God and History
By Matthew M. Anger
Three centuries before Christ, the Greek poet Cleanthes said: "naught upon Earth is wrought in thy despite, O God." Wherever we look, belief in a superior power ruling over the universe has been the norm in every civilization prior to the secular societies of the modern era. Unfortunately most Westerners, even self-professed Christians, tend to think in terms of divine aloofness rather than God's active intervention, being embarrassed into this view by their peers in the media and academia. For this reason a corrective to modern deism — the idea that everything really depends on the actions or institutions of men — is long overdue.
To treat history as if "God mattered" is to get beyond the superficial and the obvious; that clutter of mere opinions and trivia about the past. Sadly, modern historiography is almost completely dominated by hobbyists on the one hand, or neo-Marxist academics on the other. The average person is simply left out in the cold. As a result we see not only a distortion of the past, but a complete indifference to history to the point where people find it meaningless. In such a vacuum, false paradigms about human nature and society are much easier to construct.
A religious view of the past is not simply another form of ivory tower idealism. On the contrary, the problems of contemporary society only make sense as we approach them from a well-ordered Christian perspective. This perspective also demands taking into account both the grand sweep of events as well as the small details. The big picture gives us a sense of direction, while observation of precise data confirms the larger truths or acts as a corrective for false idealization. Unfortunately, contemporary scholarship has seen a radical divorce of reflective and specialized study. This prompted Catholic historian Christopher Dawson to say that
[T]he immense extension of the scale of education and its ramifications into a hundred specialisms and technical disciplines has left the [secular] state as the only unifying element in the whole system. In the past the traditional system of classical education provided a common intellectual background and a common scale of values with transcended and national and political frontiers and formed the European or Western republic of letters of which every scholar was a citizen.
In the Fullness of Time
While we may treat history in a philosophical manner, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a "philosophy of history." This point may seem recondite, yet it is at the heart of modern misapprehension. History is an order or a process in time. This process, as St. Augustine explained, is not in itself an essence or a substance. It is the post-Christian thinkers like Voltaire, Hegel and Marx who erred on this point, trying to create a "philosophy of history" by which human events could be treated as predictable "patterns" and materially quantifiable "forces." This is impossible if we realize that history is the work of Divine Providence which realizes in time the eternal plan of God. This implies not only the Creation but also the Redemption of the human race in the fullness of time. Genuine historical study must, therefore, be Christocentric, based on an Incarnational perspective.
Full completion comes... when [Jesus] places his kingship in the hands of God, his Father, having first dispossessed every other sort of rule, authority, and power; his reign, as we know, must continue until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and the last of those enemies to be dispossessed is death (I Cor. 15:24-25).
The Incarnation, the birth of Christ, by its very nature occurring in time, nevertheless points out another dimension, originating from eternity and pointing to eternity. "To the Christian," says Frederick Coppleston, S.J., "history is necessarily of profound importance. It was in history that man fell, in history that he was redeemed: it is in history, progressively, that the Body of Christ on earth grows and develops and that God's plan is unfolded." More specifically it was St. Augustine who "saw in history, as he saw in the individual, the struggle between two principles of conduct, two loves," the love of God on the one hand and the love of self on the other.
All events must be seen in this context, sub specie aeternitatis (or, "as God himself sees it"). This fact was taken for granted until the late Middle Ages, but with the rise of a skeptical form of humanism in the Renaissance, history began to be particularized and divided into artificial periods in order to accommodate it to personal and philosophical bias. The Incarnational view — never precisely formulated because it was simply taken for granted in an age of vibrant faith — survived less and less with the physical decline of Christendom.
History as Intellectual Discipline
Following the long prehistoric period of mankind there emerged early civilizations whose original written records provide the first firms of historical documentation. At this point we enter the factual study of the past. Most nations and races have had folk memories to start with but only three have developed (independently) the concept of formal written history: a) the Chinese, b) the Hebrews, and c) the Greeks. The Greek poet Homer (c. 700 B.C.), author of the Iliad and Odyssey, was rooted in the epic genre recounting great events and people with the necessary mythic trappings. The purpose of this early bardic tradition was educational. The narrative was handed down from generation to generation and provided the models for the formation of the citizen of the ancient city-state.
The disciplined description of the past originates with the Greek Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.), who is considered the "Father of History." After him, Thucydides (460-394 B.C.) developed the idea further, in his Peloponnesian War which detailed the bloody civil war between Athens and Sparta, under which form it essentially passed to the Romans. By the time that Polybius (205-125 B.C.) is writing his History of Rome, he confidently speaks of history as a "profitable field of knowledge." He also says it is strange that anyone, "however commonplace or indifferent, cannot be curious to learn how the whole world fell under undisputed ascendancy of Rome within the period of less than fifty-three years." One notes the change in genre. Unlike the Homeric epic, Polybius tries to provide an exact chronology.
This profitable field of knowledge, a systematic study of the past, becomes an intellectual discipline, invented by the Greeks and Romans in an approximate time span of four centuries. It was already called historia, a separate field of study (though it was never a separate ars of the seven liberal arts; it was studied as part of two comprehensive artes, grammar and rhetoric). Polybius expresses well its concept of self-contained meaning, though his understanding is quite removed from the later, false "philosophy of history" coined by the rationalists. Rather, Polybius' meaning was in the underlying goal that history revealed for mankind. He was referring to the empires, those great political, cultural and linguistic entities, proceeding in succession through the centuries: Babylon, Persia, and Alexander's conquests giving way to the Roman Empire.
St. Augustine echoes this by saying that "we must ascribe to the true God alone the power to grant kingdoms and empires" and that God "granted dominion to the Romans" just as He "gave sovereignty to the Assyrians, and also to the Persians." It is not accidental that the Incarnation and the subsequent establishment of the Church took place at a specific time and place — within the frontiers of the Roman world. This new development saw the convergence of three elements, each seemingly separate in origin, yet all tending towards a definite culmination. Hebrew religion, Greek philosophy and Roman order formed the triune structure of Christian Europe, perfectly personified by St. Paul, a Hellenized Jew and citizen of Rome.
Rome and Imperium
According to the classical liberal view of the "Enlightenment," as brilliantly but erroneously expounded by Edward Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Rome was "the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous." Gibbon's thesis that barbarian invasions and the rise of Christianity caused the downfall of the Western Empire became a stock-in-trade argument in the popular mind. It has hardly diminished in the two hundred years since he wrote his book.
Unlike other secularizers, Gibbon's "philosophy of history" is anti-historicist in that he sees no plan or progression in human events. He believed that the succession of events have no meaning and it is up to the historian to give it one. In this sense he is more honest than liberals who claim to see inevitable social forces at work in history. Still, Gibbon was imposing his own view on the past, and it is one which does not bear up to objective study. The moral deterioration of the ancient empire set in well before the triumph of Christianity, and it was the Church, particularly the monastic institutions, which actually preserved what could still be preserved of Rome. Had it not been for this, Europe would have lapsed into a true Dark Age from which it would never have recovered. But there is little point in speculating about alternate versions of the past since its unfolding is neither random nor aimless.
The ancient Roman historians believed in the empire's eternity, as voiced by Virgil, "Imperium sine fine dedi" ("Empire without end have I granted," Jupiter declares in the Aeneid). St. Augustine presented the ultimate teleological understanding of the events of the past with clear reference to Providence which justified the idea of Rome in a way that even Virgil, the great eulogist of the Empire, had failed to do. The concept of a highly developed political and social order, the imperium, both preceded the Rome of the Caesars and survived it.
The Near East was the cradle of civilization though we seldom appreciate what that fact means. Students briefly memorize the publication of Hammurabi's legal code in 1750 B.C. and then happily forget about the clay tablets and Ziggurats of Babylon. Yet Hammurabi's legal system — highly developed and enlightened for its time — was the prototype for subsequent legal codices of the Western world. The forms may have changed over time, nevertheless the core idea of a unified system of law endured and reached its culmination in early Christian history with the Code of Justinian I in 535 A.D.
This underlying civilizational ideal of the empire, its sense of order and justice, persisted in the concept of Romanitas ("Roman-ness") in the Middle Ages. The devotion of both sacred and lay rulers to upholding the values of Latin culture reveals an intuitive understanding of a transcendent purpose behind human development as well as a linear movement towards a supreme end. It is opposed to the pagan cyclical concept of history (historia repetitur) which has, not surprisingly, resurfaced in the works of writers since the Enlightenment.
The Christian view does not glorify the Empire for its own sake in the way that many humanists and liberals have. St. Augustine was not an apologist for pagan Rome and the first half of the City of God is largely a catalog of the evils of those who denied the true faith. Nevertheless the Bishop of Hippo believed that once the natural strengths of the Empire were subordinated to revealed religion, they would benefit the latter and aid its growth. While ungodly rulers were patently unjust and exercised only a semblance of true authority, so Christian emperors would establish political justice thereby benefiting the faithful. No further proof is needed than Constantine's Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) which ensured freedom of worship for Christians and the subsequent rapid establishment of new dioceses throughout the Empire. It is the working out on a global scale of the Thomistic dictum that the supernatural is built on the natural.
The Vibrancy of Christian Culture
To some, this close identification of Christian civilization with the Roman world invites a mistaken view of the past. After all, the history of Rome and early Europe is fraught with superficial contradictions and disappointments, with political and social decline, feudal warfare and economic collapse. What this tells us, however, is that a purely state-sponsored culture, typical in Oriental nations, would not have survived the disasters that beset the late Empire. Unlike Christianized Rome, such a society is not truly dynamic. In those places where the political and social order became absolutely identical, culture is rendered static as happened in Egypt and China (and perhaps once again in the increasingly socialized Western states).
The concept of imperium, as a living principle derived from God's active intervention in history, came to fruition under Christianity and thus defies categorization as a mere political construct. It emerged from the collapse of the Western Empire because it was not strictly identical with the Rome of the Caesars. And while it was coextensive with the Church's spiritual life, there being a clear and necessary interaction between the two, it was not identical with it either. The spiritual will always take priority over the material. Paradoxically this supernatural dimension is the key to the survivability of the Roman ideal, in that it was taken up and nurtured by a force greater than itself, whereas anything less would have engendered decay.
Things like social discipline, artistic expression, military power or economic competition do not exist for their own sakes, and when treated as self-sufficient ends they become perverted and even destructive. This is especially true for an advanced culture. The Incarnational view does not admit of any simplistic solution to societal problems and understands that the tension between the secular and the sacred is never fully resolved on this plane. As Sir Kenneth Clark observed in his famous documentary series Civilisation, this tension imposes a necessary striving for balance and is the source of vibrancy in our culture which sets it apart from all others, not only Eastern nations, but also the ancient pagan world. For Christians, perhaps the best proof of the providential nature of the development of the Roman concept lies in its robust continuity despite the shifting political topography of Europe.
Firstly, God does not measure success and failure in the way that we do. With the benefit of hindsight we can often see triumph amid failure. Likewise disaster will loom up amid apparent victory. The fact that the concept of imperium shifted from Rome to Constantinople and then was miraculously taken up by the very people who had nearly destroyed it — the Franks and the Germans — indicates no random phenomenon but some superior plan which we may discern, if dimly, with the passage of time. The collapse of Byzantium did not spell the end of our civilization. The Eastern Empire had departed from Rome both religiously and culturally. Its ecclesiastics evolved into a political appendage of the state (a situation which later prevailed in Orthodox Russia). Lacking the necessary moral independence of their Catholic counterparts, Byzantium's life resembled more and more the static societies of the Orient. Outwardly superior in political and military strength, Constantinople would be eclipsed by the true renascence of Rome under the converted barbarians of the West.
Secondly, the fact that the Christian commonwealth has never been restricted to one nation or people again demonstrates God's intervention for the purpose of evangelization and also continually reinvigorating, as it were, the human side of the Church. Hence at many points in history the civilizing mission was exercised by multiple states simultaneously. French, Germans, Spanish and Slavic peoples variously took the lead in the Catholic social order, with the smaller nations also finding a meaningful and valuable role within a scheme that fosters complimentarity rather than crass competitiveness or bland conformity.
The Germans embraced the imperial concept in the form of the multiethnic Holy Roman Empire, later transformed into the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary which provided 1,000 years of stability in Central Europe. Spain was the bulwark against militant Islam and led the way in a phenomenal conquest and conversion of the New World. France became the nexus of Europe both geographically and intellectually. It was a much needed point of stability for the outer marches of Christendom; a citadel to those embattled realms which formed our frontier against the savage and infidel. Even England, though not a "superpower" prior to the Reformation, left its enduring imprint on the West thanks to such intellects as the Venerable Bede, John of Salisbury and St. Thomas More. Nor does this unity in diversity (as understood in the original Christian sense) end with the recent cultural and religious decline of Europe. Evangelization continues and the role of Catholic peoples, in the Americas and Asia, is a story still unfolding.
Conflict and Continuity
As Malcolm Muggeridge wrote: "Thus can be seen, underlying the chaos of the world and of a spectator's own mind, God's order." The fact that the Christian nations have sadly been at odds with one another does not disprove the truth of Western unity, but reminds us of the fallen nature of mankind and the inability to put our confidence in a purely political settlement. Unlike other non-Christian societies, the rise and decline of individual states never threatened our cultural survival, and to some extent the inability of any single state to dominate Christendom acted as a safeguard against the absolutism which confronted the Church throughout its history (as for example, under Emperor Frederick II or Louis XIV). Standing at the opposite extreme from barbarian anarchy is total state control. Both are deviations from the mean of classical polity. Only in recent centuries, when the influence of the Church has been eliminated or reduced, has this absolutism advanced to a degree unthinkable to ancient tyrants in the form of crushing totalitarianism. By contrast, older Christian Europe survived and even flourished in the midst of political upheaval, invasions by barbarians and infidels, and devastating plagues, proving that it is not external but internal enemies that really threaten the imperium of Christian culture. It is loss of morale in the form of a spiritual collapse that corrodes society.
If the timeless concept of civilization has virtually disappeared, it is not because it is no longer viable. There is no greater need for an "Incarnational" ordering of society than today. But, as with the early Church surrounded by hostile pagan powers, the vision of Romanitas may pass into eclipse only to be brought back, perhaps even more resilient and vital than before, by the restoration of true Christian life.
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Matthew Anger is a freelance journalist who has written essays on history, philosophy and literature from a Catholic perspective. He lives with his wife and seven children in the Richmond, Virginia area, where he is employed as a web/multimedia designer. In addition to Seattle Catholic, he contributes to The Latin Mass and Homiletic & Pastoral Review.
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Separation And Its Discontents
The Myth of American Church-State Relations
by Matthew M. Anger
Craycraft’s argument... places him far afield of mainstream American Catholic thought. Radical as it is... his book is in many ways a rather scholarly, serious, and cogently argued exposition. It expresses an outlook that has rarely been heard in America but was once widely trumpeted in Europe, and not all that long ago. - Jeremy Rabkin, Policy Review (August & September 1999)
Though it has been in print for a few years now, Kenneth Craycraft’s American Myth of Religious Freedom (Spence Publishing, 1999) is worth another look as a remarkable study on the subject of American Church-State separation. Not only is the American Myth a long overdue Catholic appraisal, it also represents a paradigm shift among conservative thinkers outside those traditionalist circles that have hitherto been most vocal on the subject. Craycraft was the first to break ranks and enunciate a thorough and appropriately merciless, critique of the whole notion of "religious liberty." The concluding remarks of the book leave little room for second-guessing:
There is no such thing as religious freedom, and the reason that such an assertion sounds so shocking is that we have been completely formed by the American myth.
This position was arrived at by Craycraft as part of a reassessment, in the 1980s and early ‘90s, of the writings of John Courtney Murray, S.J. Best known for his treatise, We Hold These Truths, Fr. Murray was the prime architect of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae). Given the now "mainstream" status of indifferentism in church-state relations it is not surprising that Craycraft’s forthright discussion provoked heated controversy within the neo-conservative Catholic camp. This group comprises men like George Weigel, Michael Novak and Richard John Neuhaus. Their passionate reaction to Craycraft merely proves how wedded the dominant Catholic bloc is to an ideology which seeks to reconcile the irreconcilables of Americanist dogma and Church doctrine.
Synopsis of the Work
The American Myth presents a closely reasoned treatise of under 200 pages, which negates decades of sentimental cant about a supposedly Christian understanding of the "religious liberty" precept of the First Amendment. Craycraft’s analysis runs the gamut of recent political studies, precedent setting court decisions, and the question of the Founders’ intent, and includes discussion of Jefferson, Madison and the formative ideas of English secularist philosopher, John Locke.
The sections of the book that stand out most for their clarity and vigor are those directly treating the problem of secular American politics and ideology. Ironically, the sections which prove difficult are those which attempt an orthodox interpretation of the current Vatican response to religious liberty. Given the intellectual power of the work and its potentially pivotal role in genuine conservative thought, one almost hesitates to criticize The American Myth, yet the difficulties of the book cannot be conveniently shuffled aside. Nevertheless, the murky ambiguities of Vatican II are far from the most interesting or momentous aspects of Craycraft's book.
Secularization in Practice
Craycraft has a keen sense of what priorities will most impress the reader. He starts with important court decisions and well-publicized controversies over issues of traditional religion and the doctrine of "tolerance." The author notes the baneful fruits of religious liberty. Then, having made clear the overwhelming juridical and mainstream ethical bias against orthodox belief, he traces these fruits to the source which begat them.
Among the many court cases under consideration, the most striking is the Alabama school prayer case of Wallace v. Jaffre (1985). Justice John Paul Stevens made explicit the otherwise implicit opposition of the secularist state to revealed religion. It is worth citing at length, since Craycraft deems it of tremendous importance:
The individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. The Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. This conclusion derives support not only from the interest in respecting the individual's freedom of conscience, but also from the conviction that religious beliefs worthy of respect are the product of a free and voluntary choice of the faithful [author's emphasis].
Craycraft says this is the key to deciphering the myth of religious liberty. Only "voluntary" creeds are "worthy." It is the underlying raison d'être of Americanist religious thinking.
Adapting the terminology of Michael Sandel, who has studied national judicial activity in some detail, Craycraft explains that according to the Americanist concept of religious pluralism, individual rights stand paramount to any religious system. Liberalism not only rejects, but cannot even begin to contemplate, the idea that a person receives his religious and moral convictions from some outside agency (which, of course, would include God's direct action by means of supernatural grace). Thus liberalism speaks of people in a free society as "unencumbered selves." In order for a religious experience to be "authentic" it must completely free and subjective. By contrast, "encumbered" selves (orthodox believers) can have no proper standing under the law, both as originally conceived in the First Amendment and as enacted in everyday court decisions. That is because the Catholic, for example, takes his moral guidance from a transcendent authority—a source which the secularist state does not acknowledge.
If the state does grant concessions (which it does), these are only exceptions to the rule. They are pragmatic means of avoiding tension and maintaining the peace, and nothing else. One example is the exceptional ruling in favor of an Amish farmer in Wisconsin who violated that state’s law on mandatory schooling for children up to the age of fifteen (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972). The sensible deduction from this case, and others like it, is that the state can permit exemptions to an essentially non-threatening sect like the Amish which does not challenge the federal policy of religious neutralization. As the late Allan Bloom observed, the majority of Americans who practice a form of nominal Protestantism have essentially "ceased to be Christian." Bloom believes, with good reason, that "most Americans who think that they are Christians truly are something else, intensely religious but devout in the American Religion."
In truth, Americans practice a religion that has little resemblance to historical Christianity and instead embodies Gnosticism, radical personal autonomy, and salvation unmediated by the Church. The result is that the majority pose no significant threat to the doctrine of the "unencumbered self," while traditional religious groups, both Catholic and non-Catholic, are marginalized. Though Craycraft does not say so, this marginalization of native Catholicism is presently carried out through neo-modernist clerics and lay leaders who have effectively turned the faith into a "voluntary creed," though the faith being what it is, tensions are not completely eradicated, nor will they ever be. Hence, Craycraft notes the furor which erupted over Cardinal O’Connor’s 1990 declaration in favor of excommunicating public figures who supported abortion. The media, representing the broad political consensus, charged that the Church was meddling in politics by pressuring Catholic politicians to adopt a stance in line with its teaching. Hence O’Connor was placing the Church above the democratic process and thereby acting in an unAmerican manner. These charges are no different in essence from the violent anti-Catholic Know-Nothingism of the 19th century. It is further proof of Craycraft’s thesis. Revealed doctrine cannot be reconciled to a liberal theory which, on the one hand, claims religious freedom yet sets the standards for which religions are deserving of that freedom. Absolute and universal tolerance does not exist.
The Meaning of Myth
Perhaps no greater service can be done today than to warn Catholics against adopting the cultural constructs and language of their opponents. Sadly, it is something they have done for many generations, and most especially since the 1960s. Such intellectual compromise is a surer means of defeat than the most violent assault by external enemies. Craycraft is merely echoing the admonition of Dr. John Rao’s brilliant essay "Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves." According to both men, conservatives are doomed to defeat when they try to "out-liberal" the liberals. The real coup takes place when the secularist forces his enemy to embrace the superficial definition of a word such as "tolerance," which has different definitions according to the object towards which it is applied. Conservatives feel compelled to be lenient towards liberal error even as liberals suppress traditional beliefs. The former accept pluralism at face value, as if it were really possible to achieve a sublime mediocrity in which everyone practices different creeds yet agrees on some set of "common values" which allows them to live in peace. Of course, the inherent contradictions of such a middle-of-the road position are obvious. One can no more take a stand on a vague secular ethical consensus than one can take a stand in mid air.
Despite the manifold evidence such as Craycraft provides, people will claim that daily hostility to organized religion on the part of judicial and legislative officials is actuall a betrayal of the Founders’ original intention. They say that "separation of Church and State" means "liberty for religion," not "from religion." It is, supposedly, the true genius of the pluralistic philosophy. Before proceeding to demonstrate that active secularization was the foundational intent, Craycraft discusses the point which is really at the heart of the decades-long debate over church-state relations—the pluralist myth which makes misperception on the part of conservatives possible.
A myth, says Craycraft, can be understood in two ways. First, as the ancient idea of mythos which is a set of rites, symbols and institutions that sustain a particular community. These things may not be absolutely true in themselves but do point to some greater underlying truth about a society. The other definition of myth is something false and deliberately deceptive. For Craycraft the American experiment in religious liberty is a myth in both senses.
It is a myth insofar as, despite its claims, the liberal idea of religious liberty as canalized in the First Amendment is a particular and exclusive understanding of religion, a particular story of what we Americans think—or ought to think—about religion and society. And it is a myth in the more popular sense that, insofar as it claims to protect religious freedom in its full and authentic sense, it is simply not true. Rather than protect authentic freedom of religious thought and practice... the American myth has given rise to a set of symbols, rites, and institutions which always subject religion to itself, and often positively hinder religious practice.... The American attempt to overcome political religious myth-making has not succeeded because it cannot succeed.
Based on this conclusion, the author categorically denies each of the following propositions: 1) the founding of the United States was essentially religious, and guided by Christian principles; 2) that even if strongly secular, the state affords an equal degree of security to religious and non-religious people alike; 3) that religious liberty is an obtainable arrangement in any society; and 4) that religious believers are best off in a regime which propagates religious indifference, or that such a regime is itself merely an enlightened product of Christianity. On the contrary:
The only definition of religious liberty in American political discourse is one that marginalizes, if not eradicates as a significant presence, orthodox religious belief. The American story is not interested in explicitly persecuting Christianity. Toleration is a much more effective means, especially if the liberal regime is successful in enlisting the support of Christians.
Founders' Intent
Craycraft tells us that the drive to invalidate orthodox faith ("encumbered self") and the gradual co-option and neutralization of religion are not new developments. The two men credited for creating and nurturing this doctrine in its American context are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Their mentor was the English rationalist philosopher, John Locke.
Madison's role, though consequential, is not as well known. As for Jefferson, it astonishing how any conservative can contend that the man was "religious" (in the Christian understanding of the word). Devout Protestants of the day cursed the Unitarian statesman as an "atheist." Jefferson reciprocated by damning all forms of revealed religion as obscurantism. Of the Catholic Church in particular he spoke of meddling priests and "monkish ignorance." Suffice it to say, the lasting accomplishment of the Virginia Deist in American politics, and the one he most wished to be remembered for, was the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty. This law was the prototype for the First Amendment.
James Madison's influence was at least as decisive as Jefferson's. He not only supported the secularist ethos which underlies religious liberty but, more importantly, he used his mastery of the language to foist religious neutralization on a people which, Craycraft believes, still regarded themselves as essentially Christian. Madison advanced the secularist position in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance of 1785 (which opposed Patrick Henry's proposal of tax-funded religious institutions) and in the columns of the influential Federalist Papers. In 1819 he wrote that civil government "functions with complete success... by the total separation of the Church from the State."
Craycraft notes Madison's deliberate irony on religious matters. In this he was following the lead of John Locke (whose notions of widespread "religious tolerance" included no clemency for the suffering English Catholics of his time). The making of the Americanist myth is fully at work in Madison’s career. He knew that the proposition must not be too bluntly stated lest it rouse the latent opposition of the mass of practicing and nominal Protestants. Therefore he phrased the idea in such a way that it would settle comfortably in his listeners’ ears while still achieving his ultimate aim. In the end, explains Craycraft, Madison's delicacy and patience won out over the short-lived opposition of his more religious-minded compatriots.
Some have stubbornly maintained that what Madison and others were aiming at was not a negation of Christianity but simply "articles of peace" which would provide religious neutrality and avoid the sort of bloody conflicts which had so long ravaged Europe. Yet, as regards the Virginia politician's intent, there can be no doubt. If his well-known writings are not clear enough, we have access to his unpublished "Detached Memoranda" (made public in 1946). According to Craycraft, these "betray Madison's explicit hostility to institutional Christianity, and further reveal the theological and religious presuppositions behind his public documents." In his private writings he admits that he does not simply wish to "disestablish religion," but to actively curb and monitor it by taxing religious bodies so as to limit property-ownership to a bare minimum. By such means liberalism would truly equalize religious opinions, physically as well as legally. For all of the fine distinctions between American and French liberals, it was a scheme worthy of Robespierre.
Not Liberty But Neutralization
Madison’s ideas dovetailed nicely with Jefferson's belief that the ideal moral framework is one in which there is a vast proliferation of inconsequential denominations and independent churches, each competing with the next. "Freedom," Madison said, "arises from a multiplicity of sects." That is because no one body can attempt to impose orthodoxy upon another. Jefferson similarly opined that the best way "to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them." It is further proof that the First Amendment achieves the gentle but certain neutralization of serious religious activity. Attentive study of the Founders' actions and beliefs makes clear that "freedom of religion" did indeed mean "freedom from religion," since the predominant views of the eighteenth century held that the only moral system entitled to respect was one entirely "rational" and voluntary. Revealed religion does not make the mark.
As for the Christian influence of men like Charles Carroll, the Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, it may well be that Carroll sincerely viewed the First Amendment as "terms of peace," alleviating decades-long oppression of his co-religionists and permitting the faith to develop unhindered by political considerations. This, Craycraft points out, was the perception of many ordinary Americans, but not that of key figures who shaped and implemented national policy. The actual course of American history, of which the current phase of obscene neo-paganism is an inextricable part, is indebted to the original plan to transform America into a deistic state. At best, sincere Christians have fought a rear-guard action in a battle they were meant to lose.
Locke and the Doctrine of Toleration
It is important to say something about the originator of the "religious liberty" within the English-speaking world, if only because some feel that there was an indirect orthodox influence on the Constitution via John Locke. The rather maddening claim is that the liberal philosopher perpetuated the traditional natural law tradition, albeit under a non-Catholic and rationalistic guise. This is a clear misreading of Locke, since his idea of "natural law" is merely a reiteration of the Hobbesian "law of nature." This latter holds that man, in a "state of nature," is inherently alienated and individualistic. Civil society (and by extension, religious association) are artificial constructs developed to maintain peace and foster social utility. Locke's idea involves a categorical denial of the classical theory of morality and politics as handed down by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. So much for the crypto-Scholasticism of John Locke.
The clear basis for the Jefferson-Madison neutralization of Christianity resides in Locke’s Letter Concerning Religious Toleration (1685). Cutting through the baroque idiom of the period, Craycraft offers a summary:
...Locke understood that orthodox Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism) is a natural enemy of the liberal regime. But since it was not possible to eliminate the political effects of such religion by force, Locke set out to do it by reason—by reducing "authentic" religion to a set of opinions whose adherents need not (indeed, must not) consider to be exclusively true. The exclusive truth that members of this regime must hold is that no religion possesses exclusive truth, or, perhaps, any truth at all. Any person or church which rejects this "truth" is a menace to the regime, and cannot reasonably expect unqualified toleration.
That is why Locke’s public opposition to freedom of worship for Catholics in 1667 is not a contradiction of, but totally in keeping with, the liberal dogma of religious liberty. Because "papists" were intolerant (they practiced an exclusive creed) they could not be tolerated. They advanced a belief, contrary to liberal-Whig position, of "encumbered selves" who would have an ethical commitment prior to the state.
Noting the impossibility of unqualified tolerance in any society, Craycraft goes on to assert that liberalism and Catholicism are actually alike in one key respect—both make claims to absolute truth. Unfortunately many believers today feel uncomfortable with such contentions, partly out of ignorance and partly out of indifference. It is nicer to maintain that the two creeds can affect a modus vivendi, even if one condemns the increasingly "elitist" and "intolerant" stance of politically correct secularism. One likes to deny that the Church itself has always been "elitist" and "intolerant." Such terms, of course, stick in one's craw. That is because liberals provide double-think definitions to serve their own agenda, in which "anti-elitism" really means totalitarian control and "free speech" equals social and economic censorship of undesirable views. Indicative of the real intentions of liberal doctrine, Craycraft cites two recent exponents of Lockean "tolerance"—Francis Fukiyama (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992) and Stephen Carter (The Culture of Disbelief, 1993). Both men envision a humanist republic in which "religion" plays an active role, but only so long as it is subsumed under the monistic order in which traditional beliefs, particularly orthodox Roman Catholicism, are eliminated (Fukiyama says so openly, while Carter broadly hints at it in his condemnations of Pat Buchanan).
The Murray Dilemma
For all the concentrated force of Craycraft's study, its impact is lessened by a protracted deflection into the neo-modernism of John Courtney Murray. To his credit, Craycraft’s approval of Murray is far from unqualified. He criticizes the liberal priest’s reading of the First Amendment as "articles of peace." It is not, says Craycraft, that Murray believed the Founders intended it to act as such, but the cleric felt that Catholics could nevertheless appropriate the language to their own ends and make use of religious freedom as if it did mean exactly that. According to The American Myth, such an optimistic theory must be held dubious at best. Unaccountably, Craycraft maintains that Murray's reasoning was essentially sound, even though the brief remainder of the priest's career (he died in 1967) reveals an increasing radicalization of his teaching which ended in proposing dialogue with Marxists and asserting that civil society, not the Church, was ultimate arbiter of contemporary ethical norms.
It is true that preliminary to the Council, Fr. Murray advanced orthodox arguments in favor of the Church's prior claim to religious liberty ("freedom for the Church") and the obligation of individuals to respond to its call to conservation and salvation. But that merely clouds the issue. He makes assertions that, if not in open contradiction to, nevertheless tend towards a liberal humanist rendering of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. It is the kernel of the modernist falsehood—a theory containing both truth and error, and thus advancing error in a more subtle and unimpeded manner than would blatant heresy. To say that Murray was "conservative" relative to the liberation theologians of the 1970s is meaningless.
As noted above, Craycraft tells us that the First Amendment cannot be treated as a fundamental dictate with reference only to itself. It must be judged by an unchanging and objective standard as established by true religion. Unfortunately, Craycraft appears guilty of the very mindset he condemns when he adopts a rationale towards Murray's writing and the Council as if these things were primary sources of authority, carrying with them doctrinal status. One would have preferred that he had drawn the logical comparison between Dignitatis Humanae and the writings of Madison, in which radical ends are advanced in moderate and vague terminology.
Opportunism Rebounds
The crux of the Murrayite thesis (as contained in We Hold These Truths) can be summed up not so much as a formal rejection of the Church as repository of truth but as a pragmatic or utilitarian compromise in the face of the reality of the pluralist society. Religious freedom "is not a per se good for Murray; it is an exigent one."
It would have made Craycraft's job far easier, and his analysis less tangential, had he simply placed Murray within the greater context of the Americanist error. Other questions, such as prudential implementation of Church policy, non-coercion (in matters of religious conversion), and natural law considerations, are extremely interesting and Craycraft does a good job handling them. Nevertheless, they are secondary to the main point of the magisterial view on church-state relations.
Prior to Vatican II, the proper role of these relations had been explicitly enunciated in the ex cathedra statements of Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos), followed by Pius IX (Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors). These pronouncements, quite unlike the tortuous language of the Council, were entirely consistent with themselves and with Catholic teaching as a whole. They commanded without exception that the state has the duty to recognize and protect true religion. Further, no society can say that man has an inherent right to be indifferent to the Church's claims. But the problem in this country was not one of theory but implementation. So, rather than implement it, however gradually, the theory was ignored.
The American hierarchy, which had made concessions to the First Amendment from the outset, largely committed itself to a "neutralist" position. In other words, they advanced Murray's expedient of pragmatism long before Murray. Compromise was a matter of convenience. This tactic sought to put off, if not completely obviate, the unavoidable conflict between pluralism and the Catholic faith. Thus, by the time Fr. Murray deliberated upon the matter in the 1950s, there was an underlying tension which had never been resolved and had never gone away.
Murray was honest enough to see that it could not be suppressed indefinitely and demanded a clear settlement. The old tactic of sublime apathy could not endure. The logical answer was that American thought had to be brought in line with the Magisterium. Yet Murray ingenuously sought a "third option," neither ignoring nor conforming to Catholic doctrine. He went about restating the Magisterium in a manner that appeared to justify Americanism and religious liberty. Only in this way can we begin to understand what went on, first in Murray's mind, and then in the minds of the leading modernists at the Council.
On a superficial level the clerical progressives, including Murray, said they acknowledged the legitimacy of the confessional state. Yet whether advancing the confessional state or the indifferentist one, the criterion of value offered was that of historical conditions, not a moral absolute. In other words, if a Catholic state already exists, that is fine, but if a non-Catholic state exists, that is also acceptable. No longer would the Vatican encourage every nation to become a Catholic state. It is, of course, merely a type of relativism which says, as Murray did indeed say, that while certain principles may be true in principle they cannot be realized in fact. Look where Murray's "pragmatism" has lead us.
All so-called practical approaches ultimately serve some ideal, even if that ideal is purely shallow and materialistic. Murray's pragmatism does serve some principal. But it is a principal other than that of the Church, which is to "Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15). Murrayism is the handmaid of pluralism, not evangelization.
Relevancy Made Irrelevant
The almost instantaneous fall-out from the Vatican's outward abandonment of the magisterial teaching on the duties of state to religion hardly needs elaboration. Under the aegis of Dignitatis Humanae the majority of bishops have handed the initiative to the prevailing naturalist regime and washed their hands of Catholic social teaching. Many pundits, from George Neumayr to Pat Buchanan, have observed that "relevancy" renders Catholicism completely irrelevant in the eyes of the world. The sad reality has been noted not only by traditionalists, but a growing number of conservative Catholic writers like James Fitzpatrick of Catholic Exchange.
It is interesting that Craycraft's acceptance of Dignitatis Humanae is diffident. There is an unacknowledged disharmony between an integral understanding of religious liberty, which he so fearlessly articulates, and the "official" contemporary stance of the Church. The upshot is a pessimistic notion of church-state relations that verges on a form of quietism, in which the Church must abandon its political involvement and concern itself solely with influencing society through spiritual means. Craycraft asserts that the alternative—official recognition of our religion by the state, starting with the supposedly ill-fated sanction of Christianity by Constantine in 313 A.D.—must entail widespread corruption and diminution of the Church’s role of spreading the faith. Such a view seems born more of reactive, if understandable, cynicism than sober historical consideration.
Even if the perfect church-state relationship is never to be obtained, at least the effort to do so achieved a very high standard in centuries past. After all, the Spanish Catholic monarchy of the 16th century set about colonizing the New World with conversion of souls as its stated primary intention. Whatever baser motives might have been in the minds of some Conquistadors, the fact is that millions of indigenous peoples were baptized just at the very moment when much of northern Europe was apostatizing (and, by the way, overthrowing the social and political authority of Catholicism). Today, in compliance with the new pragmatist dictate, which accepts the pluralist state as the norm, those areas won to the Church at such great cost are falling away completely.
Final Assessment
The answers to the Conciliar dilemma, and its unique non-dogmatic status, have been ably dealt with by writers like Michael Davies and Romano Amerio and need not be detailed here. Nevertheless, one feels that that Mr. Craycraft could have spared himself a great deal of grief if, instead of relying on John Courtney Murray as an authority on American religious liberty, he had turned to that unsung hero of anti-modernism, Msgr. Joseph Fenton.
Fr. Fenton was a determined opponent of the Murrayite view, who engaged in a running debate with the liberals in the years leading up to the Council. In a last ditch attempt to forestall the Americanist triumph, Fr. Fenton insisted that Church teaching
bears not the slightest resemblance to the explanation in We Hold These Truths [by Murray]. It is not a matter of Catholic politic or of Catholic tactic, but a matter of Christian doctrine, that in itself and objectively the state or civil society is obligated to give public and corporate worship to God, to pay to God the debt of acknowledgement due to Him because of His supreme excellence and because of our complete dependence upon Him. Under certain circumstances the payment of this debt may be impossible, but in any event it is definitely not a good or desirable thing to have any state withhold from God the payment of the debt of religion which is due to God.
The flaws noted in this review by no means negate the power of Craycraft's groundbreaking work. It is the most honest assessment of the church-state issue to be published, outside of traditional circles, since the articles of Msgr. Fenton. The mere fact it has seen the light of day establishes an important and precedent-setting step. Such a step, once made, cannot easily be retracted.
Despite its ambiguity on the question of Murray and the Council, The American Myth inclines more to the orthodox viewpoint than the prevailing neo-modernist one, while the chapters discussing American political and cultural concerns are irreproachable. One is inclined to agree with the critic from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute who said that the upshot of his analysis must necessarily be "a return to the old pre-Conciliar view."
Matthew Anger is a freelance Catholic journalist who writes on historical and literary subjects. He lives with his wife and seven children in the Richmond, Virginia area.
SOURCES:
1 Craycraft, Kenneth R. Jr., The American Myth of Religious Freedom. Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 1999.
2 D'Elia, Donald J., The Spirits of '76, A Catholic Inquiry. Christendom Publications, 1983.
3 Fenton, Msgr. Joseph, "Doctrine and Tactic in Catholic Pronouncements on Church and State," American Ecclesiastical Review, October 1961.
4 Murray, John Courtney, "Religious Freedom," Freedom and Man. New York: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1965.
5 Murray, John Courtney, We Hold These Truths, Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960.
6 Rao, Dr. John C., Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States and "Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves". William Marra, 1995.
The Virgin, St Columba And Oregon
I'm a displaced Oregonian, but even after all the years living in Spain I still have vivid memories of the Colombia River. From living near Astoria and sturgeon fishing, to rafting, boating and Croppie/Crappie fishing trips, to living in Eastern Oregon and always passing through The Gorge - the Colombia River truly was the river that plays in the background of many of my memories.
But I wonder how many people - Oregonians amongst them - realize that the actual name for this mighty river is Catholic in origen, and relates to St. Columba (see the post on St. Columbkille: There Is A Grey Eye) and the Virgin Mary.
In 1775, the Spaniard Bruno de Heceta was placed in charge of three boats, the Santiago (St James), San Carlos (Saint Charles) and the Sonora. His mission was to sail up the Pacific Coast to not only discover new land for the Spanish crown, but to also offset the encroachment of the Russians.Initially, Bruno de Heceta thought the Columbia River was the Juan de Fuca Straits, however he quickly realized that in fact it was the mouth of a large river. However, Bruno de Heceta was unsuccessful in his attempts to enter the river, which as any local knows that the Columbia bar can be particularily difficult to navegate.
Neverthless, Bruno de Heceta named the area the "Bahía de la Asunción" or "Assumption Bay," in honor of the Virgin Mary's Assumption into Heaven.
Bruno de Heceta went on to explore the coastal lands of Oregon and Washington, naming them for Spain.
It is upon that backdrop that, as as many school-children know, Captain Robert Gray in 1792 sailed into the Pacific Northwest aboard a ship called the Columbia, (although more correctly called the Columbia Rediviva) to trade for fur and "discovered" the mightiest river of the west.
The Columbia Rediviva was, according to Wikipedia, "originally built in 1773 by James Briggs at Hobart’s Landing on North River and named simply the Columbia. The ship was then rebuilt in 1787, this is where the rediviva comes from as this means revived. The ship was decommissioned and salvaged in 1806. A replica of Lady Washington and is located at Grays Harbor Historical Seaport in Aberdeen, Washington. The name was re-used by the Space Shuttle Columbia by NASA."What is often forgotten - or perhaps overlooked in history courses - is that the Columbia Rediviva was named after the Irish and Scottish patron saint St Columba (St Columbkille), in recognition of the Gaelic saint also being viewed as a sailor - after all he did sail in the sixth century AD from Ireland to found a monastery on the island of Iona in Scotland (for the full story on this read St. Columbkille: There Is A Grey Eye).
As an aside, the song Roll on Columbia was ...
part of the Columbia River Ballads, a set of 26 songs written by Guthrie as part of a commission by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the federal agency created to sell and distribute power from the river's federal hydroelectric facilities, in particular the Bonneville Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. At the time, the agency was facing a controversy because several counties in Washington and Oregon had begun construction of their own dams on the Columbia, outside of the federal jurisdiction. On the recommendation of Alan Lomax, the BPA hired Guthrie to write a set of propaganda songs about the federal projects to gain support for federal regulation of hydroelectricity.
As part of the effort, Guthrie, who was from Oklahoma and knew little about the Pacific Northwest, was driven all around Washington and Oregon to gain inspiration from the sites of the Columbia and its tributaries. Guthrie was glad he was able to tour and get a feel for the area, commenting that "these Pacific Northwest songs and ballads have all got these personal feelings for me because I was there on these very spots and very grounds before."
Of the Columbia River Ballads "Roll on, Columbia" was by far the most popular. Because of the song's message and popularity, it was established as the official folk song of the State of Washington in 1987.
Lyrics
Chorus:
Roll on, Columbia, roll on
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on, Columbia, roll on.
The song begins with the chorus and it is sung after each verse. The phrase "darkness to dawn" is a reference about how hydroelectric power was bringing electricity to homes in rural areas, which had never had it before.
Green Douglas firs where the waters cut through
Down her wild mountains and canyons she flew
Canadian Northwest to the oceans so blue
Roll on Columbia, roll on
The Columbia River rises in British Columbia, in the alpine forests of the Cascades and northern Rockies. The river runs from southern Canada to the Pacific Ocean at the border between Washington and Oregon.
Other great rivers add power to you
Yakima, Snake, and the Klickitat, too
Sandy, Willamette and Hood River too
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
This verse talks about some of the Columbia's tributaries. These rivers themselves are fairly grand and they add to the Columbia's prowess.
Tom Jefferson's vision would not let him rest
An empire he saw in the Pacific Northwest
Sent Lewis and Clark and they did the rest
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
Thomas Jefferson's vision of Manifest Destiny, the idea that the United State would extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, began to be realized when the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the mouth of the Columbia in 1805.
It's there on your banks that we fought many a fight
Sheridan's boys in the blockhouse that night
They saw us in death but never in flight
So roll on Columbia, roll on
Later in the 19th century, when white settlers followed the Oregon Trail westward, they were met with resistance from the Native Americans. This verse talks about a battle with a congress of the northwestern tribes in the area surrounding Cascade Locks on the Washington bank of the Columbia. If the Indians had taken this blockhouse, they would have continued on into Oregon and to the Willamette Valley. However, they were stopped when Philip Henry Sheridan sailed across the river from Fort Vancouver with reinforcements and cannon.
At Bonneville now there are ships in the locks
The waters have risen and cleared all the rocks
Shiploads of plenty will steam past the docks
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
Bonneville Dam, the first dam built on the Columbia, had locks built into it so ships could navigate past it. There was a lot of concern that the dams would prevent the shipment of goods and passengers along the length of the river.
And on up the river is Grand Coulee Dam
The mightiest thing ever built by a man
To run the great factories and water the land (in some versions reads "To run the great factories for Ol' Uncle Sam")
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
Grand Coulee Dam, the second dam built on the Columbia was the biggest slab of concrete in existence at the time of its construction. The electricity it generated was used in many kinds of industry, and the water in Lake Roosevelt, Grand Coulee's reservoir, was used for irrigation.
These mighty men labored by day and by night
Matching their strength 'gainst the river's wild flight
Through rapids and falls, they won the hard fight
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
Construction of a river-spanning dam is not easy. The river must be diverted while it's being built. The workers had to create channels for the water to flow around the construction site and make sure the areas would stay dry. For the time, building Grand Coulee and Bonneville was one of the greatest achievements of the United States.
Christianity and the Pursuit of Leisure
"And what of the opportunity to retire to the society of the best men, and to select some model by which we may direct our own lives? But we can do this only in leisure." — Seneca, On Leisure
By Matthew M. Anger
It may seem that the quest for leisure has become a fetish for us moderns, and the less said of it the better. But Joseph Pieper quickly opens our eyes with the suggestion that our culture does not suffer from the overabundance of leisure but, rather, its scarcity. He would remind us of Aristotle's rather startling assertion that "the first principle of action is leisure." Taking time off from work means more than just bouts of amusement amidst purely utilitarian commotion and toil. Socrates' called leisure "the most valuable of possessions," emphasizing that it is the cultivation of the mind for the purpose of fostering and developing virtue.
In a long and productive life that evinced the mental and spiritual repose he defended in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, German born Joseph Pieper emerged as an outstanding Catholic thinker of the twentieth century. T. S. Eliot said of him that "however difficult his thought may sometimes be, his sentences are admirably constructed, his ideas expressed with the maximum clarity." As such, Eliot considered Pieper a philosopher who aimed at concision and insight rather than inflated verbiage and obscurantism.
From the outset it is clear that Pieper's view of leisure is at odds with commonly held leftist stereotypes — that it is nothing more than upper-class parasitism (according to writers like Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class). The problem is that most moderns justify every activity according to pragmatic or hedonistic principles. By contrast, Pieper makes a clear distinction between leisure and idleness. The former refers to the contemplative side of man, the ability to passively receive knowledge and wisdom. This same sort of humility is at work when we accept God's grace. In a key phrase, Pieper says that "man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift." By that same token, the contemporary attitude that the goodness of work is directly related to the effort expended is a false one, since St. Thomas Aquinas says "The essence of virtue consists in the good rather than the difficult."
It was Kant and the rationalist intellectuals who began ridiculing the belief that the contemplative life was superior to the active. All virtue, they said, consists in action per se. This reaches the modern existentialist extreme in which any action is "good" simply because it is action. As Sartre believed, "To do something is to create existence." Therein lies the egotistical need to constantly "assert" oneself as if to confirm one's being, whereby even a lewd or criminal act is better than no act at all.
The idea of leisure was transmitted to us from the Greeks. Their word for it, skole, also means school. That was because education was time spent in intellectual activity, apart from servile work, which permitted men to contemplate higher things — not just technical learning but inquiry into human society and individual responsibility. For the Christian, this contemplation is given an even greater meaning in prayer. The idea of the Sabbath "and on the seventh day the Lord rested" is an example of how Christianity extended the freedom from servile labor to the entire community. Thus, what had been the prerogative of a few free men in a slave-based society eventually became the privilege of all. But it is a privilege that has been undermined by a new paganism which is far less respectful of reflection and contemplation than were the ancients.
Pieper complains of a "proletarianization" that is widespread throughout Capitalist and Socialist societies alike. What he meant by this was quite different form the Marxist definition. A proletarian is one who is totally dedicated to servile work, be it physical or intellectual. Thus while most people assessing their goals in workplace seminars will place personal development ahead of career, their actions tend to belie such claims. Not surprisingly, there are many reasons for the modern worship of labor, which no one today would have the honesty to refer to as servile, since it is a punishment for the sin of Adam. One reason for the supremacy of labor, says Pieper, is due to the "inner impoverishment of the individual" in secular society who can no longer conceive of anything of value outside the 24/7 paradigm. The only reason for the proletarianized man not working is death.
The fact that Pieper equates religious festivities with leisure gives a better understanding of what the word should mean. He says that "celebration is the core of leisure" which leads us to the further conclusion that "leisure can only be made possible and justifiable on the same basis as the celebration of a festival. That basis is divine worship." He concludes that our modern "holiday" (the contrived festival) cannot compete with the old Holy Days. Since the French Revolution "attempts have repeatedly been made to manufacture feast days and holidays that have no connection with divine worship, or are sometimes even opposed to it: 'Brutus days,' or even that hybrid, 'Labour Day.'"
St. Thomas says that leisure is not simply a "lack of work." Rather it reflects a spiritual viewpoint that causes a man to accept that there are priorities greater than the ones he sets for himself. According to Pieper, it is a receptive frame attitude of mind and a contemplative attitude that possesses the capacity for "steeping oneself in the whole of creation." For the scholastic philosopher, idleness and the incapacity for leisure correspond with one another. They are the opposite of true leisure and meaningful work.
St. Augustine advised one of his disciples: "I pray thee, spare thyself at times." Pieper could probably say more about the purely practical side of man's need for rest, especially in an age when frenetic entertainment and nerve-racking vacations place their own demands on people's free time. In The Intellectual Life, A.D. Sertillanges, O.P. wrote that "relaxation is a duty," and notes the necessity of physical rest prior to engaging in active leisure of the intellectual sort. Nevertheless, Fr. Sertillanges agrees with Pieper in condemning the false view of "recreation" that allows people just enough time off so that they can climb back on the treadmill with renewed vigor. Mental repose and reflection thereby becomes inferior to the world of "total work." Leisure: The Basis of Culture provides a good analogy of why this should not be so:
[H]owever true it may be that the man who says his nightly prayers sleeps the better for it, nevertheless no one could say his nightly prayers with that in mind. In the same way, no one who looks for leisure simply to restore his working powers will ever discover the fruit of leisure....
In a materialist society there is no room for divine worship or for the feast. The modern world of work reposes upon the principle of "rational utilization." Pieper says there may be "circuses" to supplement the "bread," but such mass entertainment is hardly a true festival. The traditional idea of the festival was one of generosity. In divine worship, there is no calculated return on our time. The same goes for celebrations with friends and family. A world where people refuse to receive (or give) freely is a world lacking in charity. "Cut off from the worship of the divine," says Pieper, "leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman."
When we read about the saints we are struck by their amazing activity. And yet this superabundant activity was counter-balanced by a more salubrious pace of life. One day Bl. Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Sisters of the Poor, saw a young religious racing pell-mell down a corridor. She brought her to a halt by saying, "You're leaving someone behind you." The Sister turned around and asked, "Excuse me, my good Little Sister, but I can't see anyone..." "Yes, you are. You're leaving God behind. He's letting you run on ahead, for Our Lord... was never in a hurry like you are."
We suffer the added disadvantage in that our intellectual dissipation is rendered easier by technological devices which have invaded even those places that were hitherto safely removed from the noise and temptations of the world. But it would be misleading to make too much of this and posit the blame on external conditions versus internal dispositions. As older spiritual works testify, even the pre-moderns in their more bucolic epochs grappled with intellectual distraction, lack of purpose and the neglect of supernatural antidotes.
In sum, Pieper lays an unassailable theoretical groundwork for the recovery of healthy intellectual life, and we should be inspired to take some concrete steps towards establishing a domestic refuge of Christian humanitas. A return to leisure must come about in ways suited to our age and circumstances. It means keeping inane distractions to a reasonable minimum and substituting for them things like reading, learning, creative activities and, most of all, prayer. In this way, all aspects of our life must be transformed — not just in terms of public worship, but also economics, politics, arts and entertainment. In the meantime, a sincere practice of religion will give us a real appreciation of the important things in life, including the idea of leisure.
***
Matthew Anger is a freelance journalist who has written essays on history, philosophy and literature from a Catholic perspective. He lives with his wife and eight children in the Richmond, Virginia area, where he is employed as a web/multimedia designer. In addition to Seattle Catholic, he contributes to The Latin Mass and Homiletic & Pastoral Review. He also maintains Imlac's Journal, a philosophical blog.
Originally published at Seattle Catholic
The Venetian Interdict of 1606-1607
The Divine Right of Republics, and the Triumph of the Will
by Dr. John C. Rao
One of the most important events of the Catholic Reformation era was the Venetian Interdict of April, 1606 to April, 1607. It involved practical economic matters and power-political relationships which the Church may not have judged correctly. Nevertheless, is also represented a cause célèbre engaging much of the European continent in a debate on the relationship of mankind to a changing environment and the unchanging God in which the Church was indeed on the side of the angels. Examination of the entire episode yields interesting insights into the development of the Church-State framework of twenty-first century America.
The Dispute and the Interdict
A basic outline of the history of the Venetian Interdict can be sketched quickly. Venice and the Papacy, which often quarreled over jurisdictional questions, clashed especially harshly over a number of such matters in the years 1602-1605. Laws which, in effect, legitimized lay confiscation of lands which had been leased from the Church (1602), prohibited the construction of church buildings without state permission (1603), and ended transfers of property from secular to ecclesiastical hands (1605) followed one upon the other. Meanwhile, two clerics, Scipione Saraceno, a canon of Vicenza, and Abbot Brandolino of Nervesa, accused of crimes ranging from mockery of the symbols of state authority to sorcery and murder, were arrested by the Republic to be tried in secular--rather than ecclesiastical--courts.
Pope Paul V (1605-1621), excoriating all these measures, put Venice on warning that failure to change her behavior would lead to excommunication of her leaders and the laying upon the entire commonwealth of an interdict, a prohibition of all sacramental life save in life or death emergencies. Warnings came to naught. By April, 1606, therefore, the Papal threat became a reality. There then took place a battle of great bitterness for the obedience of the clergy and the laity within the Republic, in the midst of which the bulk of the churches were kept functioning by the government, and especially pro-papal forces like the Jesuits were expelled. A Venetian protest of the interdict tried to interest all secular authority throughout Europe in the Republic's plight, citing it as an example of unjust Church interference in the life of the State with general repercussions for everyone. Protestants, especially English and Dutch Protestants, became excited over the possibilities for penetrating the Italian peninsula. French Gallicans were called into the fray. Rome weighed the prospects for a military solution. Finally, after a year of turmoil, the French Cardinal Francois de Joyeuse, building upon the mutual (and anti-Spanish) friendship of Venice and his own kingdom, negotiated a settlement (April 21, 1607). Rome let the censures drop, Venice abandoned her protest, and the Republic promised to hand the clerical criminals whose immunity it had violated over to the King of France, who might, if he so wished, give them up to the Pope for judgment.
Already, beforehand, Cardinals Cesare Baronius (1538-1607) and Roberto Bellarmine (1542-1621), two of the greatest contemporary defenders of the Church, had their objections to the suggestion of an interdict against Venice. Almost everyone since them has agreed that it was a mistake and a failure on the practical level. Not only did Paul V underestimate the extent to which seventeenth-century clergy and laity might cavalierly disdain commands which would have made even hostile medieval peoples tremble, but he also could be accused of a dreamer's indifference to Venice's serious economic concerns about land usage, and political fears for her survival in a Hapsburg-dominated Italy. Not only did he pick a weapon, the interdict, which seemed to strike at the innocent as well as the guilty, but he also used it against Venice while sparing the Hapsburg Spain that terrified her: a land which men like Baronius considered to be much more guilty in these jurisdictional matters. Other states were aroused to sympathy for Venice in a fashion that hurt papal prestige. Even the settlement of the issue proved to be an embarrassment for the Papacy. The Republic forbade celebration of the reconciliation and the seeking of absolution for canonical penalties incurred by violating the interdict, insisting that it was apologizing for nothing and changing nothing in its behavior. Venice made it clear that its compromise in the matter of the criminal clerics was a one-time event, in no way prejudicial to its future jurisdictional demands. In short, the good sense and effectiveness of Rome were seriously called into question by the Venetian Interdict, and some of the greatest minds in the Catholic world could have said, "I told you so".
But does that mean that nothing that was spoken or done against Venice over the issues inspiring the interdict was for the good, or that no battle with the Republic ought to have been waged at all? Here the answer must be a decisive "no". For the long-term correctness of papal concern over the Venetian actions--and with it the overall correctness of the Catholic vision in and of itself-- comes out when one examines the spirit behind Venice's struggle with Rome. Even a superficial glance at much of the Venetian writing in defense of the Republic reveals an outlook that the Church needed to combat and can be proud to have resisted. And, in fact, men like Bellarmine and Baronius, who were uncomfortable with some of the specific political and legal aspects of the interdict, were in the forefront of the battle against certain monstrous intellectual errors at play alongside them.
The Giovani
Who were the spokesmen for this unacceptable Venetian spirit? One cannot aspire here to a complete listing of every name of significance. Let it suffice to say that the main figures of importance were men appreciated by or directly connected in one way or another with a political faction called the Giovani--the "Young Turks" we would say--which managed to gain control of the Republic in 1582. The Giovani were men with deep intellectual roots, highly conscious of the distinct historical position of Venice in the life of the West, and very eager for their city to overcome her commercial, agricultural, and strategic problems and survive.
Reference should be made specifically to the names of Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), author of Political Discourses and a work On the Perfection of the Political Life; Enrico Davila (1576-1631), known for his History of the Civil Wars in France; Leonardo Donà (1536-1612), Doge from 1606 onwards, for whom service to the State was an act of religious commitment evoking from him a vow of celibacy; Giovanni Marsilio (d. 1612), ex-Jesuit and bridge between the realms of politics and theology; and Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570-1654), a Franciscan who served as spiritual consultant to the Republic after the death of the most famous of all those involved in the battle: Paolo Sarpi (1553-1623). Sarpi, a Servite friar who came to epitomize the revolt in the eyes of Rome, and was excommunicated along with Marsilio and Micanzio, was counselor to the government from 1606 onwards. His Treatise on Benefices, History of the Interdict, History of the Council of Trent and Thoughts cannot be overlooked by the student either of the Venetian Interdict or of the development of modern secular culture as a whole. This is witnessed by no less an enemy of Christianity than Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), who considered Sarpi, along with Davila, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini as bright lights in the recent development of historiography.
A full treatment of the arguments of the Venetian spokesmen can be found (and presented, I might add, in a more favorable light than I will do in this article) in Bouwsma's work on Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Briefly stated, without untangling the specific positions of each of the different thinkers mentioned above, what one finds therein is a high-minded appeal to spiritual principles and the State's role in defending them, combined together both with a view of the universe as the realm of irrationality, sin, and lust for power, as well as a haughty indifference to the contradictions and consequences of this confusion of ideas all too reminiscent of our own zeitgeist. The entire vision is seasoned with an equally familiar disdain for everything Roman. Let us explore this vision and its dangers beginning with the anti-Roman bias.
Venice had had a different history from much of the rest of Latin Europe. Proving the extent of this distinction was one of the main stimuli to Venetian historiography in the first place. History had indeed kept the Republic out of the Carolingian-Western Roman imperial sphere of influence. Its historians fantasized that Venice surely must have remained somewhat separate from the original Imperium as well. Nothing Roman, the Giovani felt, should therefore be allowed to exercise an "unhistorical" control over Venice. This included the Roman Church, many of whose medieval demands had, in fact, effectively been kept at bay over the course of the past five hundred years.
Here is where the problem lay. Since the time of the Council of Trent, the Roman Church had been awakened from her dogmatic slumber and had dedicated herself to a reform that deeply threatened the unique historical position of the Venetian Republic. Rome, the Giovani believed, wanted to drag Venice into an ecclesiastical Imperium that broke with her whole tradition, and claimed to be acting in the name of God in doing so. This was an aggression that offended them for three reasons.
The State is the One, Proper Vicar of God in the Secular Sphere. It Rules by Divine Right.
For one thing, the Giovani were convinced that the State was the sole instrument created by God to act in the secular realm in the name of things spiritual. It ruled by Divine Right. Rome, by emphasizing the rights of the supernatural order in the natural sphere was sacrilegiously invading the space of God's State. In reality, Rome was merely reiterating what had been stressed since the days of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), and Gregory argued at that time that he himself was only reviving the ancient canonical tradition which had been suppressed by bad political customs over the course of what we call the Early Middle Ages. Hence, the Giovani had not only a pre-Tridentine, but a pre-Gregorian understanding of the State's spiritual role in the life of Christendom. Constantine might have understood their practical desires, though not necessarily their deeper explanation of their position, which involved a more contemporary development of an admittedly age-old intellectual battle.
The Secular World is the Realm of Flux and Cannot be Guided by Universal or Architectonic Principles.
This brings me to the second objection of the Giovani and their supporters, a twist on the ancient complaint of the rhetoricians against philosophy. The earthly realm, they insisted, is the sphere of constant flux and change, the sort of condition described by history (the discipline held to be most suited to demonstrating Venice's unique position in the West). God wants His spiritual agent, the State, to examine the changing reality around it, different for different societies, and use all the tools necessary to move people to do what is required to survive in its midst. He is with the State in all that it demands. Now, however, the Giovani protested, the Church, descending from its proper field of action into another, unsuitable one, was claiming that the realm of flux had to be guided by theological and metaphysical constructs (ideological principles, we would say, if we wished to indicate the same negative judgment). For example, she wanted individual states' foreign policies to be conducted with an eye to the overall interest of Christianity and Christendom, a demand which could embroil Venice in wars against the Turks. For Venice, however, a foreign policy which aimed strictly at practical issues concerning her survival and growth might lead to commerce with the Moslems rather than crusades. Moreover, the Church wanted such practical economic interests to be guided by broad Catholic moral aims, rather than the laws of agricultural and industrial advantage alone. This was a mistake. Great truths were beyond human definition and application to the natural world, the Giovani concluded, and any institution that sought to intervene in the secular realm in their name was acting absurdly. For Sarpi, this critique even extended to the dogmatic activity of the Church, since such activity required the use of natural, human language, itself inappropriate for expressing divine truths accurately. It is difficult to see how Christianity could be anything for him in the long run but the observable spiritual life of distinct, changeable local "churches", incapable of any serious advancement down the path of doctrinal formulation. Indeed, it is hard to see how anyone could be permitted by Sarpi's view and that of some other Giovani even to use history as a model for their action, since to do so would be to turn an historical argument into an intellectual guideline attempting to explain and shape pure "flux". The State, the agent of God, must merely act, commanded by nothing rational or architectonic. Discrete moments of life and reaction to them are the stuff of its existence. On the other hand, consistent obedience to State decisions is the will of God.
The World is the Realm of Sin and the Struggle for Power and Cannot be Transformed to the Greater Honor and Glory of God.
Thirdly, Rome offended the Giovani by acting as though the earth could be transformed ad majorem Dei gloriam. Such a transformation was, for them, an utter impossibility. The world was the realm of sin, with the lust for power being the specific sin that lay behind all human endeavor. Lust for power was the special distinguishing mark of Rome throughout her history, the Popes devoting themselves to the continuation of the old imperial aggression. In fact, the whole Tridentine reform effort, the entire enterprise of transformation of the world in Christ, the thrust of the growing interest in dogma and its application to daily life was one enormous mask for building Roman power, the Giovani claimed. It was therefore the duty of the intelligent man to uncover the lust for power behind every action, to "deconstruct" these seemingly principled moves to reveal the omnipresence of sin. It is this that Sarpi did particularly cleverly, after the interdict was lifted, in his History of the Council of Trent. Of course such an idea means that the State, serving as lion-tamer in a jungle of irrational conflict which may change form but never end, must then itself logically exhibit that same sinful, mindless lust for power that it is supposed to identify and manage in its subjects. Still, if the State insists upon its Divine Right to obedience, cuts off all discussion of higher principles, and, to enforce its will, relies on the kind of terror that Sarpi has no qualms about encouraging, it can easily prevent "deconstruction" of its own role as God's agent in the world.
The Principle of Pragmatism Becomes a Dogma
This brings us to a final underlying contradiction. According to the Giovani, no universal ideas were to be allowed a role in shaping the life of states with their different histories and varying problems. Politics was to be the realm of the "pragmatic". But it is clear that the pragmatically-minded Giovani were religiously devoted to their political conclusions. Many of them spoke of their Republic as though she had sprung fully formed out of the almost supernatural wisdom of her Founding Fathers, with universally applicable practical lessons for a world desperately in need of enlightenment. Hence, they were teaching pragmatism as dogma. A contradiction, indeed, but it should be clear by this time that we have entered an era in which consistency is dismissed as the "hobgoblin of little minds".
The Giovani and America
Paolo Sarpi's book on the Council of Trent was taken to the Plymouth Bay Colony by William Brewster (1567-1644), the spiritual leader of the migrants. John Locke was deeply interested in the Venetian Question. Holland was looked to by the Giovani for support at the time of the Interdict, and offered inspiration to Sarpi, among others. All the above have had their influence on America, and the dominant forces in American life have continued to emphasize much of what the Giovani had to say. America, too, demands belief in the Divine Right of her Republic. She, too, has tried to keep the Church out of secular affairs, insisting on the importance of her political institutions as the real agent for injecting spiritual, liberating influences into human life. Our system also works with an understanding of mankind as a herd of self-interested, warring animals whose factiousness can only be observed and managed, but never cured by obedience to a higher truth and a call to the practice of virtue. It, too, jumbles spiritual and practical claims together in contradictory ways, prohibiting dogmatic guidance of the natural world if this guidance is based on ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty, but requiring it if the dogma being taught is one that underlines the purely "pragmatic" actions of power-driven men. Religious dogma, for America as it was for the Giovani, has been seen as something unreal and, ultimately even "unspiritual", while the dogma of man's sinful, irrational life of flux is recognized as truly realistic and, quite bizarrely, somehow spiritually uplifting. To say that this involves a deep cynicism or confusion about the essence of things spiritual is but to touch the tip of the iceberg. Catholicism could not be reconciled with this vision in 1606-1607 and it cannot be reconciled with it today.
We live in a time when practically every element in the traditional life of the Church has been challenged or destroyed. In order for us to fight properly and fight well for the restoration of everything that ought to be restored, we would do well to try to distinguish what is essentially important to the life of the Church from what is secondary and ephemeral. The real glory of the Church and a number of her apologists in the Venetian Interdict issue was their recognition of the essential error lying behind the vision of the Giovani: the recipe for the triumph of the will, the glorification of the will to power--the "right to choose"--of the strong over the weak without having to be called to account for their action; a triumph of the will and a glorification of the will to power brilliantly argued for the benefit not of a monarchy or a dictatorship, but of a republic. They had the acuity to "deconstruct the deconstructors", to show where true cynicism had taken root.
Not every prelate and apologist in the seventeenth century was so perceptive. It was difficult for them to understand that the spiritual role which they all admitted the State to possess was being given so radically different a definition by their opponents. Indeed, their opponents may themselves not have seen all the consequences of their thought either. Whatever the case may be, the bulk of the Catholic attacks on Venice were centered on the particular facts of the jurisdictional battle, which involved issues that did touch upon legitimate Venetian political and economic fears, and on which the Church might in fairness have compromised but did not wish to in 1606-1607.
It is the insistence of our own age and land on the Divine Right of its Republic to do what it chooses to do based upon the will of its Founders, regardless of the demands of reason and Christ's Church, which is the essential dogma requiring the labor of Catholic apologists, now as with the Venetians in the seventeenth century. It is to the confused and often cynical claim of a "godly" and "spiritual" foundation for this invitation to the willful use of power that attention must be turned. The failure to recognize the essential, and the direction of attention to specific issues of ephemeral importance alone, such as the accidental benefits or detriments of a particular article of the Constitution or piece of legislation, is an enormous diversion of effort to uprooting a tree while a thick forest is left to cover everything in utter darkness.
***
Further Reading:
Bouwsma, W.J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter-Reformation (California, 1968)
Jedin, H. and Dolan, J., eds., The History of the Church (Crossroad, Vol. V., 1980)
Pastor, L. von., The History of the Popes (K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, Vols. 25 & 26, 1906-1913)
Originally published at Seattle Catholic
by Dr. John C. Rao
One of the most important events of the Catholic Reformation era was the Venetian Interdict of April, 1606 to April, 1607. It involved practical economic matters and power-political relationships which the Church may not have judged correctly. Nevertheless, is also represented a cause célèbre engaging much of the European continent in a debate on the relationship of mankind to a changing environment and the unchanging God in which the Church was indeed on the side of the angels. Examination of the entire episode yields interesting insights into the development of the Church-State framework of twenty-first century America.
The Dispute and the Interdict
A basic outline of the history of the Venetian Interdict can be sketched quickly. Venice and the Papacy, which often quarreled over jurisdictional questions, clashed especially harshly over a number of such matters in the years 1602-1605. Laws which, in effect, legitimized lay confiscation of lands which had been leased from the Church (1602), prohibited the construction of church buildings without state permission (1603), and ended transfers of property from secular to ecclesiastical hands (1605) followed one upon the other. Meanwhile, two clerics, Scipione Saraceno, a canon of Vicenza, and Abbot Brandolino of Nervesa, accused of crimes ranging from mockery of the symbols of state authority to sorcery and murder, were arrested by the Republic to be tried in secular--rather than ecclesiastical--courts.
Pope Paul V (1605-1621), excoriating all these measures, put Venice on warning that failure to change her behavior would lead to excommunication of her leaders and the laying upon the entire commonwealth of an interdict, a prohibition of all sacramental life save in life or death emergencies. Warnings came to naught. By April, 1606, therefore, the Papal threat became a reality. There then took place a battle of great bitterness for the obedience of the clergy and the laity within the Republic, in the midst of which the bulk of the churches were kept functioning by the government, and especially pro-papal forces like the Jesuits were expelled. A Venetian protest of the interdict tried to interest all secular authority throughout Europe in the Republic's plight, citing it as an example of unjust Church interference in the life of the State with general repercussions for everyone. Protestants, especially English and Dutch Protestants, became excited over the possibilities for penetrating the Italian peninsula. French Gallicans were called into the fray. Rome weighed the prospects for a military solution. Finally, after a year of turmoil, the French Cardinal Francois de Joyeuse, building upon the mutual (and anti-Spanish) friendship of Venice and his own kingdom, negotiated a settlement (April 21, 1607). Rome let the censures drop, Venice abandoned her protest, and the Republic promised to hand the clerical criminals whose immunity it had violated over to the King of France, who might, if he so wished, give them up to the Pope for judgment.
Already, beforehand, Cardinals Cesare Baronius (1538-1607) and Roberto Bellarmine (1542-1621), two of the greatest contemporary defenders of the Church, had their objections to the suggestion of an interdict against Venice. Almost everyone since them has agreed that it was a mistake and a failure on the practical level. Not only did Paul V underestimate the extent to which seventeenth-century clergy and laity might cavalierly disdain commands which would have made even hostile medieval peoples tremble, but he also could be accused of a dreamer's indifference to Venice's serious economic concerns about land usage, and political fears for her survival in a Hapsburg-dominated Italy. Not only did he pick a weapon, the interdict, which seemed to strike at the innocent as well as the guilty, but he also used it against Venice while sparing the Hapsburg Spain that terrified her: a land which men like Baronius considered to be much more guilty in these jurisdictional matters. Other states were aroused to sympathy for Venice in a fashion that hurt papal prestige. Even the settlement of the issue proved to be an embarrassment for the Papacy. The Republic forbade celebration of the reconciliation and the seeking of absolution for canonical penalties incurred by violating the interdict, insisting that it was apologizing for nothing and changing nothing in its behavior. Venice made it clear that its compromise in the matter of the criminal clerics was a one-time event, in no way prejudicial to its future jurisdictional demands. In short, the good sense and effectiveness of Rome were seriously called into question by the Venetian Interdict, and some of the greatest minds in the Catholic world could have said, "I told you so".
But does that mean that nothing that was spoken or done against Venice over the issues inspiring the interdict was for the good, or that no battle with the Republic ought to have been waged at all? Here the answer must be a decisive "no". For the long-term correctness of papal concern over the Venetian actions--and with it the overall correctness of the Catholic vision in and of itself-- comes out when one examines the spirit behind Venice's struggle with Rome. Even a superficial glance at much of the Venetian writing in defense of the Republic reveals an outlook that the Church needed to combat and can be proud to have resisted. And, in fact, men like Bellarmine and Baronius, who were uncomfortable with some of the specific political and legal aspects of the interdict, were in the forefront of the battle against certain monstrous intellectual errors at play alongside them.
The Giovani
Who were the spokesmen for this unacceptable Venetian spirit? One cannot aspire here to a complete listing of every name of significance. Let it suffice to say that the main figures of importance were men appreciated by or directly connected in one way or another with a political faction called the Giovani--the "Young Turks" we would say--which managed to gain control of the Republic in 1582. The Giovani were men with deep intellectual roots, highly conscious of the distinct historical position of Venice in the life of the West, and very eager for their city to overcome her commercial, agricultural, and strategic problems and survive.
Reference should be made specifically to the names of Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), author of Political Discourses and a work On the Perfection of the Political Life; Enrico Davila (1576-1631), known for his History of the Civil Wars in France; Leonardo Donà (1536-1612), Doge from 1606 onwards, for whom service to the State was an act of religious commitment evoking from him a vow of celibacy; Giovanni Marsilio (d. 1612), ex-Jesuit and bridge between the realms of politics and theology; and Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570-1654), a Franciscan who served as spiritual consultant to the Republic after the death of the most famous of all those involved in the battle: Paolo Sarpi (1553-1623). Sarpi, a Servite friar who came to epitomize the revolt in the eyes of Rome, and was excommunicated along with Marsilio and Micanzio, was counselor to the government from 1606 onwards. His Treatise on Benefices, History of the Interdict, History of the Council of Trent and Thoughts cannot be overlooked by the student either of the Venetian Interdict or of the development of modern secular culture as a whole. This is witnessed by no less an enemy of Christianity than Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), who considered Sarpi, along with Davila, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini as bright lights in the recent development of historiography.
A full treatment of the arguments of the Venetian spokesmen can be found (and presented, I might add, in a more favorable light than I will do in this article) in Bouwsma's work on Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Briefly stated, without untangling the specific positions of each of the different thinkers mentioned above, what one finds therein is a high-minded appeal to spiritual principles and the State's role in defending them, combined together both with a view of the universe as the realm of irrationality, sin, and lust for power, as well as a haughty indifference to the contradictions and consequences of this confusion of ideas all too reminiscent of our own zeitgeist. The entire vision is seasoned with an equally familiar disdain for everything Roman. Let us explore this vision and its dangers beginning with the anti-Roman bias.
Venice had had a different history from much of the rest of Latin Europe. Proving the extent of this distinction was one of the main stimuli to Venetian historiography in the first place. History had indeed kept the Republic out of the Carolingian-Western Roman imperial sphere of influence. Its historians fantasized that Venice surely must have remained somewhat separate from the original Imperium as well. Nothing Roman, the Giovani felt, should therefore be allowed to exercise an "unhistorical" control over Venice. This included the Roman Church, many of whose medieval demands had, in fact, effectively been kept at bay over the course of the past five hundred years.
Here is where the problem lay. Since the time of the Council of Trent, the Roman Church had been awakened from her dogmatic slumber and had dedicated herself to a reform that deeply threatened the unique historical position of the Venetian Republic. Rome, the Giovani believed, wanted to drag Venice into an ecclesiastical Imperium that broke with her whole tradition, and claimed to be acting in the name of God in doing so. This was an aggression that offended them for three reasons.
The State is the One, Proper Vicar of God in the Secular Sphere. It Rules by Divine Right.
For one thing, the Giovani were convinced that the State was the sole instrument created by God to act in the secular realm in the name of things spiritual. It ruled by Divine Right. Rome, by emphasizing the rights of the supernatural order in the natural sphere was sacrilegiously invading the space of God's State. In reality, Rome was merely reiterating what had been stressed since the days of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), and Gregory argued at that time that he himself was only reviving the ancient canonical tradition which had been suppressed by bad political customs over the course of what we call the Early Middle Ages. Hence, the Giovani had not only a pre-Tridentine, but a pre-Gregorian understanding of the State's spiritual role in the life of Christendom. Constantine might have understood their practical desires, though not necessarily their deeper explanation of their position, which involved a more contemporary development of an admittedly age-old intellectual battle.
The Secular World is the Realm of Flux and Cannot be Guided by Universal or Architectonic Principles.
This brings me to the second objection of the Giovani and their supporters, a twist on the ancient complaint of the rhetoricians against philosophy. The earthly realm, they insisted, is the sphere of constant flux and change, the sort of condition described by history (the discipline held to be most suited to demonstrating Venice's unique position in the West). God wants His spiritual agent, the State, to examine the changing reality around it, different for different societies, and use all the tools necessary to move people to do what is required to survive in its midst. He is with the State in all that it demands. Now, however, the Giovani protested, the Church, descending from its proper field of action into another, unsuitable one, was claiming that the realm of flux had to be guided by theological and metaphysical constructs (ideological principles, we would say, if we wished to indicate the same negative judgment). For example, she wanted individual states' foreign policies to be conducted with an eye to the overall interest of Christianity and Christendom, a demand which could embroil Venice in wars against the Turks. For Venice, however, a foreign policy which aimed strictly at practical issues concerning her survival and growth might lead to commerce with the Moslems rather than crusades. Moreover, the Church wanted such practical economic interests to be guided by broad Catholic moral aims, rather than the laws of agricultural and industrial advantage alone. This was a mistake. Great truths were beyond human definition and application to the natural world, the Giovani concluded, and any institution that sought to intervene in the secular realm in their name was acting absurdly. For Sarpi, this critique even extended to the dogmatic activity of the Church, since such activity required the use of natural, human language, itself inappropriate for expressing divine truths accurately. It is difficult to see how Christianity could be anything for him in the long run but the observable spiritual life of distinct, changeable local "churches", incapable of any serious advancement down the path of doctrinal formulation. Indeed, it is hard to see how anyone could be permitted by Sarpi's view and that of some other Giovani even to use history as a model for their action, since to do so would be to turn an historical argument into an intellectual guideline attempting to explain and shape pure "flux". The State, the agent of God, must merely act, commanded by nothing rational or architectonic. Discrete moments of life and reaction to them are the stuff of its existence. On the other hand, consistent obedience to State decisions is the will of God.
The World is the Realm of Sin and the Struggle for Power and Cannot be Transformed to the Greater Honor and Glory of God.
Thirdly, Rome offended the Giovani by acting as though the earth could be transformed ad majorem Dei gloriam. Such a transformation was, for them, an utter impossibility. The world was the realm of sin, with the lust for power being the specific sin that lay behind all human endeavor. Lust for power was the special distinguishing mark of Rome throughout her history, the Popes devoting themselves to the continuation of the old imperial aggression. In fact, the whole Tridentine reform effort, the entire enterprise of transformation of the world in Christ, the thrust of the growing interest in dogma and its application to daily life was one enormous mask for building Roman power, the Giovani claimed. It was therefore the duty of the intelligent man to uncover the lust for power behind every action, to "deconstruct" these seemingly principled moves to reveal the omnipresence of sin. It is this that Sarpi did particularly cleverly, after the interdict was lifted, in his History of the Council of Trent. Of course such an idea means that the State, serving as lion-tamer in a jungle of irrational conflict which may change form but never end, must then itself logically exhibit that same sinful, mindless lust for power that it is supposed to identify and manage in its subjects. Still, if the State insists upon its Divine Right to obedience, cuts off all discussion of higher principles, and, to enforce its will, relies on the kind of terror that Sarpi has no qualms about encouraging, it can easily prevent "deconstruction" of its own role as God's agent in the world.
The Principle of Pragmatism Becomes a Dogma
This brings us to a final underlying contradiction. According to the Giovani, no universal ideas were to be allowed a role in shaping the life of states with their different histories and varying problems. Politics was to be the realm of the "pragmatic". But it is clear that the pragmatically-minded Giovani were religiously devoted to their political conclusions. Many of them spoke of their Republic as though she had sprung fully formed out of the almost supernatural wisdom of her Founding Fathers, with universally applicable practical lessons for a world desperately in need of enlightenment. Hence, they were teaching pragmatism as dogma. A contradiction, indeed, but it should be clear by this time that we have entered an era in which consistency is dismissed as the "hobgoblin of little minds".
The Giovani and America
Paolo Sarpi's book on the Council of Trent was taken to the Plymouth Bay Colony by William Brewster (1567-1644), the spiritual leader of the migrants. John Locke was deeply interested in the Venetian Question. Holland was looked to by the Giovani for support at the time of the Interdict, and offered inspiration to Sarpi, among others. All the above have had their influence on America, and the dominant forces in American life have continued to emphasize much of what the Giovani had to say. America, too, demands belief in the Divine Right of her Republic. She, too, has tried to keep the Church out of secular affairs, insisting on the importance of her political institutions as the real agent for injecting spiritual, liberating influences into human life. Our system also works with an understanding of mankind as a herd of self-interested, warring animals whose factiousness can only be observed and managed, but never cured by obedience to a higher truth and a call to the practice of virtue. It, too, jumbles spiritual and practical claims together in contradictory ways, prohibiting dogmatic guidance of the natural world if this guidance is based on ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty, but requiring it if the dogma being taught is one that underlines the purely "pragmatic" actions of power-driven men. Religious dogma, for America as it was for the Giovani, has been seen as something unreal and, ultimately even "unspiritual", while the dogma of man's sinful, irrational life of flux is recognized as truly realistic and, quite bizarrely, somehow spiritually uplifting. To say that this involves a deep cynicism or confusion about the essence of things spiritual is but to touch the tip of the iceberg. Catholicism could not be reconciled with this vision in 1606-1607 and it cannot be reconciled with it today.
We live in a time when practically every element in the traditional life of the Church has been challenged or destroyed. In order for us to fight properly and fight well for the restoration of everything that ought to be restored, we would do well to try to distinguish what is essentially important to the life of the Church from what is secondary and ephemeral. The real glory of the Church and a number of her apologists in the Venetian Interdict issue was their recognition of the essential error lying behind the vision of the Giovani: the recipe for the triumph of the will, the glorification of the will to power--the "right to choose"--of the strong over the weak without having to be called to account for their action; a triumph of the will and a glorification of the will to power brilliantly argued for the benefit not of a monarchy or a dictatorship, but of a republic. They had the acuity to "deconstruct the deconstructors", to show where true cynicism had taken root.
Not every prelate and apologist in the seventeenth century was so perceptive. It was difficult for them to understand that the spiritual role which they all admitted the State to possess was being given so radically different a definition by their opponents. Indeed, their opponents may themselves not have seen all the consequences of their thought either. Whatever the case may be, the bulk of the Catholic attacks on Venice were centered on the particular facts of the jurisdictional battle, which involved issues that did touch upon legitimate Venetian political and economic fears, and on which the Church might in fairness have compromised but did not wish to in 1606-1607.
It is the insistence of our own age and land on the Divine Right of its Republic to do what it chooses to do based upon the will of its Founders, regardless of the demands of reason and Christ's Church, which is the essential dogma requiring the labor of Catholic apologists, now as with the Venetians in the seventeenth century. It is to the confused and often cynical claim of a "godly" and "spiritual" foundation for this invitation to the willful use of power that attention must be turned. The failure to recognize the essential, and the direction of attention to specific issues of ephemeral importance alone, such as the accidental benefits or detriments of a particular article of the Constitution or piece of legislation, is an enormous diversion of effort to uprooting a tree while a thick forest is left to cover everything in utter darkness.
***
Further Reading:
Bouwsma, W.J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter-Reformation (California, 1968)
Jedin, H. and Dolan, J., eds., The History of the Church (Crossroad, Vol. V., 1980)
Pastor, L. von., The History of the Popes (K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, Vols. 25 & 26, 1906-1913)
Originally published at Seattle Catholic
The Sack of Rome: 1527, 1776
The Sack of Rome: 1527, 1776
by Dr. John C. Rao
One error that every historian knows he must avoid, and yet invariably finds himself committing, is that of taking certain facts for granted on face value. It is an error that he is aware that he must shun, given that detailed investigations of specific topics always yield a much deeper, nuanced understanding of a problem than any general study can ever offer. Still, it is an error that he habitually commits precisely because he cannot examine all subjects simultaneously, and is therefore obliged to make very fallible broad comments on most matters in order to press forward with the limited task before him. I caught myself in an error of this kind some years ago in preparing for the 1997 Gardone Summer Symposium of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute on the Reformation Era (1517-1648), with reference to the consequences of one of the most unfortunate events of the time: the Sack of Rome of May, 1527. In recognizing my mistake, and comparing it to similar ones that all too many people make in our own day, I realized, once more, just how dangerous the consequences of "taking things for granted" can really be.
The Sack of Rome had its origins in the French-Spanish struggle for hegemony in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its proximate cause was the clash between the political program of the harried Medici Pope, Clement VII (1523-1534), and the ambitions of Charles V (1516-1558), King of Spain, King of Germany, and Holy Roman Emperor. If its agents were actually mutinous, unpaid, imperial soldiers, these nevertheless could say that they were merely following the examples of their more illustrious clerical ally, the Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, who had plundered the Vatican side of the Tiber some eight months earlier.
Whatever the specific responsibilities of Pope, Catholic king-emperor, and prince of the Church might have been, the end result was indeed a nightmare. On May 6, 1527, Rome suffered the worst assault that it had ever known, far worse than anything at the time of the barbarian migrations. Nothing was spared, sacred or profane. Clement VII's escape to and confinement within the walls of Castel Sant'Angelo until December, listening to the taunting of German mercenaries calling for his death and replacement by "Pope Luther", were the least of the indignities. Various cardinals and prelates, including one future Pope, Julius III, were humiliated and tortured, altars were ransacked, the Sistine Chapel used as a stable, riches confiscated, patients in hospitals and children in orphanages gratuitously butchered. Rape and rapine, exacerbated by raids of hoodlums under the direction of the abbot of the nearby monastery of Farfa, were followed by the onset of plague. Rome and the stench of death became one.
Often, and with seemingly good reason, the Sack of Rome has been looked upon as a symbol of the boundary between the Renaissance and Catholic Reformation eras in Church History. Before this chastisement, the argument runs, control of Church affairs lay in the hands of the proponents of "business as usual", obsessed with politics, tied to corrupt and ineffective administrative methods, and insensitive to the significance of the Protestant revolt in Germany. After its visitation, however, the Great Awakening had surely begun.
Here is where my own error lay. I, too, had taken it for granted that the Sack of Rome was an eye-opener. Still, the more work that I did on the period, the more it became clear to me that this was not the case. Those whose eyes were open before the Sack may have had them opened wider still, but they were relatively few in number. With rare exceptions, men who were blind remained blind. An event of such magnitude, whose mere possibility in the abstract might have seemed apocalyptic beforehand, was digested when it finally did occur in reality as though it were simply another move on the chessboard of ordinary political life. Indeed, most Catholics, clerics and laymen alike, afterwards as before, went about their daily affairs, changing nothing, watching the collapse of the Church's position in Germany, uninspired to lift a finger to arrest it, even when possessing the authority to do so.
One thing that united many of the proponents of "business as usual" was the conviction that they represented the "traditions" of the Roman Church, by which they meant the standard operating procedures of papal and diocesan courts and curias. These "traditions" were under attack at the time, but not only by the men who, after the Diet of Speyer of 1529, would be referred to as Protestants. There were a limited number of fervent Catholics who also demanded a root and branch revamping of standard operating procedures and the canonical justifications for them, in order more effectively to fight the brutal war for the souls of men and the health of secular society that they feared the Reformation portended.
In the minds of the defenders of "tradition", such Catholic critics of papal and episcopal courts and curias were, at the very least, the sort of deluded, destructive zealots that centuries of bureaucratic prudence and pragmatism had sought to tame. At worst, they were themselves the true problem of the day, unnecessarily aggravating that Protestant tempest-in-a-teapot which could be quelled through the tried laws and methods of practical professionals. This latter line of argument, which so rejected a closer examination of Catholic failings that it literally verged on the point of treating the Protestant revolt as a non-event, was particularly deadly. For nothing, says Hubert Jedin, the great historian of the Council of Trent, furthered the Reformation more than a wide-spread delusion about its actual non-existence and non-importance.
Fortunately for the survival of the Church, these "conservatives" suffered at least a partial defeat, the "traditions" which they supported being exposed for what they were: abuses fortified by many spurious, self-deceptive arguments, but used for so long as to have gained the appearance of being something sacred. Fortunately for Rome, an effort was made to rebuild its walls with something more suitable and more sturdy than whatever happened to be merely familiar: a reaffirmation of the authentic and eternal Catholic Tradition, a deeper understanding of which revealed the flaws of the immediate past and indicated a surer path to a better future.
It is instructive to investigate for a moment one major reason for this partial victory of real Tradition over false customs masquerading as an essential element of our heritage. Successful Catholic reformers realized that they could not deal with problems facing the Church merely by a legalist cataloguing of the endless abuses to be noted practically everywhere in Christendom and a demand for their correction. Almost nothing could shake most authorities' commitment to their standard operating procedures, corrupt and ineffective though these might be. Prelates had to be awakened to another, and qualitatively different, means of viewing their responsibilities. If churchmen could not endure a direct attack on the flawed practices to which they were devoted, or could always find inventive techniques for legally circumventing attempts to change them, then the path to improvement must be opened by trying to focus them on a second, more spiritual framework in which to judge their activities. This high road could, perhaps, "seduce" them to reform by the innate strength of its truth and beauty, and avoid more predictable, customary, time-wasting, and ultimately futile efforts to refute them in the process.
Thus, to give but one example of a seemingly naïve approach that nevertheless proved to be very successful, Catholic reformers understood that they could not fight their opponents on their own turf. Rather than discussing in exaggerated and all too familiar legal detail the minutiae of episcopal duties and their innumerable violations, all of which would be met by the interminable counter-quibbles of the bishops' own canonical experts, it was more fruitful to approach prelates forthrightly on the plane of conscience alone. One needed openly to emphasize the mortal sin of an Ordinary who failed to be a good shepherd. A bishop who could be won over to a realization of what he was obliged to do by directing him to a vision of the day he had to justify his behavior before the throne of Almighty God would eventually become a new man. He would contrast remarkably with one whose decisions were made on the grounds of whether or not the papal court in the course of the previous four hundred years had visited this or that immoral practice with the precise penalties prescribed under one or the other of fifteen extenuating circumstances. Bishops reformed in a qualitatively higher sense would see and use even a flawed law in a purer light. In contrast, even those who sought to correct themselves from a narrow, legalist perspective, and honestly did close the door to several wrong or inadequate practices in consequence, would nevertheless miss the higher spiritual meaning of laws that were intrinsically good. It was the spiritual break with a corrupt past which was crucial. The legal change was secondary.
Sixteenth-century Catholic reform was only partially successful. The old standard operating procedures were not completely abandoned. Familiar, attitudes were not totally eradicated. However, the model of the Catholic prelate, and, with it, that of the Roman Pontiff and the Roman priest, was reinvigorated, nourished by roots grounded in the authentic Tradition, and aimed away from the merely customary legalist, political, secularist obsessions of the late medieval period. And the model was more powerful as a deterrent to abuse than were any more rigorously defined and enforced canonical penalties. The fact that it had its impact is at least somewhat revealed by the difficulty historians have in explaining to Catholics today the failure of sixteenth century bishops and priests to live in their own dioceses and parishes. Raised in a Church that has at least partly digested the spirit of the Tridentine reform, we automatically presume that residence is their duty, regardless of the existence of any canonical loopholes through which they might legitimately slip.
My purpose in bringing up the story of the Sack of Rome, its failure to change the dominant mentality of the time, the feeling on the part of proponents of "business as usual" that Catholic reformers were dangerous enemies of "tradition", and the need to tackle such an attitude by appeal to a qualitatively higher authority is, of course, to illustrate certain similarities with our difficulties as Catholics in America today.
Year by year, decade by decade, on every level, intellectual, moral and physical, we have witnessed all that we have considered to be valuable from our Christian-Greco-Roman past mercilessly attacked, torn to shreds, and mocked in its helplessness. And yet each new assault, which seems as though it ought to be the final eye-opening disaster, appears to do little to awaken us to the major cause of our impotent defense of our own heritage. Our impotence stems from our continued support for certain supposedly practical, prudent, pragmatic "traditions", which, like the "traditions" of the corrupt papal and episcopal courts and curias of the early sixteenth century, are actually not part of Catholic Tradition at all, but, rather, errors and abuses. It emerges from our conviction that critics of such false traditions are wild-eyed and destructive zealots. It is fed by our insistence on so closing our minds to the full character of the problem that we face as to remind one of Hubert Jedin's warning that nothing does more to abet a disaster than an unwillingness to recognize its real existence.
What are the false traditions that weigh us down as Catholics in this country? I have repeatedly noted that they are the traditions of that Protestant-Enlightenment vision which shaped the environment in which the American system was founded and grew. These are not our traditions, because they involve presumptions about the relationship of the individual to society, and the role of theology and metaphysical thought in practical life, which are inimical to Catholic Truth. It is this heritage which assures the use of seemingly conservative, religion-friendly institutions in an anti-Catholic manner, allowing those individuals and groups who share its false principles to manipulate the American system in a way that we cannot imitate while remaining true to our Faith. "Patriotism" and "prudence", as defined by this different heritage, command Catholics to avoid even the most basic investigation into the game being played against them. Silent, Catholic obedience of this command is then cited as a proof of the obvious truth and popularity of the principles that are used to oppress them.
American conservatives continuously refer to American traditions as though they were the traditions of the West, both secular and sacred, and not the product of a few centuries of intellectual and cultural confusion that they really are. Conservatives tell Catholics that a full embrace of this "heritage" actually enhances the "Catholic Moment" in history. Catholics have embraced this patrimony. A corrupt eighteenth century vision has been treated as though it were the perennial message of the Church. And the effect has been deadly. The Church might as well have seized the Catholic Moment at the time of the Reformation by abetting the growth of Protestantism; the Romans called to defend their city from the Sack of 1527 might courageously have seized the Roman Moment by joining the mutinous soldiers in breaching the Aurelian Walls.
Louis Veuillot, the nineteenth century French Catholic journalist, has a valuable insight useful to recall at this juncture. Veuillot noted the following difference between Catholicism and essentially flawed intellectual and belief systems: Catholics and Catholic societies are bad insofar as they do not live up to the message of Catholicism, while people and societies shaped by intrinsically false visions are bad insofar as they do reflect their ideals. Catholics and Catholic societies are good insofar as they do heed their beliefs, while people and societies shaped by false ideologies are good insofar as they do not systematically follow their central defining principles, and modify them under the pressure of other, better influences.
Catholic acceptance of, and failure to understand the problems of the false, American "tradition" is at least somewhat tied to a failure to digest the judgment of Veuillot. America has developed under a bad set of principles which have produced good results only insofar as their logic has been thwarted by counteracting influences, including, sometimes, even Catholic ones. Left to its own devices, the American Ideology was bound to wreck havoc with the world that Catholics loved. When Catholics attributed the good that they saw in America to the truth of the false principles guiding the nation, and even declared such ideals to be Catholic ones, they helped to bring on the disaster. They ceased to apply that healthy, distinctively Catholic pressure that had contributed to diverting the sickly American tradition away from the logic of its own beliefs, and towards more suitable goals. In doing so, they allowed the opportunity for American culture to develop more quickly and systematically into the nightmarish nowhere land we see around us now. With nothing uniquely Catholic to contain it, a Protestant-Enlightenment society that had been falsely identified as Catholic-friendly has resulted in what it was bound to produce: a new Sack of Rome.
The proponents of false traditions in the first half of the sixteenth century did not see that their standard operating procedures were helpless to deal with the disaster of 1527. Similarly, Catholics who have accepted the false traditions of America cannot understand that the standard operating procedures of this heritage render them helpless in fending off further collapse. In being convinced that patriotism required recognition of the American Way, they bound love of country together with love of a destructive Protestantism and Enlightenment. Such an attitude would, mutatis mutandi, have forced sixteenth-century Englishmen to believe that patriotism required their espousal of a religious revolution promoted by a small clique of exiles and imposed by a tyrannical queen. In believing that prudent defense of their Faith demands the embrace of constitutional "business as usual", they have embraced the highly impractical routine of the American political arena, where whole lives are wasted trying to overturn one or another wrong at the price of praising the principles and methods that bring these very injustices into being in the first place. In fearing that they might be considered nostalgic for bygone social institutions if they criticize American ones, they ignore the fact that they have been irrevocably condemned to use of an irrational political rhetoric praising the "will" of long-dead Founders who are transfigured as much as any ancient God-Kings. In contending that they must offer a complete vision of an alternative system that can solve all problems of the world before they can justifiably utter one tiny word of protest about the functioning of the American Regime they have, in effect, told a father that he has no right to object to his daughter betrothing herself to a scoundrel until he can produce someone perfectly suitable to make her a counter-proposal.
No, Catholics relying on the false traditions of the American Framers and the "infallible" labyrinth of check-and-balance standard operating procedures which are molded by the Protestant-Enlightenment environment around them, can do as little to avoid their own destruction as legalist, sixteenth-century administrators operating purely on existing curial and canonical grounds. The only way that substantial progress for the Catholic cause in the United States can be made is by following the method of the more successful Tridentine activists and making a complete spiritual break with the American Ideology. We must learn to place a vision of how we will answer to God for the Catholicity of our lives continually before our eyes, and clarify that vision by revisiting the "traditions" we accept on face value to determine if they stand up to deeper scrutiny. If we do so, we will see that it is to Church Fathers and not to eighteenth century Founding Father counterfeits that we must look for guidance in understanding what our spiritual heritage counsels. Obvious as it ought to be, but contested as it always is by both "liberals" and "conservatives" of all eras, Catholics can only prosper when they are Catholics; never, when they are something else.
What would be the result of a real spiritual and intellectual break with a false heritage? It is difficult to predict. Nevertheless, referring back to our sixteenth-century analogy, it is safe to say that someone who is honestly formed according to the model of the fullness of the Catholic Tradition will see the pitfalls of "business as usual" for what they are: so many obstacles on the pathway to a life in union with God. We might imagine that some future generation of our fellow believers, brought up on the authentic heritage, will incredulously question historians as to how any Catholic could ever have convinced himself that a system rooted in the twin errors of Protestantism and Enlightenment thought might have produced anything but rotten fruit. Looking back from this light-filled, future vantage point, they might recognize the lesson to be drawn both from the Sack of 1776 as well as that of 1527: the need to get back to the sources; to the living waters of the Tradition of Christ's Church