Quote of the Day
Apropos of the “Fortnight for Freedom,” from “Freedom is Not the Good,” a post by Jerry Salyer at Front Porch Republic.
“… for generations the American Catholic leadership has mostly assumed that an Enlightenment Deist’s conception of liberty is perfectly commensurate with its own. Some would even say the leadership has adopted the Enlightenment Deist’s conception of liberty. Either way, for more than two centuries the Catholic has obediently danced to the American system’s tune, without ever seriously questioning that system’s basic vision and principles — much less seeking to revise or correct them via light from the Church Fathers and Doctors. So who is to blame when he discovers that, left to itself, the system’s definition of liberty has devolved into something hostile?”
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Exactly!
Every single sentence, and nay even parts of the sentences, in that quotation are historically false. To wit:
1. As Charles Taylor and other careful scholars have pointed out, there weren’t that many Deists around in the 18th Century, and anyways, they were not the ones who came up with the ideal of liberty alone.
2. The idea that RC Church leadership assumed that such liberty was commensurate with its own notions is manifestly contradicted by the important controversy that erupted at the beginning of the Republic (!) involving who would appoint clergy to parishes.
3. Though some Protestant Divines did adopt language similar to Deists, I am not aware of any RC representative ever adopting such language.
4. Even if a more generalized adoption is indicated, then it was never in explicit form, far from it. America’s Rome, a book about American attitudes towards Rome, indicates that many Catholic writers just assumed that some sort of congruence was possible, but were noteworthy for never working out the kinks of how such congruence could be in fact. Certainly, there is zero indication of the leadership doing so, the opposite in fact, as Charlie Curran’s historical analysis of 19th Century moral theology shows. Mr. Salyer must have just read a biography of the founder of the Paulists and gotten really annoyed. No wonder Sirico left them!
5. While on the whole Catholics have been fine citizens of this country, a group that starts its own system of schools because their notions do not mix, and thus felt ostracized, is not a conceptual contender for being “obedient” in a cultural sense. Surely the use of the term is not broached to indicate simply that they did not commit crimes and engage in mayhem.
6. Practical example contra “revise and correct”: Bishop Sheen, whose show was filled with Catholic attempts to “correct” Cold War thinking according to its own lights and (Church Father and Doctors), is indicative of a long-standing attitudes amongst RC clerics. If these leaders did have half the identification with Enlightenment liberty that Salyer indicates then the Bishops in the US South would not have been so supportive of slavery. I guess Salyer has never heard of Bishop Verot. In fact they used Catholic concepts to bolster slavery as Verot shows.
7. “Hostile” is when you get your Church burned down. Simply not being one the winning or controlling side is not a signal that you are living in a “hostile” environment. It is a sign, simply, that you are living in democracy, and the guy or gal you like is often not going to be in power. They can change this merely by not being sooooo paranoid, and encouraging candidates from their community with less lunacy than Santorum. Just a hint.
(I know they want to bring back the monarchy over on the Front Porch Republic (why not “Realm”? ) , sadly if they could I imagine that the court musicians would be on the lines Lady Antebellum and not a modern Mozart. If monarchy was good for anything it was that!)
Peter Paul, since you seem to think that the Catholic Church in America has never been persecuted by the Protestant majority, I wonder if you’re familiar with this:
Also, you might be interested to know that in the plaza of Las Vegas, New Mexico, there’s a plaque put up by “liberating” gringo military governor which states, among other things, that the new U.S. Federal occupying power will “permit” the indigenous Natives and Hispanics to retain their “traditional religion.”
digby,
Of course they were persecuted in the history of this country. But that was when anti-Catholic mobs burned convents and Churches. That indeed is persecution. That is my point. Having to deal with gay guys and their marriages, ain’t persecution. Nor is having to come grips that other people of goodwill feel differently on vexed matters of conception and pregnancy. They are the boys crying wolf, 24-7.
Peter, I think you mis-read the intent of the quote, and its obvious that you didn’t read the piece it came from. The author isn’t claiming persecution. He’s criticizing the bishops for claiming persecution, on the one hand, while on the other hand couching their complaint in the language of the very political system they blame for the persecution.
When one appeals to religious liberty, as the Catholic bishops are doing with their “Fortnight for Freedom,” one concedes the fiction that liberty is purely procedural and that liberalism has no substantive axe to grind. But this isn’t so. Kenneth Craycraft:
” …liberalism’s stated intent is not to suggest any particular substantive vision of the good, but rather to create and sustain the proper procedural institutions that will safeguard a variety of claims of autonomy and rights. The goodness of a political arrangement is thus measured by this single canon. The only rule of the goodness of a human action is its relative lack of any kind of impediment (legal, cultural, social, familial, and so on), consistent with the same for everyone else. Obversely, the category of evil actions is exactly coextensive with those actions that impede the autonomy of another person. Liberalism prescinds from making judgments about the use to which one puts one’s autonomy, with the single exception of condemning the use of my autonomy to abridge yours.
But, of course, here is the rub. At least two fatal contradictions lie at the heart of such a conception of politics. First, there is no binding moral principle that transcends the agreement we make not to impede each other’s autonomy. The only basis for our mutual agreement to respect and even defend the other’s autonomy is the “rational” expectation that you will keep your promise in the hope that I will keep mine. But if I decide not to respect your autonomy, the liberalism to which we are committed has no moral principle to which you can appeal for redress. The radical individualism that accompanies this pursuit of autonomy merely exacerbates the problem. A radically individual conception of the good cannot be reconciled with a principled respect for the autonomy of someone who interferes with my pursuit of the good.
Thus, against one of liberalism’s most basic claims, it must import some sort of public morality into its laws in order to protect the autonomy it seeks. And in so doing, of course, it necessarily impedes that autonomy.
To impose the overriding value of liberalism necessarily contradicts the values of liberalism.
Second, this regime of procedural autonomy is itself a substantive view of politics. To say that politics ought to be nothing more than the architectonic protection of the pursuit of individual private goods is itself the establishment of a thickly substantive view of the good. The political philosophical position that politics should not be about substantive views of public good is a substantive view of public good. And thus it is contradictory both on its face and in the political world it constructs. As Kekes puts it, ‘Liberals cannot consistently appeal to some . . . basic overriding value and simultaneously deny that any value is overriding.’ To impose the overriding value of liberalism necessarily contradicts the values of liberalism. ‘Given that liberals are committed to regarding some values as basic,’ Kekes explains, ‘their commitment is either arbitrary, because it lacks justification, or it is inconsistent.’ Or both. To employ the author’s terms, liberalism is a ‘monism’ of ‘relativism.’”
If you choose to respond, post a new comment, please.
digby,
I just watched the video too. Look, Mexican politics is a big old quagmire, and I am not going to defend any side clearly. But, I will say this, had the RC church in Mexico not been truly THE most backward part of the church throughout the whole world — charging for sacraments well into the 19th Century and fighting any sort of religious freedom and humane reform — a lot of massive, violent stupidity on the other sides, including the US, would not have happened. That is the ONLY conclusion one can draw from history I believe.
Only the other side there is the salient fact that Mexico got rid of slavery a lot earlier than the US. that says something, and not something good about the US ultimately or historically.
“But, I will say this, had the RC church in Mexico not been truly THE most backward part of the church throughout the whole world…”
## Including Spain ?
On a related issue, I find it very worrying that Catholic countries seem – with exceptions – to be pretty backward, politically, educationally, economically. Mexico – not the US – is the country with eight drug cartels; even though the US has immense social problems of its own. At least the US has a functioning political & judicial system, and is not plagued by political assassination. If Catholicism is valid, why does it seem to produce unstable societies ? One mustn’t over-simplify, but even so…
Maybe I’ve read too much Protestant polemic.
In connection with this, I think Ryan Klassen’s guest post on here is apropos as well, especially as it deals with what Mennonites can learn from Catholics about how to be in the world, and what Catholics can learn from Mennonites about how not to be of it.
Interesting how the word “freedom” can take on such different connotations depending on context. In the context of American patriotic rhetoric, it takes on some unsettling overtones. Of course, I’ll be the last person to speak negatively of religious freedom, but the question is whether that’s really what’s at stake in a social context where criticism or loss of power is being mistaken for persecution. Maybe instead of acting threatened, the Church in the US would do better to take the present situation as an opportunity to practice some kenosis, letting go of power – what a witness to the Gospel that could be! But then that still leaves a few questions of conscience, in both procreative issues and hospitality toward immigrants. I’m thinking there’s a larger both/and in here somewhere.
“Catholics, remember that if you desire freedom for yourselves, you must desire it for mankind. If you desire it only for yourselves it will never be granted to you: give it where you are masters so that you will be given it where you are slaves.”
French Dominican priest Jean Baptiste Lacordaire (“To live in the midst of the world without desiring its pleasures . . .”) (1801-1861), and cited with approval by Mark Hurley, peritus at Vatican II and late bishop of Santa Rosa in California, in his book “The Unholy Ghost.”
I dunno. Pardon me for being parochoal about own democratic freedoms, but I have the Archbishop of Washington spending by some estimates a quarter of a million dollars on his “freedom” campaign without every saying a word or spending a time on behalf of myself and the people of his See who are denied the freedom of democratic government.
….on behalf of myself and the people of his See who are denied the freedom of democratic government.
What are you referring to?
I think Kurt lives in Washington, D.C., which has taxation without representation.
Mark,
I’ll admit that I did not click to read the whole thing, as it seemed a bit daunting. But having read it now, nothing in it changed my view a bit. I am not here to defend those Bishops — far from it, you may guess– but the issue iS religious freedom. In this sense Salyer said exactly what I expected him to say. He argues on matters of telos, but in a political, irnoic on a website devoted to “place. and limits.” My point is that the ONLY reason he is able to go on as he does about that he conceives as the good, and right end of human life, is that he lives in a country that enshrines his right to do so. His type wants to hector the rest of humanity for not agreeing with him. It is puerile and false. His having his views is fine. Imagining that simply because society does not share them is an indication of falsehood per se, is just absurd, and self-canceling as to his very fact of being here hectoring in the first place. These guys are like a fly in the fly bottle. And they think themselves savants. Hilarious.
… the ONLY reason he is able to go on as he does about that he conceives as the good, and right end of human life, is that he lives in a country that enshrines his right to do so.
Ah, so patriotic, and two days before July 4! The guys and gals at Fox News couldn’t have said it better.
Oh spare me Mark! You know that they NEVER sat anything like that on Fox News. They are all about stumping for any religious obsession that is cooked up against real liberty — that is the freedom to do what you want. With one ginormous exception. If anyone tries to even speak about regulating the consumption of hamburgers, there is not a a religious virtue that could possibly stand between those Fox viewers and their cheeseburger.
So, “real liberty” is the “freedom to do what you want”? Liberty = license? Got it. That sounds just like Fox News on taxation and regulation. Don’t be fooled, the right wing’s religion is skin deep. At heart they’re patriotic American liberals, too.
Mark,
You surprise me. I did not take you for quite such a jaded cynic. Freedom, if it means anything, in our crazy world, means that when you believe what gives your life meaning, and follow your heart’s desire, that you won’t be put to death for it. Are we so spoiled that we forget that for most of human history, and at this very moment in some places, that this does NOT obtain.
The “liberty=license” nonsense is a total canard, and diversion from the central issue. The Front Poachers use liberty in a cannibalistic fashion. They consume enough of it to get the energy to put forth their theocratic ambitions. That is not freedom, it is online insanity, and gross.
Oh, well, Mark,
I see you did not like my saucy comment, so here is a more genteel one that might make it past the sieve. The “liberty=license” argument is not something that can be coherently assayed against the views of others, IF you live in a pluralistic society. All societies need limits and laws, so we are not addressing that. No society can condone, explicitly, violence. But it is just a matter of fact, that in a pluralistic society there are gray areas. There is simply no question but that the RC church will eventually have to accept that its continuing influence in this pluralistic world can only be as persuasion, and not defining the ground for action. By those lights, the actions and beliefs of others can NOT be defined as “license”. For if they could then one could easily make a coherent argument, just for instance, that teaching children about a notion as trasnsubstantiation,say, in the school violated the strictures of educational license for reasonable education of minors, and would have to be outlawed. Would you want that unintended consequence?
True religion is not–and never was–for the herd. Freedom (and/or liberty) works for the herd; it is arguably necessary in order to keep the herd relatively peaceful and prosperous; but it is death to true religion. To become a saint, one must withdraw from the masses and turn to one’s own soul as the doorway to God. Organized religion is useful only to the point that it has taught the few with ears to hear that lesson; otherwise it is as big a fraud as organized politics.
“Nowadays it is sometimes held, though wrongly, that freedom is an end in itself, that each human being is free when he makes use of freedom as he wishes, and that this must be our aim in the lives of individuals and societies. In reality, freedom is a great gift only when we know how to use it consciously for everything that is our true good.” – Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis