
Shawn McElhinney's Rerum Novarum has yet to reply to my devastating, unconquerable arguments on kneeling to receive communion and after receiving communion!!! It's been more than a week! I'm still right!!
Shawn McElhinney's Rerum Novarum has yet to reply to my devastating, unconquerable arguments on kneeling to receive communion and after receiving communion!!! It's been more than a week! I'm still right!!
Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
We continue our serialization of Brownson's essay, noting that Bishop Richardson has now been confirmed and accepted by the Episcopalian Church after an ironic episode during which his elevation was briefly postponed by a concern over "scandal."
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part III:
The Survival of Liberty Requires Super-Human Virtue
It is a beautiful theory, and would work admirably, if it were not for one little difficulty, namely -- the people are fallible, both individually and collectively, and governed by their passions and interests, which not unfrequently lead them far astray, and produce much mischief. The government must necessarily follow their will; and whenever that will happens to be blinded by passion, or misled by ignorance or interest, the government must inevitably go wrong; and government can never go wrong without doing injustice. The government may be provided for; the people may take care of that; but who or what is to take care of the people, and assure us that they will always wield the government so as to promote justice and equality, or maintain order, and the equal rights of all, of all classes and interests?
Do not answer by referring us to the virtue and intelligence of the people. We are writing seriously, and have no leisure to enjoy a joke, even if it be a good one. We have too much principle, we hope, to seek to humbug, and have had too much experience to be humbugged. We are Americans, American born, American bred, and we love our country, and will, when called upon, defend it, against any and every enemy, to the best of our feeble ability; but, though we by no means rate American virtue and intelligence so low as do those who will abuse us for not rating it higher, we cannot consent to hoodwink ourselves, or to claim for our countrymen a degree of virtue and intelligence they do not possess. We are acquainted with no salutary errors, and are forbidden to seek even a good end by any but honest means. The virtue and intelligence of the American people are not sufficient to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome action of the government; for they do not secure it. The government commits, every now and then, a sad blunder, and the general policy it adopts must prove, in the long run, suicidal. It has adopted a most iniquitous policy, and its most unjust measures are its most popular measures, such as it would be fatal to any man's political success directly and openly to oppose; and we think we hazard nothing in saying, our free institutions cannot be sustained without an augmentation of popular virtue and intelligence. We do not say the people are not capable of a sufficient degree of virtue and intelligence to sustain a democracy; all we say is, they cannot do it without virtue and intelligence, nor without a higher degree of virtue and intelligence than they have as yet attained to. We do not apprehend that many of our countrymen, and we are sure no one whose own virtue and intelligence entitle his opinion to any weight, will dispute this. Then the question of the means of sustaining our democracy resolves itself into the question of augmenting the virtue and intelligence of the people.
********
Tomorrow, Part IV: Why Only Religion Can Sustain Liberty
We continue our serialization of Brownson's essay, noting that Bishop Richardson has now been confirmed and accepted by the Episcopalian Church after an ironic episode during which his elevation was briefly postponed by a concern over "scandal."
The Survival of Liberty Requires Super-Human Virtue
[In yesterday's installment Brownson argued that simple reliance on constitutionalism and law cannot serve to protect individual liberty from social passions, avarice, and prejudice. In this installment, Brownson looks at the root problem all societies which value liberty must solve -- ensuring that men are sufficiently virtuous and intelligent to deny their own passions, ambitions, and prejudices on behalf of the common good.]The theory of democracy is, Construct your government and commit to the people to be taken care of. Democracy is not properly a government; but what is called the government is a huge machine contrived to be wielded by the people as they shall think proper. In relation to it the people are assumed to be what Almighty God is to the universe, the first cause, the medial cause, the final cause. It emanates from them; it is administered by them, and for them; and, moreover, they are to keep watch and provide for its right administration.
It is a beautiful theory, and would work admirably, if it were not for one little difficulty, namely -- the people are fallible, both individually and collectively, and governed by their passions and interests, which not unfrequently lead them far astray, and produce much mischief. The government must necessarily follow their will; and whenever that will happens to be blinded by passion, or misled by ignorance or interest, the government must inevitably go wrong; and government can never go wrong without doing injustice. The government may be provided for; the people may take care of that; but who or what is to take care of the people, and assure us that they will always wield the government so as to promote justice and equality, or maintain order, and the equal rights of all, of all classes and interests?
Do not answer by referring us to the virtue and intelligence of the people. We are writing seriously, and have no leisure to enjoy a joke, even if it be a good one. We have too much principle, we hope, to seek to humbug, and have had too much experience to be humbugged. We are Americans, American born, American bred, and we love our country, and will, when called upon, defend it, against any and every enemy, to the best of our feeble ability; but, though we by no means rate American virtue and intelligence so low as do those who will abuse us for not rating it higher, we cannot consent to hoodwink ourselves, or to claim for our countrymen a degree of virtue and intelligence they do not possess. We are acquainted with no salutary errors, and are forbidden to seek even a good end by any but honest means. The virtue and intelligence of the American people are not sufficient to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome action of the government; for they do not secure it. The government commits, every now and then, a sad blunder, and the general policy it adopts must prove, in the long run, suicidal. It has adopted a most iniquitous policy, and its most unjust measures are its most popular measures, such as it would be fatal to any man's political success directly and openly to oppose; and we think we hazard nothing in saying, our free institutions cannot be sustained without an augmentation of popular virtue and intelligence. We do not say the people are not capable of a sufficient degree of virtue and intelligence to sustain a democracy; all we say is, they cannot do it without virtue and intelligence, nor without a higher degree of virtue and intelligence than they have as yet attained to. We do not apprehend that many of our countrymen, and we are sure no one whose own virtue and intelligence entitle his opinion to any weight, will dispute this. Then the question of the means of sustaining our democracy resolves itself into the question of augmenting the virtue and intelligence of the people.
********
Tomorrow, Part IV: Why Only Religion Can Sustain Liberty
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Orestes Brownson & Homosexual Bishops, Part II
Herewith Part II of our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay, "Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty."
"Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty," Part II:
Why Constitutions Cannot Protect Liberty
The framers of our government foresaw this evil, and thought to guard against it by a written constitution. But they intrusted the preservation of the constitution to the care of the people, which was as wise as to lock up your culprit in prison and intrust him with the key. The constitution, as a restraint on the will of the people or the governing majority is already a dead letter. It answers to talk about, to declaim about, in electioneering speeches, and even as a theme of newspaper leaders, and political essays in reviews; but its effective power is a morning vapor after the sun is well up.
Even Mr. Calhoun's theory of the constitution, which regards it not simply as the written instrument, but as the disposition or the constitution of the people into sovereign states united in a federal league or compact, for certain purposes which concern all the states alike, and from which it follows that any measure unequal in its bearing, or oppressive upon any portion of the confederacy, is ipso facto null and void, and may be vetoed by the aggrieved state -- this theory, if true, is yet insufficient; because, 1. It has no application within the state governments themselves; and because 2. It does not, as a matter of fact, arrest what are regarded as the unequal, unjust, and oppressive measures of the federal government. South Carolina, in 1833, forced a compromise, but in 1842, the obnoxious policy was revived, is pursued now successfully, and there is no state to attempt again the virtue of state interposition. Not even South Carolina can be brought to do so again. The meshes of trade and commerce are so spread over the whole land, the controlling influences of all sections have become so united and interwoven, by means of banks, other moneyed corporations, and the credit system, that henceforth state interposition becomes practically impossible. The constitution is practically abolished, and our government is virtually, to all intents and purposes, as we have said, a pure democracy with nothing to prevent it from obeying the interest or interests which for the time being can succeed in commanding it. This, as Mr. Caleb Cushing would say, is a "fixed fact." There is no restraint of predominating passions and interests but in religion. This is another "fixed fact."
* * *
Our own government, in its origin and constitutional form, is not a democracy, but, if we may use the expression, a limited elective aristocracy. In its theory, the representative, within the limits prescribed by the constitution, when once elected, and during the time for which he is elected, is, in his official action, independent of his constituents, and not responsible to them for his acts. For this reason, we call the government and elective aristocracy. But, practically, the government framed by our fathers no longer exists, save in name. Its original character has disappeared, or is rapidly disappearing. The constitution is a dead letter, except so far as it serves to prescribe the modes of election, the rule of the majority, the distribution and tenure of offices, and the union and separation of the functions of government. Since 1828, it has been becoming in practice, and is now, substantially, a pure democracy, with no effective constitution by the will of the majority for the time being. Whether the change has been for the better or the worse, we need not stop to inquire. The change was inevitable, because men are more willing to advance themselves by flattering the people and perverting the constitution, than they are by self-denial to serve their country. The change has been effected, and there is no return to this original theory of the government. Any man who should plant himself on the constitution, and attempt to arrest the democratic tendency -- no matter what his character, ability, virtues, services -- would be crushed and ground to powder. Your Calhouns must give way for your Polks and Van Burens, your Websters for your Harrisons and Tylers. No man, who is not prepared to play the demagogue, to stoop to flatter the people, and, in one direction or another, toe exaggerate the democratic tendency, can receive the nomination for an important office, or have influence in public affairs. The reign of great men, of distinguished statesmen and firm patriots, is over, and that of the demagogues has begun.. Your most important offices are hereafter to be filled by third and fourth-rate men -- men too insignificant to excite strong opposition, and too flexible in their principles not to be willing to take any direction the caprices of the mob -- or the interests of the wire-pullers of the mob -- may demand. Evil or no evil, such is the fact, and we must conform to it.
* * *
Such being the fact, the question comes up, How are we to sustain popular liberty, to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome action of our practical democracy? The question is an important one, and cannot be blinked with impunity.
********
Tomorrow, Part III: The Survival of Liberty Requires Super-Human Virtue
Herewith Part II of our serialization of Orestes Brownson's essay, "Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty."
Why Constitutions Cannot Protect Liberty
[In the preceding installment Brownson recounted how strong passions and interests influence, even dictate, public policy. He concluded that democratic liberty can survive such intemperate influences only if it is protected by a strong force which can moderate -- or, even, condemn outright -- various passions or their particular manifestations in a country's laws. In this installment, Brownson begins to examine the flaws of possible moderating forces, beginning with the ideas of constitutionalism and the rule of law.]
The framers of our government foresaw this evil, and thought to guard against it by a written constitution. But they intrusted the preservation of the constitution to the care of the people, which was as wise as to lock up your culprit in prison and intrust him with the key. The constitution, as a restraint on the will of the people or the governing majority is already a dead letter. It answers to talk about, to declaim about, in electioneering speeches, and even as a theme of newspaper leaders, and political essays in reviews; but its effective power is a morning vapor after the sun is well up.
Even Mr. Calhoun's theory of the constitution, which regards it not simply as the written instrument, but as the disposition or the constitution of the people into sovereign states united in a federal league or compact, for certain purposes which concern all the states alike, and from which it follows that any measure unequal in its bearing, or oppressive upon any portion of the confederacy, is ipso facto null and void, and may be vetoed by the aggrieved state -- this theory, if true, is yet insufficient; because, 1. It has no application within the state governments themselves; and because 2. It does not, as a matter of fact, arrest what are regarded as the unequal, unjust, and oppressive measures of the federal government. South Carolina, in 1833, forced a compromise, but in 1842, the obnoxious policy was revived, is pursued now successfully, and there is no state to attempt again the virtue of state interposition. Not even South Carolina can be brought to do so again. The meshes of trade and commerce are so spread over the whole land, the controlling influences of all sections have become so united and interwoven, by means of banks, other moneyed corporations, and the credit system, that henceforth state interposition becomes practically impossible. The constitution is practically abolished, and our government is virtually, to all intents and purposes, as we have said, a pure democracy with nothing to prevent it from obeying the interest or interests which for the time being can succeed in commanding it. This, as Mr. Caleb Cushing would say, is a "fixed fact." There is no restraint of predominating passions and interests but in religion. This is another "fixed fact."
Our own government, in its origin and constitutional form, is not a democracy, but, if we may use the expression, a limited elective aristocracy. In its theory, the representative, within the limits prescribed by the constitution, when once elected, and during the time for which he is elected, is, in his official action, independent of his constituents, and not responsible to them for his acts. For this reason, we call the government and elective aristocracy. But, practically, the government framed by our fathers no longer exists, save in name. Its original character has disappeared, or is rapidly disappearing. The constitution is a dead letter, except so far as it serves to prescribe the modes of election, the rule of the majority, the distribution and tenure of offices, and the union and separation of the functions of government. Since 1828, it has been becoming in practice, and is now, substantially, a pure democracy, with no effective constitution by the will of the majority for the time being. Whether the change has been for the better or the worse, we need not stop to inquire. The change was inevitable, because men are more willing to advance themselves by flattering the people and perverting the constitution, than they are by self-denial to serve their country. The change has been effected, and there is no return to this original theory of the government. Any man who should plant himself on the constitution, and attempt to arrest the democratic tendency -- no matter what his character, ability, virtues, services -- would be crushed and ground to powder. Your Calhouns must give way for your Polks and Van Burens, your Websters for your Harrisons and Tylers. No man, who is not prepared to play the demagogue, to stoop to flatter the people, and, in one direction or another, toe exaggerate the democratic tendency, can receive the nomination for an important office, or have influence in public affairs. The reign of great men, of distinguished statesmen and firm patriots, is over, and that of the demagogues has begun.. Your most important offices are hereafter to be filled by third and fourth-rate men -- men too insignificant to excite strong opposition, and too flexible in their principles not to be willing to take any direction the caprices of the mob -- or the interests of the wire-pullers of the mob -- may demand. Evil or no evil, such is the fact, and we must conform to it.
Such being the fact, the question comes up, How are we to sustain popular liberty, to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome action of our practical democracy? The question is an important one, and cannot be blinked with impunity.
********
Tomorrow, Part III: The Survival of Liberty Requires Super-Human Virtue
Monday, August 04, 2003
Introduction to the Series
In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court recently elevated homosexuality to membership in the hallowed company of constitutional liberties: "[A]dults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engage[ ] in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle" are entitled to "respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." We are accustomed to believing that the Supreme Court wages its ongoing war on traditional culture because the American legal establishment has been captivated by an alien "secular humanist" worldview that comes to us from non-Christian thinking and encourages its believers to strike vigorously at whatever tattered roots may still attach our way of life to Christianity. But by a strange coincidence, the Supreme Court's secular praise of homosexual liberty now resonates within Christianity itself; the Episcopalian Church is about to beg Sodom's pardon on God's intemperate homophobia by confirming Gene Robinson, a flagrant homosexual, as a Bishop. Accompanied by the now-predictable rhetoric of "rights" and "inclusiveness" -- and a good deal of deconstructive sneering at common law, Scripture and Tradition -- Ceasar and the Church have united in open praise of homosexuality as a legitimate bond among men and women, fit to take its place with marriage and childbearing as a crucial element of our social life. The combination of Protestant and Constitutional magisteriums to depart from the Holy Will is indeed curious, but it is not a sheer coincidence. It has all happened before.
Years before Roe v. Wade, the United Methodist Church continually approved of legalized contraception and called out for the legalization of abortion. In 1968 the Methodists preached that "responsible family planning, practiced in Christian conscience, fulfills the will of God . . . there are certain circumstances under which abortion may be justified from a Christian standpoint." In 1970 the Methodists told us that we should decriminalize abortion and make it available "upon request of the person most directly concerned." In 1968, the American Baptist Convention also agreed that abortion on demand was God's will, resolving that "abortion should be a matter of responsible, personal decision," and calling for legalized abortions at any time until the fifth month of pregnancy. Almost forty years earlier, the Anglicans "corrected" millennia of Christian thinking by proclaiming that artificial contraception was part of God's plan for a healthy, happy, and wholesome Christian life. In fact, Protestantism's enthusiastic endorsements of abortion, its "brave" rebuke of Biblical prejudices in the person of Bishop Robinson, is just a logical development of that Lambeth Conference; as one wit has put it, when sexuality is divorced from the begetting of children any orifice will do, and Christianity is left with no reasonable way to refuse men who want the church's blessings on their orifices of choice.
So it's possible, indeed probable, that modern Protestant howling about "secular humanism" invading our culture is, at best, regret over lost innocence and, at worst, a combination of alibi and anodyne. Justice Douglas didn't spend an evening with the writings of Anais Nin and suddenly imagine a "right" to artificial contraception. The Anglican fathers at Lambeth had already done it for him, thirty-five years earlier. Justice Blackmun didn't invent a right to abortion after smoking dope one afternoon with the Society of Secular Humanists Sworn to Destroy Christendom. He did what Baptists and Methodists had for years been saying was God's will which the government should obey. Do Griswold and Roe, Lawrence and Bishop Richardson represent merely another game of "Arians and Athanasians," another episode of invasive and temporary oppression of orthodoxy by an alien and ungodly trend? I don't think so. I think they represent culminating moments in a culture's self-seduction, an ongoing prostitution to the Zeitgeist made inevitable by the culture's inherently secular identity. A necessary corollary to Protestantism's "invisible Church" ecclesiology is the idea that all the visible Protestant communities are merely human institutions which, as with all other human institutions, conform themselves to the pressures, passions and prejudices of their constituencies. Catholic countries like Ireland may legalize abortion, but they don't do it with the blessings of the Church. Practically, that's a small difference. But if one is to hope for the restoration of Christian sanity to our civilization, it's the only difference that really matters.
An exploration of this phenomenon couldn't begin better than by a look at the writings of Orestes Brownson. Brownson is, in my humble estimation, the nearest rival American Catholicism can propose to the likes of Hillaire Belloc and GK Chesterton. A genuine searcher for the truth, Brownson wandered throughout the Protestant world. By turns a serious Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian, Brownson understood the dynamics of Protestant communities and their involvement with the society of their age. He became Catholic in 1844, simultaneously forfeiting his rising journalistic career to the anti-Catholic prejudices of his day and encountering an American Catholicism which is very like its modern counterpart, led by Catholics who (as the Catholic Encyclopedia explained with reference to Brownson's day) "feared to make their religion prominent", preferring to blend "liberalism, latitudinarianism, and political atheism" into a "tame and apologetic" Catholicism that was ever "labouring to soften the severities and to throw off whatever appeared exclusive or rigorous in . . . doctrine." Brownson wrote several books and edited Brownson's Quarterly Review, a journal of culture and apologetics which eventually addressed every signal topic in Catholicism's conversation with the world. He was commended for his work by the Plenary Council at Baltimore (the one which wrote the famous Catechism) and Pope Pius IX. He died in the bosom of the Church in 1876.
Brownson was a fiercely-implacable critic of Protestantism, and often employs a tone and language which we are not eager to see revived in discussions with our separated brethren. Brownson's verbal jabs and roundhouses cannot be accurately understood, however, without recalling the vicious anti-Catholicism which raged in the United States during the 19th century. Brownson intended Catholicism to give as good as it got from its Protestant critics, whose major theme was that a decent society can have no place for Catholics. But Brownson's talents were not confined to rhetorical fireworks; when he strikes, he strikes home, and in one of his essays he puts his finger on that irremediable, central aspect of Protestantism which has brought it into such close harmony with "secular humanism" on the question of sexual rights. I am therefore serializing his essay, "Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty" as it appeared in Brownson's Quarterly Review in October 1845. As one can easily tell, Brownson wrote it during a time when America's transformation into an industrial and commercial nation produced enormous debates about economic life and the policies of the federal government. In our day the bourgeois materialism which emerged from those decades has become so completely pervasive that we hardly notice it, and are tempted to look upon the fierce controversies which raged over the idea of a national bank, and the rise of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay's "American System," with a good deal of incomprehension at the passions and ideas displayed. Brownson's vigorous condemnation of materialism and state-sponsored graft (a/k/a "economic policy") may sound unrealistic, even bizzare, to modern readers. But the present value of his essay isn't in his economic and political predictions (correct though they were), but in his ideas about the friendliness Protestantism has -- and must have -- to worldly passions and perspectives. I have taken the liberty of rearranging three or four paragraphs of the essay (Brownson's style is not all it could have been), indicating the fact by ellipses. I have also written introductory headings for each segment. The full and entire text can be found in Volume X of Brownson's Works, published by AMS Press (New York), 1966, pp. 1-17. At the end of the series, which will take several days, I'll offer some concluding thoughts of my own.
Thesis and Introduction
By popular liberty, we mean democracy; by democracy, we mean the democratic form of government; by the democratic form of government, we mean that form of government which vests the sovereignty in the people as population, and which is administered by the people, either in person or by their delegates. By sustaining popular liberty, we mean, not the introduction or institution of democracy, but preserving it when and where it is already introduced, and securing its free, orderly, and wholesome action. By Catholicity, we mean the Roman Catholic Church, faith, morals, and worship. The thesis we propose to maintain is, therefore, that without the roman Catholic religion it is impossible to preserve a democratic government, and secure its free, orderly, and wholesome action. Infidelity, Protestantism, heathenism may institute a democracy, but only Catholicity can sustain it.
The great danger in our country is from the predominance of material interests. Democracy has a direct tendency to favor inequality and injustice. The government must obey the people; that is, it must follow the passions and interests of the people, and of course the stronger passions and interests. These with us are material, such as pertain solely to this life and this world. What our people demand of government is, that it adopt and sustain such measures as tend most directly to facilitate the acquisition of wealth. It must, then, follow the passion for wealth, and labor especially to promote worldly interests.
But among these worldly interests, some are stronger than others, and can command the government. These will take possession of the government, and wield it for their own especial advantage. They will make it the instrument of taxing all the other interests of the country for the special advancement of themselves. This leads to inequality and injustice, which are incompatible with the free, orderly, and wholesome working of the government.
Now, what is wanted is some power to prevent this, to moderate the passion for wealth, and to inspire the people with such a true and firm sense of justice, as will prevent anyone interest from struggling to advance itself at the expense of another. Without this the stronger material interests predominate, make the government the means of securing their predominance, and of extending it by the burdens which, through the government, they are able to impose on the weaker interests of the country.
Tomorrow, Part II: Why Constitutions Cannot Protect Liberty
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