Category: Politics

January 10, 2016 Church, Politics

A Returning Remark for Sunday

Upon returning to his childhood faith, Fr. Robert Sirico could have opted for a quiet life of peace and piety with nary a soul knowing. Instead he opted to found the Acton Institute, an international think tank committed to promoting liberal economic ideology largely at odds with the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church. Rather than commit himself solely to a life of humble service in the Church he renounced in his youth, Sirico spends his time courting high-level donors for Acton while using the platform the institute gives him to water-down Catholic social teaching and “correct” the Pope for his “economic errors.” As a liturgical conservative, Sirico has managed to draw an impressive following to his parish in Grand Rapids, believing—rightly—that most people are willing to dial-down demands for strict doctrinal orthodoxy in exchange for a pretty Mass and a semblance of communal stability. (It’s hard to argue with this compromise given the number of priests in the diocese who openly reject core tenets of the Catholic Faith.) Some folks in these parts murmur against those who choose, out of conviction, to bypass Sirico’s parish in favor of the chapel established by the Society of St. Pius X on the outskirts of town, never once stopping to consider that consistency and coherency are principles some people can’t let go of. As numerous individuals have expressed to me over the years, it’s not that Sirico espouses bald heresy from the pulpit or lacks good pastoral sense; it’s that they cannot bring themselves to support a parish with priests and laity who believe it is their right to dissent from the Catholic Church when it does not comport with economic—and sometimes social and religious—liberalism.

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December 16, 2015 Politics, Theology

Katechon – Part II

I do not believe that any historical concept other than katechon would have been possible for the original Christian faith. The belief that a restrainer holds back the end of the world provides the only bridge between the notion of an eschatological paralysis of all human events and a tremendous historical monolith like that of the Christian empire of the German kings. The authority of church fathers and writers, such as Tertullian, Hieronymus, and Lactantius Firmianus, could be reconciled with the Christian transmission of sibylline prophecies, in the conviction that only the Roman Empire and its Christian perpetuation could explain the endurance of the eon and could preserve it against the overwhelming power of evil. For German monks, this took the form of a lucid Christian faith in potent historical power. Anyone unable to distinguish between the maxims of Haimo of Halberstadt or Adso and the obscure oracles of Pseudo-Methodius or the Tiburtinian sibyls would be able to comprehend the empire of the Christian Middle Ages only in terms of distorting generalizations and parallels, but not in terms of its concrete historical authenticity.

This arresting paragraph, found on pg. 60 of Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, offers more depth on the importance of the katechon (restrainer) in Schmitt’s thinking and, indeed, in Christian history. The katechon, in Schmitt’s interpretation, injects meaning into history by justifying the political form it had inherited from the Roman Empire. Politics did not end at the Ascension; they took on a new, vastly more important, shape. Political authority was no longer an alien imposition upon the faith of the true believers it Christ. It became the means by which that faith could be sustained, even transmitted, to as many men as possible before the age of antichrist and the triumphant Day of the Lord.

As I noted in yesterday’s post on this subject, it is fashionable for Christians today to decry politics. The most vocal are the young, but there are several generations now of “enlightened Christians” who find it imperative to shed the history of their Faith of all Constantinian elements. They are as embarrassed by Justinian’s cult in the East as they are of Charlemagne’s in the West. They prefer the idea of liberal democracy to everything else because it gets them, and their religion, off the hook for war, destruction, and death. They say that they will die for their “faith in Jesus Christ” but they want nothing to do with the actual faith of Jesus Christ which came into the world at an actual moment in time, when Augustus ruled the earth, and was upheld and delivered throughout all lands by innumerable Christian kings.

Now the Christian authorities of the earth have been displaced and yet the end of the eon has not come to pass. We do not think about the kathechon explicitly anymore, but it must still exist, yes? Something must be holding back the antichrist, as St. Paul tells us. It is not the Roman Empire. It is not the Christian European polities. And it is almost certainly not the United States, one of the greatest affronts to true Christian authority ever conceived by man. (The advent of atheistic communism is only a footnote to the explosion of a thoroughly anthropocentric politics in the 18th Century.)

Maybe it is best not to meditate on this matter too deeply, for it may lead some to conclude the restrainer is no longer present and the End is closer than our pornography-saturated, iPhone-obsessed culture could ever dare contemplate.

December 15, 2015 Church, Politics, Theology

Katechon

In his posthumously published journals, entitled Glossarium, Carl Schmitt provocatively stated the following: “I believe in the katechon; for me he is the sole possibility for a Christian to understand history and find it meaningful.” The term katechon, which is found II Thessalonians 2:6-7, has been interpreted by theologians as the restrainer that holds back lawlessness or the coming of the antichrist before the Second Coming. Who or what the katechon is has been the subject of fierce debate for centuries, and it is possible this restraining force has never been static throughout history.

Why did Schmitt put so much stock into this (originally Biblical) concept? Henrich Meier, in his controversial work The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction Between Political Theology and Political Philosophy pg. 162, offers the following answer with brief quotes from Schmitt’s writings:

The notion of the katechon achieves three things. First, it “explains” the delay of the Parousia, it offers an answer to the question of why there is still “history.” For that purpose, Paul’s expression was originally introduced. Second, it protects historical action from despondency and despair in the view of a seemingly overpowering historical process that is progressing towards its end. Third, and conversely, it protects historical action from the disdain for politics and history in the certainty of promised victory. Thus for Schmitt, the katechon is simultaneously the complement and correction of the “genuine, ever-present, and necessary eschatology.” For the “living expectation of the immediately impending end seems to rob all history of meaning and gives rise to an eschatological paralysis, of which there are many examples in history.” The figure of thought of the “restrainer” forges a link between eschatological faith and the consciousness of “historicity.”

It could be said that the concept of the katechon has receded from Christian memory, particularly in these time where “enlightened Christians,” most of them young and suffering from a nasty case of Weltschmerz, claim to either no longer believe in politics or, laughably, exist “above” politics. This phenomenon can often be detected in Protestant circles, though Catholics are hardly immune. Why demonstrate any political allegiance at all when the only thing that matters—the only thing worth living for—is the End of Time? St. Augustine viewed history as the great boredom before the eschaton, and he was partially correct. Compared to the Day of the Lord, what are the days of history? But that observation does not necessarily rob history of meaning and purpose, not if there is evil to be held back in the time that remains.

There is an obvious tension in belief in the katechon and it is this: Is not the “benefit” of restraining the antichrist come at the “cost” of delaying the return of the Son of God? And yet it might be argued that due to the perennial difficulty in identifying the antichrist will always compel serious men to seek that which they perceive contains any genuine outbreak of lawlessness rather than suffer desolation for nothing. That is anything but a comforting thought for Christians will thus be tempted to throw their allegiance behind all sorts of authorities (political, moral, theological, etc.) who seem to hold the promise of being a katechonical force in whatever epoch they happen to inhabit. Only the Pope can save us from Protestantism; only capitalism can save us from economic ruin; only Vladimir Putin can save us from cultural decadence; only Donald Trump can save us from the Islamic State; and so on and so forth.

November 24, 2015 Church, Integralism, Politics

Tuesday Comment on Christ the King

Mattias A. Caro, writing over at Ethika Politika, calls on Catholics to detach themselves from the petty things of this world in order to better serve Christ the King. I couldn’t agree more. Quoting Pope Pius XI’s Quas Primas, Caro reminds readers that before Christ can reign in society, He must first reign in our hearts, minds, and wills. In most instances, Christ’s social reign begins in the home and then moves outward into the schools, workplaces, and seats of political authority. It is a pious practice for Latin Catholics to enthrone the Sacred Heart of Jesus in their homes, reciting this prayer nightly:

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November 18, 2015 Politics

Charlie Hebdo Again

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is back in the mainstream news today for its latest cartoon cover related to last week’s attacks in Paris. I shall refrain from comment. However, I thought it would be appropriate to re-link my blog entries (and one anonymous reflection from The Josias) on the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The first of these posts became — somewhat to my surprise — the single most controversial thing I ever wrote for Opus Publicum.

October 23, 2015 Politics

A Note on Saving Christendom in Europe

Until today I had never read a single word penned by Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Wall Street Journal who caught some eyes with his recent opinion piece, “In Defense of Christendom.” It’s a mixed bag, reminiscent of George Weigel’s The Cube and the Cathedral and any number of other dystopian takes on Europe’s future. Arguably, Stephens isn’t all that interested in preserving European Christendom so much as he—like many others—is worried about the tidal wave of Muslim immigrants that has hit the Continent in recent months. Better the Cross than the Koran, I suppose. Some have taken umbrage with Stephens’s piece, including Artur Rosman, a pedestrian Patheos blogger emblematic of that site’s intellectual vapidity. Rosman’s main beef with Stephens concerns the latter’s brief reliance on Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI’s Without Roots to advance the thesis that Europe has lost its sense of self. According to Rosman, Stephens “proof-texted” from the former pontiff’s words because he failed to take into account Benedict’s positive appraisal of multiculturalism. So what? As we’ve come to see over the last two years, popes aren’t always right, especially when speaking outside of a magisterial context.

The immigration crisis in Europe is, to put it mildly, messy. Rosman believes that basic Christian hospitality ought to guide the European Union’s (EU) hand, though he fails to clarify why. States have a duty first and foremost to their own citizens, which cannot be separated from their duty to the true religion. Although the world is now bereft of any authentically Catholic state, that does not mean the nations of the world have a right to religious indifferentism. Although some of the refugees pouring into Europe are Christian, most are not. As such, it behooves the EU, or any individual state, to balance charity with its first-order obligations. If mass Muslim migration to Europe threatens the rights of the Church and Christ the King—and there is good reason to suspect it does—then a blind “open door policy” would not only be imprudent, but contrary to right order as well.

None of this is to say that Muslims should be automatically excluded from finding safe haven in Europe or any other Western country. As Pope Pius XII taught, immigration is a right and the goods of the earth belong to all peoples. However, states are still entitled to take measures to maintain social order and to defend themselves from existential threats, external as well as internal. Should the ongoing violence in the Middle East come to a close, there is no reason why the EU or any state which has taken in Muslim immigrants shouldn’t request them to return if the common good demands it.

But let’s not forget what is often at the heart of many states’ immigration policies, and it has nothing to do with either charity or justice. It’s greed. Immigrants are a useful source of cheap labor which can keep bloated social programs running and white retirees happy. Capitalist greed, not Christian ethics, drive state-level decisions on who to let in, when, and under what conditions. And in the case of Europe, that greed may very well be the EU’s undoing as it trades off short-term maintenance of its economic ordo for civilizational surrender.