The Apolitical Man and the Passing Age
To begin, I would like to thank readership for their engagement with the last essay. I very rarely launch into topics surrounding politics. I attribute this, quite frankly, to extensive behavioral conditioning, but also my theological convictions. For the sake of the Gospel, it always seemed prudent to keep silence on political matters in the pulpit and elsewhere, unless there was/is a matter of clear public importance, such as abortion. Moreover, I believe most sincerely that “we have here no abiding city” on earth. The Letter to Diognetus is probably my favorite testament to this attitude, and I read it when I was very young:
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.
Letter to Diognetus
Although Thomas Aquinas and others are clear that patriotism is a clear natural virtue, this attitude found above is based on supernatural virtue. While supernatural virtue does not abolish the natural, it does realign it and purify it, raising it to new heights and new potentials.
I have said in the past something akin to Voltaire on free speech; that even though I am not a Traditionalist, I will fight to the death for the right of Traditionalists to worship according to their spiritual aspirations. This is because I both love Sacred Tradition, of which the Sacred Liturgy is an expression, and because, from a pastoral heart, I still cannot fathom the cruelty and hardness of heart which the Church has inflicted upon traditionalists these past sixty years. At the same time, my recent exchanges reinforced in me something which I already knew. Traditionalism as a phenomenon, both in Europe and America, exists as the cultic (in the positive sense of the word) nexus of the ancien regime. This is well-documented and well-known. In Europe, many Traditionalists are denigrated as ‘Integralists’, a word which is difficult to understand in America, but which can best be understood as a throne-and-altar fusion of Church and State, such as existed during the apogee of the Church’s influence on Ancient and Medieval Western Civilization.
Part of my own scholarly reading and work, including translation, brought me in literal contact with documents which passed between various European courts, of which the Papal Curia was one. In one study of the Avignonese Papacy, an interesting metric I discovered that specialists were using to measure bureaucratic ‘output’ of the court was the amount of money the Holy See spent buying tons of lead in order to seal Papal Bulls. It’s always incredible in historical work how seemingly insignificant details like cutlery and accounting books can tell us the condition and status of a government.
My point in saying this is that one thing I often find among throne-and-altar Traditionalists today is an abundance of knowledge about the history and systems of ancient and medieval government. However, I often find that knowledge curated and selective. Fine details go missing, in favor of narratives. I also think, respectfully, they underestimate how much of the privileges we enjoy today, from Common Law to Due Process, is precisely due to a complex and continuous conflict between the Church and State which took place over centuries. It was important, in my mind, that the Church and State existed in creative tension, just as Faith and Reason do. The ‘good old days’ were not always as good as they seem, and sometimes it was because they were bad and we learned from some mistakes, that we enjoy better things today.
I believe it was Socrates/Plato who said that opinion is the lowest form of knowledge, but since we are all sharing opinions, I would like to share for some clarity what my thoughts are regarding political theory, whether you hate it or love it. There are plenty of writers and speakers whom I love to read or listen to, but maybe there are one or two things I don’t agree with them on. Maybe this will be one of them for you. Either way, I hope it will stimulate and challenge.
Benedict XVI, in his Encylical Caritas in Veritate, there advocated a reform of the United Nations, or some sort of supranational body “so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth” (67). I remember that this statement at the time made people, especially euroskeptics and libertarians, extremely nervous. After all, in 2009, just before the Eurozone had its debt crisis, we were witnessing first hand how anti-democratic and ‘soft authoritarian’ the European Union was becoming in its methods, especially in the reform of its constitution. The United Nations and its affiliate organizations have been beset by corruption and waste for decades, and their goals often have been in direct opposition to Christian morals. Several European and American Catholic writers did voice their opinion on the inadviseability of Benedict XVI’s suggestion. The best way to secure justice in a family of nations, it seemed to them, was not to create more organs of enforced and contrived solidarity, but to encourage more subsidiarity and cooperation wherever possible. I happen to agree with this idea.
In this vein, I like to say that I do not have passionate, deeply held political views, but in so far as I believe that they are applicable to Catholic Social Teaching, I am far more inclined to an arrangement such as the Republic of Venice or a Greek City-State, than something like the Kingdom of France, or the Byzantine Empire. The Most Serene Republic of Venice and its longevity is as much as quirk, admittedly, of its peculiar geography as it was of its political institutions. Short of the War of Chioggia, the Republic of Venice very rarely faced a threat of total annihilation. Its relations with the Holy See were, by turns, amicable and acrimonious. The cynical could say that the Republic had one objective, which was the generation of wealth. The Republic was not purely democratic, just as the American Republic is not purely democratic. It was a mixture of Patrician families which formed a Great Council, and other lesser bodies which together formed checks and balances within the government. Most controversally, the Council of Ten, including the so-called ‘Supreme Tribunal’, carried out internal surveillance within the state, ostensibly to root out threats to the governance of the Republic, such as attempts to turn it into an autocracy. Although abuses did occur, it was generally effective, and the Republic endured for a thousand years.
Although the term is loaded in American context, I am far more favorable to a Confederate Union of States than a tightly controlled, centralized one. Subsidiarity today is probably the most neglected element of the Church’s teachings, and I think that is because of the advent of the internet. Because of globalization, because of the possibility of near-instantaneous communication, it is tempting to want all our complaints and solutions to ‘go to the top’, and I think we often neglect the immediate and the embodied. This is one reason I often emphasize the incarnate in human experience. The same is true in our common discourse on justice. We talk a lot as a culture about distributive and legal justice, but very little about commutative justice. That is, what does the government need to do for me (top-down), and what are my rights when I need remediation under the law. What often disappears is the question of the Common Good and the pressing question of what a citizen should be contributing to their society: not as an abstract or monetary question, but most especially as a relational and local question.
People say that government is messy, and politics are hateful and divisive today. But how many people have sat in on a School Board Meeting, or a Homeowners Association Meeting recently? Or heck, what about these interminable Synod “Listening Sessions”? Every society is filled with malcontents. It does seem that, due to the breakdown in parenting, a lot of people have lost their sense of good manners, at the very least. Yet I think ‘little groups’, as insignificant as they may seem, are far more significant than we give them credit for. Any political theory which I would endorse would give a lot of weight to local decision making bodies, and only leave the absolutely necessary to the higher-level bodies. The anxiety so many people feel I think stems from their sense of helplessness. Giving people agency and some degree of qualified control ennobles them and develops their sense of responsibility.
Now this returns to what I said about the Holy See recently as the Last Global Institution. I completely understand and feel the unease people have expressed recently regarding the recent ‘warmth’ the Holy See seems to have toward very hostile and dangerous individuals and organizations, whether they be people from Davos, the World Economic Forum, etc. Not only do I worry because the Church proclaims her preferential option for the poor, and yet seems to be rubbing elbows with the ultra-rich all the time, but also because we know as a matter of public record that they do not want to establish a World Order which respects human rights and dignity for all. They want quite the opposite.
Yet this is where I think there is an opportunity for us, and this is why I took pains to say “Church” and not simply “Holy See”. The Church, such as in Africa, is aware, painfully aware, of the ‘ideological colonization’ taking place by the likes of Soros and his allies. It is encouraging to see the Church resist, even as it is discouraging to see Rome embrace some of them.
The Papacy of Francis, when it finally ends, I predict is going to do us a huge favor, by reminding us of something we have forgotten these past two centuries: Rome is our Mother, but we, the Churches, are her adult children. Like in a human family, parents can give advice to adult children, they can guide and admonish, but there are only a few things regarding which, after a certain age, we must obey them. Although the analogy is somewhat imperfect, I believe it is helpful. We look to the Apostolic See for guidance, for inspiration, and sometimes for correction. In so far as the Pope and Bishops represent Ordinary Magisterium, and the Pope proclaims something of Extraordinary Magisterium, we are in obedience, and must remain so. That is how Christ constituted the Church. But obedience is not a straightjacket, it is meant to be a springboard.
Like the laws of physics or basic mathematics, we have basic framework to operate by the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that the Holy Spirit can continue to operate in the Church throughout the world until the Second Coming. In that sense I say we are the Last Global Institution: the Church is inherently apolitical, we are pre-political, we may be even said to be post or super-political, because our horizon is supernatural. Fulton Sheen famously quipped that to marry oneself to the spirit of one age is to become a widow in the next. We cannot become bound, whether by nostalgia or by the enthusiasms of the age, to one political framework or another, even if we may argue the merits and demerits of any particular one in good faith.
In closing, I count among my dear friends people who would love to live under the Holy Roman Emperor, the Restored Bourbon Monarchy, or perhaps even in the Papal States. I find these to be entertaining discussions, fit for dinner or evening walks. But they simply do not interest me or convict me in any way. In a few short years I will be dead, and perhaps in a few short years after that, no one on earth will remember me, and “all earth’s proud empires will pass away.” A better world, a more just and humane world…these questions do interest me. There simply is no way Charlemagne is going to be crowned anew in Saint Peters in 2030 AD. Yet just like very serious and respectable people bludgeon each other over matters liturgical, please remember, dear brethren: you all fight on the side of the angels, up to the moment your passion for justice turns into hatred for one another, and zeal turns to bitterness.
