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December 1, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Church, Eastern Catholicism, Integralism, Politics

In the Mire Below

Much has been written about the revival of “white nationalism” in the United States due to the ascendency of the alt-right. Most of it isn’t very good. Originating as a mixture of dark humor, trolling, and unaccountable venting on forums such as 4chan, the alt-right, according to many in the Left, is a political force to be reckoned with. That some, if not many, of those who claim to identify with the alt-right are both white and nationalist is not in dispute. What’s not entirely clear is if the alt-right represents a distinct and coherent political movement rather than just an amalgamation of dissenters, online troublemakers, and old-fashioned fever-swamp racists.

The only interest I have in the alt-right is why so many Catholics (many of them traditional) are drawn to it, especially given the Church’s historic condemnations of liberalism, racism, and nationalism. Keep in mind that despite its ostensibly extreme views, the alt-right is a liberal movement; it buys into the idea that democracy is a proper vehicle for political change and that religion has, at best, salutary function in maintaining social cohesion. (It is worth noting that many alt-righters, at least those who inhabit some of the darker regions of the Internet, are virulently anti-Christian.) As best as I can tell, the alt-right fills a certain vacuum for Catholics who have long felt disenfranchised from mainline American politics, liberal or conservative. Instead of banding together to form authentically Catholic political organizations in the United States, these individuals are leaping aboard the alt-right bandwagon in the hopes of gaining some measure of relevance in today’s fractured political landscape. Will it work? I’m skeptical. For though the alt-right or, really, the forthcoming Trump Presidency may deliver on certain promises relating to health-care reform, stricter immigration rules, and trade, “pelvic issues” such as same-sex marriage and abortion are unlikely to be touched.

Some might object here and claim that nationalism is no bad thing; it’s just an expression of patriotism, which the Church has never condemned. Indeed, Catholic teaching holds that patriotism can be a virtue (within limits). The problem with nationalism, particularly in its American guise, is that it often degrades into a political religion; the nation takes primacy of place over God and the Church. Even heavily Catholic areas, such as Galicia (west Ukraine) during the interwar period, risked succumbing to nationalism as a political religion due to both the passions of the people for self-determination and the uncertainty which loomed on the horizon due to the rise of Soviet Russia and the reassertion of Polish control of the region following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While Ukrainian nationalists could not be prevented in full from carrying out terrorist attacks, including ethnic cleansing operations, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was able to serve as a check on nationalist ideology by both condemning violence and asserting the priority of the Church over politics. Without deep roots in Galicia, however, it is doubtful the UGCC would have had any success, and whatever success it did have dissipated by the 1940s with the invasion of the Soviets and the destruction of the Ukrainian Church.

What certain UGCC churchmen proposed at the time was a form of Christian nationalism, perhaps best exemplified by St. Mykola Konrad’s declaration: “The sword and the cross—this is the only hope of nations and humankind for a new and better tomorrow.” Konrad, like other UGCC clerics who supported Ukrainian independence within the limits of Church teaching, envisioned a social order that rejected both capitalism and communism; it was not built upon secular nationalism, but rather Christianity. Such a vision was sustainable only to the extent that the UGCC was willing to assert indirect temporal authority over Galician society by not only reminding the faithful of their duties before God, but also building-up the necessary infrastructure for a Christian state (e.g., schools, literacy programs, charitable organizations, etc.). What was sorely lacking during this period was meaningful and sustained external support, the sort which would have checked Polish nervousness over Ukraine and provided the fledgling nation with the means to defend itself from Soviet encroachment. It is little wonder then that the entrance of Nazi Germany into Galicia, and its promise to combat the Russians, was met initially with approval from Greek-Catholic authorities, including Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. That approval quickly dissolved into disgust once it became apparent to Metropolitan Andrei and others what the Nazis truly intended to do to the peoples of Ukraine, Jew and Gentile alike.

In America, despite what certain campfire stories claim, the Catholic Church has no deep roots. It is not, how shall I say, an integral part of the American enterprise, nor has it exercised any meaningful influence on society in politics, local or national, in a great number of years. If indeed more and more disaffected Catholics begin flocking to nationalism, either in its alt-right variety or some other equally unsettling form, the American Church can do very little about it. Oh, perhaps some liberal bishop or cardinal may opt to speak out against the alt-right, nationalism, or Trump’s policy platform, but their voice will be easily ignored. Why? Because the Catholic Church in the United States mortgaged its authority a long time ago. Between the still-ongoing sex-abuse crisis and gross revelations about the sexual behavior of seminarians, priests, and bishops, the American Church is bereft of moral credibility. Moreover, intentional injections of confusion into what the Church has always taught concerning marriage, divorce, and the sacraments has left many conservative and traditional Catholics feeling shepherdless. If the Church is so disorganized, corrupt, and beholden to liberalism, what does it matter if her leaders today are uncomfortable with nationalism? Nationalism, for all of its faults, at least provides the hope of surety, the promise of binding people together for a common destiny even if it is intramundane.

Nothing will change until the faithful are awakened from their secular slumber. The problem that remains is who will lead this awakening? If the “approved authorities,” either in America or Rome, cannot speak with credible voices, then who can? It is not enough to run, hide in a ghetto, and “wait for St. Benedict.” Now more than ever we need to be roused by St. John the Baptist. But if such rousing occurs, it will come with great personal and professional costs to the faithful. The time has long past for Catholics to live as Catholics and do so in harmony with the secular-liberal order. The nationalism now running amuck in America is a temptation for Catholics, and like all temptations it comes from the devil. Like other modern ideological manifestations, it dangles the dubious hope that Christians can be both in the world and of it, that we can indeed have an earthly home, and that our greatest reward lies not in Heaven above but down in the mire below.

November 1, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Eastern Orthodox Church, Politics

All Saints Day

Whenever I start to wonder why the Catholic Church in America is so bloodless, confused, and indifferent toward the deposit of faith, I quickly peruse the websites of Patheos, First Things, and the National Catholic Reporter to find my answers. This year’s “Reformation Day,” coupled with a certain notorious papal visit to Sweden, has really brought out the worst in some people, and by the “worst” I mean the worst sort of equivocating in the name of “dialogue” and “unity.” In times past, I thought one of the central problems with post-Vatican II American Catholicism is its inordinate desire to be accepted as “good liberals” in a secular democracy. It now seems to me that part of being accepted as such meant being accepted by the Protestant elites who, for all practical purposes, ran (and to some extent still run) America’s socio-political machinery. Things started to change a bit in the late 1970s when Catholics and Evangelicals became jointly concerned about abortion (and some other moral matters). Now, however, Catholics are desperate to divorce themselves from that “fever-swamp Christianity” of days gone by while looking to the collapsing mainline Protestant confessions for inspiration. Sometimes Catholics will call this “dialogue”; in truth it’s merely capitulation.

The Eastern Orthodox handle themselves a bit better, at least as far as rejecting limp-wristed ecumenism masked by vacuous terms like “encounter” and “witness” is concerned. Those with eyes to see know of course that American Orthodoxy, more than American Catholicism, struggles with “Protestant captivity,” largely due to the influx of converts into Orthodoxy’s fold during the 1990s and early 00s. While some of these converts have packed their bags and left, numerous influential Orthodox clerics (and a few laymen) continue to push for an Orthodoxy that amounts to little more than “Byzantine Rite Calvinism.” Heck, even well-meaning cradle Orthodox are often duped into believing that old-fashioned Protestant polemics against Rome, when dressed up with some Greek jargon, represents an authentic articulation of “true Orthodoxy” over-and-against “Papist errors.” This leads to all sorts of nonsense, such as fanciful distinctions between what the Orthodox have (allegedly) “always believed” and what Catholics now (allegedly) “do.” (Yes, I have been told straight up that among the (alleged) differences between Orthodox and Catholics, one can list Mary worship, statue worship, saint worship, and Communion worship.)

Perhaps it’s cliché to say that things will get worse before they get better, but let’s not forget that clichés are clichés for a reason. Regardless of what happens next Tuesday, there can be little doubt that the country will be even more politically torn apart than it already is. Christians (of whatever stripe) will have to select sides, and there will be plenty of finger pointing to go around. Those Catholics (and Protestants and Orthodox) who insist that we must vote for Donald Trump or else are going to remain at odds with those Catholics who follow the Church’s actual teachings when it comes to voting. That is to say, those Catholics who refuse to materially cooperate with evil are apt to be marginalized by both Left-wing Catholics (who, of course, have no problem materially cooperating with evil) and Right-wing Catholics, at least for a time. Remember: If Hillary Clinton prevails over Trump, it’s everyone’s fault for not violating their consciences or embracing “the lesser of two evils”; the fact that American conservative politics has degraded to the point where a buffoonish billionaire can hijack the Republican Party has nothing to do with it (or so they say).

Some harbor the hope that when the dust finally settles, a new, more diversified, politics might emerge and that Christians (specifically Catholics) will finally be able to have an unadulterated say in the direction of the Republican Party or, more likely, a new party that splinters from it. I am not so sure. If Trump-style “conservatism” is the new flavor of the decade (just as Tea-Party conservatism was briefly before), then it is likely that many conservative-to-traditional Catholics will choose remain faithful to that brand. Why? Because many are fearful of what is coming and the idea of a “strong man” savior will always be appealing, especially when the new political enemy is a woman. Also, the idea of Trump supporters openly embracing an orthodox form of Catholic politics is hard to fathom when such an embrace would mean that at the core everything they professed about the necessity of voting for someone like Trump is simply wrong. Sure, perhaps some of these well-meaning souls can be converted to the truth, but with so many traditionalist outlets doubling-down on the Donald, it is reasonable to fear that a significant contingent of their followers will never return to the light.

October 27, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Politics, Roman Catholic Church

Heaven Forbid

Given that every traditional argument for becoming a Catholic comes accompanied with an asterisk, I have suspended all efforts to kick-up any dirt over somebody choosing to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. What I mean is, it is difficult to expect a non-Catholic to easily embrace the “surety of Catholicism” and the “importance of the Papacy” during an unprecedented period of doctrinal chaos. Though it may be fashionable to look back into history and hold that today’s crisis “isn’t as bad” as the era of Arianism or the reign of Iconoclasm, the hard fact of the matter is that those tragic periods in Church history dealt primary with one central dogmatic issue (and then a host of peripheral theological ones). This time out, everything under the sun seems to be on the discussion table, with Catholic prelates all over the world sowing error on everything ranging from “same-sex marriage” to the historicity of the Resurrection. Maybe this could all be accounted for and endured if the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Francis, took affirmative steps to combat these problems, but he hasn’t—and nobody expects him to. Indeed, a mass of evidence has already accumulated that he knowingly contributes to the present crisis under a grossly distorted concept of “mercy.” Catholics of good will everywhere should, of course, give thanks to God that the Church still has good shepherds in her midst, but only after recognizing that those shepherds are few and far between. The hard reality today is that most Catholics are still lost in the wilderness.

As I have opined before, the Orthodox Church, by and large, has more doctrinally sound bishops, priests, and laity than contemporary Catholicism does. (I should note here that it appears that all of the Eastern Catholic churches, by and large, have more doctrinally sound bishops, priests, and laity than contemporary Latin Catholicism does.) What I have meant—and still mean—by this is that on any given Sunday, one is less likely to hear raw nonsense, if not objective heresy, preached from the pulpit in an Orthodox temple compared to a Catholic parish. Although I have witnessed many an Orthodox priest struggle to mutter an intelligible homily, what often makes it out of their mouths are simple, everyday reminders of what the Gospel message means coupled with a bit of history (depending on the liturgical day). Maybe it’s not “profound,” and certainly at times the Orthodox fall prey to clouding up basic points with useless mystical jargon and ahistorical declarations, but all of that is much easier to swallow than a cleric who begins his sermon with, “Today’s reading concerns what the author of the Gospel we attribute to John placed on the lips of Jesus . . .”

This is not to say that Orthodoxy—particularly American Orthodoxy—is not without its troubles. Just the other week, the Greek Orthodox Church presented pro-abortion, pro-homosexualist New York Governor Andrew Cuomo with the “[Patriarch] Athenagoras Human Rights Award.” Why? Because he helped the Greeks get the permits necessary to rebuild St. Nicholas Church, which was destroyed on 9/11. As most should know by now, the Greek Orthodox in America, much like their estranged Catholic brethren, have a long history of cozying up to Democratic politicians. Maybe this was all fine and well during the days when “Democrat” meant “New Deal” and “New Deal” meant social safety nets and industrial restraints intended to help laborers and the under-privileged, but those days are long behind us. No less than many average American Catholics, the Greek Orthodox seem content with the “privately opposed/publicly accepting” dichotomy on most pressing moral issues and cannot be bothered to take a stand against the rising tide of secularism in America.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are those Orthodox who seem to align politically with certain traditionalist Catholics in believing Donald Trump and the alt-right will save them. Most of these poor souls are infected with “Russophilia” and believe, contrary to all available evidence, that “Holy Russia 2.0” is upon us. (If anybody needs a sobering account of why “Holy Russia 1.0” was not all that and a bag of chips, please see about purchasing a copy of the late Metropolitan Evlogy’s two-volume memoirs from St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.) For them, Kirill of Moscow is Pope, Vladimir Putin is Tsar, and the only crucial political issue of the day is, “How can we appease Russia?” Now, granted, many of these Orthodox have their instincts in the right place. There is, after all, no benefit in following Hillary Clinton’s plan of picking a war with Russia so that jihadists can control Syria, nor can any Christian be blamed for being leery of the Democratic Party after what it has done to help raze Middle Eastern Christianity over the past eight years. Still, it is unsettling how easily a noticeable segment of American Orthodoxy can have its political orientation steered by romanticism.

All of this is to say that while the choice to choose Orthodoxy over Catholicism makes sense on a certain level, particularly as far as “basic orthodoxy” is concerned, those wishing to acquire a “total package” of “pure Christianity” with an unbreakable moral compass may wish to take a few steps back. As confused as Catholic thinking is today on a great many issues, no one can seriously contend that the Catholic Church has not spoken—and spoken forcefully—on matters such as abortion, contraception, homosexuality, just war, just wages, and so on and so forth. While Orthodoxy has exhibited moral clarity in the past, its confederate-style makeup coupled with (uncanonical?) jurisdictional overlap has created something of a free-for-all when it comes to moral choices. For instance, if a couple doesn’t care for what Fr. Barsanuphius has to say about the pill and rubbers, Fr. Panteleimon down the street can put their consciences at ease.

At the political level (the lowest level?), American Orthodoxy is weak—so weak as to be almost nonexistent. And that’s fine. Those faithful bands of Catholics truly dedicated to what the Church teaches regarding the common good are also weak numerically and materially. The vast majority of Christians living today, regardless of confessional adherence, have made their peace with liberalism; they have no use for a Gospel that still speaks literally of living in the world and not being of it. Orthodoxy, for all of its apparent “other-worldliness,” is just as susceptible to secularism as Catholicism. What is still unclear is that if Orthodoxy, in its modern American iteration, has the capacity to step outside of these times, to find that horizon beyond liberalism, and then push forth with the Great Commission in hand. Or, in the end, will its seemingly most faithful adherents retreat from the moment of decision to dwell in figurative caves where they might cry out to the sky to be saved from the absolute corruption into which they have been thrown? And will the Catholics join them? Heaven forbid.

October 24, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Politics

All Earthly Cares

I am equal parts astonished and horrified that at this depressingly low point in American political history there are still faithful Catholics—even young faithful Catholics—who keep clinging to the promise of liberalism, as if one more First Things article paying homage to the public square or another Ethika Politika piece on civic engagement or a Crisis entry that mentions Tocqueville and Kirk two-dozen times in the span of half-a-dozen paragraphs will reverse our fortunes and make America that great bastion of religious liberty and civic virtue which it allegedly was during some distant point in history now lost in the fog. Granted, there does exist a contingent of Catholics who believe that we have entered a post-liberal age where liberalism has collapsed in on itself, but how quickly do they fall into unimaginative rhetoric concerning multiculturalism, tolerance, freedom of speech, and other sacred cows of the liberal order. Even ostensibly Left-wing Catholics, posturing Marxist (or whatever), can’t extricate themselves from liberal strands of thought concerning equality, pluralism, and the promise of a life without demands but plenty of room for entertainment.

Not that things are much better on the conservative-to-traditional side of the divide. Out of a mixture of fear and cowardice, many Catholics of the conventional Right are fleeing to their strong man, Donald Trump, to save them from every socio-political hobgoblin under the sun. “A failure to vote for Trump is a vote for evil!” Now, some might not use the T-word, but everyone knows what is meant with Catholics—clerical and lay alike—call on the faithful to “use all reasonable means” at the polls to stop Hillary Clinton’s ascendency. Following this “logic,” it appears that voting for a third-party candidate amounts to a sin of omission.

If there is an authentically Catholic and airtight case for voting for The Donald, I haven’t come across it. Sure, Trump and the alt-right camp(s) that claim to support him speak a big game when it comes to globalism, immigration, international trade, and a plethora of domestic social ills, but it is doubtful that a Trump presidency will deliver what many Catholics have been fighting for over the decades, namely a repeal of so-called abortion rights. The most optimal time in recent history to curtail abortion came during the first term of the Bush II Presidency and the Republican Party failed to act. Now it is more than a decade later and abortion, just like same-sex “marriage” and over curtails to religious freedom, have been accepted as a normative part of American political life, even among a growing number of conservatives.

I make mention of all of this not to throw in the towel or set the stage to propose some “Option” which will save those who can afford to flee to out-of-the-way communities of likeminded folks dedicated to preserving their imported craft beers and immaculately bound books. For Catholics truly committed to the Faith in full, here is no other “option” than following the perennial teachings of the Church, stretching all the way back to the Apostolic period. Yes, Tertullian’s Apology reminds us that we have a duty to pray for our temporal rulers just as the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus recalls that Christians “live in their own countries as though they were only passing through.”

Some may be inclined to read this and other passages in the letter in a hyper-eschatological fashion, leading to the forsaking of politics for an endless gaze toward the Second Coming. Indeed, there is a powerful argument available that the Roman Church’s decision to shift the forthcoming Feast of Christ the King from the Sunday prior to the Feast of All Saints to the final Sunday of the liturgical year (on the eve of Advent) has, intentionally or not, helped pull Catholic consciousness away from the temporal sphere altogether. And yet it cannot be denied that, at least in the United States, there remains a continuing Catholic quest to make peace with the present age, to become part of the liberal order in toto, and forego the always uncertain quest for Heaven in favor of some decaying pleasures and breathing room during the time that remains.

October 17, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Politics

The Tradinistas Drop the Ball

Kevin Gallagher, a Yale graduate who likes to posture Marxist and anti-liberal on social media despite working as a manager for the asset and investment consulting firm Casey Quirk and Associates, has penned a piece for the Tradinistas which ostensibly claims to point out the “incoherence of The Josias.” In truth, it is nothing more than an uncharitable hit job on one of The Josias’s founders and First Things editor, Elliot Milco. Milco, as you will recall, recently took a hard (and humorous) look at the so-called “Tradinista Manifesto,” a document so riddled with vagaries and inconsistencies that it’s hard to imagine anyone defending it under their own name. This is perhaps why Gallagher opted to pen his smear piece under the pseudonym Coëmgenus (the same one he used when he wrote for The Josias). Still, if someone is going to dive-bomb another with public character attacks while saddling them with views they do not hold, you would think the attacker would have the integrity to do so under their own name.

There’s no need to defend The Josias from Gallagher’s words since he himself admits “[t]hose responsible for the recent publication of the Tradinista Manifesto have long looked with respect at The Josias and the works published there.” Moreover, just before taking his first swipe at Milco, Gallagher states that The Josias folks (who are mainly integralists) and Tradinista kids “should be allies.” Strange then that instead of demonstrating how the integralist and Tradinista projects cohere or laying the groundwork for forming an alliance, he quickly blasts Milco’s intelligence and integrity by stating that “it is no surprise that employment under a Trumpist masthead [i.e. First Things] has left him with a defective understanding of political argument.” I wonder: Would Gallagher, a man who is consciously part of the capitalist machinery he claims to oppose, say something similar about himself? But I digress.

The truth of the matter is that anyone who regularly reads Milco’s work knows full well that he openly dissents from First Things’s old neoconservative orthodoxy and that the decision of its lead editor, R.R. Reno, to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid has as much impact on Milco’s thought as it does on that of another First Things contributor, David Bentley Hart. So why bring it up at all except to suggest that Milco is somehow associated with the “Trumpism” that First Things as a publishing institution is allegedly associated with based on the personal politics of its head overseer. That’s not a promising start—and then it gets worse from there.

Over the course of numerous rambling paragraphs readers are treated to the claim that Milco endorses “vulgar Thatherism” and can’t understand the Tradinista Manifesto’s true meaning because he apparently hasn’t read the right books. Sure. What Gallagher so glibly ignores is that when it comes to the manifesto itself, the bulk of Milco’s criticisms are aimed at the document’s internal incoherence and not whether or not it properly uses Leftist jargon. Whatever value the Marxist critique of capitalism has for Catholics (and that has yet to be demonstrated by the Tradinistas), that matter is secondary (or even tertiary) to what Holy Mother Church has taught about politics, society, and economic ordering. Gallagher maintains that Milco (and others) suffer from the illusion that “Leftist politics” have received “an apodictic Apostolic anesthetization” without once acknowledging the numerous instances where people have pointed directly to those very condemnations. It is no great shock that the Tradinistas, in claiming to offer up a defense of “Catholic socialism” [sic], are quite selective in their proof-texting, ignoring as they do papal decrees such as St. Pius X’s Notre Charge Apostolique and Fin Dalla Prima Nostra. This allows Gallagher and his fellow Tradinistas to freely dwell in what the philosopher Eric Voegelin (following Austrian novelist Robert Musil) calls a “Second Reality” or pathological play land free from the burdens of reality. In this instance, ideology trumps magisterial proclamations.

The apotheosis of Gallagher’s senseless attack on Milco’s character is to accuse of him being monstrous for critiquing Fr. James Martin’s response to the recent gay-club massacre in Orlando instead of “providing the slightest comfort to the gay community.” (What comfort, I wonder, did Gallagher or the other Tradinistas provide?) Not only does Gallagher miss the point of Milco’s critique, but it’s dizzying that a man who has had no problem calling me a “wetback” should feign harboring so much concern for minorities of any stripe.

In the end, Gallagher’s overwrought, tendentious piece buckles under the weight of its own idiocy. As noted, not only does it fail to adhere to its title by saying nothing about any incoherency of The Josias, it self-consciously mischaracterizes its true target—Elliot Milco—in an effort to distract from his takedown of the Tradinista Manifesto. If this is the quality of “work” we can expect out of the Tradinistas going forward, then let us rejoice that the possibility of them ever winning thoughtful followers is nil and that the real work of articulating an authentically Catholic response to the errors of liberalism—political, social, economic, and religious—can continue without distraction.

October 10, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Economics, Integralism, Politics, Uncategorized

Are the Tradinistas Done Yet?

The Tradinista project has been thoroughly discredited, but apparently they didn’t get the message. Matthew Shadle, writing over at Political Theology Today, shreds the Tradinistas’ attempt to wed their idiosyncratic and over-broad iteration of socialism with Catholic social teaching by uncloaking their bait-and-switch tactics while also calling into question the workability of their proposals. It will be interesting to see whether or not they respond to Shadle’s analysis. Like most ideologically charged movements, the Tradinistas are interested in neither reasoned disputation nor empirical analysis; all that matters is their ideas and how dare anyone tell them they’re wrong. In fact, despite an avalanche of criticism, the Tradinistas haven’t said much of anything at all. They’re just pushing on ahead, hoping nobody will notice the design flaws in both their so-called manifesto and three-part defense of “Catholic socialism.”

For instance, Jose Mena (who deserves some credit for using his real name), just penned a piece for The Catholic Herald’s blog that might lead some to believe that Tradinistas are a persecuted and misunderstood lot whose mission simply “combines socialist ideas with Catholic orthodoxy.” The problem, of course, is that it’s far from clear this is what the Tradinistas are up to, and so far it doesn’t appear as if they’ve convinced anyone but themselves. Why? Because for nearly two centuries, the Catholic Church has forcefully opposed socialism, an inconvenient truth which shifts to them the burden of proving that the socialism they claim to support is compatible with the Church’s magisterium. Mena doesn’t bother with any of this, of course. Instead, he tries to bolster what the Tradinistas are doing through another bait-and-switch by comparing them to Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez, neither of whom were socialists per se. (In fact, Mena even acknowledges that Day was a Distributist.)

As for the rest of Mena’s piece, it’s a bit of a mess. For instance, Mena says that he identifies with millennials who are burdened by debt, can’t find a job, and live with their parents while failing to make mention of the fact that he graduated from Princeton in 2012 and worked for an institution run by the federal government. (If only all those he claims to be in solidarity with had it so hard!) He then maintains that “the Church has no answers” to the plight of the millennials before maintaining that he and the Tradinistas “do nothing more than follow Pope Francis.” If the Church has no answers, then why follow the Pope? While Mena is right to acknowledge that the Church is “torn by the confusions of the Second Vatican Council,” he seems to miss the fact that openly dissenting from what the Church has always taught concerning property, the market, labor, and subsidiarity is only going to add to this confusion.

The problems don’t end there. Mena, for reasons which are lost on me, believes the Cold War “drove Catholics right and left into the arms of capital,” “result[ing] [in] . . . a widespread embrace of American civic religion[.]” He fails to acknowledge that as early as the 19th Century, American Catholics were tempted by liberalism, pluralism, and separationism—temptations Pope Leo XIII warned against on several occasions. As Mena’s remark about the “arms of capital,” it’s hard to understand what he is driving at. Does Mena mean that American Catholics came to embrace and uphold capitalism over the course of the last century? Certainly many did, but not all. As for capitalism itself, living under it doesn’t necessarily mean endorsing it, which is why Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI all issued directives concerning the relationship between labor and capital while hoping for a more authentically Catholic economic order to rise up.

Not surprisingly, Mena conveniently ignores the fact that for more than a century, faithful Catholics have consistently opposed all forms of liberalism—social, political, economic, and religious—without ever feeling compelled to posture socialist for what they call in the pro-wrestling industry “a cheap pop.” The heirs of the Distributists and Solidarists of the early-to-mid 20th Century—Belloc, Chesterton, Pesch—and the great social thinkers of that era as well—Fahey, Cahill, and Ousset—can be found today within traditional Catholic circles. The Society of St. Pius X has for nearly half-a-century kept alive the fight against liberalism while promoting the Church’s authentic social magisterium. More recently, integralist projects such as The Josias have sought to reclaim that magisterium and bolster it with original commentaries and translations from works which have, sadly, fallen by the wayside.

What comes next for the Tradinistas? Heaven only knows. Without much in the way of practical guidance or internal coherency, hopefully they will depart as quickly as they came. I have my doubts, however. For the time being, the Tradinistas “look cool,” what with their cheap rip-off of communist symbolism and claims to be “edgy” and “dangerous.” I have to wonder how many of these self-professed Tradinistas have ever been involved in labor issues or know what it’s like to try and organize workers. As a friend of mine noted, the closest most of the Tradinista priv-kids have probably ever come to interacting with blue-collar workers is stiffing them on a tip. Who would have thought “the revolution” would be this banal?

October 7, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Eastern Orthodox Church, Economics, Orthodox Social Thought

Perjury, Lies, Charity, and the Market

Much has already been written about David Bentley Hart’s somewhat iconoclastic Commeanweal article on wealth and the Gospels. One of Hart’s Eastern Orthodox co-religionists, Dylan Pahman, was not amused. In both pieces, passing references were made to how the Church Fathers understood certain New Testament texts on wealth and poverty, though a great deal was left uncovered. To fill this lacuna, I found myself reaching for Susan R. Holman’s collection of Patristic studies, Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society (Baker Academic 2008). I was drawn in particular to Angeliki E. Laiou’s article, “Trade, Profit, and Salvation in the Late Patristic and Byzantine Period,” which covers the thinking of the Church Fathers from roughly the 4th through the 10th centuries. According to Hart’s account, by the time of St. Clement of Alexandria (2nd/3rd Century), compromises were already being made between the rigorous demands of the Gospel and the economic realities of the late Roman Empire. This is not entirely true, or so observes Laiou. In examining the thought of Ss. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom in particular, Laiou detects open hostility toward what we today call “the profit motive” and the idea that any should gain beyond what they require to sustain themselves. Laiou highlights the negative attitude Chrysostom held toward merchants, that is, those who buy and sell for profit without interjecting their labor into the mix. Consider the following, taken from Chrysostom’s Homilies on Matthew (quoted by Laiou, pg. 246):

But even they [merchants], if they are not careful, gather much evil from this [i.e., their profession]. For they add to their rightful labor the injustice that comes from buying and selling, and often pile oaths and perjury and lies onto their greed, and they care only for earthly things. They do everything they can to gain money, while they do not try very hard to give to those in need, since what they want is constantly to increase their property. What can one say about the mocking, the insults, he interest, the exchanges that smell of trade, the shameless bargaining?

To remedy this problem, Chrysostom (and others) go on to exalt charity as a remedy for the sin of ill-gotten gains. As Laiou notes throughout her article, there is a heavy emphasis among the 4th Century Fathers that Christians should eschew any gain that goes beyond their needs. The reason the merchant is singled-out for such harsh words is both because of the perjury and lies that often accompany trade, bargaining, negotiating, etc. and because such actions are carried out in the interest of greed. Chrysostom was not the only one to call attention to the dangers of the merchant’s profession and trade. A far more rigorous condemnation can be found in the section of the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum which deals with Matthew 21:12, that is, the account of Christ driving out of the Temple “those who bought and those who sold” (quoted by Laiou, pg. 247).

This means that the merchant can never or almost never please God. Therefore, no Christian should be a merchant. Or, if he wishes to be a merchant, let him be thrown out of the church according to the saying of the prophet, “Because I have not known bargaining I will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” . . . He who buys and sells cannot be free of lies and perjury: for it is necessary that one of the merchants swear that the thing he is buying is not worth its price, while the other swear that the thing he is selling is worth more than the sale price. Nor is the property of merchants stable. It is either destroyed while the merchant is still alive, or it is dissipated by bad heirs or it is inherited by outsiders and enemies. Nothing that is collected evilly can come to any good.

The Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, for those who are unaware, is a 5th/6th Century text thought to have been composed originally in Greek, but only extant today in Latin translation. Laiou remarks that the text had a much greater impact on Western Christian thought concerning labor and the market than Eastern thinking, and that the Byzantines distanced themselves from the declaration that “no Christian should be a merchant.” Still, further on in the Opus comes a concession towards any individual “who buys a thing not so as to sell it in the same unchanged and complete form but rather in order to work with it[.]” According to the Opus, “he is not a merchant, for he is selling not the thing itself but rather his own work he has put in it[.]” In contrast to such a just person is the usurer, for “if he who buys in order to resell is a merchant, and accursed, how much more accursed is he who gives at interest money that he has not bought but has been given to him by God?”

This rigorism, as already noted, had a much greater impact in the West than the East, a fact which becomes evident when comparing the often complex relationship between Christian thought in usury among the Latins as opposed to the Byzantines. This does not mean, however, that the Byzantines simply accepted trade as an absolute good or paid no mind to profiteering. Still, by the latter centuries of the first millennium, the hagiographic tradition in the East revealed far greater tolerance for the role of merchants and the marketplace than is evident in either Chrysostom or the Opus. In several places in her article, Laiou pinpoints how the Byzantines, in both their spiritual writings and legal codes, opened the door to what they considered to be a just accumulation of wealth while still maintaining that greed is sinful and that almsgiving and other forms of charity are important virtues which must be cultivated. The Byzantines, with mixed success, tried to frame profit as a blessing from God and praised exchange only to the extent that it is just, that is, carried out without recourse to perjury or lies.

From a historical perspective, none of this is terribly surprising. Whereas Western Christendom faced centuries of political turmoil, material privation, and overall social decline after the fall of Rome, the Byzantine East enjoyed expansion and opulence brought about in part by trade and commerce. There was, psychologically speaking, a greater need in the Christian East to justify profit in the light of the Gospel than there was in the West. This would not remain true forever, of course. Following the Reformation and the advent of capitalism, the Church of Rome lost track of her historic condemnation of usury and began to harbor a much more lackadaisical attitude toward wealth accumulation despite paying lip service to the historic witness of the saints concerning greed, trade, and usury. What remains clear, though, is that even centuries after Pentecost, the Church had not lost full sight of the radical demands of the Gospel; whether or not her vision sharpens again before the eschaton remains to be seen.

October 3, 2016 Catholic Social Thought

No, Tradinistas Are Not Falangists

I am disappointed to see that the Tradinistas are getting more press than they warrant, but so it goes with almost anything which is seemingly novel. One (relatively minor) reason I am uncomfortable with what they promote is that it risks injecting even more conceptual confusion into the Catholic landscape than what already exists. A fair number of souls have already identified how their use of the word “socialism” is either incoherent and disingenuous or wrongheaded and pernicious. It doesn’t help that their “platform,” as contained in their manifesto, is riddled with ambiguities and over-broad statements, a fact which has, sadly, caused Shaun Kenney over at Ethika Politika to identify the Tradinistas with the Falangist movement. For those unaware, Falangism was a fascist (or semi-fascist) political movement that emerged in Spain in the 1930s; it stressed a strong Catholic identity while also being vehemently anti-capitalist and anti-liberal. Like most political movements, Falangism fractured as the years went by, with various elements aligning with Franco-style conservatism and others maintaining more radical positions. Even though some Falangists saw themselves as being “above” the Left/Right distinction in politics, it is fair to say that most of their platform was unabashedly far Right.

Why Kenney identifies the Tradinistas as Falangists (or perhaps neo-Falangists) is beyond me. Perhaps he wanted to score some easy polemical points. While Kenney does draw some comparisons between the Tradinista “Manifesto” and the Falangist “26 Point Program,” the differences between the two programs are glaring. For instance, while both the Tradinistas and the Falangists speak out against capitalism, the latter went much further.

10. We repudiate the capitalistic system which shows no understanding of the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property, and causes workers to be lumped together in a shapeless, miserable mass of people who are filled with desperation. Our spiritual and national conception of life also repudiates Marxism. We shall redirect the impetuousness of those working classes who today are led astray by Marxism, and we shall seek to bring them into direct participation in fulfilling the great task of the national state.

The Tradinistas, by their own admission, are Marxist in orientation; they would never think of rejecting their sage (even if they don’t understand him). Moreover, the Falangist vision was bound up with a strong adherence to Catholicism (albeit perhaps a somewhat utilitarian adherence); it never contemplated aligning with a Left-ideological rejection of “racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and similar forms of oppression” (Point #11). In fact, the Falangists strongly rejected homosexuality and other forms of moral degeneracy while, at times, embracing a racialist view of humanity (though some have argued against this). Certainly the Falangists desired a privileged place for Spain in world affairs and had no use for any form of multiculturalism, internationalism, or social relativism.

As for the rest of Kenney’s article, it’s alright. More work could have been done, however, to distinguish between the two dominant uses of the word “integralist”: (1) The false usage associated with the “new theology” and neo-Modernism (which the Tradinistas may, or may not, accept); and (2) The proper usage associated with not just the Catholic social magisterium of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the Church’s social tradition as a whole. (Whether or not the Falangists represented an authentic form of integralism is a matter I’m leaving to the side; it’s probably safest to say that they had integralist leanings.) I disagree with Kennedy’s point that the Second Vatican Council didn’t get it wrong with respect to religious liberty and his further point that the Tradinistas, at their core, are against Dignitatis Humanae. If anything, the ambiguous statements contained in Point #2 of their manifesto suggests a certain degree of religious indifferentism in the Tradinista outlook. Certainly the Falangists could never have accepted that.