Following up on the previous posting on this subject, answering the question What is liberalism? is key to
understanding the life and times of John Henry Newman, particularly since what
has baffled many Newman scholars is the fact that he claimed to be against all
forms of liberalism and yet held many opinions and took many positions that people
today regard as liberal. Part of this
may be due to the possibility that Newman seems to have had trouble viewing
this world as anything other than a temporary stopping place on the way to the
next.
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| Oxford University |
Civil institutions, even the domestic society of the
family simply did not hold Newman’s focus the way religion did. He accepted the world outside organized
religion as a given, but at times seemed baffled by it, as well as by many
human relationships and domestic institutions.
It is probably safe to say he never truly understood how many other
people, even those who seemed most receptive to the message and meaning of
religion, could not seem to conform themselves as completely as they ought to
the demands of a God-centered life.
Thus, the critical differences between the various types
of liberalism in civil society, while essential to come to an understanding of how
religious society — organized religion — fits into the rest of life, were not
really of concern to Newman. His focus
was the effect of liberalism on religious society, and what he saw appalled
him.
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| Pope Pius IX |
This is understandable.
In English type liberalism, the unintended ideal (to invent a concept) was
a Church controlled by the State, or a State controlled by the Church. Although the ostensible intent was to join
the “two swords” of authority to avoid a conflict of interest on the part of
citizens, the arrangement inevitably led to a religious or secular theocracy
with those who were not members of the established church tolerated at best as
second-class citizens. Religious
doctrine would be subject to political expedience, or political decisions would
be made to advance religion, depending whether the civil power or the religious
power was in the ascendant.
European type liberalism cut out the intermediate step of
establishing religion and asserted either a secular state or a religious state
directly. Admittedly, in the nineteenth
century few people would have tolerated the establishment of a new religious
state, especially since under Pius IX an unsuccessful effort had been made to
separate the civil and the religious powers in the Papal States.
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| Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre |
Ultramontane proposals such as those of Joseph-Marie,
comte de Maistre (1753-1821) and Hugues-Félicité
Robert de Lamennais (1760-1854) before he renounced Christianity (yes,
surprising many, ultramontanism is a school of thought derived from European
type liberalism) never found many advocates.
Nor were the “New Christian” and neo-pagan arrangements of Claude Henri
de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Auguste
Comte (1798-1857),
respectively, any more
attractive, although gaining sufficient adherents on occasion to justify
experiments.
Only
in the United States were utopian socialist experiments in any degree
successful. In America enthusiasts (in
the sense used by Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, 1888-1957) established utopian communities as a matter of course. These included the Harmonist or Rappite
(later Owenite) community at New Harmony, Indiana, the many “Phalanxes”
established throughout the country under the initial leadership of Albert
Brisbane (1809-1890) on a modified version of the
detailed communities designed by François
Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837), and the transcendentalist
Brook Farm shareholding commune in Massachusetts (later a Fourierist Phalanx).
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| Archbishop John Ireland |
Secularist proposals ostensibly separating Church and
State — but really establishing the State itself as the official religion —
were more successful in Europe.
Secularism did, however, gain adherents in the United States in the
latter half of the nineteenth century. As
Archbishop John Ireland (1838-1918) noted,
Secularists and unbelievers will demand their rights. I concede their rights. I will not impose upon them my religion,
which is Christianity. But let them not
impose upon me and my fellow-Christians their religion, which is
secularism. Secularism is a religion of
its kind, and usually a very loud-spoken and intolerant religion. Non-sectarianism is not secularism, and, when
non-sectarianism is intended, the secularist sect must not claim for itself the
field which it refuses to others. I am
taking my stand upon our common American citizenship. The liberty that I claim, I grant. (Archbishop John Ireland, “State Schools and
Parish Schools,” Address before the National Education Association of the
United States, 1890.)
Obviously, the secularist type of separation of Church and
State that came out of European liberalism was not the separation of Church and
State as originally conceived in the United States Constitution, where
government and organized religion kept to their own spheres, cooperating in
areas of mutual interest. This was,
rather, strict control of organized religion by the government, often quickly
degenerating into suppression.
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| Fulton J. Sheen |
The word [liberalism] can be used in three senses: (a) As a
philosophy which believes in the progressive achievement of civil, social,
political, economic and religious liberties within the framework of a moral
law. (b) As an attitude which denies all standards extrinsic to man himself,
measures freedom a physical power rather than a moral power and identifies
progress by the height of the pile of discarded moral and religious traditions.
(c) As an ideology generally identified with the
doctrine of laissez faire. The first kind of liberalism is to be encouraged,
prospered and achieved. The last two are false for reasons well known to those
who are familiar with Laski Hocking, Tawney, Weber and the Papal Encyclicals.
It is the third kind of liberalism, called historical liberalism, with which we
are briefly concerned in this book. (Fulton J. Sheen, “Preface,” Communism
and the Conscience of the West. New
York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948.)
The (a) type of liberalism is, obviously, American, (b) is clearly the European type
liberalism that attempts to justify socialism of all kinds, e.g., the communism or “scientific”
socialism with which Sheen was primarily concerned, while English type liberalism that underpins
capitalism is recognizable in (c).
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| William Cobbett |
In short, they drew up, à la “glorious,” charges
against their Protestant king, his late Majesty; and as the charges against
James II. are found in an Act of Parliament, so the charges against George III.
are found in an Act of Congress, passed on the memorable 4th of
July, 1776. (William Cobbett, History of the Protestant
Reformation in England and Ireland, 1826, § 425.)
In contrast, the French Revolution was the application of
new ideas of sovereignty and of the Nation State, and the actual
institution of a new world order. Despite
repeated statements, and possibly even the sincere beliefs of America’s
Founding Fathers, however, they did not seek a
new world order in the same sense as that represented by the French Revolution. The essential difference in orientation is
clearly evident when we examine the principles of political science used in
forming the United States of America.
The English 1689 Bill of Rights was not the only or even predominant
source for America’s founding documents, especially the Declaration of
Independence, or “true bill” the Continental Congress drew up to justify the
American Revolution, with themselves as Grand Jury. When the Virginia Convention met in the
spring of 1776, the members of that body adopted a resolution to draft a
declaration of fundamental natural rights that they believed King George III
and his parliament had violated.
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| George Mason of Gunston Hall |
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and
have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or
divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring
and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
As drafted, then,
the Virginia Declaration stated that all men have inherent (i.e., natural) rights, of which neither
they nor their posterity can be deprived, regardless of the justification. All
men have the right to live, to be free, and to acquire and possess private
property. This was John Locke’s famous triad of fundamental
human rights of life, liberty, and private property, but
with a significant difference.
And that difference? Mason, in common with Bellarmine, whom Mason appears to have studied, ignored the “state of
nature” theory that provided the foundation on which English liberalism was
established. He simply declared that all
men have rights by nature, not as a
result of entering into a social contract and agreeing to enter into society.
Mason therefore agreed with Aristotle and Aquinas that man
is by nature a political animal. People
do not agree to enter society and subordinate their individuality to expedience. Instead, people realize their individuality
to the fullest by being in society as full members of the pólis. People are already members
of society by nature unless they remove themselves by the commission of crimes.
That man is naturally a member of society is not, however,
a doctrine found anywhere in John Locke or Algernon Sidney! Both men were firm adherents of the “state of
nature” theory, which was virtually their sole point of agreement with Thomas Hobbes. That man is naturally a member of society,
however, is found throughout Bellarmine’s writings, notably in De Laicis, or, The Treatise on Civil
Government.
And that was a
problem for a slave-owning society. . . .
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