Your honor, I rise in opposition to papal ninjas.
Peter insists that in spite of jocularity he has a serious point, so I will insist on taking it seriously. One of the major problems with Roman ecclesiology – and with the ecclesiologies of many Protestants and Orthodox as well! – is that it requires the institutional church to be two things at the same time that no institution can be at the same time: the conscience of Christendom and a political authority. The reason no institution can be both at the same time is because all political authorities are constantly involved, for reasons of state, in a variety of hypocrisies and shenanigans. (For a scholarly analysis of the reasons why political authority necessarily involves this kind of thing, see Batman.)
It is not my purpose today to emphasize the intrinsic impossibility of this juxtaposition. Whether or not it could ever be done, the more important point is that it never has, in fact, been done. And for a long time this caused no end of trouble.
But it has not caused trouble in Rome in recent times. The Vatican has blessed the whole world and empowered itself as a moral voice by recusing itself – mostly voluntarily – from the role of political authority. For obvious reasons it cannot formally renounce its claim to have the right to play that role. But in the 20th century it has wisely chosen not to press that claim, and as a result it has emerged as a global moral authority on an unprecedented scale.
Today, there are more and more Catholics and Protestants who, under the influence of Alasdair MacIntyre and other deadly enemies of brotherly love, want to go back to the old way. They long once again for the impossible dream of the institution that will be both prophet and king. And none of them, in my experience, is even beginning to think about the monstrous consequences that would result.
I recently sat in an academic seminar and listed to a respectable Catholic intellectual express the view that he would like to see all non-Catholics forcibly torn out of their homes and expelled from their communities. He insisted that this could be accomplished without putting people in prison or violent confrontation. I hear more and more of this sort of irresponsible thinking.
Papal ninjas would be a first step on a very dangerous road.
Robert Royal had a serious point, one I didn’t want to be seen as mocking–but I am pretty sure his point was about Papal teaching and American politics getting synched up to make a more rational foreign policy. It just made me think of Jonah Goldberg’s “Papal Ninjas” meme.
It’s the sort of thing that’s an interesting thought exercise because it would be very unlikely to happen in the current configuration of politics. The Vatican actually mustering armed expeditionary forces would share some of the worst features of Japan and Luxembourg arming: it would be as out of keeping with recent history as Japan, and as likely to be inconsequential as Luxembourg.
I assumed that, given the frothy nature of my post, readers would go read the serious point where Royal made it. I am far more “link blogger” than essayist, most of the time–In the past two weeks, I have written about 50 pages in three offline projects, graded three stacks of papers and submitted six-week grades, and must get back to work on a review, so I don’t have time to construct long, prosy pieces that won’t be read by much of anyone. I’m just trying to keep certain themes woven into the conversation, and work them out as I go.
Royal’s point was spelled out fairly well. I’ll emphasize what I though were the important takeaways:
[ http://www.thecatholicthing.org/2015/03/02/defending-rome/ ]
My use of “serious’ was a direct reference to the concluding line of Royal’s essay. Again, I set people up to make connections like this. I’m a lit teacher; it’s what I do.
But we cannot avoid–no one can ever avoid–the interaction of the political and the religious. All we can do is accidentally crown secularism, and then hope that the new consensus on all religious and metaphysical matters is one we like, or can control. The result is that the most nihilistic, not the most humane, will routinely win.
The Church marches on her knees. But she can and should find protectors.
America had a great thing going: about the best blend of toleration and consensus possible. If the Kulturkampf continues, though, it will be over. As long as I refuse to succumb to despair, I necessarily believe that it must be possible for the faithful precisely as such to build durable cultural institutions–and that always means having a secular arm that actually knows the true, the good, and the beautiful when it sees it.
I fancy you’re facing a different set of struggles, on your front, but I really don’t see how your alternative actually takes shape at present. It just sounds like cultural Calvinism trying to pretend the culture hasn’t become toxic, to me.
I’m solidly–avowedly, as in, it’s the major rationale I offer my students for the study of Rhetoric–in favor of political suasion rather than quietism, tyranny, or revolt, but political suasion is still at bottom a method for deciding how force will be used; and unless it is linked to an actual, consequential, true moral vision, it is just another form of violence. Only force used to protect what is good from the violent is justifiable; but that means we have to argue in favor of a vision that puts those who know the difference in power, and prevents those who don’t from overruling them.
Unless “moral consensus” just means “whatever the majority thinks at the moment,” which I very much don’t believe you have in mind.
And please understand–given my upbringing and study of history, the only reason I could possibly have for being “in Rome” these days is that I am thoroughly convinced that the Church’s dogmatic teaching is true, and her authority real. Pragmatics and politics may make that trying, may aggravate my frustrations, but Truth is worth a mess.
in haec fide vivere et more statuo
What I am really asking for here is that we treat the authority structures of human culture – which are never fully Christian and never, at least in our context, fully non-Christian either – as what they really are and must inevitably be. The church really exists as something distinct from human culture, because a supernatural force is creating the church within the culture without bringing the whole culture into the church. But the converse also holds: human culture really exists as something distinct from the church, because a supernatural force is creating the church within the culture without bringing the whole culture into the church. The two must interact and influence one another, but the distinction is of critical importance – to both of them.
What worries me is that any mention of this kind of thing is met with extreme, even parodic slippery slope arguments. In my world, even the most cautious assertion that the world is not the church is met with howls of “That’s secularization! That’s the immanent frame! That’s the disenchanted world!” in a tone of voice suggesting that if I were to have a heart attack, no one in the room would call 911.
Is the whole universe one enormous slope, so slippery as to be totally frictionless, with God at the top and Satan at the bottom, and no possibility of anything existing in between?
I’m not sure what you mean by “cultural Calvinism” and want to hear more. Do you mean:
1) An approach to culture shaped by Calvinist theology?
2) An approach to culture that you are describing as “Calvinist” not literally but by analogy (i.e. you find it “determinist” in some sense)?
3) A Calvinism that is shaped more by a culture or subculture than by theology (just as some use the phrase “cultural Christianity” to describe those who identify Christianity as conformity to a Christian subculture)?
4) Something else?
The reference is vague, and really only entered my vocabulary when a pretty successful former executive from a Dutch Reformed background spoke of how while teaching in Japan he, a “cultural Calvinist,” had been “radicalized.” He ended up working at, administering, and serving on the board of a [Protestant] private school when he returned to the States. I took his meaning to be the “success as a result of hard work reflects divine favor” element that is often noted in Calvinist culture (for example, both Puritan and Huguenot culture get praised for this in some circles).
When I use the term, which I rarely do, I am indicating something like a view that the “Protestant work ethic” is normative and a normal result of proper Christian formation, and that on balance it will lead to prosperity. Even though I think Weber’s analysis is flawed, I’m probably incidentally referring to him as a shorthand for this cultural consensus [ http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-protestant-ethic-thesis/ ]. Given that I was raised on this, and on the view that “middle class” was what Genevan & Huguenot & Puritan culture promoted, I think of this as a large part of the reason that “middle class” has such totemic force in American politics (even though it now seems to mean “ordinary working folks” in rhetoric but “small business owners and professionals” in practice, given that our regulatory and tax code and our problematic urban density make artisanship either unprofitable or a luxury good, and commerce entirely subsidiary to finance).
Here’s a pretty good discussion in the context of Huguenot culture:
[ http://www.h-france.net/vol5reviews/vol5htmlreviews/mcgrath.html ]
Of course, there are two respects in which I might not regard this as a positive (and neither is ipso facto a criticism of Calvin or Protestantism). One is just the general difference in Catholic cultural vision from Calvinist cultural vision, to the limited extent one can generalize so very broadly. [see http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2852 for a very quick sketch of such a conversation.]
The other, more germane, one is that I think such a vision only “works” insofar as one is actually already living in a culture that prizes that ethic. That is, while a generally Christian formation shared by believers and unbelievers in the community emphasizes a certain ethos of hard work, focus on secular occupation as “calling” [my marriage, never my career, is a “vocation” properly so called], and interpretation of prosperity as endorsement of my efforts, then it is indeed likely that commercial success will tend to reinforce attachment to that kind of Christian formation, and vice versa. But when that formation is not at all what is general in the culture, then the rationalizations required to adjust immoral successes and noble failures into the system, as well as the culture’s successful restriction of the reinforcement mechanisms, call into question the foundations of that ethos–or at least its viability in the larger culture. This is true whether (as I think) this ethos has its own self-defeat baked in (the misconstruction of “calling” being one key), or whether we simply view it as a proposition that can be more successful or not depending on whether people will subscribe to it.
Either way, the culture is toxic and hostile to both “cultural Calvinism” and Catholic culture, at present, and shows few signs of significant improvement. However, there are still reasons to hope–and while they exist, we must not stop advocating for a culture in which, for example, “at least don’t kill babies that you can see are struggling for life!” is a banally obvious proposition, not–Lord, have mercy!–a controversial one that I risk my career to utter publicly.
At some point I think I should try to elaborate on a distinction I try to make between “secularizing” regimes or “secularist” institutions, and “secular” interests and “the secular arm” of God’s work in the world. I think there’s an important difference, and many folks who try to oppose “secularism” are sadly doing nothing at all different than the knee-jerk rejection of “wordly” things without differentiating the perverse from the useful. For one thing, folks conflate bodily/material with “of this age,” that is, passing/distracting/trendy….
Having said which, it is important not to be too attached to anything strictly of this age, but to continually sacrifice from those things in order to draw closer to the One Who is with us in saecula saeculorum!
Your analysis is shaped by the errors of Weber (curses be upon his name forever) in ways you don’t seem to be aware of. Weber interpreted the transformation of believers’ behavior exclusively in terms of ascetic personal morals, but this is completely at odds with the record. Yes, revival does inculcate improved personal morals, and (as you say) this by itself is not transformative of culture. But revival does much more than simply inculcate personal morals; it changes people’s understanding of public things, and moves them to public action.
You had to look pretty hard to find a concrete example – some obscure Huguenot, and one who was condemned by Calvin to boot! The great Protestant and Catholic revivals of the 16th century, and the more settled cultural forms produced by their successors in the 17th, were much more shaped by the demands for public justice we see in Calvin and Luther (the 95 Theses are not about justification and church authority, they are about justice for the oppressed) and in their Catholic counterparts than by some no-name people who don’t matter and are lost to history except when they’re dug up for the special purpose of propping up the rotting corpse of Weber’s intellectual respectability.
This is why, in fact, revival is consistently associated with cultural transformation even in the most hostile cultures. Take a look at what’s happening in China or South America (much of which is dominated by a militant secularism that puts ours to shame) or southern Africa today. In fact, to the extent that the evidence suggests anything, it suggests that cultural transformation takes much longer to take effect when revival breaks out in nominally Christian cultures as opposed to pagan ones. The contrast, and the appeal of the Christian alternative, becomes clearer faster in the pagan context.
Let me clarify that one important point I’m trying to make in the comment I just left is that the key is revival and transformation, not Calvinist or Catholic ecclesiology per se. From the beginning (re-read my original post) I have been trying to stress that while I disagree with Roman ecclesiology, that is not the important point. Rome – as I stressed – has actually been a tremendous contributor to cultural transformation in the 20th century. But it had to abandon its ambitions to political authority in order to achieve this! Unless you’re prepared to say the popes who undertook this strategy were in breach of Catholic faith and doctrine, I think I can accurately characterize my position by saying that I’m fighting on behalf of all (Protestant and Catholic) who keep the church and the world distinct, against all (Protestant and Catholic) who confuse them.
Hmmm, yes, I can easily see where my comment, at least, may have muddied some matters.
The operational definition of “cultural Calvinism” I was using, based mostly on my former colleague’s usage and experience, would be something which needed to be “revived,” i.e., something which had become denatured and routinized. A return to the vital source would, as you say, have transformative consequences as well as restorative ones.
In Catholic terms, the choice is between “Continuity in reform, Reform in continuity” and a “progressive” insistence on reform as rupture. For what it’s worth, debates over the motto semper reformanda seem to reverberate with similar dynamics.
Greg,
I haven’t commented on your posts before, although I’ve enjoyed following them for quite a while. I simply wanted to say “thank you” for bringing this problem to light – and to encourage you to continue doing so.
I’m currently in graduate school and have seen the rise of this kind of wishful thinking among my peers, both Catholic and Protestant. The first group tend increasingly towards some kind of vague caesaro-papism, and the second towards Reconstructionism or – currently in vogue on the interwebs – “Reformed Libertarianism” (which really shouldn’t be anything other than an oxymoron, but oh well). As you point out, both camps claim that no coercion would be involved, but rarely take very great pains to show why not. What astounds me is that the people I’ve known in both camps are normally sober-minded, critical thinkers, and yet these last few years, it seems like any historical sense has gone completely out the window. Increasingly, the presumption seems to be that, since the “liberal” state created this godforsaken mess, the “pre-liberal” state must have been better. I’m not sure how that follows, but that always seems to be the tacit belief motivating these things.
Your distinction between the prophetic and political strikes me as a really good one for this reason. It points to the two very distinct “ends” of church and state – ends which Locke shows pretty convincingly are blurred beyond distinction as soon as coercive power is given to the church – but emphasizes the inherent tension between the two in a helpful way. This is not something that’s unique to a particular time or a particular political “project” – it’s the dichotomy of human nature (the needs of the body versus the needs of the soul) writ large. Just in case you haven’t read anything by him, a thinker I’ve found very useful in this regard (in addition to Locke) is Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly his Nature and Destiny of Man.
Thanks again for your commentary and balanced take on things. I keep hoping to see something from you in First Things, responding to Michael Hanby’s hit-piece (hint, hint).
The internet ate my first reply so I’m trying again.
Yes, we need a rediscovery of Niebuhr – both of them, actually. Like Locke, they’re currently despised by all the fashionable Christian intellectuals, but they were onto important insights. We are losing the insights, and thus despise (without having read) the great thinkers who had them.
The question I would like to confront all these people with is this: Suppose we got back the pre-liberal order you crave; why would it turn out any differently this time? What would you do to prevent the collapse of the pre-liberal order into a two-century bloodbath of unspeakable violence and horror? I see no sign that the fashionable Christian intellectuals are even aware of this question.
With one exception: Alasdair MacIntyre has been admirably forthright about his answer. He would preserve the neo-medieval order by arresting the next Luther and torturing him to death immediately, rather than allowing him to live on and poke holes in the social order (which in MacIntyre’s system seems to be indistinguishable from God) through such horrible acts as translating the scriptures and writing about what they mean.
Before you can ask that question, though (i.e., “why would it turn out differently this time”), there has to be some consensus that persecution actually existed, and that it was profoundly harmful to traditionalism’s sacred cows of “community,” “place” and “family.” Thing is, I’ve seen many more people in my own circles these past few years gravitate towards a Thomistic or Calvinist Geneva sort of “toleration” than towards Locke’s.The burden of proof seems increasingly to be on conservative defenders of toleration to prove that toleration is even a desirable goal, because, while we’re confronted every week with scandals in the name of freedom, people aren’t seeing the realities of the late middle ages and the pre-liberal “order” held up in front of their eyes. I’m puzzled about what to do about all this, as I’m preparing to enter the academy in a couple years. At the academic level, what can I do? Is the answer accurate historical treatments of the era, and more of an Evangelical emphasis on history? Problem there is, since conservative academia is increasingly ecumenical in character, those are just the issues that both “sides” (especially my own Evangelical side, given the dearth of Evangelicals going into academia) have to side step for pragmatic reasons. The “moral consensus” we most need is also a hard one to maintain charitably once you get right down to it. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
What are your reasons for going into the academy?
That question always catches me off guard. Well, most fundamentally, I guess, I’ve always hated seeing people living their lives out according to lies they’ve been told. More particularly, seeing the two worlds I grew up in (small town America and Evangelical Christianity) increasingly fall apart these last ten years, I came to the conclusion that the fundamental thing wrong with both was that faith and reason were perceived as uneasy bedfellows. In Evangelical churches, reason was often denigrated. In politics, faith was excluded. I guess I hope to try to find the balance for myself and help others do the same.
How would going into academia position you to address this?
“Caesaropapism” is what Catholics accuse the Orthodox of practicing, Nathan. (The view that the [Byzantine? Russian? Putin?] emperor’s control should extend to the enforcement of orthodoxy in the Church, appointment of bishops, etc.) The era of “cuius regio, eius religio” compromise has more in common with caesaropapism and modern Theonomy (and with Bucer’s view of the authority of magistrates, which Bullinger concurred with) than with Catholic thought. So if your Catholic friends are advocating caesaropapism, they are seriously mistaken about their views (or possibly you are confused about your nomenclature).
Catholics *do* believe that the regime has an objective duty to protect the actual common good (even against hypothetical “if wishes were horses” projects), and we *do* proclaim that the Gospel and its consequential public practice are first-order instances of the common good. We also believe that the institution of marriage and the law against killing those innocent of crime, which like liberty to follow a well-formed conscience are matters of natural law, are first-order instances of public good. To the extent a regime sets itself against these, the regime delegitimizes itself over against other claimants to establish just order. (Thus, an unjust union has little right to defend itself against the just reforms of a state government, but an unjust state government has little right to defend itself against the encroachments of just unions.)
Because it is possible for regimes to be led by morally responsible people who recognize their obligations to the Church, Catholics do believe it is technically possible for the civil power and the ecclesial power to be united–but not so as the civil power possesses ecclesial authority (that is, the right to alter the constitution of the Church), nor so as the Church herself treats civic matters as ecclesial (that is, treating the whole world as though all were baptized and communing, applying canon law without distinction to all). Find every contortion possible–and you can–yet you will not find that the Roman Church has ever established in principle the supremacy of the transient regime over the Church, nor the *realized* surpremacy of the Church in all matters properly left to the regime’s competence.
I highly recommend a reading of Pink’s article on the question: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/conscience-and-coercion (If possible, read his longer scholarly treatment instead, but this will put you on the trail.)
As a convert to Catholicism, and an academic, I long for the Church to stop using secular reasoning in her own institutions, and thus for a robust reassertion of her authority that does not first check the rhetorical situation in the secular media and only then accept the wisdom of Sacred Tradition. However, in so doing I am *not* repudiating the Church’s own wisdom in taking the lesson of many different pragmatic and transient arrangements of secular power relative to the enduring beachead of the Kingdom of God in this world [seculae, that is, both aeon and mundo]. The Church regards current “rights based” regimes as potentially powerful guardians of the good, and prefers to vigorously advocate within them for what natural law teaches us, rather than assert a better way over against them.
Precisely as an academic, I live at the boundaries of these conversations, and try to keep an eye on the “bottom line” rather than the transient and pragmatic arrangements–but in practical parish teaching, and in helping my friends make choices, and even as I try to think through how to evolve new and better practical arrangements, I like everyone else actually *live* with those arrangments. Personally, though, I still try to minimize my entanglement with them. (Actually, it is precisely Catholic teaching that urges me to *risk* more entanglement, FWIW; my own Baptist upbringing had a much heavier emphasis on “Come out from among them, and be ye separate!”)
I concur with the drift of Greg’s question, by the way: as an academic, I am far from convinced that the only, best, or automatic way for you to help persuade your fellows to base their thinking on reality (prominently including divine revelation) is to bind yourself to the professoriate. Believe me, students have far more freedom to speak than most academics dare use.
Nathan: Peter is correct in discerning the “drift” of my question.
Peter: I appreciate your desire for precision in the use of the term Caesaropapism; in Nathan’s defense, however, in practice there has been little important functional difference between Caesaropapism (putting the state in charge of the church) and the view embraced by people like MacIntyre and Patrick Deneen (encouraging the state to enforce religious uniformity on the civil community). He who does the latter ends up doing the former – especially in modern times.
Pingback: Moving Past History | Inkandescence