Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy
Weigel, George
CATHOLICISM AND THE RENEWAL OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY George Weigel/Paulist Press/218 pp. $11.95 paper George Sim Johnston A midst the Kulturkampf of American life, writes George Weigel in his...
...Both are orthodox and have no intention of jettisoning 2,000 years of church teaching in favor of a spurious "relevance...
...The Catholic left, like all modern liberalism, is the distant offspring of Pelagius, the fourth-century heretic who denied original sin and taught that man can perfect himself without recourse to the supernatural...
...W eigel sees the American misunderstanding of John Paul II as part of a wider tension that has always existed between America and Roman Catholicism...
...Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, Pius IX and his successors had in effect barricaded the church from the onslaught of modernism...
...W eigel's book is a valuable contribution...
...But if the church in America succumbs instead to leftist fashion, it can expect to evaporate as quickly as mainline Protestantism, whose political accommodations have emptied its churches...
...But the Founding Fathers never wanted an impenetrable wall between church and state, and if we are to avoid complete moral anarchy, such a wall is out of the question...
...The more embittered elements of the Catholic right, meanwhile, would seem to be succumbing to a form of Jansenism, the seventeenth-century heresy that denied the essential goodness of creation and implied that man is saved not in (and with) the world but from it...
...On one side, there is the leftish establishment which takes its inspiration from the sixties liberationist ethos...
...The Catholic Church has always managed to slough off these two extremes...
...Secularists have been at work for decades to rid public policy of all religious referents...
...Theirinstrument has been the establishment clause of the First Amendment...
...But let the wall be porous...
...Weigel's train of thought here mirrors that of Wilmoore Kendall, the late Yale political theorist, who should be consulted more often by conservatives on this particular issue...
...the chief project of modernity is "autonomous man" (perhaps best grasped not by abstract definition but by Rilke's image of a panther silently gazing from its cage...
...Weigel refers to Thomas Aquinas as the "first Whig...
...And yet both are intent on the agenda of Vatican II...
...they aimed instead at a liberty ordered by civic virtues whose taproot is religion...
...It talks a great deal about the "spirit" of Vatican II, while implicitly rejecting much of the actual content of the council's decrees...
...In the last part of his book, Weigel addresses specific issues—the economy, abortion, nuclear policy, and so forth...
...Moreover, since it claims infallibility in matters of faith and morals, the church has been less than enthusiastic about a pluralistic culture that treats religion like any other consumer commodity...
...celebrate it, indeed, as a wall that cannot and must not be breached...
...American liberals, who had seized on the post-conciliar thaw as an opportunity to push a secularist agenda, were bitterly disappointed when it turned out that the Pope had no intention of changing any of the church's moral and dogmatic teachings, which had in fact been confirmed by Vatican II...
...But if the church in America succumbs instead to leftist fashion, it can expect to evaporate as quickly as mainline Protestantism, whose political accommodations have emptied its churches...
...In looking for points of convergence between Rome and Cicero, Illinois, Weigel sides with those historians who see the American experiment as grounded not so much in the radical individualism of Locke as in the Christian idea of community, the "city upon a hill," whose roots can be traced back to the Catholic middle ages...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 37 CATHOLICISM AND THE RENEWAL OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY George Weigel/Paulist Press/218 pp...
...But the interior life, so to speak, of the church, which has remained intact for two millennia, has little to do with being right or wrong about most contemporary issues...
...Catholicism, argues Weigel, should find this kind of polity congenial and, with its natural law approach to moral reasoning, should be in a strong position to help guide the republic back to moral common sense...
...This wing of the church is rightly exercised about the liturgical and doctrinal abuses that have occurred under the pretext of Vatican II...
...But the Founding Fathers never wanted an impenetrable wall between church and state, and if we are to avoid complete moral anarchy, such a wall is out of the question...
...When John Paul II told the conclave that had just elected him that he was going to be guided by the decrees of Vatican II, he meant it...
...And the encyclical was quite clear about its endorsement of private enterprise, so long as the profit motive is guided by higher values...
...still, I cannot help but think that all such books should have a warning sticker addressed to both the practicing Catholic and anyone else who happens to open it...
...Both camps represent tendencies that have always been present in Christianity...
...The Catholic Church has always managed to slough off these two extremes...
...and if now and then, here or there, some moisture seeps through from one side of the wall to the other, that is, from religion to government (though not the other way 'round), use some common sense, of which we expect you to have some, in deciding how excited to get about it...
...still, I cannot help but think that all such books should have a warning sticker addressed to both the practicing Catholic and anyone else who happens to open it...
...The more embittered elements of the Catholic right, meanwhile, would seem to be succumbing to a form of Jansenism, the seventeenth-century heresy that denied the essential goodness of creation and implied that man is saved not in (and with) the world but from it...
...11.95 paper George Sim Johnston A midst the Kulturkampf of American life, writes George Weigel in his thoughtful new book on Catholicism and America, one finds a not-so-inconsequential Kulturkampf within the American Catholic Church itself...
...When John Paul II told the conclave that had just elected him that he was going to be guided by the decrees of Vatican II, he meant it...
...A century later, however, it was high time to drop the triumphalist armor...
...Moreover, since it claims infallibility in matters of faith and morals, the church has been less than enthusiastic about a pluralistic culture that treats religion like any other consumer commodity...
...they aimed instead at a liberty ordered by civic virtues whose taproot is religion...
...vorced from human contingency...
...Especially in the area of sexual morality, the Pope was as uncompromising as any of his predecessors...
...and if now and then, here or there, some moisture seeps through from one side of the wall to the other, that is, from religion to government (though not the other way 'round), use some common sense, of which we expect you to have some, in deciding how excited to get about it...
...Secularists have been at work for decades to rid public policy of all religious referents...
...In looking for points of convergence between Rome and Cicero, Illinois, Weigel sides with those historians who see the American experiment as grounded not so much in the radical individualism of Locke as in the Christian idea of community, the "city upon a hill," whose roots can be traced back to the Catholic middle ages...
...It rejects both a worldly pragmatism separated from the supernatural and a spirituality utterly diGeorge Sim Johnston is a writer living in New York...
...The church, in effect, said "no" to the nineteenth century, something that the rest of the world is just now getting around to doing...
...Despite the caricatures of the media, which portray John Paul II as a Central European authoritarian who does not "understand" the West and Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Grand Inquisitor, both men stand squarely in the reasonable center that Weigel urges...
...But, Weigel argues, we are now seeing the dissolution of the Enlightenment...
...If the Catholic Church can keep its "theological nerve," it will play a major role in setting the post-modern agenda...
...W eigel's book is a valuable contribution...
...But the interior life, so to speak, of the church, which has remained intact for two millennia, has little to do with being right or wrong about most contemporary issues...
...To define being a Catholic around a menu of positions (which, let me hasten to say, Weigel does not do) is to entirely miss how the church has always understood herself...
...America is the laboratory of modernity...
...Weigel, who was recently named president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argues that this reasonable center is exactly where American Catholics ought to be...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 37 CATHOLICISM AND THE RENEWAL OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY George Weigel/Paulist Press/218 pp...
...Along with Richard John Neuhaus, he thinks that post-modernity presents the church with extraordinary opportunities, but that the "Catholic moment" (the title of one of Neuhaus's recent books) will be missed if a plurality of Catholics succumb to the agenda of either the liberals or the restorationists...
...The Pope's social thinking should upset no conservatives other than libertarians who think that the key to happiness is getting one's utility preference curve to incline at just the right angle...
...On a deeper level, however, the restorationists resent almost everything that has happened in Western culture since the Enlightenment and would like to barricade themselves in a fortress (preferably baroque) and, unfurling the encyclicals of Pius X, hurl down anathemas on the modern world...
...The Pope's social thinking should upset no conservatives other than libertarians who think that the key to happiness is getting one's utility preference curve to incline at just the right angle...
...and the church has always been at odds with this aspect of the Enlightenment...
...Along with Richard John Neuhaus, he thinks that post-modernity presents the church with extraordinary opportunities, but that the "Catholic moment" (the title of one of Neuhaus's recent books) will be missed if a plurality of Catholics succumb to the agenda of either the liberals or the restorationists...
...Both camps represent tendencies that have always been present in Christianity...
...This wing of the church is rightly exercised about the liturgical and doctrinal abuses that have occurred under the pretext of Vatican II...
...Weigel refers to Thomas Aquinas as the "first Whig...
...The Catholic left, like all modern liberalism, is the distant offspring of Pelagius, the fourth-century heretic who denied original sin and taught that man can perfect himself without recourse to the supernatural...
...This wing of the church bitterly resents not so much the politics of John Paul II, which are hardly reactionary, as the Pope's orthodoxy and intolerance of apostasy (which is a different thing from mere dissent...
...Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, Pius IX and his successors had in effect barricaded the church from the onslaught of modernism...
...But let the wall be porous...
...America is the laboratory of modernity...
...The church had become centered on a remote hierarchy rather than on the laity it was supposed to serve...
...And the encyclical was quite clear about its endorsement of private enterprise, so long as the profit motive is guided by higher values...
...On one side, there is the leftish establishment which takes its inspiration from the sixties liberationist ethos...
...W eigel sees the American misunderstanding of John Paul II as part of a wider tension that has always existed between America and Roman Catholicism...
...This wing of the church bitterly resents not so much the politics of John Paul II, which are hardly reactionary, as the Pope's orthodoxy and intolerance of apostasy (which is a different thing from mere dissent...
...and the church has always been at odds with this aspect of the Enlightenment...
...No, the Pope was not committing "moral equivalency" when addressing the two power blocs—any more than Saul Bellow was when he remarked that it's our "soft nihilism" versus their "hard nihilism...
...But 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 even though the sexual revolution has hit a brick wall in the eighties, the liberal Catholic wing in America is still furious that the church remains the only major institutional bulwark against further carnage...
...No, the Pope was not committing "moral equivalency" when addressing the two power blocs—any more than Saul Bellow was when he remarked that it's our "soft nihilism" versus their "hard nihilism...
...But as Weigel acknowledges, the church today does not find in America this ideal sort of pluralismone with a transcendent horizon"—but rather the "naked public square" that Pastor Neuhaus writes about...
...The church had become centered on a remote hierarchy rather than on the laity it was supposed to serve...
...But, Weigel argues, we are now seeing the dissolution of the Enlightenment...
...Kendall argued that the Constitution should be read in the spirit with which Americans have always instinctively handled the problem of religious penetration of the civil order: Maintain a wall...
...Theirinstrument has been the establishment clause of the First Amendment...
...On a deeper level, however, the restorationists resent almost everything that has happened in Western culture since the Enlightenment and would like to barricade themselves in a fortress (preferably baroque) and, unfurling the encyclicals of Pius X, hurl down anathemas on the modern world...
...In the last part of his book, Weigel addresses specific issues—the economy, abortion, nuclear policy, and so forth...
...Especially in the area of sexual morality, the Pope was as uncompromising as any of his predecessors...
...But 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 even though the sexual revolution has hit a brick wall in the eighties, the liberal Catholic wing in America is still furious that the church remains the only major institutional bulwark against further carnage...
...He rejects the notion that the Founders conceived merely a "procedural" republic of clashing interests...
...The locus classicus of this effort was the Syllabus of Errors of 1864, which condemned, among other things, the proposition that "the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself . . . with progress, liberalism and modern civilization...
...Both are orthodox and have no intention of jettisoning 2,000 years of church teaching in favor of a spurious "relevance...
...celebrate it in myth and song even as the Great Wall of China was celebrated in myth and song...
...Weigel, who was recently named president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argues that this reasonable center is exactly where American Catholics ought to be...
...11.95 paper George Sim Johnston A midst the Kulturkampf of American life, writes George Weigel in his thoughtful new book on Catholicism and America, one finds a not-so-inconsequential Kulturkampf within the American Catholic Church itself...
...On the other hand—and this is less likely—if the church were to retreat back to the triumphalist barricades to suit the wishes of a hardened minority, it can also look forward to a rapid marginalization...
...On the other side, there is the restorationist counterculture which would like to go back to the way things were done in the forties and fifties...
...The locus classicus of this effort was the Syllabus of Errors of 1864, which condemned, among other things, the proposition that "the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself . . . with progress, liberalism and modern civilization...
...Kendall argued that the Constitution should be read in the spirit with which Americans have always instinctively handled the problem of religious penetration of the civil order: Maintain a wall...
...And yet both are intent on the agenda of Vatican II...
...Weigel's train of thought here mirrors that of Wilmoore Kendall, the late Yale political theorist, who should be consulted more often by conservatives on this particular issue...
...To define being a Catholic around a menu of positions (which, let me hasten to say, Weigel does not do) is to entirely miss how the church has always understood herself...
...Catholicism, argues Weigel, should find this kind of polity congenial and, with its natural law approach to moral reasoning, should be in a strong position to help guide the republic back to moral common sense...
...A century later, however, it was high time to drop the triumphalist armor...
...It talks a great deal about the "spirit" of Vatican II, while implicitly rejecting much of the actual content of the council's decrees...
...If the Catholic Church can keep its "theological nerve," it will play a major role in setting the post-modern agenda...
...The church, in effect, said "no" to the nineteenth century, something that the rest of the world is just now getting around to doing...
...He rejects the notion that the Founders conceived merely a "procedural" republic of clashing interests...
...It rejects both a worldly pragmatism separated from the supernatural and a spirituality utterly diGeorge Sim Johnston is a writer living in New York...
...Despite the caricatures of the media, which portray John Paul II as a Central European authoritarian who does not "understand" the West and Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Grand Inquisitor, both men stand squarely in the reasonable center that Weigel urges...
...True, as Romano Guardini said, the church does not stand in metaphysical remoteness, but in time, and as such there will always be "issues...
...He has performed a service in explaining John Paul II's social thinking, especially the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, which exercised so many conservatives when it came out two years ago...
...vorced from human contingency...
...the chief project of modernity is "autonomous man" (perhaps best grasped not by abstract definition but by Rilke's image of a panther silently gazing from its cage...
...But as Weigel acknowledges, the church today does not find in America this ideal sort of pluralismone with a transcendent horizon"—but rather the "naked public square" that Pastor Neuhaus writes about...
...celebrate it in myth and song even as the Great Wall of China was celebrated in myth and song...
...On the other hand—and this is less likely—if the church were to retreat back to the triumphalist barricades to suit the wishes of a hardened minority, it can also look forward to a rapid marginalization...
...On the other side, there is the restorationist counterculture which would like to go back to the way things were done in the forties and fifties...
...celebrate it, indeed, as a wall that cannot and must not be breached...
...American liberals, who had seized on the post-conciliar thaw as an opportunity to push a secularist agenda, were bitterly disappointed when it turned out that the Pope had no intention of changing any of the church's moral and dogmatic teachings, which had in fact been confirmed by Vatican II...
...True, as Romano Guardini said, the church does not stand in metaphysical remoteness, but in time, and as such there will always be "issues...
...He has performed a service in explaining John Paul II's social thinking, especially the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, which exercised so many conservatives when it came out two years ago...
Vol. 22 • September 1989 • No. 9
