This brief series
on “Philosophies at War” is not just of academic interest, nor is it
particularly religious, although the issue is being fought out most visibly in
religious circles. Obviously, however,
how we view the human person is key to how we understand the role of the State,
the natural law, organized religion and, increasingly these days, the family,
all of which are under attack today in one way or another.
To close out the
series, then, we thought it would be a good idea to show where matters stand
today in American Catholic Academia, the hierarchy of the American Catholic
Church, and American politics. The point
is driven home by the fact that all three milieux are in better shape than
their counterparts in other faiths and other countries, but that is not saying
all that much.
Today’s and
tomorrow’s postings are taken almost verbatim from a brief series of emails
that were, in large measure, the inspiration for this series. (The actual trigger was obtaining a rare copy
of Fulton Sheen’s Philosophies at War.) Minor editing has been done to correct
grammar and to hide the identities of people who might be offended to learn
that their thought is not entirely consistent with the Just Third Way and
natural law.
The first three
emails resulted from a question regarding whether the supernatural virtue of
charity could be considered part of the natural law that had popped up in the
newsletter of a conservative American Catholic group. The brief answer (which had been given
before) is, no — the supernatural fulfills and completes, it does not replace
or abolish, the natural. The longer
discussion is —
Dear Carlo:
We
have to be careful of mixing the natural and the supernatural. Someone who
conforms to the precepts of the natural law but does not conform to the
supernatural law is not wrong, but incomplete. Christianity fulfills, it does
not abolish the natural law; “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law
or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matt.
5:17)
As
Fulton Sheen pointed out in his autobiography, Treasure in Clay (1979), many people think that Jesus actually came
to abolish everything that went before.
This, they believe, leaves them free to do as they will.
This,
in fact, was the premise of the “New Christians” of the nineteenth century. The term “New Christian” comes from the
socialist Henri de Saint-Simon’s book, Nouveau
Christianisme (1825). Saint-Simon
believed that charity, the “Third Dispensation” of the Holy Spirit, abolished
justice, and that Heaven could be created on Earth.
This
would be by eliminating the precepts of the natural law with respect to prudence,
temperance, fortitude, and above all, justice, and substituting the
supernatural law of charity. That is why “New Christianity” was often used as
another term for socialism, and which Leo XIII made a special focus of his
pontificate, culminating in Rerum Novarum,
“New Things.”
No,
as all recent popes have taken great pains to point out, charity is the soul of
justice, not its replacement. Sheen called the natural law “the pagan virtues”
and emphasized that one could only become fully human by acquiring and
developing them. If, however, one wanted to become a Child of God, one must
acquire and develop the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and above all,
charity, and become a Christian — in Sheen’s opinion.
Do
not be deceived, however, by Sheen’s language.
As a Catholic priest, he could hardly say anything else. He was,
nevertheless, fully aware that non-Christians are as fully human, and are human
in the same way as Christians, and thus fall under the duty of conforming to
the natural law, the “Reign of Christ the King,” as it manifests in this world
. . . always keeping in mind that His kingdom is not of this world . . . which the New Christians forgot. As for the
next world — that relies on conforming to both the natural law and the
supernatural law, which each person must work out for him- or herself.
Yours in justice,
Just Third Way Blog
In response, we
got a brief note from Carlo, saying he wanted to look up a few things before
responding. In the interim, however, we
got an email from South America, asking about the contents of the newsletter,
and a catalog from a conservative Catholic bookseller. As this again raised the question of the role
of the natural law, we sent another email before receiving the first response. It was a little repetitive, but not very
much.
 |
| New Christian logic requires socialism. |
Dear Carlo:
After we forwarded our comments
on The Conservative American Catholic Newsletter today, we received a
catalog from a conservative Catholic bookseller. A significant proportion
of the offerings are from the faculty at Conservative Catholic College and individuals
involved in various groups dedicated to G.K. Chesterton and distributism.
Sadly, if we are to believe
what is in the catalog, it appears that what now passes for “orthodox” Catholic
thought in regard to the Church’s social teachings consists largely of
warmed-over socialist pabulum and conspiracy theory. There are books by
admitted Fascists, socialists, Jew-haters, monetary crackpots — you name it.
There are, for example, at
least a dozen books on “social credit,” a form of socialism based on Georg
Friedrich Knapp’s “chartalism” and that spun off from Fabian socialism, yet is
presented as “authentic Catholic teaching” despite all the papal warnings
against socialism. One of the books contains essays by a sexual deviant
who boasted of his crimes — they are too disgusting to mention — and never
repented.
By coincidence, over the past
week we think we have discovered a major source of the perversion of Catholic social
teaching. This was the “New Christian” movement of the early nineteenth
century that provided the basis for what is known today as Christian socialism,
modernism, and the New Age. This came from the work of the Comte de
Saint-Simon who published a book called Nouveau
Christianisme (“The New
Christianity”) in 1825, which started what we would today call a New Age
cult. Some authorities trace the inspiration for Madame Blavatsky’s
version of theosophy (that influenced Nazi occult and racial theories) to this
strange body of thought.
 |
| "When I said 'new things,' I mean exactly that." |
According to The Catholic
Encyclopedia, “Saint-Simonism” or “Saint-Simonianism” was essentially a new
religion under the name of Christianity that attempted to base everything on
brotherly love and faith and rejected reason and justice, and blended socialism
with Catholicism. It had its own “pope,” and (according to the Encyclopedia),
Leo XIII was referring primarily to Saint-Simon’s “New Christianity” when he
spoke of “new things” in Rerum Novarum.
New or Neo Christianity was/is
explicitly socialist, and — despite the efforts of people like Chesterton and
Fulton Sheen — continues to have a tremendous influence down to the present day
in misunderstandings of Catholic social teaching. Nor should we be particularly surprised at
such widespread misunderstanding. As
Maurice Evans noted in his 1938 Le Bas Prize Essay, “Chesterton’s wit has made
him one of the best read and least studied of all modern thinkers.” (Maurice
Evans, G.K. Chesterton. Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1938, 134.)
If any Catholic academic has
fallen victim to “New Christianity” (as some of the Chesterton people appear to
have done — just the other day I found a report of a Chesterton conference
devoted to finding common ground with “New Age spirituality”), he will never
listen to anything coming out of CESJ. Sadly, many of the people caught
up in this nonsense seem completely unaware that, for all their talk about God
and the Church, all they’ve done is re-invent what Fulton Sheen called “Religion
Without God,” putting in place something akin to Émile Durkheim’s “divinized
society” with Collective Man represented by the “Mortall God” of the State at
the center.
Yours in justice,
Just Third Way Blog
