How the End of Papal Military Might Strengthened Catholicism

Posted on June 30, 2011 by The Catholic Populist

 

The Walls of Rome Were Breached by the Italian Army in 1861

On September 20 of 1870, the Aurelian Walls in Rome were breached by heavy cannon fire from an Italian Army loyal to King Victor Emmanuel II.  All in a moment, the radically outnumbered Swiss Guards and papal military volunteers were overwhelmed, the Risorgimento uniting Italy into one nation was completed, the First Vatican Council was effectively ended, Pope Pius IX was made “prisoner in the Vatican,” and the papacy lost its temporal power which it had wielded since the Crowning of Pepin in 752.

Commenting on this turn of events, Cambridge History Professor Lord Acton gave a speech describing his grief at seeing the defeat of the papacy.  However, his speech was full of encouragement to Catholics whose faith in Providence was shaken.  Lord Acton argued that the Papal monarchy operated in Rome had become a liability to the propagation of the Faith and that Catholicism and the papacy would flourish in its absence.

Lord Acton had been one of the earliest and most vocal advocates of the compatibility of democracy and Catholicism.  Lord Acton believed that the Catholic teachings on the dignity of the human person, the natural order, and the natural law had created a fertile field in which natural rights philosophy was bound to emerge.  In spite of the fact that John Locke had been the true founder of liberalism (a term whose meaning has changed so much in modern parlance that populism is a more accurate description of this phenomenon), Lord Acton still regarded liberalism as born out of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

In the speech, Lord Acton offers a birds eye view of the papal throne-and-altar politics which he believed had hampered the Catholic development of natural rights theory.  He made the case that the papacy had developed a level of political power that had caused its foreign policy decisions to have far-reaching resentment in certain developing nation-states of Europe even before the Reformation.  The Reformation allowed for a great expansion of power by Kings and nobles at the expense of the Catholic Church and the populace — particularly the poor who most relied on Catholic Guilds, Monasteries, Hospitals, and Schools.  During the Reformation, the idea of the Divine Right of Kings was developed and was later famously endorsed by Martin Luther in his elitist tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Horde of Peasants written during the German Peasants War.

The Protestant princes — after putting down the peasants — fought against the Hapsburgs in the Catholic Empires of Austria and Spain (with some help from the treacherous Cardinal Richelieu of France and the Islamist leaders of the Ottoman Empire) in the grueling 30-years war.   The out-manned Hapsburgs agreed to the Peace of Westphalia.

Innocent X strongly objected to the Peace of Westphalia, which endorsed the Divine Right of Kings and announced that the prince had the authority to impose his religion on the populace regardless of their desires.  This led to Protestant and Catholic Inquisition Courts (both of which Lord Acton opposed) which were set up to ensure that the populace conformed to the religion of the monarch.  In Protestant countries, the subjection of religion to the control of the state led to precipitous theological and participatory decline as the populace sensed that religion was no longer serving a divine end but a political end.

Meanwhile, the papacy’s political interests became dire as militant Protestantism and militant atheism advanced.  For example, political considerations in direct violation of pastoral considerations allowed the French monarchs to successfully pressure the papacy to suppress the Jesuit order when their renowned intellects were most needed (during the eve of the French Revolution).  Furthermore, the papal monarchy had a political imperative of maintaining its diplomatic friendships with the Catholic emperors of France and Austria and the Catholic monarchs of Spain, which prevented the papacy from proper pastoral, intellectual, and theological engagement with ascendent democratic principles.

Lord Acton argued that the end of the temporal power, provided that the papacy would be granted sovereign authority over a small piece of land would have the following benefits:

1) The papacy would engage without political reservations with the new democratic principles that were rising to power throughout the world and join the debate as the pre-eminent champion of human rights in a democratic world.

2) It would end the Protestant and atheist propoganda that Catholicism — as evidenced by the papal monarchy itself — was incompatible with democratic human rights.

3) It would allow the papacy to shift its focus to Christ’s mercy rather than secular justice.

4) It would allow the Pope to  develop (counter-intuitively) more political influence — focusing exclusively on the Catholic religion that shapes culture that in turn shapes politics.

Lord Acton revealed these insights in the mid 18th Century.  Like many of the greatest historians, he was blessed with great foresight.

Joseph Stalin, on the other hand, was not so blessed.  In 1935, responding to a warning against his contempt of the papacy, he sneered, “How many divisions has the Pope?”

In light of the largely John Paul the Great-inspired fall of the Berlin Wall and all that Stalin had hoped to achieve, the answer to this question has proven to be, “Enough.”

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The Fall of the Temple and the Triumph of Judaic Populism

Posted on April 13, 2011 by The Catholic Populist

Destruction of the Temple in 70 AD

Judaism is one of the oldest and most powerful religious, ethnic, and cultural traditions still extant in human history.  During the lifetime of Jesus, two distinct worldviews were competing for dominance in Judaism — the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  The outcome of this battle ended up taking the Judaic tradition in the opposite direction of Islamism.

There is no question that Islamists support the establishment of a theocracy — an inherently elitist church-state hybrid that uses the state to enforce a Islamic theology on the populace and Islam to enforce morality on the populace of the state.  This allows the state and Islam to benefit and perfect each other in a utopian Caliphate of the future.

Many critics of the Judeo-Christian tradition wielding influence in the public square often attempt to tie Judeo-Christian beliefs into the desire to install an elitist “theocracy” of their own.  This charge of elitist theocracy, however, ignores both the inherent populism of Christianity and the triumph of populism in the Judaic tradition in 70 A.D.

From 597 – 516 BC, the Jews were captured and taken into the Babylonian exile.  The scribe Ezra helped to bring about a renewal of observance of Judaic law among the populace while the Jews were in exile.  He believed that all Jews were called to obey the Laws of Moses and forged a popular renewal.  He did not believe that Jerusalem was necessary to continuing to observe the Covenant and advocated the creation of synagogues outside of the Temple — which were run by teachers called Rabbis.  He believed in the importance of tradition, taught that in addition to the Torah itself, the Histories, the Poetries, and the Prophets were all part of the sacred tradition of Judaism.  He also believed in the Resurrection from the Dead as described in the Poetries and the Prophets.  He was the founder of the tradition of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees had many disciples among the populace but were opposed by the ruling class in Judea.

In 516 BC, the Persian King Cyrus restored the Jews to Judea from the Babylonian Exile and allowed them to rebuild the Temple.  Instead of setting up a king who could challenge his overlordship, Cyrus set up the Great Sanhedrin Council, a group of priests who were mostly Sadducees.  Sadducees believed that the Laws of Moses needed only to be followed by the priests except when people went to pilgrimage in the Temple.  They were fundamentalist who did not believe in the Resurrection of the Dead because it was not proclaimed in the Torah, the only books they viewed as legitimately sacred.  They tended to believe that Divine retribution was visited in this world while wealth and power were signs of Divine favor.  They had control of both secular and religious governance under the oversight of their conquerors.  They did not believe that God could be worshiped outside of the Temple, which they controlled.  They had the elitist belief  that they themselves and the elite classes were clearly more favored by God than the suffering populace.

Jesus, of course, struggled against both the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

The Pharisees viewed Jesus as showing too wild an example to the populace while the Sadducees viewed Jesus as making his demands on the populace too strict.

The entire ministry of Jesus, he dealt with the Pharisees — who were typically either Rabbis (teachers) or scribes (Mosaic law attorneys), who were sprinkled throughout Galilee and Judea.  They criticized Him for being lax on following Mosaic Law.

Jesus did not ever really encounter the Sadducees (mostly Temple priests) until he went into their turf in Jerusalem.  They believed Jesus was being too hard on the populace and asked Him condescending questions related to his hard teachings on marriage and divorce.

Jesus identified more with the teachings of the Pharisees than the Sadducees, telling audiences to follow the words of the Pharisees but not their example.

Ultimately, it was Sadducees in the Sanhedrin Council (although some Pharisees were on the Council too, in the minority) who arranged for Jesus to be put to death.  That was the height of their power.  In 70 AD, the Temple was destroyed , the Sadducee theocracy was ended, and the elitist strain of Judaism (oft-criticized in the Bible) was shattered forever.

Although the Sadducee elitism boasted strength (as evidenced by the execution of Jesus in spite of His popularity) its lack of popular support made its ongoing strength dependent on retaining power.  Once the Temple, the symbol of the power of the Sadducees, was destroyed, the Sadducee ideology no longer had the capacity for popular renewal.

The destruction of the Second Temple engendered a sort of second exile, which proved to be fertile ground for the Pharisees.  The modern Judaic tradition (both Orthodox and Reformed) descended from populism of the Pharisaical Rabbis has completely routed the Judaic elitism descended from the Sadducee priests, an extinct species in Judaism.

Out of the bitter destruction of the Temple came the decisive triumph of Judaic populism.

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The Great Ideologies: Social Conservatism

Posted on April 7, 2011 by The Catholic Populist

Thomas Jefferson translated Locke's Liberalism into the United States

John Locke was often called the “Father of Liberalism” and can most properly be understood as the grandfather of “Social Conservatism.”  John Locke was a Calvinist and, like John Calvin himself and unlike Martin Luther, he believed in the Natural Order and focused on its political preservation in his works.  Like most Natural Order theorists, he delved deeply into the Natural Law and its proper role in preserving the Natural Order.

However, he was revolutionary in his belief in Natural Rights.  He argued that man had inherent equality as the result of his humanity.  He reasoned that the State of Nature (in which no prearranged Social Contract existed) would self-evidently feature human equality.  This Natural equality was ultimately based on man’s reason.  Locke believed that all government was the result of a Social Contract where man chose to relinquish aspects of his perfect liberty in exchange for the protection of the government.

His argument did not depend on Christianity.  However, it resonated with Protestant and Catholic thought.  They had the additional reason to believe in the equality of man because they felt that man’s equality was derived from his redemption in Jesus Christ.

Thomas Jefferson immortalized Lockean beliefs on Natural Law and Natural Rights in the Declaration of Independence, the mission statement of the United States:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

This ideology was in direct contradiction to slavery, which of course existed in the U.S. when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration.  However, the abolitionists fought to enshrine this belief into the Constitution of the United States — a feat that was not accomplished until the bitter end of the Civil War.  Further, smaller ideological opponents remained to fight — segregationists, opponents of the suffragettes, and the Know-Nothings.

However, the next great challenge was the Sexual Revolution in the 1960s — a popular movement resulting from the embrace of birth control by the popular eugenics movement, the invention of the hormonal contraceptive pill by the pharmaceutical industry, and the take-over of the public schools in the United States by the progressive movement.

The Sexual Revolution broke the social consensus on the natural order.  The Left exploded into the mainstream of the American political scene.  They portrayed their triumph as inevitable and won decisive Supreme Court decisions on contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1968 and on abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973.  It looked like the Left would be able to control both the Democratic and Republican Parties from Jimmy Carter to Richard Nixon.  They ensconced themselves deeply into the UN and began to wield their influence in Africa and South America.

Once the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down 7-2, the Catholics got organized and founded the National Right to Life Committee for lay Catholics.  The NRLC coordinated a host of statewide affiliates.  Meanwhile, the Bishops organized effective lobbying with the newly founded United States Catholic Conference.

Then the Left overreached.

They went after Evangelical radio stations with the Fairness Doctrine.  The Evangelicals organized politically and allied themselves with the Catholics who they had historically distrusted.  Ever since then, the movement of Social Conservatism has advanced.  They remain undefeated on the marriage issue in 31 statewide referenda.  Polling shows that Republicans win social issues voters 5 to 1.  Rhetorically, the pro-choice rhetoric has retreated.  In the 1980s, “Abortion is a woman’s body and a woman’s right.”  In the 1990s, “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”  In the 2000s, the pro-choice movement focused on having a few exceptions “abortion is necessary for rape, incest, or threat to the life or health of the mother.”  Democratic politicians gradually began to avoid the abortion issue.  Now, Planned Parenthood, the heart of the abortion industry, desperate to retain its funding, emphasizes all of the services that they do besides abortion.  The Left’s hold on the Supreme Court is precarious, with 4 very Catholic Justices on the Court.  If the Left (Planned Parenthood) is defunded, the battle could turn into a rout.

Demographics are further slipping away from the Left, even in the Democratic Party.  California and the South are facing a huge influx of socially conservative (Democratic) Latinos.  California is now 47% pro-life.

The Left is desperate to portray their battle with Social Conservatism as an attempted “Theocracy” by the “Religious Right.”  However, social conservatism is simply the (classically) liberal philosophy of the American founding.  The elites remain committed to the Left.  But this is a Republic and the elites cannot control the political scene forever.

The battle in the U.S. between Social Conservatism and the Left is still up in the air.

But Social Conservatism is advancing.

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