Contemporary Tyranny and Catholic Social Doctrine
The usual view among Catholics is
that public authority should look after all aspects of the common good. As a
result, the social encyclicals have proposed a variety of responsibilities for
government. The variety has grown with the range of problems under
consideration, from the condition of industrial workers in Rerum Novarum to the
comprehensive good of all humanity and even the natural world in more recent
encyclicals.
The
popes have therefore presented classical liberalism and libertarianism as
positions to avoid. They have, of course, also rejected socialism. People,
families, and associations need to lead their own lives, make their own
decisions, and own the consequences. Otherwise they will be deprived of the
agency necessary for human dignity. Saint John Paul II noted that rejection of
such considerations by Communist governments led to passivity, alienation,
inhumanity, and gross inefficiency, and eventually to collapse of the system.
The popes have been less inclined to discuss limitations on
public authority based on the corruptions to which political power may lead.
John Paul’s comments on democracy and the division of powers in Centesimus Annus showed his
awareness of the problem, as did some of Benedict’s comments in Caritas in Veritate, but such concerns have
been a minor feature of the social encyclicals. Concern with extremes of
economic power, along with the position of the Church hierarchy as a
government, seem to have inclined the popes to think of government as a neutral
arbiter that stands above the clash of interests that pervades everyday social
and economic life.
That
tendency has perhaps been strengthened by memories of Catholic monarchy, by
hopes for a better world after the sacrifices of two world wars, and by the
post-Vatican II sympathy for secular aspirations and movements that led many to
idealize what a universalized secular authority could achieve. It may also
reflect the status of Catholic social doctrine as part of moral theology, which
leads it to speak more of what should happen than what actually happens.
Idealization of worldwide secular movements and authorities
seems to have reached its peak in Populorum
Progressio, in which Blessed Paul VI asserted that
“[development] agreements would be free of all suspicion [of self-interest] if
they were integrated into an overall policy of worldwide collaboration,” and
contended that
some
would regard these hopes [regarding world government] as vain flights of fancy.
It may be that these people are not realistic enough, and that they have not
noticed that the world is moving rapidly in a certain direction. Men are
growing more anxious to establish closer ties of brotherhood … they are slowly
making their way to the Creator, even without adverting to it.
But
political power is often more corrupting than economic power. Nor are the
corruptions likely to be remedied by making power global, thereby emancipating
it from answerability to anyone but those who are globally strongest.
The corruptions come from every direction: ordinary people find
ways to game the
system for various benefits; pressure groups use government
programs as a
vehicle for rent seeking; the well-connected profit through cronyism
and special deals; and private powers and their public counterparts
otherwise find ways to work together for mutual benefit that take little
account of the public interest.
Beyond
such economic corruptions, there are ideological temptations. Those with power
habitually exaggerate their wisdom and virtue and the importance of what they
do, so that the greater their power the more likely they are to feel themselves
called upon to remake the world in the image of their own perhaps radically
defective ideal. Our present global elites, for example, lead extraordinarily
privileged lives, and they base the legitimacy of their position on claims of
economic efficiency and neutral expertise. So why wouldn’t they try to put
their legitimacy beyond question by claiming that such qualifications are the
key to all good things, and attempt to establish a global technocracy that overrides
all other sources of authority, including local community, cultural tradition,
natural law, and the Church?
The
most basic point leading the popes to reject both socialism and classical
liberalism is the need for societies to be oriented toward something beyond
economic concerns, and ultimately toward God. Pope Benedict noted that denial
of objective values can lead even democracies into a new form of tyranny
notwithstanding forms of popular election, separation of powers, and legal
recognition of human rights.
Such concerns are becoming ever more pressing. Even so, recent
popes haven’t said much about their practical implications. Suppose, for
example, that the “true world political authority” Benedict called for in Caritas in Veritate became a possibility,
but there was no prospect whatever it would “observe consistently the
principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, … seek to establish the common good,
[or] make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development
inspired by the values of charity in truth” in the sense he required. What
then? He didn’t say.
Regimes
whose nature is contrary to the natural law, to the public order, and to the
fundamental rights of persons cannot achieve the common good of the nations on
which they have been imposed… Authority is exercised legitimately only when it
seeks the common good of the group concerned.
Current
Western governments and international organizations, as a matter of the
defining principles they believe give them moral authority, reject natural law
and public order based on anything other than technology and human will. They
also reject rights as basic as religious freedom, the right to life, and the
right of a man and a woman to form a family as a publicly-recognized
institution with a natural function and the rights corresponding to that
function, such as the right to educate their children in accordance with normal
standards of right living.
The
ability of such governments and organizations to achieve the common good and
exercise legitimate authority is consequently limited. Their faith in their own
righteousness is not. They are therefore unlikely to be suitable partners for
the Church in advancing her social goals.
Churchmen
have sometimes been caught flatfooted dealing with totalitarian movements, and
the current situation of growing soft totalitarianism is too recent and too
disturbing for its implications for Catholic social action to have been
adequately understood and articulated. For that reason it is not surprising if
some churchmen fumble things.
Many have therefore fallen into serious errors, some of which
are strikingly illustrated by the
recent article by Antonio Spadaro, S.J., and Marcelo Figueroa
in La Civiltà Cattolica. From
that and the subsequent America interview with
Fr. Spadaro it is clear that for the authors any religiously motivated
political opposition to secular progressivism—for example, support for abortion
restrictions, denial of recognition to same-sex “marriage,” and conscientious
objector rights for culture war losers—is an attempt to impose “religious morals”
that falls outside legitimate political discourse. Cooperation among Christians
in support of such projects is therefore an “ecumenism of conflict” or even an
“ecumenism of hate” that should be resolutely opposed.
That
view, of course, rejects not only traditional doctrine on the relation between
Church and society but the applicability of natural law to secular states. It
reduces the social activity of the Church to that of a secular progressive NGO.
Some such result seems inevitable when the post-Vatican II anthropocentric turn
and the will to cooperate with secular movements and authorities become
absolute.
That
must change, and Catholics must regain their critical sense of what secular
movements and authorities really are. The obvious remedy—which is necessary in
any case, for reasons apart from politics—is a restored emphasis within the
Church on natural law and on the transcendent dimension of the Faith. Only
those dimensions can give us a correct perspective on worldly affairs, and make
possible effective efforts for true justice. Divorced from them the social
doctrine of the Church is no longer itself.
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