Note: When I wrote this in October 2012 for the previous iteration of Opus Publicum I never expected it to become as “popular” (relatively speaking) as it did. Since it was brought up to me the other day, I am pulling it from the archives and reposting it without any emendations.
No one can be so optimistic as to believe that the ideal of a Christian state is going to spread throughout the world in the near future, apart from the extraordinary intervention of Divine Providence. Yet, that should not prevent Catholics from proclaiming unhesitatingly the absolute necessity of a return to Christ on the part of governments as well as individuals, if there is to be any lasting peace in the world. . . . We must not compromise with the spirit of the times so far as to admit that the state is bound only by the natural law. We must unhesitatingly proclaim that the state cannot attain its destiny, save through Christ the King, even though that destiny is temporal, not eternal happiness.
– Fr. Francis J. Connell, C.S.S.R., “Christ the King of Civil Rulers,” American Ecclesiastical Review
The idea of Christian nationalism is upsetting to many contemporary Catholics and Orthodox in the West, albeit for different reasons. The Orthodox have never had much of a home in the geographic West, being confined to a handful of geographic locales where, regrettably, they have watched their numbers dwindle over the decades. Perhaps because of this fact, coupled with the “convert wave” of the 1990s, Orthodox found it convenient to hitch themselves to the political wagon of mainline Evangelical Protestants—a wagon directed primarily by the dominant politics of the Republican Party and its false promise to significantly curtail abortion access in the United States. (That Republicans, at the local level, have managed to do this in discrete areas of the country is not in dispute; their failure to do much at the federal level is telling, however.)
If the so-called “New Right” or “New European Right” are, at their core, pagan and the “old Right,” as we have experienced it in the United States, liberal and ineffectual, in what sense should we even speak of the political Right anymore? Has it become a useless designation? Truth be told I do not have any immediate answers to these—and other related—questions. Like all distinctions, the Left/Right one’s utility is hampered by excessive use. In the American context, both the Right and the Left, except perhaps in the latter’s most extreme formulation, are little more than offshoots of liberalism. Each fails to capture a reality that is not, at its core, liberal and therefore both “camps” do not appear to be welcome homes for faithful Christians, particularly Catholics and Orthodox.
There is a queer fascination with apoliticism running amuck among certain contingents of Christians (mostly Catholic) who believe, for rather unsettled reasons, that they can somehow rise above politics—either the shabby form available to us here in the West or its more substantive manifestations in both human history and thought. This is cheap escapism at its worst for there is no such thing as an apolitical faith any more than there can be an apolitical society. What really drives this temptation to “rise above” appears to be little more than a desire of making an unmerited distinction of superiority between the enlightened apolitical and the lowly masses left squabbling over who gets what, when, and how much. Strange it is that Catholics should come to find this choice in any way coherent with their faith, particularly given the strong political thrust to papal teachings on the right order of society since liberalism violently exploded onto the scene in the 18th Century.
Ben Mann, a frequent contributor to the website Catholic Exchange, penned a piece back in December 2013 entitled “The End of Christianism.” In it, Mann leans on the French Catholic theorist Remi Brague to decry Christianism, “an ideology focused on accomplishing a cultural program,” which is somehow distinguishable from mere “faith in Christ.” This leads Mann to detect an irony, namely that “Christianism can’t achieve its goal: believers only transform culture when, in a sense, they forget about that and simply serve the Lord.” What’s unclear is what this “sense” means to Mann or even how a self-conscious project of Christian cultural transformation could ever unfold without faith that Jesus is the Christ. Does Mann (or Brague) suppose that there is now an extant socio-cultural movement, ostensibly Christian, which, at its core, is not? Granted, in the context of modern American political realities, there have been plenty of politicians—even an entire political party—which were once given over to speaking in a Christian vernacular in order to achieve electoral ends. And certainly the last several centuries have furnished more than a few “enlightened” thinkers who defended the Christian patrimony on primarily instrumental grounds. But both camps have been exposed for what they truly are, which leads me to wonder where exactly is “Christianism” today?
I assure you: the new theme of Opus Publicum is not Dylan Pahman. However, when one man is wrong about so much and so often, it’s difficult not to say something. Following up on his misguided and ill-reasoned attack on Pope Francis, Pahman now turns his sights to the so-called Benedict Option and those who support it. While I harbor my own reservations concerning the “Options” phenomenon, I do believe their various proponents have their instincts in the right place, at least as far as rejecting late-style liberalism is concerned. Pahman, an Actonite to the core, disagrees. Liberalism isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the alternative, or so Pahman believes. The case he makes for this rickety conclusion is anything but convincing.
A large project of sorts has been keeping me away from web-logging, but I did want to call attention to Rod Dreher’s latest American Conservative entry, “Critics of the Benedict Option.” Why? Because despite my deep misgivings about the “options” fad (see, e.g., here, here, here and here), I want to believe that the so-called Benedict Option (or any other “option”) can be something more than a marketing ploy. This is not to say that I believe Dreher is acting in bad faith, only that the realities of publishing often demand tag lines, catch phrases, clever wordplays, and so forth. Moreover, there is a more fundamental question to consider that Dreher still seems to struggle with, namely, “What is the Benedict Option?” He rejects narrowing it down to a formula, a move that is incredibly unhelpful. Granted, perhaps the Benedict Option could or would manifest itself in different ways in different concrete circumstances, but surely it needs at least some minimal unifying elements, yes? I pray that we don’t have to simply “wait for the book” to discover what they are.
Today, over at First Things (FT), Brandon McGinley’s article “Liberal Limits—And Our Opportunity” represents another in a growing line of (mostly) Catholic commentary expressing exhaustion with liberalism. Now that same-sex marriage is perfectly legal and fresh attention is now being paid to stripping religious institutions of their tax-exempt status if they fail to fall in line, it is now a tad more respectable to suggest that the promise of liberalism was never more than a lie. Concepts like pluralism, relativism, and tolerance made for easy consumption when people—including many devoutly religious persons—believed their absence could only mean insularity, persecution, and hatred; now it’s starting to become clear that all three will be dealt out freely against any man, woman, or child who dares to speak ill of the Supreme Court’s attempt to do the impossible, namely redefine the meaning of marriage. Liberalism, according to McGinley, is giving way to a more destructive post-liberalism, but in the midst of this post-liberal chaos McGinley sees an opportunity. Here are his words:
Update: Here it is. Everybody can now comfort themselves with the knowledge it was never going to be any other way.
Will the Supreme Court legalize same-sex marriage? For some, that is the only question that matters right now. The Affordable Care Act still has its opponents, but the opposition is largely ideological at this point. Despite its many defects and shortfalls, Americans now believe, by and large, that the country is better off for having the legislation in place. Some inevitable tweaking will have to take place down the line. That’s how these things go. But it will not go away. The integrity of marriage, naturally defined, won’t go away either. Legally speaking, however, it’s already on its way out. When that process began is difficult to discern. Some say it was the moment no-fault divorce became normative. Others hold that a larger cultural shift, one commonly associated with the so-called sexual revolution, is responsible. People rarely contemplate the closing of our horizon, the loss of a vision that includes justice and duty, right and wrong, and God. That is, the real God, not the “god” of political convenience or the “god” of metaphysical surety or the “god” of irrational carping, and so on and so forth.
