The Catholic Populist

Christendom commissioned monarchs to uphold the values of Christianity

Almost every Empire and nation in the history of the world has been built on nationalism, conquest, or world domination.  There were two exceptions — Christendom and the United States.  Christendom started with Pope Leo III’s crowning of Charlemagne in 800 AD.  The Monarch of the decentralized feudal era adopted a specifically Christian vision of man.

Christianity holds that there is an Eternal Law by which God governs all creation.  Human beings gain understanding of this law by two complementary methods: through Natural Law (dictated by reason and accessible to all men and not merely Christian) and Revealed Law (found in the teaching of the Church).  Christianity opposes any combination of Church and State.  But it does mandate that the State create laws that do not conflict with Natural Law or Revealed Law.  Natural Law and Revealed Law are presumed to be in harmony.  Because of its role as the interpreter of Revealed Law, the Catholic Church exercised enormous influence over Christendom symbolized by papal recognition of each Monarchy.  Christendom did not always live up to the principles upon which it was founded.  In the 30-Years War (1618 – 1648), an alliance of Lutheran Prussia, Anglican England, Nationalist France, and Islamist Ottoman Empire shattered Christendom by force of arms.

In 1776, the United States became the second nation to be founded on a conception of humankind.  Whereas Christendom had built its laws around Revealed Law and Natural Law, the United States discarded Revealed Law (and the need for an authoritative interpretation by a particular Church).  The US rather built its lawmaking around Natural Law (“the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”) and Natural Rights (“that all men have been created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”)  This philosophy used to be referred to as Liberalism but is now more accurately described as Populism.

Now, Christendom had a problem with lawmaking.  The Church has always taught that not everything contrary to Natural Law (or the moral law) should not be made illegal in Positive Law (human law).  Otherwise, every sin ever confessed in a confessional would be liable to prosecution by the State.  This would result in a Police State (always opposed by the Church).  However, a simple question arises as the result of this guideline.

Which violation of the Natural Law should be made illegal in Positive Law?

There was no answer offered strictly by the principles underlying Christendom.  There is no question that as a result Christendom tended at different points to make too many things illegal.  For example, the Cathars were prosecuted for heresy when they should have been prosecuted for insurrection.  The pagans of Prussia were governed by the “monastic state” of the Teutonic Knights (for their own good).  Thus, Christendom lacked a principle that prevented Positive Law from expanding to cover too much of the Natural Law.  Furthermore, the Papacy at times used its credibility as the foremost interpreter of Revealed Law to pursue a particular political agenda not mandated by Revealed Law.  For people disadvantaged by the Pope’s political agenda, this created a logically unjustified but nevertheless understandable bitterness towards the true Revealed Law itself.  This bitterness at times hampered the Church’s primary role of leading people to Heaven.

The principle of Populism resolves these issues.

The principle of Natural Rights restrains the state and provides it with a guideline for what to make illegal (only those things which violate Natural Rights).  Populism presumes that Natural Rights and Natural Law have a profound harmony.  Catholicism holds that Revealed Law has a profound harmony with Natural Law.  Thus, Catholicism can be fully satisfied by the Populism underlying the United States — finding in it a harmony between Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Revealed Law (as interpreted by the Catholic Church).

Furthermore, the Church is in fact more effective if its understanding of Natural Law must be transmitted by evangelization rather than by a formalized mutual recognition by the Church and the Monarchy.  The further separation of Church and State that Populism allows permits the Church to focus exclusively on its true role of salvation rather than creating possible confusion through the level of Church participation in the State necessitated by Christendom.  The Church can convey timeless principles without the need to get caught up in the particulars over which by its own admission it has no authority.

On the other hand, Populism simply cannot find a justification for Christendom.  Christendom was managed primarily by Aristocrats and Monarchs who were not equal before the law with the common people.  It is anachronistic to utterly condemn the feudal system because it allowed for a gradual transition from the slavery common during the Roman Empire towards greater liberty.  However, this inequality — which can be reconciled to the Catholic Faith since there is a holiness to be found in the roles of Monarchs, Aristocrats, and Commoner — is nevertheless unacceptable to Populists.

Thus, Catholics and Populists can both find satisfaction in the principles underlying the United States.    These principles allow for the Church to focus on building the holiness necessary for the City of God.  They also allow the State to have the entire Natural Law and Natural Rights framework to more effectively pursue justice in the City of Man.

Has the United States always lived up to the principle of Populism?

No.  But neither did Christendom always live up to the principle of Christianity.

But for those committed both to the Catholic faith and the principles of the Declaration of Independence, any nostalgia for a return to Christendom is profoundly misplaced.

The United States is founded on better governing principles.  Period.

Planned Parenthood Is Playing with Dangerous Fire

Headlines across the United States are blaring some variation of the headline: “Most Conservative State in America Rejects Pro-Life Amendment 58% to 42%.”

The surface story runs something like this:  Bishop Joseph Latino of Jackson, Mississippi, announced that he thought the Personhood Amendment had good intentions but suffered from bad strategy.  The Bishop announced that the Diocese of Jackson would remain neutral on the bill.  Popular GOP Governor Haley Barbour announced the strategic worries of pro-lifers (such as Bishop Latino) on MSNBC and said that many pro-lifers had legitimate concerns.  The No on 26 campaign (funded by Planned Parenthood and their allies) created an advertisement arguing that pro-lifers should oppose the Amendment.

Most of the opposition hinged on the fact that the Pill can act as an abortifacient — thinning the uterine wall, preventing implantation, and causing the embryo to die from lack of nutrients.  In a moment of gloating triumph Planned Parenthood issued a statement saying that the Amendment “would have allowed government to have control over personal decisions that should be left up to a woman, her family, her doctor and her faith, including keeping a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy from getting the care she needs, and criminalizing everything from abortion to common forms of birth control such as the pill and the IUD (the intrauterine device).”  Typically, Planned Parenthood vociferously denies that the Pill can act as an abortifacient.  They may soon deeply regret this statement.

Why is this a surprising admission?  What is Planned Parenthood’s rhetorical strategy?

In 1873, the federal government passed the Comstock Act, which banned the importation or mailing of “obscene matter” (including contraceptives and information on contraceptives).  In 1936, Margaret Sanger got that portion of the Comstock Act declared unconstitutional in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries.  In 1960, the FDA legalized the Pill while abortions were still illegal by changing the definition of conception from fertilization to implantation — thus semantically avoiding the abortifacient nature of the drug.  In 1968, Griswold v. Connecticut declared state bans on contraception were unconstitutional (in additional to federal bans which had been unconstitutional since 1936).  In 1970, the federal government began promoting contraception (and Planned Parenthood) through Title X funding.  In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized all abortion.

National Right to Life strategies all focus on overturning Roe v. Wade (returning to 1972 on abortion policy).  Their greatest victory is the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart ruling that declared that Rick Santorum’s Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was indeed constitutional.  This stopped Planned Parenthood momentum and they have been playing defense ever since.  Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for Life have gone further — starting a movement to defund Planned Parenthood but not Title X itself (a partial repeal of 1970).  However, Mitt Romney — combining fiscal and social issues — has called for the abolition of all Title X funds (taking us back to 1969).  Personhood USA has set its sights higher — on making abortion and abortifacients illegal (taking us back to 1959 on abortion policy).  They specifically chose to declare that life begins at fertilization rather than conception to pick a fight with obfuscation at the FDA and the legality of abortifacients.

Based on the campaign run by Planned Parenthood’s campaign front group No on 26, it is evident that in the heart of the Bible Belt, keeping the Pill legal has the support of 58% of citizens.  Based on the behavior of the Bishops and National Right to Life many opposed only for strategic reasons.  That is weak for an allegedly unassailable political third rail.

But if an abortifacient like the Pill can win in Mississippi, what does that mean for the US?

It is important to remember that Margaret Sanger worked through capitalizing on anti-Catholicism in the Protestant churches to build a majority consensus on contraception.  The Protestant consensus went from condemning contraception and condemning abortion to praising contraception and condemning abortion to lobbying for both.  In 1976, the Southern Baptist Convention, a flagship of Evangelicals that now serves as a strong right arm of the Evangelical-Catholic pro-life alliance, adopted a resolution stating:

“Be it further RESOLVED, that we also affirm our conviction about the limited role of government in dealing with matters relating to abortion, and support the right of expectant mothers to the full range of medical services and personal counseling for the preservation of life and health.”

It sounds like it was written by Planned Parenthood itself.  But the SBC had been lobbying to legalize abortion for years before Roe v. Wade.  However, since then, Catholics have founded the National Right to Life Committee and learned to speak the language of Populism, which has served as the rallying point of the most effective ecumenism of all — the pro-life movement.  The Southern Baptist Convention and the American Family Association now supportive this initiative (even more so than the Catholic Bishops although young lay Catholics created the Personhood USA movement).

It may be good short-term politics for Planned Parenthood to shout that the Pill is an abortifacient and that protecting the unborn will deprive people of it.

But over the long haul, Planned Parenthood is playing with fire by going where they have never gone before.  They are openly linking one of their earlier and more supported policy initiatives (the Pill) with their newer and increasingly hated policy initiative (abortion).  Conflating an unpopular policy and a popular policy moves public opinion on both issues towards the median.  Evangelicals turned against abortion but thus far have not targeted abortifacients like the Pill en mass.  But they changed their position on abortion.  Planned Parenthood is taking the risk of turning Evangelicals against the Pill as well — a newfound Catholic-Evangelical alliance aimed even more deeply at the heart of the Culture of Death.

You know what happens when people play with fire.  Someone gets burned …

A Catholic-Populist Alliance overwhelmed the USSR

As the Left engulfed Europe after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquest in a grip which it has retained in various stages of Leftist metamorphosis (Nazism and Communism being the most advanced stages of Leftist “progress”), the United States developed a radically different vision of modernity.  The Catholic Church — operating with a Euro-centric vision — failed to immediately recognize Populism as both an authentic vision for modernity and deeply compatible with the Catholic faith.  Ongoing condemnation of Modernism (a term for the Left) dominated the Church until Vatican II.

The first Populist Catholic was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence — the eternal Creed of Populism.  Lincoln referred to Populism as the “Civic Religion” of the US.  The Declaration of Independence claimed that the charter of the State lay in the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.  However, it argued that the state should concern itself with securing Natural Rights rather than enforcing Natural Law.  It implicitly left the pursuit of holiness under the Natural Law to the Church.

It is important to recognize that the Declaration of Independence expressed a series of principles that none of the states lived up to.  Every state in America had legal slavery.  Charles Carroll was a Maryland slave owner who famously asked: “Why keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil.”  Immediately after the Revolution, abolition movements began in all the states.  Charles Carroll fought for the Maryland legislature to pass a gradual emancipation bill but it was defeated.

Although Catholicism was represented only by one man at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the great waves of immigration were predominantly Catholic.  The first wave included many Catholics from southern Germany persecuted by the Prussians.  The second wave included many Irish Catholics persecuted by the British.  The third wave included many Italian Catholics fleeing Fascist Socialism.  The current wave is Latino Catholics, many of whom are fleeing from Leftist governments in South America.

The Parochial Era was an era of systematic persecution for Catholics not seen since the Roman Empire so it is not surprising that many Catholics have fled to the United States.

However, the United States has historically struggled with four great violations of the principles of the Declaration of Independence — Slavery, Segregation, Abortion, and Nativism.  Nativism ignores the fact that the United States was built on an idea and that therefore anyone who accepted our “Civic Religion” — as Abraham called it — becomes truly American.  Nativism operates under the assumption that the US is founded exclusively on self-interest and ethnic nationalism.  It has tended to resent immigrants and attempted to protect WASP culture for its own sake.  The fact that the immigrants were Catholic — with an allegiance to a Papacy repeatedly condemning “Modernism” and “Americanism” made it even worse.  A misunderstanding arose that the Church was condemning Populism rather than the Left.  However, Catholics thrived in the United States.  Legendary political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville even predicted in 1831 that the US would end up with a Catholic populace and a secularist elite.

In 1843, educator Horace Mann visited Prussia and witnessed the public school — the vessel Prussia was using to wage its Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church.  Appealing to Nativist tendencies in the American populace, Mann started a movement that created non-denominational Protestant public schools across America managed by local communities.  These schools were mandatory to attend — spewing anti-Catholicism and proselytizing small Catholic children.  In 1852, at the First Plenary Council of Baltimore, the US Bishops mandated the creation of the Catholic Parochial school system as a defense mechanism against the public schools.  They were staffed by religious and managed by priests.  The Church created introspective communities vested with the siege mentality so necessary in Europe (but less necessary in the United States).  The Bishops commissioned Hospitals, charities, and even newspapers for these self-contained communities.  The Parish Priests effectively managed these sealed communities.

Vatican II ended this siege mentality.  Gaudium et Spes — the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World — crafted an alliance with Populism and its vision of modernity.  It shifted the emphasis from the Parish Priest to the laity.  Now, the fiercest defenders of the faith are typically countless lay-led ministries such as EWTN, FOCUS, Catholics Come Home, One More Soul, Catholic Answers, CCL, and so many more.

In 1989, a Washington DC-Vatican Alliance unthinkable before 1965 shattered the Soviet Empire — the mightiest form of the Left ever witnessed in human history.

Since that time, Catholics have led the charge to defend Populism.  The National Right to Life Committee (which derives its name from the Declaration of Independence) was founded by Catholics when they were the only faith group willing to defend Populism.  The US has pursued policies that protect the religious liberty of Catholics around the world.

Catholicism and Populism need each other.

The Left is no longer confined to the Evil Empire.  It has put down its root in the United States.  And it will take both ideologies — Catholicism and Populism — to weed it out.