For the first time ever a French/English edition of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s essay “On Royal Government” is now available. I am proud to say that the translator is an online acquaintance of mine and an all around good egg. Illiberal Catholics of goodwill everywhere should be rejoicing over this. I know I am.
An Unheard Lamentation
Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, will be the “Grand Marshal” of the 2015 New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade — the first to feature openly homosexual groups marching under their own banners. Here are the Cardinal’s thoughts on his decision, with some bracketed commentary provided by the folks at Rorate Caeli:
Scapegoats and Caricatures
Ethika Politika (EP) houses articles by Distributist Tom Storck, “illiberal Catholic” Patrick Deneen, and a host of other Catholic writers who take the Church’s social magisterium seriously. It is also one of two outlets for Dylan Pahman, an ex-Calvinist convert to Orthodoxy whose other forum is the Acton Institute. How Pahman fits within EP’s vision remains something of a mystery. That fact is not nearly as mystifying, however, as Pahman’s recent article on “Scapegoats of Christian Social Thought.” Purporting to criticize the reductio ad Hitlerum (though Pahman doesn’t use that term) as deployed by “socially-conscious Christians,” it’s difficult to not read Pahman as criticizing only a certain type (or certain types — if socialists are brought into the mix) of “socially-conscious Christians,” namely those who oppose free-market capitalism. This is made clear enough with Pahman’s intentional swipe at Distributism — a swipe he refuses to take at his fellow free-marketeers who routinely castigate their opponents as “statists” (quasi-fascists):
A Reminder on Illiberal Catholicism
I don’t want to give John Zmirak any more credit than he deserves, but as I mentioned previously I (and others) owe him something of a debt of gratitude for (first?) deploying the term “illiberal Catholicism” during one of his petulant rants earlier this year. Patrick Deneen, writing in The American Conservative, used the term “radical Catholicism” when describing a contingent of the anti-liberal Catholic thinkers Zmirak and his liberal cohorts cannot stand. (For the record, I am here using “liberal” in the classic sense which the Church routinely condemned up through the middle of the 20th C.) However, as I have discussed in several posts on this blog, including “The Other Illiberal Catholicism,” “A Note on Illiberal Catholicism,” and “Opus Publicum and Illiberal Catholicism,” the illiberal-Catholic landscape is fairly broad. The landscape broadens out even further once you start including other confessions. While I have strong reservations concerning their theological project, the so-called “Radical Orthodoxy” movement has taken a strong stand against the liberal-capitalist consensus which emerged in the West over the course of the last century. Sometimes this has made for interesting associations. John Milbank, Radical Orthodoxy’s leading theologian, wrote a supportive blurb for Catholic traditionalist Christopher Ferrara’s magnum opus Liberty: The God That Failed.
I am making mention of these earlier posts because I think it is important for all of those who are rightly skeptical of, and thus stand in opposition towards, the marriage of Christianity and liberalism to know they have allies. Too often Catholics—to say nothing of other Christians—get caught in their own theological-political enclaves. This is no more or less true of traditional Catholics than it is of proponents of the “new theology” such as thinkers often associated with the international journal Communio. While there are obvious and substantial disagreements between these and other “camps” within the Catholic Church, that does not mean those disagreements cannot be temporarily set aside in order to shine light on the larger problem of Catholic writers, thinkers, magazines, and think tanks attempting to promote a false ideology of liberal Catholicism which places its hopes in religious neutrality (if not privatization), free markets, and utilitarian social policies.
If I can offer any advice to you, dear reader, let it be this: read broadly. After you visit Ethika Politika or check out Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s web-log, crack open a copy of Jean Ousset’s Action. Digest John Medaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market, but make sure to pick up Fr. Edward Cahill’s The Framework of a Christian State. Take Pope Francis’s words about global capitalism and inequality seriously, but don’t forget to give equally serious attention to Pope Pius XI’s Quas Primas and Quadragesimo Anno. Myopia has nothing to offer.
A New Right Coming?
Fr. Dwight Longenecker is telling his readers to “Prepare for the Rise of the Right.” To be frank, I don’t know what to make of it. By describing a potential trajectory of ascent for a political leader of the Right, is Longenecker merely making a positive analysis or is he longing for such a figure himself? He wants his readers to “watch and be alert,” though not for the purposes of resisting the Right. In fact, the only warning Longenecker gives runs as follows:
Libertarian, Or Not
Joe Carter, writing on the Acton Institute Power Blog, expresses skepticism toward the results of a recent Pew survey which purportedly reveals that approximately one-in-ten Americans describe themselves as libertarian. That would be frightening if true, but thankfully it isn’t — or so says Carter. Carter’s rightful concern is that a significant portion of those surveyed hold views which are contrary to libertarian orthodoxy, such as “say[ing] that government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest” or holding that public assistance to the poor “does more good than harm because people can’t get out of poverty until their basic needs are met.” Carter believes that this is proof that most people don’t understand the political labels they apply to themselves. Maybe. Or maybe it’s because political reality, like economic reality, is a bit messier than some would like and not all of the world can be packaged into an ideological box; sometimes experience and reflection interfere with ideological purity.
Conservatism and Markets
For those interested, my latest column from Bridge magazine, “There’s More to Conservatism Than Genuflecting Before Free Markets,” is now up online. If you’ve paid attention to this blog for more than five seconds, I am sure you already know where I am coming from.
The Russian Soul
I don’t normally read the Los Angeles Review of Books, but one of its latest essays, “Two Abysses of the Soul” by Costica Bradatan is an outstanding example of using literary analysis to tease out a cultural truth, even when that truth is unsettling. Here is a brief excerpt:
Vote Libertarian But Be Distributist?
Today is primary day in Michigan and that means an embarrassingly tiny fraction of the voting population will turn out to decide the Republican ticket for Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District: (A) Incumbent Tea-Party/libertarian darling Justin Amash; or (B) Challenger and quasi-Republican businessman Brian Ellis. (For some of my earlier thoughts on this race, see my commentary in Michigan’s The Bridge magazine here.) Since first taking a seat in Congress in 2011, Amash has positioned himself as a “Washington outsider” willing to challenge “the establishment,” albeit with few, if any, tangible results to show for it. Amash may have made headlines opposing the “Security State” and reports of the National Security Agency’s data-mining overreach, but let’s be honest. Amash knows full well that the current security ordo is too precious to too many Americans to overturn (or probably even reform meaningfully). Amash, like other “Tea Partiers,” has managed to curry favor with a significant number of Catholic (and Orthodox) Christians on the grounds that their platform opposes the contemporary Leviathan state which, inter alia, has threatened religious freedom on multiple fronts while upholding the onerous system known as “crony capitalism.” This is no doubt why many Catholics who take the Church’s social magisterium seriously have no qualms about endorsing Amash et al. A good friend of mine even suggested that those who are Distributist in principle can, and perhaps even should, support Tea Party-types in good conscience because they favor policies that are, at a certain level, closer to a system of localized governance Distributists — and Catholic Social Teaching (CST) — champion. While this claim may be superficially correct, it leaves much to be desired at the substantive level.
A Free Market for Religion
I have been accused before of being uncharitable and harsh toward the Acton Institute and all of its works. Some claim I am distorting what they are “really doing” while unduly demonizing them when I should be praising their pro-market, pro-freedom agenda. Then I read thing like Dylan Pahman’s “Consumerism, Service, and Religion” over at the Acton Power Blog and quickly remember why I, a professing Catholic, cannot flatter Acton’s troubling worldview. Pahman, an ex-Calvinist Orthodox Christian, isn’t happy with Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s recent piece on “The Spoiling of America.” Why? Well, for one thing Longenecker’s anti-consumerist ethos doesn’t jibe with Pahman’s free-market religion, which includes lauding a free market for religion. Using Alexander Hamilton’s somewhat famous observation that “it is . . . absurd to make [religious] proselytes by fire and sword,” Pahman concludes that markets are the better — perhaps only? — alternative. On this point I’ll let the man speak for himself. Pardon the extended block quote.