On
Christmas Day in the year 1797, Luigi Barnabà Chiaramonte (1742-1823), bishop
of Imola, astounded conservatives in the congregation at his cathedral by
declaring that there is no necessary conflict between Christianity and
democracy. Nor did Chiaramonte change
his liberal position when he was elected to the papacy in 1800, taking the name
Pius VII.
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| Pope Pius VII |
As
friend and mentor of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792-1878), Pius VII
inculcated the younger man in the principles of a liberalism consistent with
Catholic doctrine, sending him on a mission to the new Republic of Chile in
1823. When Mastai-Ferretti was himself elected
to the papacy in 1846 following the death of Gregory XVI, he took the name Pius
IX in honor of his patron and immediately began implementing those reforms he
thought consistent with Catholic doctrine and that did not endanger the
security and integrity of the Church.
Pius
IX’s reform program failed for reasons beyond his control, and the real story
still remains to be told. The bitterness
and bafflement of modern liberals regarding “Pio Nono,” combined with the
confused encomia of today’s conservatives, however, suggests that liberals and
conservatives both may be in for some surprising revelations concerning the
pope they have, respectively, demonized and idolized, and for all the wrong
reasons.
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| John Henry Newman |
In
the late 1820s and early 1830s, however, John Henry Newman and others in his
circle at Oxford University were faced with forms of liberalism they had no
doubt were incompatible with Christianity, even though some of them were
presented as the only true Christianity, as we saw in the previous posting on this subject.
At the same time, they were clergy of a church that seemed not only inadequate
to meet the challenge presented by the rise of liberalism but that could not by
any stretch of the imagination be said to be meeting the spiritual needs of the
people. Government interference in
church policy and administrative decisions only increased the frustration with
the situation.
This
makes Newman’s blindness to the real situation all the more remarkable,
considering the fact that his genius and careful scholarship persuaded even
himself once he became convinced of the truth of something, and he did not
hesitate to pursue a question to its ultimate origins. Nevertheless, he failed to see the social
problems caused by the increasing concentration of capital ownership, especially
of the new machinery, and which were turning people away from traditional
Christianity.
Conditions
were drawing people into either the new “enthusiastic” sects, such as
Methodism, or into the “democratic religion” of socialism. Worse, as Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg
University has explained in his writings, socialism was almost always linked to
modernism and esotericism, and dedicated to the overthrow instead of the reform
of traditional religion.
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| Hilaire Belloc |
As
far as Newman and those in his circle were concerned, then, liberalism was the
enemy. Ironically, as Newman realized
after his conversion to Catholicism, the Oxford Movement was organized to
defend the English type of liberalism against the inroads of the European type
of liberalism. This was at a time when
those two types of liberalism were beginning to merge into what Hilaire Belloc
termed “the Servile State.” Thus, as
Newman explained years later in the notes to later — that is, post-1864 —
editions of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua,
I have been asked to explain more fully what it is I mean by
“Liberalism,” because merely to call it the Anti-dogmatic Principle is to tell
very little about it. An explanation is the more necessary, because such good
Catholics and distinguished writers as Count Montalembert and Father Lacordaire
use the word in a favorable sense, and claim to be Liberals themselves. . . . I
do not believe that it is possible for me to differ in any important matter
from two men whom I so highly admire. In their general line of thought and
conduct I enthusiastically concur, and consider them to be before their age.
And it would be strange indeed if I did not read with a special interest, in M.
de Montalembert’s beautiful volume [his
biography of Lacordaire — ed.], of the unselfish aims, the thwarted
projects, the unrequited toils, the grand and tender resignation of Lacordaire.
If I hesitate to adopt their language about Liberalism, I impute the necessity
of such hesitation to some differences between us in the use of words or in the
circumstances of country; and thus I reconcile myself to remaining faithful to
my own conception of it, though I cannot have their voices to give force to mine.
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| Charles Forbes René de Montalembert |
As
Newman admitted, he used the term “liberalism” in one sense, while two men he
admired greatly, l’abbé Jean-Baptiste
Henri Dominique Lacordaire (1802-1861) and Charles Forbes René de
Montalembert (1810-1870), appeared to use it in quite
another. Confusing matters still
further, Lacordaire and Montalembert had been associates of Hugues-Félicité Robert de
Lamennais (1760-1854), who used the term in yet another
sense — which was one of the primary reasons that both Lacordaire and
Montalembert cut the connection with him when it became obvious that their
philosophies and religious beliefs were profoundly different.
Specifically,
Newman used the term liberal in its English sense, while de Lamennais used it
in the European sense. And Lacordaire
and Montalembert? To them liberalism
meant much the same as it did to Pius VII and later to Pius IX and subsequent
popes, in substance if not in terminology: the liberalism or democracy of the
United States as analyzed by Alexis de Tocqueville. And that is. . . ?
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| Thomas Aquinas |
Not
to get too pedantic — it is actually essential in this instance to indulge in
pedantry a bit, due to the massive amount of misinformation that has been
spread around — but the American type of liberalism had its origin in the
correction of Aristotle by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Briefly, where Aristotle held that every
human being has a different capacity for virtue (and “natural slaves” have no
capacity for virtue at all and are therefore human only in appearance), Aquinas
maintained that all human beings have an “analogously complete” capacity for
virtue.
In plain English, what Aquinas said is that every human
being at any stage of physical, cultural, economic, political, or any other
type of development has by human nature itself the “same”* potential to become
as fully human as every other human being.
There may be “accidentals” in a particular individual’s “form” that
preclude becoming more fully human, but that does not change the fact that
every single human being is as fully human, and is human in the same way, as
every other human. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts.
*”Same” is not the right word here, but it perhaps best
conveys the idea in ordinary speech. In
correct “philosophical language,” each and every human being is not a duplicate
of every other human being (i.e., the “same”), but an analogue of
every other human being, having all that which is essential to be called a
human being, even as that essence or substance takes a different form in every
single human being. Thus, Aquinas said
not that human beings “are all the same,” but that they “are all analogously
complete.”
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| Aristotle |
Given that every human being has the “same” capacity
to acquire and develop virtue and thereby become more fully human, it necessarily
follows that every human being has the right of access to the means to become
more fully human. Read that carefully,
because it does not say that every human being has the right to become more fully human, but that every
human being has the right to the opportunity
(and thus access to the means) to become more fully human.
In other words, Aquinas was talking about equality
of opportunity, not equality of results.
His “analogy of being” thereby comes into direct conflict with:
· English
type liberalism/capitalism, which restricts opportunity to an élite,
· European
type liberalism/socialism, which mandates equality of results, and
· the
Servile State/Welfare State that combines English and European liberalism,
which mandates equality of results controlled by an élite.
The question then becomes how people are supposed to
acquire and develop virtue, which comes from virtus, a Latin word signifying “humanness.” We find the answer in something that
Aristotle got right and with which Aquinas agreed: that “man is by nature a
political animal.” (Aristotle, Politics, 1253a.)
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| Thomas Hobbes |
That is, man is not simply an individual, as, e.g., Thomas Hobbes supposed and that
forms a core principle of English liberalism.
Nor is he merely a fungible member of the collective as European
liberalism assumes. No, each human being
is by nature an individual who best realizes his or her humanity within the pólis, an intentionally structured
network of institutions in conformity with human nature (the natural law) that
we call the common good.
Institutions are important for man as a political
animal because it is through the exercise of natural rights of life, liberty,
and private property that people acquire and develop virtue, thereby becoming
more fully human. It is therefore a
fundamental human right for each person as a member of civil society to have
the opportunity and access to the means to participate in the institutions of
the common good. What each individual
does with the opportunity is another matter.
(Different principles apply to domestic society, the
Family, and to religious society, usually signified by “Church,” but including
all organized religion, but that is not relevant to this discussion.)
That, however, does not mean that every human being
has automatic access to all civil institutions.
Children — “unemancipated minors” — for example may in most cases only
participate in civil institutions with the knowledge and consent of their
parents. (The modern Nation State has
often eroded the authority of parents, asserting the primacy of the civil power
over domestic and paternal right, but might does not make right.)
Nor does someone whose “accidentals” or particular
circumstances disqualify him or her from participation in a civil institution
mean he or she should be able to participate, anyway. That would be not a true equality of
opportunity, but a false equality of results.
For example, no one may legitimately be barred from
dining in a restaurant because of race, creed, or ethnicity, but it would be
quite proper to refuse service due to lack of space, the customer’s inability
to pay, or improper dress. Nor is anyone
within his or her rights to enter a vegan establishment and complain he or she
is being oppressed or discriminated against because no beefsteak is served.
Obviously, then, American type liberalism, while
sharing a label, is a horse of an entirely different color than European and
English type liberalism. The issue now
becomes how and why American type liberalism diverged from European and English
type liberalism, and how and why Newman, for all his genius, failed to make the
distinction or even realize that it was important.
#30#
