et Vetera Nova Summer 2023 • Volume 21, Number 3 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal Co-Editors Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Associate Editors Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Reinhard Hütter, Catholic University of America Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Daria Spezzano, Providence College Board of Advisors Anthony Akinwale, O.P., Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria Khaled Anatolios, University of Notre Dame Michael Barber, Augustine Institute Robert Barron, Bishop of Winona-Rochester John Betz, University of Notre Dame Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., University of Fribourg Christopher O. Blum, Augustine Institute Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Michael Dauphinais, Ave Maria University Angela Franks, St. John’s Seminary Jennifer Frey, University of South Carolina Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Anthony Giambrone, O.P., École Biblique Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., Pontifical John Paul II Institute (Washington, DC) Russell Hittinger, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Paige Hochschild, Mount St. Mary’s University Andrew Hofer, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Angela Knobel, University of Dallas Dominic Legge, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Steven A. Long, Ave Maria University Reginald Lynch, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Ave Maria University Andrew Meszaros, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame Thomas Osborne, University of St. Thomas (Houston) Aaron Pidel, S.J., Pontifical Gregorian University Trent Pomplun, University of Notre Dame Scott Roniger, Loyola Marymount University Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Freiburg Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg Vincent L. Strand, S.J., Catholic University of America Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Capuchin College William Wright, Duquesne University Instructions for Contributors 1. Address all contributions, books for review, and related correspondence to Matthew Levering, mjlevering@yahoo.com. 2. Contributions should be prepared to accord as closely as possible with the typographical conventions of Nova et Vetera. The University of Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) is our authority on matters of style. 3. Nova et Vetera practices blind review. Submissions are evaluated anonymously by members of the editorial board and other scholars with appropriate expertise. Name, affiliation, and contact information should be included on a separate page apart from the submission. 4. Galley-proofs of articles are sent to contributors to be read and corrected and should be returned to the Editors within ten days of receipt. Corrections should be confined to typographical and factual errors. 5. Submission of a manuscript entails the author’s agreement (in the event his or her contribution is accepted for publication) to assign the copyright to Nova et Vetera. Nova et Vetera The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Summer 2023 Vol. 21, No. 3 Seeking the Sources of a Theologian: In Memory of Fr. Roch Kereszty, O.Cist. (1933–2022).. . . . . . Joseph Van House, O.Cist. 781 Tracts for the Times Tract 12: The Sacrament of Matrimony.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous 791 Tract 13: St. John of the Cross and the “Well-Formed” Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous 795 Articles Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi: A New Argument in Favor of the All-Male Priesthood. . . . . Paul Gondreau 805 The Call for New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage and the Thought of St. Thomas. . . . . . . . . . Lawrence J. Welch 845 Symposium on Catholicism and Politics Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. 889 A Skeptical View of Integralism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elizabeth Corey 919 Aquinas and Black Natural Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas S. Hibbs 943 How to Inherit a Kingdom: Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought. . . . . . . . . . Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger 971 Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James F. Keating 991 “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William McCormick, S.J. 1019 Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science. . . . Matthew K. Minerd 1043 Integralism and Justice for All. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Dominic Rooney, O.P. 1059 Review Essay Deification through the Cross: Reflections from an Implied Ideal Worshiper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew J. Summerson 1089 Book Reviews An Evangelical Adrift: The Making of John Henry Newman’s Theology by Geertjan Zuijdwegt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reinhard Hütter 1097 Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr. . . . . . . . . . . . Patrick Auer Jones 1101 Vessel of Honor: The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of Vatican II by Brian A. Graebe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aaron Pidel, S.J. 1106 Configured to Christ: On Spiritual Direction and Clergy Formation by James Keating. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christian Raab, O.S.B. 1110 The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international forum for theological and philosophical studies from a Thomistic perspective. Founded in 1926 by future Cardinal Charles Journet in association with Jacques Maritain, Nova et Vetera is published in related, distinct French and English editions. The English edition of Nova et Vetera welcomes articles and book reviews in theology, philosophy, and biblical studies that address central contemporary debates and discussions. We seek to be “at the heart of the Church,” faithful to the Magisterium and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and devoted to the work of true dialogue. Nova et Vetera (ISSN 1542-7315; ISBN 978-1-64585-341-1) is published quarterly by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Nova et Vetera is distributed to institutional subscribers for the St. Paul Center by the Catholic University of America Press. Institutional subscriptions, notifications of change of address, and inquiries concerning subscriptions, back issues, and missing copies should be sent to: JHUP Journals Division, PO Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. © Copyright 2023 by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Please send address change to Nova et Vetera, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. 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Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 781–790 781 Seeking the Sources of a Theologian: In Memory of Fr. Roch Kereszty, O.Cist. (1933–2022) Joseph Van House, O.Cist. University of Dallas Dallas, TX Fr. Roch Kereszty long enjoyed thinking about how, and how much, we can discover the truth about Jesus of Nazareth through historical research into his earthly life. Fr. Roch also often enjoyed indicating that at least part of the answer is that research about a human being can never be content with descriptions of any number of empirical facts or ideas from that person’s life. The true goal of one who writes or reads about the life of another is insight into the meaning of that person’s life. Such insight is possible some extent while the person’s life is ongoing, but it calls for a more decisive kind of assessment after the person’s death. The meaning of a life also cannot truly reveal itself when viewed through the lens of an inadequate philosophy or theology. Indeed, Fr. Roch tended to think that philosophy itself is adequate to show that any quest to understand another human being cries out to be structured by love, or at least some form of empathy: I can truly understand another only in my proportion to my ability to discover communion or affinity with that person, to find in him or her another self who is in some deep way similar to my own self.1 1 Roch A. Kereszty, “The Role of the ‘Jesus of History’ Research within the Theological Enterprise,” Communio 24 (1997): 297–310, at 301–4; Kereszty, “Historical Research, Theological Inquiry, and the Reality of Jesus: Reflections on the Method of J. P. Meier,” Communio 19 (1992): 576–600, at 582–584; Kereszty, Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology, 3rd ed. (New York: St. Paul’s, 2011), 17–21. His thinking on this point was notably helped by Paul Ricoeur, “Objectivity and Subjectivity in History,” in History and Truth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 21–40, esp. 28–29. 782 Joseph Van House, O.Cist. Although Fr. Roch elaborated such ideas to guide historians seeking to write a “biography” of Jesus, and although they make great demands of many kinds, it nevertheless seems fitting to consider them when beginning to memorialize Fr. Roch himself. Last December, God granted Fr. Roch the gift of a passage from this life that was surrounded by the love of many people who had known him on earth. Among them were many who had known him through his theological writings and had found them to offer a special combination of intellectual vigor and personal relevance. It is a blessing now to be able to offer a short memorial for the benefit of his sympathetic readers of the past and the future. Attempting to explain the golden thread that unites his many books and articles seems unreasonable; the writings themselves remain their own best explanation. Such an approach could also perhaps suggest that we are most loved in our productivity rather than in the ways we are dependent on God and others. For both of these reasons, one good way to serve love and communion with a theologian of interest would be to portray him in some of the ways that he himself was loved, fathered forth and shaped, by the One from whom all fatherhood is named. In this essay, then, I offer a simple and very fragmented portrait of the sources of a theologian, the fontes theologi: the different ways that God fathered in Roch Kereszty a theological writer who was a blessing to people who read periodicals such as this one. If I provoke either fresh appreciation of his writings or deeper reflection on the variety and patterns in the ways God leads his children generally (and especially those who are interested in theology), then this act of thanksgiving to God for a good teacher will have been successful. A Reader Raised in Rome It is suggestive to notice that Fr. Roch was born in central Europe just six years after Joseph Ratzinger, and died seventeen days before him; their lifespans as theologians roughly overlapped and were formed by engagement with many of the same theological movements and crises. This said, moving quickly to the specifics of the person in question, it seems especially natural to attend to the character of Fr. Roch’s formal theological education. This education took place in Rome, in the company of a handful of fellow bright young refugee Hungarian Cistercians, from 1957 to 1962 (during which time he also made his solemn vows and was ordained). In those days leading up to the Second Vatican Council, theology in the Roman universities was dominated by an increasingly stale and self-contained Neo-Scholasticism. The Benedictine Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo, where young Roch and his Seeking the Sources of a Theologian 783 peers were enrolled, was a conspicuous exception. A relatively small institution led by ressourcement-minded monk-professors such as Jean Leclercq and Cipriano Vagaggini, and inspired by the research of writers like Yves Congar, Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac, and Jean Daniélou, Sant’Anselmo was animated by the cry “ad fontes!” and sought to give its students a bracing immersion into the kind of rich study of Christ and Christianity that the renewal of studies of the Bible and of the liturgy and preaching of the great doctors of the early Church had made possible. Roch’s novice master back in Hungary had already taught him about the heart of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, but one of the most obvious results of his Roman studies was the development of a lifelong lectio continua of the theology of the Cistercian doctor. His dissertation explored especially the relation between wisdom, knowledge, and Christian love in St. Bernard’s theology.2 A closely related gift of Roch’s training at Sant’Anselmo was the developed conviction that, far from being a matter of relativist historicism or of antiquarian care for museum pieces, the thoughtful study of the whole human intellectual patrimony is key to a strong and supple Christian engagement with all the possibilities of the living word of God and the living human mind: The past needs to be known and profited from, but none of the past models may be resuscitated as it had been. Instead, we need to learn from all the constructive models of past theology; thus, we should re-appropriate the sapiential finality of patristic-monastic theology, disentangle the historical-critical method from its own rationalistic presuppositions, and include it in a theological exegesis which regards the Bible as one book, the normative, God-given scriptural witness to Salvation History. We also need a philosophy and a coherent theological method which are able to stand their ground against the Kantian opposition to metaphysics and can be integrated with an adequate philosophy of science.3 2 3 Rochus Kereszty, “Sapientia in Experientia Spirituali apud S. Bernardum” (STD diss., Pontificii Athenaei S. Anselmi, 1962); published as Die Weisheit in der mystischen Erfahrung beim Hl. Bernhard von Clairvaux (Westmalle, Belgium: Abbey of Westmalle, 1963). See also Roch A. Kereszty, “The Significance of St Bernard’s Thought for Contemporary Theology,” Communio 18, no. 4 (1991): 574–89. Roch A. Kereszty, “Toward the Renewal of Theology and the Theologian.” Communio 35, no. 2 (2008): 273–89, at 277. 784 Joseph Van House, O.Cist. Even though he wrote these words many decades later, the ambition that they express was nurtured especially at Sant’Anselmo. A Teacher Tried in Texas So, God prepared Fr. Roch to teach and write by placing him in the classrooms and libraries of major theological visionaries. This much must be said, and it has its ways of shedding light on his writings and on our own efforts to serve similar theology today. But to focus on it exclusively, even primarily, would be to miss the formation of the human being, the Christian, and the priest. To go one layer deeper in this excavation, then, a later sequence of events will help frame why Fr. Roch became engaged by humbler, broader concerns that have often been difficult of access for the professional theologians of the Old World. First, in 1962, at the end of his Roman studies and just after the opening of Vatican II, his canonical superior, an exiled Hungarian Cistercian, ordered young Roch and his fellow Hungarian classmates, very much against their wishes, to come and join a monastery that refugee Hungarian Cistercians had founded some six years earlier in the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. Roch was to arrive in the spring of 1963, improve his English over the summer, and begin serving on the theology faculty of the nearby University of Dallas in the fall. As he would later write, “I was convinced that Texas was the wildest and the least cultured state of America and there was nothing but dried-out prairie everywhere.”4 He was at least as convinced that he should be living in Europe, waiting to help rebuild the Church in Hungary as soon as the iron curtain fell. But most of all, he was convinced that he was a refugee religious with no realistic canonical recourse, and so he obeyed and went to Texas. From then until 1970, he found himself bringing his theological perspective into an otherwise Neo-Scholastic theology department distant from Old World ideals, but also often serving as university chaplain or dean of men, and often living in the dormitory with his undergraduates (this latter, both because of his mentoring responsibilities and because the under-construction monastery lacked rooms for the monks). It was a rocky time in pastoral and theological life, but also an exhilarating one. Indicative of Roch’s self-immersion in the thought-world of his American students, in the mid-1960s he learned that a theological movement called “Christian Atheism” was sweeping the country. It had been triggered 4 Roch A. Kereszty, “Autobiographical Notes,” document held by Our Lady of Dallas Abbey. Seeking the Sources of a Theologian 785 by a small group of radical American theologians, been picked up by a variety of mainstream media outlets, and provoked a remarkable wave of “funerals for God” held in churches across the country. Indicative of Roch’s self-understanding, his response was to write his first book, an incisive study of the roots of “the theology of the death of God” in the thought of World War II–era Germanic Protestant theologians, and of the internal contradictions of its American representation. The book, however, was obsolete before it was finished, and at its publication in 1970, the author’s preface opens with a remarkable declaration: “Today, the death-of-God fad is dead. Its demise came earlier than most theologians and the general public had anticipated.”5 Although the book is in fact a fine example of mid-century public theology and it rewards attention even today, almost the only thing anyone remembers Fr. Roch saying about it is that he was so disappointed by its lack of reception that from then on he “vowed” to resist the fascination of theological fads and instead to redouble his attention to the classics and to the heart of the Christian tradition itself. While of course such resolutions could only be so effective in the foment of theology following Vatican II, it is also true that virtually all of his future book-length works emerged from his teaching of the fundamentals of Catholic theology for seminary-level audiences, an attempt to provide reliable and nuanced education on the core questions of Catholic thought, especially in Christology, ecclesiology, the sacraments, and interreligious dialogue. A second “humiliation” from 1970 left an at least equally decisive mark on his writing: persuaded by his fellow monks that he was truly needed, he accepted a full-time appointment teaching theology at the middle and high school for boys that his fellow Hungarian Cistercians had founded on the model of the educations they themselves had received as children. This reduced his role at the University of Dallas to moonlighting as an adjunct professor for one course per semester; this role, combined with daytime immersion in the lives of high school boys (and, before long, mentoring young monks as the abbey’s novice master), would characterize his teaching life for almost fifty years. Schoolmastering resulted in various personal trials and rewards. “Things went alright at the beginning, until my students observed that when they misbehaved I got confused and unable to control them.”6 But across the years, his students showed a growing tendency to regard his foreignness with reverence more than revilement, such that, within 5 6 Roch A. Kereszty, God Seekers for a New Age: From Crisis Theology to “Christian Atheism” (Dayton, OH: Pflaum, 1970). Kereszty, “Autobiographical Notes.” 786 Joseph Van House, O.Cist. fifteen years, the following profession appears on the title page of a key school publication: “The class of 1985 would like to dedicate this yearbook to Fr. Roch Kereszty, who turned out to be not such a bad guy after all.” Questions of classroom management and personal respect aside, he sometimes described his feelings about being made a full-scale priest-schoolmaster as dominated by the thought that he had been “sold at a discount” to a work that was beneath his training. Nevertheless, it kept him in close daily working communication with the school’s headmaster, Fr. Denis Farkasvalvy, his most important long-term theological interlocutor.7 More intrinsic to the new role, Fr. Roch also began to find that his stable presence in the holistic formation of young adolescents provided him with lifelong loving relationships, and evangelical opportunities, that he would not have had as a graduate professor. And even from the specific point of view of his writings, he would happily report that it was in facing the questions of his rebellious and needy teenagers, rather than those of his more devout and self-sufficient students in their twenties, that he was pushed to do the deepest thinking, and the most important work in setting his priorities as a theologian. A Boy Born in Budapest Even though many kinds of omissions are necessary in a short essay, and even though he itinerary of Fr. Roch’s adult life could not have been foreseen on the basis of his early years, it would be especially misleading to offer these reflections on the shaping of the adult child of God without also reaching back to consider some aspects of how God first conceived this child who would one day teach and write about the Father. After all, the agenda for many theologians is set long before graduate school, if they even go. “Theology is not some abstract discipline meant for the academic elite. It is quite simply the study of God, which is the task—and the joy—of every single person. . . . Our minds reach after the divine and, in Christ, receive the fullness of the Creator himself. All who pray are, in a sense, theologians.”8 András (Andrew) Kereszty was born in prewar Budapest to Romantic, progressive parents who loved him warmly and imparted to him a delight in the green world of the outdoors. Religious instruction was not a gift they sought to offer their child, but the educators they chose for him, persons in 7 8 As a sign of the significance of this theological brotherhood, it is instructive to page through the footnotes of almost any of his books, but in particular his memorial article, “Denis Farkasfalvy on the Theology of the Bible,” Communio 47, no. 3 (2020): 577–98. Denis Farkasfalvy and Roch A. Kereszty, Theology in Practice: A Beginner’s Guide to the Spiritual Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2023), 9. Seeking the Sources of a Theologian 787 whom they must have recognized something deeply good, did so in their place. András’s first Christian memory recalled when his devout nanny, “Bibi,” took him into a church to visit “little Jesus” in the tabernacle. An excellent and saintly first-grade teacher, Kápolnásy Hermin, further nurtured his growing faith. He always venerated these two women for giving Christ to him by their teaching and their prayers. They were spiritual midwives and mothers to a Christian vocation that eventually included “professional” theological teaching and writing. A decisive step in the young man’s life occurred in 1943 when his parents enrolled him in the widely esteemed Cistercian school of St. Imre, where he thrived intellectually and spiritually, especially under the tutelage of a young Fr. Placid Csizmazia.9 But already in the spring of 1944, instruction was radically disrupted by the great traumas of the city’s takeover by the German army, accompanied by American air raids and ultimately yielding to Soviet shelling and siege. The Keresztys and the faculty of St. Imre remained committed to surviving and building a future, and Fr. Placid often visited his young ward in the bomb shelter to give him homework. School resumed in early 1945 after the Soviet victory; András continued flourishing under the guidance of his Cistercian teachers until June of 1948, when the Hungarian communist regime deprived the priest-schoolmasters of their schools, going on in October 1950 to imprison their abbot and deny them any right to live together or wear the Cistercian habit. Young András’s response was to cling all the more tightly to the extracurricular tutoring and mentorship his beloved Cistercian former schoolmasters continued to offer, operating in an ever-more clandestine fashion as informants multiplied and persecution became more sophisticated. Around 1950, András’s Cistercian teachers introduced him to Fr. Lóránt (Lawrence) ’Sigmond, who soon became the decisive spiritual father of whom this son would never cease to speak. After years as a successful teacher of Hungarian and French literature at the St. Imre school, in 1946 ’Sigmond had been called back to the motherhouse in rural Zirc, where he served as master of the abbey’s booming formation program. In 1950, after the suppression, he became the vicar of the imprisoned abbot, responsible for some two hundred dispersed Cistercians across the country, and focusing his personal attention especially on the needs of the elderly, the sick, and those in formation. Living mostly in Budapest, he posed as a quiet, poor member of 9 Csizmazia (1915–1999) would join the Cistercian monastery of Dallas in 1965, where he lived in the company of his former protégé and taught a variety of languages at the University of Dallas, with legendary skill, until his death. 788 Joseph Van House, O.Cist. the working class so that he might go from meeting to meeting undetected by the secret police. Although he was never an instructor of theology or a writer of books, his vigorous Christian intellect (and love of poetry) was closely intertwined with his heroic faith and priestly shepherding. One suggestive detail: he was known to wrap his original-language volumes of writers such as Bernard, Aquinas, Thérèse, or Claudel in brown paper so that he could read them on public transit with reduced fear of being noticed. In 1951 ’Sigmond accepted five young men as the inaugural members of an underground Cistercian novitiate program in Budapest; András was among them, receiving the religious name “Rókus” (Roch). Brother Roch lived in an apartment with a Catholic family and enrolled in a Budapest university’s program in library sciences to avoid attracting attention. ’Sigmond conducted instruction during discreet urban meetings and occasional group retreats to private, rural locations. He focused the attention of his protégés on becoming strong in the naked core of monastic life, stripped of all outward security and splendor: daily meditation, spiritual reading, assistance at mass, private recitation of the divine office, a vigorous practice of poverty, careful attention to the instructions of the superior, courage and discretion in adverse circumstances. Fr. Roch later wrote that, although he originally had doubts about joining an order in which he would have to be a schoolmaster, after his first rural retreat as a Cistercian novice he became convinced that “God bestowed on me a pure and great grace to be educated by a true saint, Fr. Lóránt. I had to sober up from my romantic dreams of religious life and learn the ‘little way’ of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: a simple, down-to-earth way of love and trust. I knew this was real, this would lead to God.”10 ’Sigmond’s spiritual fatherhood left a decisive mark on Roch (and on his other novices, the most widely known of whom are Blessed János Brenner and Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy).11 At the core of this blessed and evangelizing generativity was his heroic way of life: “The way a Christian lives and acts, suffers and dies, bears witness to the reality that what he lives and dies for is more precious than his earthly life.”12 As a priest who loved the intellectual life, Fr. Lóránt also gifted his charges with an understanding of the Christian faith, teaching them insights into the Gospels, conversion, the meaning of monasticism, the thought of St. Bernard, and filial responsiveness to God’s 10 11 12 Kereszty, “Autobiographical Notes.” Denis Farkasfalvy, “New Cistercian Martyr: In Celebration of the Beatification of John Brenner Anastasius, O.Cist. on May 1, 2018,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2019): 99–108. Roch A. Kereszty, Rekindle the Gift of God: A Handbook for Priestly Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2021), 61. Seeking the Sources of a Theologian 789 real providence. Indeed, at one point in a 2022 interview with Fr. Andrew Summerson entitled “Adventures of A Primary Care Theologian,” Fr. Roch attributed his understanding of the understanding of faith, which is to say his whole vision of theology as an outworking of Christian discipleship, to Fr. Lóránt’s early theological insight that, as Fr. Roch wrote in his own name elsewhere, the mission of teachers of Christianity is not simply to speak about God, but to allow the Spirit to open up “their subjectivity to be united in faith with the true and transcendent theologian, Christ within his church.”13 For Br. Roch, this period of clandestine Cistercian formation under Fr. Lóránt lasted until the Hungarian borders briefly opened during the ill-fated 1956 Hungarian revolution. ’Sigmond told his bookish son: “If I thought you would be a good soldier I might tell you to stay and fight for our freedom, but since I don’t, you should leave and study theology and come back some day to rebuild.” Although ’Sigmond’s protégé was never able to return to Hungary for anything longer than a vacation, writing quality theological literature in the language of this people group, made up of about as many people as the state of Ohio, remained a priority of his into the last year of his Texan life. *** This reflection has sought to communicate to theologians some loving insight about the ways that God led a member of their guild whose keyboard has now fallen silent. His life, in its own unrepeatable way, follows recognizable patterns of blessing and testing in Christ. Like him, we are all responsible for fashioning ourselves, but still more deeply, our selves are gifts from “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars,”14 who cultivates and summons each of us by confronting us with other influencing selves and events. Central among these selves is the form and model of all, Jesus Christ: “By assuming as his own a human nature, the eternal Son has become the transforming center of all history, and confronts every human being. For those who accept him in faith, the entire Christ event becomes transformative and therefore contemporaneous.”15 Expressed as it is in myriads upon myriads of ways, the Father’s love and providence in the Son, through the Spirit, is the key to the meaning of every human life, and especially of those he invites to speak and write with unusual directness about Jesus Christ himself. 13 14 15 Kereszty, “Towards the Renewal of Theology and the Theologian,” 289. Dante, Paradiso 33. Roch A. Kereszty, “Contemporaneity: The Mystery of Liturgical Time,” Nova et Vetera 18, no. 2 (2020): 505–19, at 519. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 791–794 791 Tract 12: The Sacrament of Matrimony The sacraments necessarily “effect what they signify,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 1). Put a bit differently, the sacraments, as dynamic actions of the person of Christ, always accomplish what Christ intends them to accomplish. This accomplishment spells nothing other than our justification or sanctification—the sacraments have the power to justify—whereby we are healed of sin and proportioned or elevated to God. The sacraments offer both healing medicine and deifying power. As we consider the sacrament of matrimony and the particular human need to which it responds, or the particular way it provides healing medicine and deifying power to the married qua married, we must first take into account what the sacrament of matrimony signifies—its res et sacramentum (to advert to the classical Scholastic terminology). For marriage, the res et sacramentum is the indissoluble conjugal union of Christ and the Church. Given that the sacraments necessarily effect what they signify, there is considerable spiritual fruit to be reaped if we enumerate the concrete implications that this—the doctrine that marriage signifies the conjugal union of Christ and the Church—bears for married persons. By elevating the natural institution of marriage and granting it a share in the sacramental economy, Christ the Lord reveals his desire to impart upon married couples the power that he alone, in virtue of his Passion, death, and resurrection, possesses over sin. And who would deny the reality of marital sin, or that marriage suffers in a particular way under the assault of sin? Beginning with the plague of divorce (which has reached unprecedented levels), the union of man and woman in marriage today suffers under the barrage of sin as at no other time. Many individuals—in ever increasing numbers—ensnared by today’s empty allure of libertine hedonism and sexual profligacy of every sort, currently reject marriage altogether, preferring instead alternative arrangements: mostly fornication and cohabitation, 792 Anonymous but ever-more including same-sex couplings, polyamorous arrangements, unions that accommodate gender-fluid identities and the rejection of binary sexual difference, and the list of perverse sexual unions goes on (some heretofore unimaginable, such as agalmatophiliac arrangements that unite human beings with robotic mannequins or even holograms). The vice grip of sin threatens to squeeze the great and noble union of marriage to an inglorious death. And this is to say nothing of how those who do embrace the union of marriage and who are committed to making their marriages happy and lifelong confront the way that marital sin manifests itself in their own conjugal lives: whether as a consequence of each spouse’s own sinful tendencies; or as a result of the tension that arises on account of male–female sexual difference, where male-specific tendencies can easily run up against (even if complementary to) female-specific tendencies; or in the vicissitudes and hard-pressed demands of marriage and family life; and the list continues, as any married couple can attest. Here the noblest of human efforts on its own will never overcome. Aquinas is clear that the natural good that we can do on our own without divine aid, including in our marriages, will never amount to much, whether it means being honest, or just, or a self-giving spouse.1 The antidote (the only antidote) to marital sin is Christ—via the mediation of the sacrament of matrimony. And what an antidote it is! By this sacrament, Christ places himself squarely in the center of our marriages, granting married partners a share in his redemptive victory over sin. Not leaving married couples alone in their struggle against marital sin, God confers in this sacrament a sanctifying grace whose precise aim is to heal marital brokenness and to bolster and perfect spousal love. Indeed, Aquinas, recognizing God’s superabundant action in the economic order, attests that each sacrament, over and above sanctifying grace proper, provides a “certain divine assistance” that targets the particular end of that sacrament.2 In the case of the sacrament of matrimony, that divine assistance aims at the realization of a truly happy, fulfilling marriage in its procreative and unitive 1 2 He intimates this unmistakably when, in offering instances of “good works” that we can perform without grace, he gives rather paltry, almost laughable examples, given that the context implies good moral works: “build dwellings, plant vineyards, and the like” (ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2). Later in a. 5, he reiterates the same view: “Without grace man . . . can perform works conducive of a good which is natural to him, as ‘to toil in the fields, to drink, to eat, or to have friends,’ and the like, as Augustine says in his third reply to the Pelagians.” ST III, q. 62, a. 2: “Sacramental grace confers, over and above [sanctifying] grace commonly so called, a certain divine assistance in obtaining the end of the sacrament.” In ad 1, he maintains that sacramental grace targets “certain special effects that are necessary in the Christian spiritual life.” Tract 12: The Sacrament of Matrimony 793 structuring. It aims at lifting marriages out of the burden and downward drag of sin and at the holiness of the spouses. “Because the sacraments effect what they signify,” writes St. Thomas, “one must believe that in this sacrament a grace is conferred on those marrying, and that by this grace they are included in the union of Christ and the Church.”3 They are included in the union of Christ and the Church. This means that husbands are lifted out of the downward drag of sin by being configured to Christ qua Bridegroom of the Church, and wives the same by being configured to the Church qua Bride of Christ. We know that the best husband and father is the man who attends to the unitive and procreative structure of his marriage by serving the needs of his wife and children before his own, who gives of himself to his family completely without thought of cost to himself. The best husband and father is the one who loves as Christ loves—the Christ who offered himself completely by undergoing the worst imaginable suffering, utterly undeserved and utterly for our sake. Likewise, the best wife and mother is the one who loves as the Church loves. The sacrament of matrimony makes both become a reality, to be these kinds of lovers. To become a “power couple” (to invoke current parlance). And it is guaranteed for those who are of living faith, as “the sacraments effect what they signify.” Through this sacrament, Christ transforms the husband’s love into his own and the wife’s love into the Church’s: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave his life up for her,” St. Paul adds in Eph 5:25, immediately after telling wives to be subject to their husbands, “just as the Church is subject to Christ.” Without the sacrament of marriage, the love between husband and wife would never become the kind of love that God intends for it; with this sacrament, it is guaranteed to become this kind of love. Only sanctifying grace and the divine assistance of the sacrament give husband and wife the power to overcome their selfish tendencies and moral shortcomings, thereby attaining the dreams and ideals with which they pronounce their vows. “Whenever a man and woman fall in love,” proclaimed Pope Francis at the World Meeting of Families on June 22, 2022, “God offers them a gift; that gift is marriage.” He continued: It is a marvelous gift, which contains the power of God’s own love: strong, enduring, faithful, ready to start over after every failure or moment of weakness. . . . So take heart: family life is not “mission impossible!” By the grace of the sacrament, God makes it a wonderful 3 Summa contra gentiles IV, ch. 78. 794 Anonymous journey, to be undertaken with him and never alone. The family is not a lofty ideal that is unattainable in reality. God solemnly promises his presence in your marriage and family, not only on the day of your wedding, but for the rest of your lives, on every day of your journey. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 795–804 795 Tract 13: St. John of the Cross and the “Well-Formed” Conscience Thinking about a well-formed conscience, I am puzzled about how to answer these questions. Is it possible that someone’s conscience be mistaken and yet well-formed? Could the conscience of an intelligent, informed, and serious adult Catholic be at odds with clear Church teachings on an important issue and yet be well-formed? Do the requirements for a well-formed conscience differ depending on the age of the person, say at twenty versus forty? What are the reasons for answering these questions as you do? If these questions were put to readers of this essay, I believe the transcript of the ensuing discussion would extend to a book or two. If I am right about this, then the expression “well-formed conscience” these days is a term of cant, “a set form of words repeated perfunctorily or mechanically,” “a stock phrase . . . repeated as a matter of habit or form,”1 and as such should be avoided. Twenty-first-century American society is an ever-fertile mine of cant terms and phrases, but that does not excuse us from doing what we can by promising never again to use “well-formed conscience” without explaining what we mean by it. My preferred substitute is “a correct conscience correctly formed,” which I admit is not much better, but at least it is not cant, resolves one ambiguity, and may call forth the question of what might be meant by “correctly” as opposed to “incorrectly.” The adverb suggests there are steps to be taken, requirements to be met, which if not met make for at least an incorrectly formed conscience, even if not necessarily an incorrect or mistaken one. The “steps to be taken” are the primary interest here, steps that have been 1 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., under the third general group of meanings for “cant” as a noun, meanings derived from cantus, “singing,” “song,” “chant” (5a and 5b). 796 Anonymous routinely (not universally) ignored or downplayed in the recent debates over Covid, number one, and the current controversy within the Church over the primacy of conscience, number two. I hope in this essay to do something about that. The “steps to be taken” turn out to be an extraordinarily complex matter, but I want to offer a small—but what I take to be vital—contribution to filling in the blanks. To accomplish the task I have in mind, there is no more helpful a source than the works of St. John of the Cross on the topic of “attachments.” St. John himself believes that the topic lies at the foundation of the spiritual life and the path toward perfection and holiness, for he devotes the first book of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the first and foundational work of his corpus, almost exclusively to that topic.2 We will begin with what he has to say there about attachments, then show the relevance of his treatment to the question of the “steps to be taken,” and finish with further observations from other parts of his writings. I By “attachment” St. John means an inordinate love for some good contrary to perfect love for God. He understands “appetite” in the Aristotelian-Thomistic sense as an inclination toward or desire for some good, and in most cases he has in mind the concupiscible or irascible, animal appetites. Though he often uses “appetite” where “attachment” or “inordinate appetite” would be called for, uncertainty regarding St. John’s meaning in such contexts is ordinarily easily resolved. We are here principally concerned with one particular effect of our attachments discussed by St. John, that of blindness. By definition, an attachment is contrary to perfect love for God, and since two contraries cannot exist in one subject, “darkness, an attachment to creatures, and light, which is God, are contraries and bear no likeness toward each other, as St. Paul teaches in his letter to the Corinthians . . . What conformity is there between light and darkness? (2 Cor 6:14)” (Ascent 1.4.2 [p. 123–24]). The appetites . . . enkindle concupiscence and overwhelm the intellect so that it cannot see its light. The reason is that a new light set directly 2 Especially chs. 6–13 of Ascent, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (Washington, DC: ICS, 1990), 130–51. For references in parentheses: The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night are cited by book, chapter, and section, while The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love are cited by stanza and section; all page numbers for any of these four works refer to this edition. Tract 13: St. John of the Cross and the “Well-Formed” Conscience 797 in front of the visual faculty blinds this faculty so that it fails to see the light farther away. And since the appetite is so close to individuals as to be actually within them, they are impeded by this interior light, feed upon it, and are unable to see the clear light of the intellect; nor will they see it until they extinguish this blinding light of their appetite. (Ascent 1.8.3 [p. 136]) In book III of The Ascent, St. John adds a striking twist: Those, then, whose joy is unpossessive [i.e., unattached] of things rejoice in them all as though they possessed them all; those others, beholding them with a possessive mind, lose all the delight of them all in general. The former, as St. Paul states, though they have nothing in their heart, possess everything with greater liberty (2 Cor 6:10); the others, insofar as they possess things with attachment, neither have nor possess anything. Rather, their heart is held by things and they suffer as a captive. (Ascent 3.20.3 [302–3]) The goods to which we are attached by our disordered emotions become the masters we serve, who must be served, no questions asked. Commenting on “the great prostitute . . . with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk” (Rev 17:1–2), St John writes: Where does this poisonous harm fail to reach? . . . She reaches out to all states. . . . The text says they were inebriated. No matter how small the amount of this wine of joy [i.e., attachment to natural goods, especially beauty], it immediately takes hold on the heart and subdues it, producing obscurity in the reason, as happens with those who get drunk from wine. . . . [The soul] will find itself a captive of its enemies, grinding at the mill like Samson with his eyes plucked out and the hair of his first strength cut. (Ascent 3.22.4–5) Plucked-out eyes and the hair of strength cut are effects not confined to sensual attachments only, but can be found in the attachments to any object. It seems obvious to me that St. John owes these remarks ultimately to the positions of Aristotle and Aquinas, though I do not pretend to know the details of their lineage. Aquinas is forever quoting Aristotle’s “as a man 798 Anonymous is, so does the end appear to him,”3 meaning that a person’s views regarding what is good and bad can be affected and possibly distorted by his emotional dispositions (i.e., qualities of the animal appetites), should they themselves be distorted. To that topic Aquinas devotes an article entitled “Whether the will is moved by the sensitive appetite?” That which is apprehended as good and fitting moves the will by way of object. Now, that a thing appears to be good and fitting, happens from two causes: namely, from the condition, either of the thing proposed, or of the one to whom it is proposed. For fitness is spoken of by way of relation; hence it depends on both extremes. And hence it is that taste [gustus], according as it is variously disposed, takes to a thing in various ways, as being fitting or unfitting. Wherefore as the Philosopher says (Ethics 3.5): “According as a man is, such does the end seem to him.” Now it is evident that according to a passion [emotion] of the sensitive appetite man is changed to a certain disposition. Wherefore according as man is affected by a passion, something seems to him fitting, which does not seem so when he is not so affected: thus that seems good to a man when angered, which does not seem good when he is calm.4 Distorted emotional loves cause our animal appetites to be distorted and, according to Aristotle, Aquinas, and St. John of the Cross, can cause distorted views of the good. They are thus rich sources of incorrect conscience. If someone does not believe in the power of attachments to cause distorted views of the good, I would simply ask him to consider the debates over matters Covid or the primacy of conscience and to reflect upon the possible sources of those disagreements. In the case of Covid, matters of fact can explain some of it, but not in the case of the supremacy of conscience. Even regarding Covid, I find it impossible to believe that the complexity of questions about facts can account for the entire dispute. For example, think about masks or closings and shutdowns, or disputes within the Catholic Church over church closings and steps to be taken when masses were being celebrated. 3 4 Nicomachean Ethics 3.5.1142a32–b1. Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 9, a. 2, corp. Tract 13: St. John of the Cross and the “Well-Formed” Conscience 799 II Attachments, distorted emotions, are a universal feature of our human nature except for “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” and her Son. We detach ourselves from them here and now or we do so later in Purgatory. “Pay me now, or pay me later,” and if reports about the “later” can be believed, the news from there is not good. No reasonably sane, honest, and reflective human being will deny that he is subject to attachments. A second harmful effect of attachments mentioned by St. John is that of weakness. If I know that I should or should not do something, why do I often not act or refrain accordingly? Often the answer is obvious: it is because I have an attachment, a disordered emotional love for something inconsistent with perfect love of God. So, we know some of our attachments and know that we should be working on them. That is partly why the Church establishes penitential seasons and encourages (or at least should encourage) a detached life. But what about the attachments we do not know we have? Those attachments remain real, and their effects remain real. They weaken us even while we are unaware of their presence. And they blind us too, bringing about one of the worst forms of blindness there is, blindness to their very existence, to our own wretched and miserable condition. They distort what “is apprehended by us as good and fitting” without causing any awareness on our part. Attachments, then, have the potential for being powerful distorters of conscience. Now, finally, we arrive at the “step to be taken” that is the topic of this essay. The expression “correctly formed” is a topic of immense complexity, but here is a necessary feature in the list of things one must do: strive to know one’s attachments, to uncover those presently hidden, and conscientiously work against them at the level of action, thought, and feeling. This in a nutshell is St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, the opening section of which reads in part: “We call Spiritual Exercise every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, of seeking and finding God in the disposition of our life for the salvation of our soul.”5 This single “step to be taken” can be further divided into sub-steps; some may be baby steps, and some certainly are not. And never underestimate the power of attachments to turn what otherwise would be a baby step into a mountain climb. First, I must admit that I do have attachments and that I could safely wager my life on some of them being hidden from me, 5 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Based on Studies in the Language of the Autograph (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, n.d.). Also see no. 319. 800 Anonymous if not from the people around me. Second, I must truly want to discover them, pleading with the intensity of the blind beggars in the Gospel of Matthew—“Lord, I want to see”— and make this a living daily prayer. Third, I can observe other people and consider that the attachments common to them are likely to be mine as well, and by reflecting on my own wrongful behavior, uncover the underlying attachments. Fourth I should consult sources, persons or writings, to discover the unrecognized attachments I may have. And these steps and others like them must be taken daily and in the right spirit. Halfhearted engagement is insufficient. To do this well, the virtues of love for truth and honesty, humility, and courage are necessary. If we have a duty to act on our conscience, it seems inexplicable that we would not also have a duty to act on a correct conscience. Some very wise or very attached person might argue to the contrary, but for the life of me, I cannot make out what that argument might come to. And if we have a duty to act on a correct conscience, then we have a duty to act on a conscience correctly formed, that is, when all the steps to be taken to achieve a correct conscience have been taken. The distinction between a correctly formed versus incorrectly formed conscience represents a continuum, of course, but whatever steps in the “steps to be taken” list were not taken in a particular individual’s case, they are all steps he could reasonably have been expected to take in the range of circumstances surrounding his action at the time. The idea is that it is wrong to demand of someone what he could not have done under the circumstances. Thus the expression “correctly formed,” in addition to its vagueness, has two meanings, one given normal and common circumstances, and one given the peculiar circumstances of an individual. The extraordinarily useful and important distinction between “material” and “formal”6 is of great help here. The list of “steps to be taken” viewed materially contains all steps that could reasonably be expected of normal agents under normal circumstances, whereas the list viewed formally must conform to the peculiar circumstances of individuals regarding what might reasonably have been expected of them, there, and then. Normal adult human beings should know about attachments and their blinding effects, and therefore they can reasonably be expected to take appropriate steps to protect themselves from this blinding, and if they fail to do so and their blindness remains, then they are responsible for the continued presence of their blinding emotional attachments, and then for whatever ignorance that may ensue, and then for their mistaken conscience, and then for the resulting wrongful action, and then for the resulting harm. The 6 ST I-II, q. 20, a. 1. Tract 13: St. John of the Cross and the “Well-Formed” Conscience 801 principle here is “voluntary in cause”: the foreseeable result of a voluntary action is itself voluntary and something for which we are responsible. Ah, but what “normal human beings should know about attachments and their blinding effects” is one thing, and what most people actually know today and what they can reasonably be expected to know today are quite different things. Who has told them, has warmed them of the risk of incorrect conscience incorrectly formed caused by their attachments? The Church, one would think, should be expected to have sounded the warning, but this eager listener has somehow missed the warning, if indeed it has ever been issued with the clarity and insistence that could reasonably have been expected. So, the condition “incorrect conscience correctly (formally) formed” may be widespread. But the feature “correctly (formally) formed” does not remove the feature “incorrect” and the damage resulting from it. And that damage is not merely the harm caused by the incorrect conscience. A failure to form a correct conscience is a harm in itself even if we are not culpable for that error. It is not a moral evil, but it is a rational and natural one. We are expected to grow in maturity of conscience, and our failures in doing so are failures of our rational capacities, and their causes are causes of imperfectly rational acts and imperfectly rational animals, and thus sources of real evil, though not necessarily moral and blameworthy evil. Light is better than darkness in the rational animal not simply owing to their contrasting consequences but in its own right. Our world in some ways resembles the world of Jesus’s time—“They were like sheep without a shepherd”—though it must be admitted that the sheep of our day might have a good deal of responsibility to bear on their own. III The blindness brought about by our disordered emotions and attachments is an immediate and generic harm, but what are their remote and specific harms? We have seen one, incorrect conscience, but where there is an incorrect conscience, especially about an issue clear in its nature, “incorrectly (formally) formed” is a harm not likely to be far distant. Are there any others? The following are some of St. John’s more striking observations. First, arrogance toward God specifically, arrogance regarding truth generically. In The Dark Night, St. John speaks of the benefits the “dark night and purgation” brings, the dark night being the purgation of disordered appetites: 802 Anonymous Individuals commune with God more respectfully and courteously, the way one should always converse with the Most High. . . . [Beginners in the spiritual life who have not yet been cleansed from their attachments] did not act thus, for that satisfying delight made them somewhat more daring with God than was proper, and more discourteous and inconsiderate. . . . When [Moses] heard God speaking to him, he was blinded by that gratification and desire and without any further thought would have dared to approach God, if he had not been ordered to stop and take off his shoes (Exod 3:4–5). This instance denotes the respect and discretion, the nakedness of appetite, with which one ought to commune with God. . . . Having left aside the shoes of his appetites and gratifications, he was fully aware of his misery in the sight of God. (Dark Night 1.12.3 [p. 386]) Those who have been freed from their attachments are no longer “discourteous and inconsiderate” only with respect to God. They have become “fully aware of their misery [imperfections] in the sight of God,” that is, with respect to the truth. Having been purified of their “inconsiderateness” and folly and arrogance, they have begun to know themselves better, and so have begun to acquire humility at last. Their conscience (i.e., their self-will) is no longer their god. Second, inability to relate to things in their reality. Those who have been freed from their attachments delight in [temporal] goods according to the truth of them, but those who are attached delight according to what is false in them; they delight in the best, the attached delight in the worst; they delight in the substance of them, those sensibly attached delight in the accidents. . . . The spirit, purged of the clouds and appearances of the accidents, penetrates the truth and value of things. . . . Joy [that has not been purged of attachments] clouds the judgment like a mist. . . . The denial and purgation of such joy leaves the judgment as clear as the air when vapors vanish. (Ascent 3.20.2 [p. 302]; see also Dark Night 1.12.4 [p. 387]) Third, a base way of being and thinking. The third of the evils caused by attachments mentioned by St. John in the book I of the Ascent, in addition to those of blindness and weakness, is that of defilement. The soul in the dialogue with the Beloved in the Spiritual Canticle calls the appetites of the lower, animal part Tract 13: St. John of the Cross and the “Well-Formed” Conscience 803 girls because as girls attract lovers to themselves by their affection and grace, so these pleasant sensory operations and movements [of uncleansed, disordered appetites] strive persistently to attract the will of the rational part to themselves. They try to draw it out of its interior to a desire for the exterior things that they crave. They also endeavor to move and attract the intellect so it may be wed to them in their base way of feeling, and they strive to bring the rational part into conformity and union with the sensory. (Spiritual Canticle 18.4 [p. 547]) Fourth, difficulty in raising one’s thoughts to God. St. John writes in The Living Flame of Love that one can be in obscurity without culpability, but even then it is impossible for [the soul] to lift its eyes to the divine light, or even think of doing so, for in never having seen it, it knows not what it is. Accordingly, it will be unable to desire this light; it will rather desire darkness because it knows what darkness is, and will go from darkness to darkness, guided by that darkness. One darkness cannot but lead to another. (Living Flame 3.71 [p. 703]) The amount of despair caused in this world by attachments, even when inculpable, cannot be told or imagined. And finally, failure to advance in the way of perfection. In book III of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, St. John considers harms that can result from attachment to various kinds of goods, including even what he calls “moral goods”: moral virtues and actions, observance of God’s law, political prudence, and good manners. One may wonder how these goods could possibly be the cause of harm, but St. John succeeds in finding seven different kinds, the fifth of which is failure to advance in the way of perfection. As a result of attachment to satisfaction and consolation in their works [i.e., their moral goods], some usually become discouraged and lose the spirit of perseverance. This ordinarily happens when God leads them on by giving them hard bread, the bread of the perfect, and takes away the infant’s milk so as to prove their strength and purge their weak appetite so they may taste the substantial fare of adults. For when the occasion of practicing some mortification is presented to these persons, they die to their good works by ceasing to accomplish them, and they lose the spirit of perseverance. (Ascent 3.28.7 [p. 320]) 804 Anonymous I conclude with a warning St. John of the Cross issues not to those whose judgments are blinded by their attachments, but to those who leave them in their blindness. St. John is addressing spiritual directors who mislead their directees and cause them to take false turns in their path of prayer. But that is just one form of blindness, and the relevance of St. John’s admonition to this essay needs no comment. Perhaps in their zeal these directors err with good will because they do not know any better. Not for this reason, however, should they be excused for the counsels they give rashly, without first understanding the road and spirit a person may be following, and for rudely meddling in something they do not understand, instead of leaving the matter to one who does understand. It is no light matter or fault to cause a soul to lose inestimable goods and sometimes leave it in ruin through temerarious counsel. Thus one who recklessly errs will not escape a punishment corresponding to the harm caused, for such a one is obliged to be certain, as is everyone in the performance of duties. The affairs of God must be handled with great tact and open eyes, especially in so vital and sublime a matter as is that of these souls, where there is at stake almost an infinite gain in being right and almost an infinite loss in being wrong. (Living Flame 3.56) I end this essay with a second series of questions. They are intended principally for issues about which there is no general agreement but which should pose little difficulty for a correctly (materially) formed conscience. How likely is it that any random individual’s conscience is correct? How likely is it that any random individual’s conscience is correctly (materially / formally) formed? How likely is it that any random individual whose conscience is mistaken would change his mind were a clear and sound argument for the truth be presented to him? What are the reasons for answering these questions as you do? Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 805–844 805 Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi: A New Argument in Favor of the All-Male Priesthood Paul Gondreau Providence College Providence, RI “One must be allowed to think about and discuss the issues. . . . [And on the issue of women’s ordination] the discussion is still with us, it is still alive, and cannot be stifled [ersticken] by a paper [ein Papier].” So declares Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 2020, where “a paper” refers to an apostolic letter, Pope St. John Paul II’s 1994 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which definitively rules out the admissibility of women to priestly ordination.1 No doubt the archbishop was drawing inspiration from Cardinal Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who a month earlier had opined that arguments against women’s ordination were becoming increasingly “weaker” (schwächer).2 In his capacity as president of the German bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing 1 2 As originally reported on the German website Domradio.de, August 20, 2020 (domradio.de/themen/reformen/2020-08-20/die-historische-perspektive-ist-nichtalles-erzbischof-hesse-zur-debatte-ueber-frauenweihe), with English reporting by Colleen Dulle, “German Archbishop Calls for Open Debate about Women Priests in the Catholic Church,” America Magazine, August 20, 2020 (americamagazine.org/ faith/2020/08/20/german-archbishop-debate-women-priests-deacons-catholic). As things would turn out, this same Archbishop Hesse offered his resignation less than a year later (in March of 2021) after a report faulted him for how he handled sexual abuse allegations when he was a high-ranking official in the archdiocese of Cologne. In response, Pope Francis granted Hesse a “time out” rather than accept his resignation. Unless otherwise noted, translations in the present article are my own. See the original reporting on the German website Domradio.de, July 10, 2020, domradio.de/themen/reformen/2020-07-10/kardinal-marx-zu-frauen-und-reformen. 806 Paul Gondreau of Limburg also pronounced on the issue in even more unabated terms; after insisting in June of the same year that Catholics can “continue to talk about the issue of women’s ordination,” he went further in an interview with the German magazine Herder Korrespondenz six months later: “There are well-developed arguments in theology in favor of opening up the sacramental ministry to women,” he asserted, after declaring his desire for “change” (Veränderung), a change that he opined could begin with ordaining women as deacons before ordaining them as priests and bishops.3 Two years later, Bätzing remained adamant, going so far as to declare to speak in the name of the faith of the entire Church on this issue: “The sensus fidelium, that is, the sense of the faithful,” he stated, “has moved on” (geht weiter).4 Since the deposit of faith, of which the sensus fidelium is expressive, does not and cannot “move on,” that is, change, Bätzing’s appeal to the sensus fidelium marks a curious—if also audacious—move, to say the least. It appears we are destined ever “to think about and discuss” the issue of women’s ordination, no matter if the Holy Father himself, in the person of the John Paul II, should seek to quell this discussion in the strongest and most authoritative of terms: “In order that all doubt be removed regarding [this] matter,” writes the Polish Pontiff, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful”(Ordinatio Sacerdotalis §4). As regards John Paul II’s assertion that his judgment is to be “definitively held” by all Catholics, it is worth recalling that, even if one high-ranking German churchman (Hesse) might esteem Ordinatio Sacerdotalis as 3 4 See Stefan Orth and Volker Resing, “‘Ich will Veränderung’: Ein Gespräch mit dem DBK-Vorsitzenden Georg Bätzing,” Herder Korrespondenz, December 29, 2020 (herder.de/hk/hefte/archiv/2021/1-2021/ich-will-veraenderung-ein-gespraech-mitdem-dbk-vorsitzenden-georg-baetzing/); for the English reporting on this, see Jack Jenkins, “Top German Catholic Bishop Urges Shift on Women’s Ordination, Homosexuality,” Religion News Service, December 29, 2020 (religionnews.com/2020/12/29/ top-german-catholic-bishop-urges-shift-on-womens-ordination-homosexuality/). As for Bishop Bätzing’s remark earlier in June of the same year, see the reporting on this (in English) by Elise Ann Allen, “New Leader of German Bishops Signals No Retreat from Progressive Line,” Crux, June 16, 2020 (cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2020/06/ new-leader-of-german-bishops-signals-no-retreat-from-progressive-line/). See Christiane Florin, “Ich gebe zu, ja, der Papst enttäuscht mich auch,” CNA Deutsch, May 22, 2022 (deutschlandfunk.de/interview-der-woche-georg-baetzingbischof-limburg-kirche-papst-vatikan-synodaler-weg-100.html); for the English reporting on this, see “German Bishops’ Leader Expresses Disappointment in Pope Francis,” Catholic News Agency, May 24, 2022, catholicnewsagency.com/news/251345/ german-catholic-bishops-leader-expresses-disappointment-in-pope-francis. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 807 tantamount to ein Papier das erstickt, “a paper that stifles,” another, Joseph Ratzinger (in his role as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], before becoming Pope Benedict XVI), holds up John Paul II’s apostolic letter as expressive of the infallible teaching of the Church’s ordinary magisterium and as “belonging to the deposit of faith.” As such, the letter requires all Catholics, asserts Ratzinger, to offer their “definitive assent” to the Holy Father’s pronouncement.5 John Paul II and Ratzinger may as well have been talking to the wind. If Archbishop Hesse and his disparaging attitude—dismissing a papal apostolic letter as a paper that “stifles”—serves to indicate what “definitive assent” looks like, and if Bishop Bätzing can find that the deposit of faith (represented by the sensus fidelium), particularly as it concerns women’s ordination, is able to “move on,” it is no wonder that we find the issue “still alive.” And recall Hesse and Bätzing hardly stand alone among German prelates in their willingness to ignore Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, as Cardinal Marx and the much touted German “synodal way” show (the archbishop of Luxembourg, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, could also be added to the list).6 Further, when Hesse asserts, “one must be allowed to think about and discuss [women’s ordination],” there is little doubt that, for him and those who share his view, such thought and discussion go in one direction, especially when coupled with Marx’s contention that merely “weak” arguments support the ban and with Bätzing’s claim that “well-developed arguments in theology” favor women’s ordination. To oppose women’s ordination is, quite plainly, to oppose proper theological reflection. Indeed, for Bätzing, it is to oppose the sensus fidelium. “Thinking about and discussing” the possibility of women’s ordination will end, it would seem, only when women at last receive the laying on of hands. With the foregoing in mind and complementing the excellent work on this topic by the theologian Sara Butler, I propose in this essay to put to the test the two claims that merely “weak” arguments stand in the way of women’s 5 6 “This teaching [expressed in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis] requires definitive assent, since . . . it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, . . . [and thus as] belonging to the deposit of faith” ( Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Responsum ad Propositum Dubium Concerning the Teaching Contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis,” October 28, 1995). Cardinal Hollerich, who is also president of the Commission of the Episcopal Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), declared in the same summer of 2020 that he was “open” (offen) to the idea of women’s ordination; see the September 13, 2020 interview with him on the German website Domradio.de, domradio.de/themen/ papst-franziskus/2020-09-13/papst-franziskus-ist-nicht-frustriert-kardinal-hollerichueber-papst-migration-und-den-synodalen-weg. 808 Paul Gondreau ordination and that “well-developed arguments in theology” favor the opening of holy orders to women.7 It is the contention of this essay that sound theological argument falls instead on the side of the all-male priesthood, thereby bolstering what John Paul II maintains in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Turning to the topic of Christ’s male sexuality, I argue specifically that, when acting in persona Christi at the time he confects the Eucharist, the priest identifies himself essentially, albeit implicitly, with Christ’s maleness. Maleness is of absolute or essential necessity for the ministerial priesthood by the wise institution of Christ, so that the minister may fitly or suitably (convenienter) represent Christ. This suitability is linked to the Incarnation itself, so that to affirm the all-male priesthood is at bottom to affirm the Incarnation in its full concrete reality. It must be stressed at the outset: upholding the all-male priesthood is to affirm nothing negative, inferior, or denigrating about women.8 It is merely to aver that Christ became a man and not a woman, since to be human one must be one or the other, and that his male-structured sexuality remains integral to his full humanity—and by extension integral to the ministerial priesthood. In the final analysis, then, to favor women’s ordination is to fall prey, at least implicitly, to a docetic-leaning Christological error, one that favors an undifferentiated humanity in Christ. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, since discussion of the all-male priesthood faces—nearly without fail—the objection that, by excluding women from the circle of the Twelve (and thereby from the ministerial priesthood), Jesus was merely acting in accord with the customs and patriarchal fetters of first-century Judaism, I give a succinct overview of the textual evidence by way of counterargument to this objection. As I attempt to show, the cultural argument—that Jesus was simply conforming to the cultural mentality of his day in choosing only male apostles—proves facile and unsatisfactory, unfounded even, begging for a deeper theological reason for Jesus’s exclusion of women from the Twelve. Second, I move towards this deeper theological account by examining, in a compendious manner, what I suggest provides the theological foundation for the all-male priesthood: 7 8 Sara Butler treats the topic more comprehensively in The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2007); for a more abbreviated treatment, see her “Embodied Ecclesiology: Church Teaching on the Priesthood,” in Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching, ed. Erika Bachiochi (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2010), 143–59. See also Guy Mansini, “On Affirming Dominical Intention of a Male Priesthood,” The Thomist 61, no. 2 (1997): 301–16. For extensive treatment of this side of the issue, see Butler, Catholic Priesthood, 44–47. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 809 Jesus’s maleness and the essential role it plays in his full humanity. In a third speculative move, I show how Jesus’s maleness bears on the ministerial priesthood, particularly as regards its defining action, that of acting in persona Christi when confecting the Eucharist, and that this necessitates an all-male priesthood. Throughout this essay I draw upon the principles and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, even if the Common Doctor nowhere makes the argument presented here. Jesus’s Counter-Cultural Treatment of Women as Equal in Dignity to Men In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time. Consequently, the assumption that he called men to be apostles in order to conform with the widespread mentality of his times, does not at all correspond to Christ’s way of acting. Thus asserts John Paul II in §26 of his 1988 Mulieris Dignitatem, Apostolic Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women, and reiterates six years later by citing that passage in §2 of his Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.9 The textual evidence unambiguously bears out the Polish Pontiff ’s claim. To show this, we need first to consider the customs and the legislative traditions—or at least some of them, and that by way of rapid overview—to which John Paul alludes. Many of these are well known. “Who Has Not Created Me a Woman” Epitomizing the regard for women in the Judaism of Jesus’s time is the prayer that Jewish men would commonly recite at the beginning of the day, and which we find recorded in the Talmud (the set of rabbinic teachings and commentaries on the Torah, much of which goes back to the second century AD and which forms the basis of Jewish law): “Blessed are you, Lord, our 9 Here the Polish Pontiff reiterates the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1976 Inter Insignores, Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, §2: “If [ Jesus] acted in this way [by choosing only male apostles], it was not in order to conform to the customs of his time, for his attitude towards women was quite different from that of his milieu, and he deliberately and courageously broke with it.” 810 Paul Gondreau God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman.”10 Consistent with this prayer, the Talmud also instructs Jewish men to pray for a male child upon learning that their wives are pregnant.11 In the matter of intellectual aptitude, particularly in view of rabbinical instruction, women were deemed unfit for this: “women are of light mind,” asserts the Talmud.12 To be fair, the Talmud does praise the intellectual talents of a certain Beruriah, a rabbi’s wife who, as the Talmud puts it, “was so sharp and had such a good memory that she learned three hundred halakhot [laws] in one day from three hundred Sages.”13 Yet Beruriah seems clearly to have marked the exception rather than the rule, since women were otherwise prohibited from becoming disciples of Jewish rabbis and were excluded from learning the Torah: “You shall teach Torah . . . to your sons, but not your daughters,” the Talmud instructs.14 Not to study under the rabbis themselves, women should instead support their husbands’ rabbinical education, as the Talmud details when it enumerates how women bring honor upon themselves: Women merit [their reward] . . . for bringing their children to read the Torah in the synagogue, and for sending their husbands to study mishna in the study hall [i.e., to study in the schools of the rabbis], and for waiting for their husbands until they return from the study hall.15 Consistent with the Talmud’s insistence that the female sex occupies a separate human category altogether (“women are a people unto themselves”), women were confined to their own court outside the ancient Temple in 10 11 12 13 14 15 The prayer, the full version of which expresses gratitude to God for not being made a gentile, a woman, or a slave/ignoramus, is found in b. Menachot 43b (“b.” designates the Babylonian Talmud, as opposed to the Jerusalem Talmud [“y.”], and 43b specifies the folio page number and side within the tractate call Menachot in b.); available online at Sefaria, sefaria.org/Menachot.43b. For a tracing of the history of this (and other) Jewish prayers, see Yoel Kahn, The Three Blessings: Boundaries, Censorship, and Identity in Jewish Liturgy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). See b. Berakhot 60a: “From the third day [after sexual relations] until the fortieth, one should pray that it [the fetus] will be male” (sefaria.org/Berakhot.60a). The citation is from b. K/Qiddushin 80b (sefaria.org/Kiddushin.80b). Quotation from b. Pesachim 62b (sefaria.org/Pesachim.62b). Commenting on Deut 11:19 (“And you shall teach them [the ordinances and commandments of the Lord] to your children”), the Talmud clarifies in b. Kiddushin 30a that “your children” should be taken to mean “your sons, but not your daughters” (sefaria.org/Kiddushin.30a). The Mishnah makes this a disputed point, however; see, e.g., m. Sotah 3:4 for teaching Torah to daughters (sefaria.org/Mishnah_Sotah.3.4y). This passage comes from b. Berakhot 17a (sefaria.org/Berakhot.17a). Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 811 Jerusalem, prohibited from entering the Inner Court (unless bringing a special sacrifice).16 This extended to the synagogue, where women were required to remain behind a rear barrier (mehitzah), principally to protect men from sexual distraction during prayer—“The voice of a woman is indecent,” asserts the Talmud.17 To be sure, in general the Talmud, looking upon women as objects of sexual temptation, recommends that men have as little contact as possible with women to whom they are not married (as dictated by the laws of negiah, which are somewhat loosely based on Lev 18:6 and 19), even forbidding that they be alone in a room together (this latter would come to be termed the laws of yichud).18 In this connection, the Talmud also stipulates that women (especially married women) stay indoors as a general rule, that they cover themselves as much as possible, in particular their heads, as in accordance with Num 5:18 (“And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and unbind the hair of the woman’s head”), and that they avoid speaking with men they encounter.19 As regards marriage, women were treated as the property of their husbands, enjoying few conjugal rights (Num 5:20 reminds women, “you are under your husband’s authority”). Hence, the Mosaic permission for divorce was in practice a unilateral male privilege, since, generally speaking, the right to divorce was reserved to Jewish men alone. Basing itself on Deut 24:1–2, the Talmud, for instance, states that only the husband can initiate a divorce, and that this can be for any reason, including the spoiling of his dinner, or for practically no reason—an ancient form of “no-fault” divorce.20 The Talmud goes further. Responding to the view, voiced by one rabbi’s 16 17 18 19 20 “Women are a people unto themselves” is found in b. Shabbat 62a:11 (sefaria.org/ Shabbat.62a). The ancient Temple layout is detailed in the Mishnah in m. Middot 2:5–6 (sefaria.org/Mishnah_Middot.2.5). See b. Berakhot 24a (sefaria.org/Berakhot.24a). See, for instance, b. Shabbat 13a–b (sefaria.org/Shabbat.13a), and b. K/Qiddushin 80b (sefaria.org/Kiddushin.80b). For more on this in the Talmud, see Rabbi Nisan Dovid Dubov, The Laws of Yichud: Permissibility and Prohibition Regarding the Seclusion of a Man and Woman (Brooklyn, NY: Sichos In English, 2006). Thus, b. Ketubot 72a: “And who is considered a woman who violates the precepts of Jewish women? One who, for example, goes out of her house, and her head, i.e., her hair, is uncovered; or she spins wool in the public marketplace; or she speaks with every man she encounters. . . . The prohibition against a woman going out with her head uncovered is not merely a custom of Jewish women. Rather, it is by Torah law, as it is written [in Numbers 5:18]” (sefaria.org/Ketubot.72a). In the Mishnah, the School of Hillel states that a man may divorce his wife “even due to a minor issue, e.g., because she burned or over-salted his dish, as it is stated: ‘Because he has found some unseemly matter in her’ [Deut 24:1],” while Rabbi Akiva adds in the Talmud, “He may divorce her even if he found another woman who is better looking 812 Paul Gondreau son, that “a slave is the same as a woman,” the Talmud seeks to temper this position, but only so much. It maintains instead that “a slave is more lowly than a woman,” as Rabbi Aha bar Jacob puts it.21 Though in one respect this Talmudic move marks an effort to lift up women, the fact remains that it assigns women to a second-tier social status. Indeed, that the Talmud reports the opinion that women are no different from slaves indicates how the culture of ancient Judaism could easily breed such an attitude, erroneous though it be. Gospel Innovation: Jesus Breaks with This Cultural Tradition It is a remarkable feature of the Gospel accounts: in his interaction with and treatment of women, Jesus broke, in nearly every instance, with these customs and legislative traditions, elevating women to a status of equal dignity with men in the process. All four Gospels, especially Luke, offer uniform witness of Jesus’s persistent efforts to push social boundaries and legal restrictions, even to the point of risking offense or scandal, as they impinge upon the social status and dignity of women.22 John Paul II holds that this witness constitutes nothing short of “innovation” particular to the Gospel: “In all of Jesus’ teaching, as well as in his behavior, one can find nothing which reflects the discrimination against women prevalent in his day. On the contrary, his words and works always express the respect and honor due to women” (Mulieris Dignitatem §13; emphasis original). We can summarize these words and work, which undoubtedly “preserves [an] essential feature of the original figure of Jesus,” to quote Benedict XVI, as follows.23 21 22 23 than her and wishes to marry her, as it is stated in that verse: ‘And if it comes to pass, if she finds no favor in his eyes’ [Deut 24:1]” (b. Gittin 90a; sefaria.org/Gittin.90a). This comes from b. Menachot 43b–44a (sefaria.org/Menachot.43b). It is Rabbi Jacob’s own son who identifies women with slaves, for which reason the son finds it redundant to express gratitude to God for not being made a slave after having voiced gratitude for not being made a woman. Thus, Inter Insignores §4: “An examination of the Gospels shows . . . that Jesus broke with the prejudices of his time, by widely contravening the discriminations practiced with regard to women.” Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Image, 2007), 183. John Paul II compiles these words and works nearly exhaustively in part V of Mulieris Dignitatem (§§12–16). One also finds a quite cursory sketch of them in Butler, “Embodied Ecclesiology,” 148. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 813 Conspicuous Encounters with Women Though women were required to avoid contact with men, or, short of that, conversations with men that they encountered, Jesus for his part did not hesitate to initiate such conversations. More than that, he was willing to initiate these conversations even when alone with women—a taboo practice—as with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John 4:7–26. That the Samaritan woman herself owned a highly checkered moral past (married five times, and at the time living with another man) only underscores how such an occurrence would have raised eyebrows, to put it mildly. Little wonder that the disciples, upon rejoining Jesus at the well, “marveled that he was talking [alone] with a woman,” though none dared to ask the obvious question: “‘Why are you talking with her?’” ( John 4:27). An obvious question for a Jewish rabbi speaking alone with a woman with a checkered moral past, indeed. For another example of a startling encounter with a woman that Jesus initiated, we can turn to the incident with the crippled woman in the synagogue that Luke 13:10–17 recounts. Standing presumably behind the mehitzah (rear barrier) of the synagogue, the woman seems otherwise to have been making no effort to attract Jesus’s attention. All the same, Jesus notices the woman “bent over and hardly [able to] straighten herself ” (v. 11). This leads him, evidently in a kind of outreach of affection and compassion, to call out to her: “When Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, ‘Woman, you are freed from your infirmity’” (v. 12). That Jesus notices the woman and does not ignore her, and that, moved it would appear by compassion, he calls out to her and then goes over to her behind the mehitzah so that he can “lay hands upon her” (v. 13)—and this no matter the cultural strictures severely limiting contact between men and women in public, let alone in synagogue—almost certainly raised eyebrows and generated scandal. This would seem confirmed by the reaction of the ruler of the synagogue, who grew “indignant” with Jesus (v. 14). Though the ruler offers the pretext that Jesus healed (i.e., “worked”) on the Sabbath as the reason for his indignation, he no doubt also took offense at Jesus’s calling out to a woman in synagogue, to say nothing of his touching her. Perhaps the best-known example of Jesus’s willingness to treat women with tender compassion, dignity, and respect, no matter how socially improper or checkered a woman’s moral past, comes in his encounter with the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee, recounted in Luke 7:36–50. That the uninvited woman kisses Jesus’s feet and dries them with her hair—her uncovered hair—was an obvious cause of scandal, compounded by Jesus’s refusal to rebuff her. Reacting with indignation, Simon seems willing to 814 Paul Gondreau use the expected male Jewish reaction as a litmus test for determining the authenticity of Jesus’s ministry: “‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner’” (v. 39). Undeterred, Jesus audaciously upends the social convention by contrasting Simon’s example with the woman’s: “‘You gave me no kiss [Simon], but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet’” (v. 45). We should also call attention to the fact that Jesus exhibited special affection for certain women, particularly Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” ( John 11:5). Though on its face this comment strikes as unremarkable, it stands out in sharp relief if we read it against the backdrop of first-century Jewish culture. It would be difficult to imagine a parallel first-century Jewish account of the ministry of a certain unmarried itinerant rabbi making mention, somewhat gratuitously, of the fact that this rabbi “loved” various particular women. One finds no such similar observation in the Talmud, for instance, despite its many narrative accounts about numerous rabbis. Equality in Marriage When it comes to marriage, and in particular the Mosaic permission for divorce, here too Jesus boldly upends social convention in his effort at lifting up women, part and parcel of his determination to affirm the true meaning of marriage: “‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’” (Matt 19:8). Recall that Jewish law relegated women to the property of their husbands—indeed, to a status just above slaves, as per the Talmud—with few conjugal rights. The right to divorce accordingly belonged to men alone. By rescinding the (male) permission for divorce, then, Jesus was affirming, among other things, the fundamental equality of husband and wife in the marriage covenant, with his express appeal to Gen 2:24 (“And the two shall become one flesh”) in Matt 19:5 making this unambiguous.24 Not at the disposal of their husbands’ mere whim or wish (recall that husbands could initiate a divorce for any trivial reason, or for “any cause,” as the Pharisee puts it in Matthew 19:3, and thus practically for no reason), women enjoy, on Jesus’s account, the security of full rights and responsibilities that come with any true partnership. Jesus signals that women are not 24 Thus, Inter Insignores §2: “ [ Jesus] does not hesitate to depart from the Mosaic Law in order to affirm the equality of the rights and duties of men and women with regard to the marriage bond.” Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 815 be regarded or treated as chattel, no matter if Jewish law suggests otherwise. Husbands and wives enjoy by God’s design and Jesus’s witness a “friendship of equality” (aequalis amicitia), as Aquinas terms it, since, indeed, friendship always presupposes equality (as the pagan philosopher Aristotle observes).25 Female Disciples and Traveling Companions Perhaps the most striking feature of Jesus’s treatment of women is that, though they were otherwise prohibited from being disciples of rabbis and learning under them, Jesus freely accepted female disciples and instructed them alongside his male disciples. (He would also hold women up as a model of discipleship, as in Luke 10:42, and feature them prominently in many of his parables, as in Luke 15:8–10.) What is more, Jesus allowed some, indeed, “many,” of his female disciples to travel with him, and thus to belong to his “more intimate community of believers,” as Benedict XVI puts it.26 Luke 8:1–3 reports: Jesus went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means. To say that such practices by a first-century rabbi would have provoked scandal would be understating the issue. That Jesus flouts the laws of negiah—the laws and customs dictating strict avoidance of physical contact between men and women who are not married to each other—in such an overt manner would certainly have offended and dismayed first-century Jewish sensibilities. A Riddle to Be Solved Admittedly, this flouting can strike—still today—as somewhat puzzling, shocking even, and leave us with somewhat of a conundrum. On the one hand, the safeguarding of sexual propriety, accomplished through the imposition of strict boundaries between the sexes, marked the chief aim of the negiah. By disregarding the laws of negiah—most flagrantly by his allowing 25 26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles [SCG] III, ch. 123; see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 8.8.1159b. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:183. 816 Paul Gondreau women to travel with him and his “intimate community” of male disciples— Jesus, it would appear, was throwing strict sexual propriety to the wind. On the other hand, countervailing evidence shows that Jesus hardly favored a lax approach to sexual morality. To be sure, Jesus sought to elevate and intensify the rigors of the Torah as they concern sexual morality, and this in rather pronounced terms. That he adverts to the arresting phrase “adultery of the heart” to condemn lustful desires in Matt 5:27–28 or that he revokes the Mosaic permission for divorce on the grounds that it marks a concession to sin in Mark 10:5 (“For your hardness of heart, he [Moses] wrote you this commandment”) amply confirms this.27 Jesus thus insisted quite forcefully upon proper moral boundaries between the sexes—something the laws of negiah did as well. As we probe his attitude toward and treatment of women, what sense, then, are we to make of his casting aside the laws of negiah? A Moral Standard that Directs Internal Acts The answer emerges when we recognize that, relative to the laws of negiah, what Jesus prefers—and introduces—is a new and more perfect standard of sexual propriety. By enjoining his disciples to discipline their interior sexual urges and to cease looking upon persons as objects of sexual self-gratification, which his arresting language of “adultery of the heart” underscores, Jesus promotes a moral standard that imposes not stringent external constraint, but strict internal self-governance—a self-governance that the virtue-ethics tradition terms “chastity.” Evidently, Jesus views this standard as sufficient for establishing proper moral boundaries—the strictest of moral boundaries—between his male and female disciples, while at the same time allowing, contra the laws of negiah, for close personal interaction of the sexes. Put slightly differently, the practice of the virtue of chastity implies self-mastery over one’s interior life (thoughts and desires), the source of outward action, whereas the laws of negiah place the focus on external action. Jesus prefers an integrated chastity, a self-governance that pervades or integrates our entire being, a self-governance that moves from the inside out, from internal thoughts and desires to external bodily action: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles a man,” he says in Matt 15:18. In this connection, Scholastic theologians, Thomas Aquinas chief among them, hold up the regulation of internal acts as a defining feature of New Testament morality: “The New Law [of the Gospel] surpasses the Old 27 For much more on all this, see my essay, “Jesus and Paul on the Meaning and Purpose of Human Sexuality,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 2 (2020): 461–503, at 464–75. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 817 [Mosaic] Law,” Aquinas writes, “since the New Law directs our internal acts. . . . Hence the saying [by Peter Lombard] that ‘the Old Law curbs the hand, but the New Law curbs the soul [anima].’”28 Merely dwelling on external action (“curb the hand”), the laws of negiah fail to target the proper source of outward action (“curb the soul”), and thereby prove insufficient. That the laws of negiah, predicated on the view that women are a sexual temptation (recall from the Talmud that “the voice of a woman is indecent”), do this in an excessively restrictive and rigid fashion explains why Jesus prefers to break with them. Removing the Sexual Stigma from Women It bears insisting that, by regarding women as a sexual temptation, ancient Judaism both helped exculpate men as regards their own struggles with lust and encouraged men to objectify women and to look upon them with negative suspicion. Hence, the greater strictures that the negiah laws placed on women that were noted above: women were to stay out of public view as much as possible so as to avoid contact with men; they should avoid speaking with men; they should thoroughly cover themselves, especially their heads; they should remain behind the barrier in synagogue and remain confined to the Women’s Outer Court at the Temple in Jerusalem; and the list goes on. Jesus will have none of this. By insisting upon interior self-mastery, which shifts moral responsibility from without—from an external object or person—to within, he accomplishes two things, both of which render the burdensome strictures of negiah laws defunct. First, in a culture such as that of first-century Judaism, he demands respect for women, since he enjoins men to cease objectifying women and looking upon them with negative suspicion. Jesus removes the sexual stigma from women, and thereby promotes their dignity as persons and elevates them to a status of equality with men. Second, and in a more general sense, Jesus demands that men (and women) take moral ownership of their actions, denying both sexes, but especially men, the excuse to blame their struggles with lust on someone else. Why this concerns men especially shall be addressed shortly below, but for the moment, it is not by accident, I think, that Jesus appears to direct his injunction against lustful desires primarily at men, given his express naming of women (gynaikes) as the object of said desire: “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:28). 28 Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 91, a. 5; see also I-II, q. 107, a. 2; q. 108, a. 3. Translations of the ST (with adaptations) are from the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger, 1947–1948). For Peter Lombard, see Sentences III, d. 40. 818 Paul Gondreau Jesus’s attitude toward the negiah laws emerges as analogous, then, to his regard for the laws governing Sabbath observance (the laws surrounding the third commandment). Jesus will be a slave to the strict letter of neither the negiah laws nor those governing Sabbath observance: “The negiah laws were made for man, not man for the laws of negiah,” one might say. Yet, at the same time, hardly does Jesus disregard the “spirit” of these two sets of laws either. As a religious man, he continues to observe the Sabbath and to respect the third commandment as expressive of a foundational normative good, namely, the proper worship of God. As a moral man, indeed, as a man of consummate virtue, Jesus continues to observe the “spirit” of the laws of negiah, honoring the moral good that they seek to bring about, albeit along the superior lines of an integrated chastity. Jesus as Exemplum Castitatis That Jesus imbibed in his own person consummate moral virtue merits further remark. “The virtues were in their highest degree in Christ,” writes Thomas Aquinas, for which reason the Dominican master designates him the exemplum virtutis, the supreme model of virtue.29 This means that, when he enjoins his disciples to strive for moral perfection in Matt 5:48, Jesus knows that he models this in his own person. He models the way of self-control of one’s sexual appetites, that is, the way of integrated chastity. His sex drive was not cut off from his moral agency as an acting person but integrated into it. Because he was sinless, Jesus was not subject to the internal disorder of the struggle of the spirit against the flesh. Introduced into the human condition by original sin, this struggle, which the theological tradition denotes by the terms “concupiscence” and fomes peccati (the affective “spark” to sin), results from the disharmony that exists between the higher rational powers and the lower, animal-like inclination to bodily goods, inclusive of movements of passion or emotion. Spared this disorder, Christ enjoyed perfect interior rectitude and self-mastery, similar to Adam before the Fall: “[Christ was] not troubled by the passions of the soul nor the desires of the flesh,” professes the Second Council of Constantinople (553)—though he certainly experienced passions of the soul.30 This would include passions and desires of a sexual nature. Jesus 29 30 ST III, q. 15, aa. 1 and 2. Constantinople II, anathema 12 (Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., ed. Norman P. Tanner [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990], 1:119). For more on this, see my The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002; repr. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018), 340–49. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 819 experienced no disordered sex drive; in no way can we attribute lust in any form to him. On the contrary, he enjoyed unmitigated command of his sexual impulses. As exemplum virtutis, he was by that fact also exemplum castitatis, supreme model of the virtue of chastity, or even more specifically, highest model of the virtue of virginity (exemplum virginitatis), the virtue that regulates the perpetual renunciation of all sexual pleasure. Jesus looked upon women with eyes of purity and enjoyed healthy affective relationships with them. The perfect model of being human, he evinces the fullness of human development and affective maturity, where the emotional dimension of human life, especially in the area of sexuality, is properly integrated with the rational and spiritual dimension of the acting person. Chastity emerges as the most basic measure of affective maturity and of the capacity for delayed bodily gratification, key to men regarding women as intellectual and moral equals (and vice versa). All this Jesus exemplifies to the highest degree. Jesus as the “Reset” for Male Sexual Self-Governance That Jesus enjoyed perfect command of his sexual impulses bears special significance for men, as lust marks an especially male problem. Recent scientific findings have established a neurobiological foundation for the male struggle with lust. These findings show that the structuring of the male brain orients the male sex drive to physical attraction (or to what researchers term “objectification”) and to physical pleasure—whereas the female brain owns a different type of structuring, one that orients the female sex drive more particularly to relationships.31 No doubt, the disordering effects of original 31 For an overview of these findings, see my “Thomas Aquinas on Sexual Difference: The Metaphysical Biology and Moral Significance of Human Sexuality,” Pro Ecclesia 30, no. 3 (2021): 177–215. I also cover the neurobiological differences between the sexes in my essay, “Aquinas on Christ’s Male Sexuality as Integral to His Full Humanity: AntiDocetism in the Common Doctor,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2021), 195–232, at 211–14. In brief, the male brain owns more extensive testosterone circuits, the hormone that mediates male aggression and the male sexual drive, whereas the female brain engages more the cerebral cortex and has more extensive oxytocin circuits, the so-called bonding hormone, hardwiring women neurobiologically in a particular way for relationships. As a result, women experience optimal sexual pleasure within the context of a committed relationship, more so than for men, given the orientation of the male sex drive to physical attraction and pleasure. The physician and psychologist Leonard Sax puts it this way: “Women’s sexual experience is ‘happening’ more in the cerebral cortex and is therefore more connected with the rest of what’s going on in their mind. The sexual experience in men is less connected with the cortex, less connected with the outside world. . . . ‘For women, an important goal of sex is intimacy; the best context for pleasurable sex is a committed relationship. This is less 820 Paul Gondreau sin have compounded this male-specific neurobiological predisposition to physical attraction and to seeking sexual pleasure. Indeed, I think that, beyond the more general fomes peccati, the affective “spark” to sin that both sexes inherit from original sin, one can affirm in men a veritable fomes luxuriae, an affective spark to lust characteristic of the male fallen condition. The male neurobiological predisposition to physical attraction (i.e., to objectification) and to seeking sexual pleasure becomes, as a consequence of original sin, a condition of “lying in wait”—thus, a “spark” (fomes) to lust that stokes or rouses and thereby exacerbates this male neurobiological predisposition. Recent psychological research would seem to bear this out, as studies indicate that men exhibit a greater willingness to pursue sexual opportunities and to engage in casual sex.32 Studies also show a much greater occurrence of sexual pathologies and sexually deviant behavior in men as opposed to women.33 32 33 true for men’” (Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, 2nd ed. [New York: Harmony, 2017], 122–23 [see also 228–29]; quoting psychologist Letitia Anne Peplau, “Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ?,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 [2003]:, 37–44). For men showing greater propensity to engage in casual sex, see the classic study by Russell D. Clark and Elaine Hatfield, “Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers,” Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality 2, no. 1 (1989): 39–55, with the opening abstract stating: “In [our] experiments, . . . male and female confederates of average attractiveness approached potential partners with one of three requests: ‘Would you go out tonight?’ ‘Will you come over to my apartment?’ or ‘Would you go to bed with me?’ The great majority of men were willing to have a sexual liaison with the women who approached them. Women were not. Not one woman agreed to a sexual liaison.” This study, with some modifications, was repeated several years later, with similar results; see Mercedes Tappé, Lisamarie Bensman, Kentaro Hayashi, and Elaine Hatfield, “Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers: A New Research Prototype,” Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships 7, no. 2 (2013), interpersona.psychopen.eu/article/view/121/html. See also R. F. Baumeister, K. R. Catanese, and K. D. Vohs, “Is There a Gender Difference in Sex Drive? Theoretical Views, Conceptual Distinctions, and a Review of Relevant Evidence,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 5 (2001): 242–73. This is according to the psychologist Paul Vitz in his paper, “Men and Women: The Psychology of Their Differences and Their Complementarity,” delivered at the annual symposium of the Catholic Women’s Forum of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC, June 26, 2019. See also Samantha J. Dawson, Brittany A. Bannerman, and Martin Lalumière, “Paraphilic Interests: An Examination of Sex Differences in a Nonclinical Sample,” Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment 28, no. 1 (2016), 20–45, particularly its conclusion: “Our results suggest a reliable and substantial sex difference in paraphilic [i.e., sexually deviant] interests, such that men report less repulsion to a variety of paraphilic acts than do women, and more men Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 821 To be clear, it is paramount that we distinguish original sin’s wounding of the male sex drive from the natural wiring of the male brain that is expressive of God’s creative design. Morally speaking, this latter in itself is neither good nor bad. It forms part of the metaphysical biological makeup of the male human being. And since, as Aquinas puts it, “sin does not belong to human nature, a nature that has God for its cause,” with the result that “what is natural to man was neither acquired nor forfeited by sin,” it would be deeply erroneous, heretical even, to deem that men are inclined by design to sin (lust) on account of the wiring of their brain for physical attraction and pleasure.34 As with all biological or animal-like features of human life (such as the passions or emotions), the male neurobiological propensity for physical attraction and pleasure becomes moral only when acted upon by reason and will, that is, only in the measure that reason and will finalize and integrate it into a life of proper human flourishing.35 Following Aristotle, Aquinas insists that moral virtue accomplishes this task—chastity in the case of neurobiological design ordering to sexual desire and pleasure.36 As we shall see in the next section, Jesus, like any man, owned a male-structured brain, part and parcel of his male-structured body. Even if we can attribute no form of lust to Jesus, we must still affirm in him the typical male neurobiological predisposition to physical attraction and to 34 35 36 than women report being actually aroused by particular paraphilic activities” (37). The study also observes: “Sex drive appears to provide the best explanation for the sex difference in paraphilic interests. . . . Sex drive, comprised of measures assessing sexual compulsivity and hypersexuality, was found to significantly and fully mediate the sex difference in overall paraphilic scores” (34–35), journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/1079063214525645. For the citations from Aquinas, see ST I, q. 98, a. 2; III, q. 15, a. 1. For Aquinas on the passions or emotions being morally neutral in themselves, see ST I-II, q. 24, aa. 1–2; q. 59, a. 5, ad 2; In II eth., lec. 3. See also Mark Jordan, “Aquinas’s Construction of a Moral Account of the Passions,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 33 (1986): 71–97. “Moral virtue perfects the appetitive part of the soul by directing [the passions or emotions] to the good defined by reason,” writes Thomas, as, indeed, passion or emotion constitutes the “proper matter” of the moral virtues (ST I-II, q. 59, aa. 4–5). See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.1106b15–16. For much more on this, see my own “The Passions and the Moral Life: Appreciating the Originality of Aquinas,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 419–50. As for chastity, the moral theologian Servais Pinckaers observes that sexuality “is realized in man in a different and far richer way than in animals,” since it gets “integrated in the totality of human nature” through the virtue of chastity (The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Mary Thomas Noble [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995], 438). For how a much deeper examination of how this traces out, see my “Thomas Aquinas on Sexual Difference,” section III. 822 Paul Gondreau pleasure. Natural biological design, essential to human nature, demands as much. At the same time, since Jesus did not contract original sin, he was spared the fomes luxuriae, the disordered affective condition characteristic of men. His neurobiological predisposition to physical attraction and pleasure remained nothing more than a predisposition. Manly Imitatio Christi The moral lesson here is paramount: by his own example Jesus provides the proper “reset” for how men should master their sex drive, and thereby neutralize the fomes luxuriae—and, by extension, for how men should look upon and treat women. True, Jesus serves as a model of chastity for both sexes. All the same, he serves as a more particular model of “manly” chastity for those who share a male structuring with him—just as the Virgin Mary serves as a particular model of virtue for women. The theme of imitatio Christi, revered throughout Christian tradition and enjoying pride of place in the writings of Aquinas, bears particular relevance for men, it must be said.37 Enjoying unmitigated interior mastery of his sexuality, Jesus exemplifies an integrated chastity in a male-specific or male-appropriate manner. Though men in their fallen condition might commonly struggle to varying degrees with a disordered sex drive, they can, by practicing a manly imitatio Christi, find their proper “reset” in the Jesus who at all points mastered this drive. While St. Paul exhorts all Christians to “put on” Christ (Rom 13:14), men in a particular way are called to put on the masculine Christ, the manly Christ. Relating this expressly to the female sex, Jesus, as just mentioned, provides the proper reset for how men should regard and treat women. Jesus’s example makes quite plain that proper respect for women and affirmation of their dignity as equal persons begins with interior control of the male sex drive. Where a man has little or no self-governance of his sexual appetites, where he lacks affective maturity and the capacity for delayed gratification, he cannot properly respect women; he will instead necessarily objectify them. John Paul II observes in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio that “the first victims of this mentality [whereby a human being is looked upon ‘not as a person but as a thing, as an object of trade, at the service of selfish 37 The expression “Christ’s action is our instruc­tion” occurs seventeen times in Aquinas’s works (see, e.g., ST III, q. 40, a. 1, ad 3). For more on this, see Richard Schenk, “Omnis Christi actio nostra est instructio: The Deeds and Sayings of Jesus as Revelation in the View of Thomas Aquinas,” in La doctrine de la révélation divine de saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. L. Elders (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990), 103–31. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 823 interest and mere pleasure’] are women.”38 In Jesus, we see that not only does an integrated chastity go hand-in-hand with respect for women, but the two are inextricably causally linked. Proper respect for women can occur only within the framework of virtue, headed most obviously by chastity (or virginity for those vowed to celibacy), but also involving prudence, justice (rendering to women what is their due on account of their equal dignity), charity, and the other virtues. How the First “Priests of the New Covenant” (the Apostles) Responded Before leaving the topic of Jesus’s treatment of women and his flouting the laws of negiah, we might wonder what his male traveling companions, the twelve apostles, made of this conduct—the first “priests of the new covenant,” to quote the Council of Trent.39 How did these first priests of Jesus Christ, who “were believing and observant Jews” (as Benedict puts it), find Jesus’s attitude toward women, inclusive of his open disregard for the negiah laws?40 Evidently, they acceded and adapted to it. If at first they understandably reacted with surprise and dismay, as seems to have happened when they found Jesus speaking alone with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (see John 4:27), they appear to have quickly learned to follow Jesus’s lead, no matter how perplexing they found this “mysterious new way,” as Benedict terms it.41 Given that the testimony of the apostles marks the primary source of the Gospel witness, it speaks volumes, I think, that all four Gospels offer detailed accounts of Jesus’s conduct toward women and do not attempt to cover over such a controversial feature of his ministry. Among other things, this indicates that, on the issue of sexual propriety, the apostles in time came to grasp the new standard of purity set by Jesus and that this standard was meant to be part and parcel of the “mysterious new way” of Christian discipleship—with these first “priests of the new covenant” charting the path. The apostles were the first to practice a manly imitatio Christi by exercising an integrated chastity in their own persons, freeing them to enjoy healthy affective relationships with women. Their successors in the priesthood would do well to heed their example. 38 39 40 41 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (1981), §24. Council of Trent, session 22, on the holy sacrifice of the Mass, ch. 1, affirms that the apostles’ priestly “ordination” occurred during the Last Supper. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:178. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:178. 824 Paul Gondreau Affirming the Equality of the Sexes from the Cross Finally, that Jesus’s female disciples, in contrast to the apostles, remained faithful to Jesus to the very end—faithful, that is, by being present at the foot of the Cross ( John was the sole male disciple present)—speaks volumes of their intimate bond with Jesus and of their indispensable place among his group of disciples. And no one more so than Mary of Nazareth, Jesus’s mother, the most important woman of the entire biblical witness, who stands at the center of salvation history. If his earlier interactions with his mother hold up Mary as the “model believer” (see, for instance, Luke 2:51 and John 2:5), to quote Benedict, Jesus greatly intensifies and elevates her status when she is present at the foot of the Cross.42 There, as John’s Gospel records, Jesus uses his final words to his mother to hold her up as the “new Eve” (with Jesus himself as the new Adam). He signals this by addressing Mary as “woman” ( John 19:26; see also 2:4), an unmistakable echo of Gen 2:23 (“she shall be called Woman”).43 That Jesus’s side is opened by the soldier’s lance after he had fallen into the sleep of death (see John 19:34) further amplifies this identification of Mary as the new Eve, given that the first woman was created from Adam’s side while he slept (see Gen 2:21–22). Christ’s opened side also points to the equal dignity of women, as Eve’s formation from Adam’s side intimates the fundamental equality between man and woman, on the reading of Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.44 Jesus’s effort to affirm the equal dignity of women thus reaches even to his death on the Cross, and indeed to the resurrection itself, since in his risen state he chooses to appear first to a female disciple, Mary Magdalene, whom he also addresses—in a garden—as “woman” (see John 20:15). 42 43 44 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 3, The Infancy Narratives, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (New York: Image, 2012), 125. See Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 221–22. The Second Vatican Council, citing various Fathers of the Church, offers a rich reflection on Mary as the new Eve, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, §56. For more on how Christ on the Cross reveals Mary as the new Eve, see Michele Schumacher, “Revelation and Human Sexuality,” in The Oxford Handbook of Divine Revelation, ed. Balázs M. Mezei, Francesca Aran Murphy, and Kenneth Oakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 571–86, at 577–82. Aquinas, Super 1 Cor 7, lec. 1 (trans. F. R. Larcher [Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012], 122); Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 18, a. 1, q. 1. For more on Bonaventure concerning this exegesis, see Emma Thérèse Healy, Woman according to Saint Bonaventure (Erie, PA: Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, 1956), 24–45. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 825 Equality, Not Sameness: Jesus Favors the Model of Male Headship Jesus dignifies women and stands up for them persistently and courageously. He defends them, builds them up—truly remarkable for a culture that ranks women just above slaves. In brief, Jesus was undaunted by the cultural roadblocks he faced in seeking to lift up women in their social status and dignity. He was determined, it would seem, to level these roadblocks by affirming that women stand before God as equal to men in personal dignity and social status. Such a pattern would seem strongly to suggest, therefore, that Jesus should have included at least one woman among the Twelve, the group chosen by him to exercise headship in the Church. He opted not to do this, however—clearly an intentional decision on his part: “We have here a number of convergent indications that make it all the more remarkable that Jesus did not entrust the apostolic charge to women,” to quote §2 of Inter Insignores, the Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, issued by the CDF in 1976, and where “convergent indications” refer to what this essay has summarized above. For his part, Benedict writes: “The difference between the discipleship of the Twelve and the discipleship of the women is obvious; the tasks assigned to each group are quite different.”45 It would thus appear that Jesus espouses the view that equality does not equate with sameness or interchangeability, particularly with regard to social roles and function (the Church, after all, constitutes a society).46 Bypassing the effort to see his lifting up of women to its logical end, Jesus instead, by accepting only men as apostles, chose to favor the model of male headship. Honest with the biblical evidence, the New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III notes the significance of this, no matter Jesus’s “revolutionary” treatment of women: Jesus broke with Jewish tradition in having women disciples and travelling companions, and there is no reason why He could not have continued this revolutionary trend by choosing some women to be among the Twelve. It appears then that male headship as a pattern 45 46 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:181. The philosopher Laura L. Garcia writes: “Recognizing the equal dignity of women and men, grounded in their shared nature as human beings, does not require that women and men be treated as interchangeable in all of their social roles” (“Authentic Freedom and Equality in Difference,” in Bachiochi, Women, Sex, and the Church, 15–33, at 20). 826 Paul Gondreau of leadership, if refined and redefined according to the dictates of discipleship and Jesus’ example, was acceptable to him.47 On its surface, this decision, because stopping short of the path that Jesus readily left open for himself, remains somewhat enigmatic. The patriarchal-cultural argument may provide a quick explanation for Jesus’s decision to exclude women from the Twelve, but it remains facile and inadequate, countering as it does the overwhelming countervailing evidence. Hence, John Paul II’s assertion in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis §2 that Jesus’s exclusion of women from the Twelve “did not proceed from sociological or cultural motives peculiar to his time.” Given this, Jesus’s choice “cannot be dismissed as a historically conditioned decision open to subsequent development,” writes Butler, with the result that “‘a purely historical exegesis of the [Gospel] texts cannot suffice’ to establish Christ’s will on this matter.”48 We must look deeper for another possible and more satisfactory theological explanation. Jesus’s maleness, I submit, provides the foundation for such an explanation. To that notion, then, we turn. Truly Human, Fully Male: The Doctrine of the Incarnation and Christ’s Male Sexuality As I have written elsewhere and at further length on Christ’s male sexuality, here I simply recapitulate certain elements of these studies as they bear on the issue at hand.49 It is a defined truth of the faith: God became fully and truly human in the person of Christ (Christ’s humanity is the ground, of course, of his male sexuality). Against the ever-present threat of docetism, the heretical 47 48 49 Ben Witherington III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus: A Study of Jesus’ Attitudes to Women and Their Roles as Reflected in His Earthly Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 195n233. Butler, Catholic Priesthood, 13, 69. Paul Gondreau, “‘It Was Proper for Christ to Assume a Particular Sex’: Thomas Aquinas on the Maleness of Christ,” in Une théologie à l’école de saint Thomas d’Aquin: Hommage au prof. Gilles Emery op à l’occasion de ses 60 ans, ed. Nicole Awais, Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole, Doris Rey-Meier (Paris: Cerf, 2022), 455–90; an earlier and slightly different version of this essay first appeared as “Aquinas on Christ’s Male Sexuality as Integral to His Full Humanity: Anti-Docetism in the Common Doctor,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, Roger Nutt (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2021), 195–232. See also my “The Maleness of Christ,” in The Clerical Sex Abuse Scandal: An Interdisciplinary Analysis, ed. Jane F. Adolphe and Ronald J. Rychlak (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2020), 347–63. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 827 tendency to deny or downplay Christ’s full humanity, the Church, especially in its conciliar decrees, has consistently affirmed that God became man: that God substantially and not merely accidentally or temporarily took on a “true human body” and a “rational soul,” to advert to the language of Aquinas, and thus an integral human nature.50 Christ’s Full Human Consubstantiality in the Conciliar Tradition The earliest conciliar profession clearly attesting to Christ’s full humanity came at Constantinople I (381), specifically with its key term enanthrōpeō, “to become man.”51 (The singular importance of this term is highlighted liturgically by the gesture of bowing when it is pronounced during the recitation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed at Mass.) Crucial in the lead-up to this Council, whose principal aim was to respond to the heresy of Apollinarianism (which denied a rational soul in Christ, holding instead that the Word, Logos, took the place of Christ’s human mind, or nous), was the use by multiple Church Fathers of the celebrated soteriological principle. Predicated on the understanding that the very purpose of God’s becoming man was for the sake of human salvation, the principle asserts in its classic formulation that what was not assumed was not healed or saved. As the early patristic author Origen puts it, man would not have been saved entirely if Christ had not clothed himself in man entirely.52 The other Church council that proved crucial in the effort at affirming Christ’s humanity was Chalcedon (451), which indeed marks the high point of the ancient Church’s determination to proclaim the full truth of Christ’s humanity (and divinity). Chalcedon responded to the heresy of monophysitism (or Eutychianism), which compromised Christ’s full humanity by positing in him not two natures, a human nature and a divine nature, but one blended or mixed nature. This heresy turned Christ into a kind of theandric mutant. To counter this, Chalcedon appropriated the celebrated term of 50 51 52 See ST III, q. 5, aa. 1–4, where Aquinas argues that Christ’s assumption of a true human body (verum corpus humanum) and a rational soul (animam rationale) is established both by the principle of hylemorphism (matter–form composition) and by the witness of the New Testament. As for docetism (from the Greek dokeō, “to seem,” and traceable to apostolic times; see 2 John 7: “Many deceivers . . . will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh”), this heresy alleges that Christ only appeared to have come in the flesh. For more on docetism, see Fernando Ocáriz, Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, and José Antonio Riestra, The Mystery of Jesus Christ: A Christology and Soteriology Textbook, trans. Michael Adams and James Gavignon (Portland, OR: Four Courts, 2011), 55–58. See Tanner, Decrees, 1:24. Origen, Discussion with Heraclitus 7. 828 Paul Gondreau Nicaea I, homoousios (“consubstantial”), used to affirm Christ’s divinity in the earlier Council, and applied it to Christ’s humanity: “Christ is consubstantial [homoousios] with the Father as regards his divinity,” Chalcedon professes, “and consubstantial [homoousios] with us as regards his humanity.”53 Christ shares in our human nature fully, not partially. Chalcedon did not stop there. Continuing to hold monophysitism (as well as Nestorianism) squarely in its scope, the Council’s profession of faith employed another, even more crucial turn of phrase (its celebrated phrase): “One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion [asugchytōs], no change [atreptōs], no division [adiairetōs], no separation [achōristōs].”54 Christ’s human nature was not compromised or diluted by its being joined to the divine nature, his humanity was not swallowed up by his divinity, since, still quoting the Council, “the property of both natures is preserved, [while] com[ing] together into a single person and a single hypostasis.”55 The integrity and distinct identity of Christ’s human nature were preserved. “It Was Proper for Christ to Assume a Particular Sex” Thomas Aquinas supplies the crucial next step relative to Christ’s maleness. Drawing out the implications of Christ’s full human consubstantiality, Aquinas stakes a position on Christ’s sexuality that, to my knowledge, marks a historical first. It comes in a query in a little-known passage from his early commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences on whether Christ had to assume any particular sex at all. Here Aquinas writes: Christ had to be like his brethren in all things natural, as Heb 2:17 says. Yet sex is natural to man [sexus est de naturalibus hominis]. Therefore, he had to assume a sex. . . . [Further] Christ came to restore [or redeem] human nature by his very assumption; and for this reason it was necessary that he assume everything following upon human nature, namely, all the properties and parts of human nature, among which is sex; and therefore it was proper for him to assume a particular sex. . . . He assumed a sex not in order to use it but for the perfection of nature.56 53 54 55 56 Tanner, Decrees, 1:86. Tanner, Decrees, 1:86. Tanner, Decrees, 1:86. In III sent., d. 12, q. 3, a. 1, qa. 1, sol. 1, corp. and ad 2 (emphasis added). This query is appended to an Augustinian-sparked consideration of whether Christ assumed the “more honorable sex” (sexus honorabilior), which Augustine answers affirmatively; Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 829 That Aquinas, ever the biblical theologian, opens with a citation of Heb 2:17 is instructive. Undoubtedly, it is this passage’s appeal to human nature (“like his brethren in all things natural”) that draws Thomas to it. Such an appeal readily lends itself to a robust philosophical exegesis and coherence, and Aquinas wastes little time in offering one. “Sex Is Natural to Man”: Metaphysical Christology Thomas insists that sex belongs to human nature (“sex is natural to man”), and this on account of its belonging to the animal-like (and thus biological) structure of human nature, as he makes clear later in the Summa theologiae: “[Sexuality] is natural to man by reason of his animal life, . . . as our bodily organs clearly attest.”57 Note that, contrary to the tendency of modern thought, Aquinas does not look upon “animal nature” in reference to the human being, along with all things biological, as signifying the subhuman. Nor does Aquinas intend to reduce human sexuality entirely to our “animal life,” since, as the Thomist moral theologian Servais Pinckaers observes, sex becomes “integrated in the totality of human nature.”58 All the same, sex begins with our biological, animal-like design. Thomas offers a deeper metaphysical account of the same in another early work, the De ente et essentia. There the Dominican master assigns human sexuality to the category of an essential property of our animal nature. Eyeing the hylemorphic (matter–form) structure of the human person, he holds that there are certain essential features of human nature (he calls them “proper accidents”) that, while not entering into the definition of the human being as a rational animal per se, nonetheless proceed immediately, and thus essentially, upon this definition. Certain essential attributes, or essential compositional accidents, thus follow immediately upon our animality (expressive of the body or of our matter) and upon our rationality (expressive of the soul or of our form). If risibility provides an example of an attribute following upon human rationality, then sexuality, or binary sexual 57 58 see De diversis quaestionibus octaginta tribus 11 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 44A:18). Peter Lombard took this issue up for discussion in Sentences III, d. 12, ch. 4, from which it passed to the thirteenth‑century Sentences commentaries. In addition to his own Sentences commentary, Aquinas addresses this issue of the sexus honorabilior also in ST III, q. 31, a. 4, ad 1. ST I, q. 98, a. 2. In ad 1, Thomas affirms that the human being owns “an animal life in his body.” Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 438. Aquinas goes so far as to situate the mean of virtue, i.e., the good of reason, in the conjugal act itself, the act by which children are procreated (In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3; trans. Beth Mortensen in Commentary on the Sentences, Book IV, 26–42 [Green Bay, WI: Aquinas Institute, 2018], 9). 830 Paul Gondreau dimorphism (maleness and femaleness), stands out as a compositional attribute that proceeds upon our animality, or upon our animal bodiliness: “The diversity of male and female among animals derives from matter,” Aquinas writes.59 As risibility is to the rational soul, so is binary sexual difference to the animal body. Not a pure or contingent accident (like hair color), sex marks a proper or essential accident of the body. Thus, when Thomas holds that Christ’s sexed nature owes to his having assumed “all the properties and parts of human nature,” the “property” of human nature that pertains to sex is that of a compositional attribute (or proper accident) of the body, while the “part” concerns the animal side of human nature. Later in the Summa theologiae, he makes Christ’s assumption of the animal part of human nature explicit: “Nothing implanted in our nature by God was lacking in the human nature assumed by the Word of God. . . . Hence the Son of God necessarily assumed together with his human nature whatever belongs to animal nature.”60 Though this passage, where the specific concern centers on Christ’s possession of a sensitive appetite (the human animal-like ordering to bodily goods), fails to name Christ’s male sex as an example of that which belongs to his “animal nature,” the earlier passage from the Sentences commentary leaves little doubt. Christ Had to Take on a Sex in order to Redeem Sexuality The metaphysical thrust underpins the theological coherence. We see this when, after affirming the link between sex and human nature, in the same Sentences commentary passage quoted at length above, Thomas nods unmistakably to the soteriological principle: “Christ came to restore [or redeem] human nature by his very assumption.” For the whole of man to be saved, Christ had to take on the whole of man—he had to take on everything essential pertaining to human nature, and this includes sexuality. If the incarnate Word of God were not a biologically structured man (or woman), as owing to his assumed body’s animal-like structure, human sexuality would not have been redeemed. This holds as well for the way the early Church defined genuine human consubstantiality.61 Human consubstantiality must, on Thomas’s reading, 59 60 61 Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 5. ST III, q. 9, a. 4; q. 18, a. 2. Scholars have long documented Aquinas’s unparalleled thirteenth-century familiarity with the conciliar decrees of the early Church. Though he acquired this familiarity for the most part when serving at the papal court in Orvieto from 1261–1265, that is, after he had written the commentary on the Sentences, it remains open to speculation if nonetheless the Sentences commentary passage does indeed echo the conciliar teaching. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 831 mean the Word’s assumption of a sexed nature: “[Christ] assumed a sex not in order to use it [given his virginal chastity] but for the perfection of nature,” he asserts in the last line of the above-cited passage. Christ Was Human in the Measure That He Was a Male Individual To be human, that is, to be a concrete existing human individual—one with “individualized signate matter,” as Aquinas puts it, meaning an individual with a particular body (and soul)— one must be a man or a woman.62 A human individual is differentiated by sex, and sex is binary: “The Creator’s decision [was] that the human being should always and only exist as a woman or a man,” observes John Paul II in his commentary on Gen 1:27 (“male and female he created them”) in Mulieris Dignitatem §1 (emphasis added). It holds the same for the God-man. In order to “become flesh” ( John 1:14), God must assume a differentiated body—a body differentiated by sex—with either the XY (male) or XX (female) genetic karyotype. It is a truth of the faith because a truth of history that God became a man, a male individual, rather than a woman: “Behold [Mary], you shall conceive in your womb and bear a son,” says the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:31, where “son” means biological male, as the circumcision of this same son, recounted in Luke 2:21, manifestly confirms. Inter Insignores §5, expresses it thus: “The incarnation of the Word took place according to the male sex: this is indeed a question of fact, and this fact . . . cannot be disassociated from the economy of salvation.” Christ was human, then, in the very measure that he was a man, a male individual (just as the Virgin Mary was human in the measure that she was a woman). Christ is fully (and truly) human because fully male. Like any human being, Jesus is no generality; he is not “humanity.” We humans possess bodies of differentiated biological design, and our bodies (along with our souls) are a constitutive part of our human identity, including Jesus’s. This means that it is impossible to dissociate Jesus’s sexual differentiation—his maleness—from the embodied, animal-like (and thus biological) structure 62 For Aquinas’s familiarity with the conciliar decrees, see, e.g., C. G. Geenen, “The Council of Chalcedon in the Theology of St. Thomas,” in From an Abundant Spring: The Walter Farrell Memorial Volume of The Thomist, ed. staff of The Thomist (New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1952), 172–217, and Martin Morard, “Thomas d’Aquin lecteur des conciles,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 98 (2005): 211–365 (particularly the chart on 246 that chronicles Thomas’s exposure to the conciliar texts). ST I, q. 119, a. 1. Here Thomas distinguishes between human nature “in general” and “in the individual,” with the latter signifying “individualized signate matter [i.e., a particular body], and the form [i.e., the soul] individualized by that matter. . . . Thus to the true human nature of Peter and Martin belongs this soul and this body” (emphasis added). 832 Paul Gondreau of his human nature.63 Possessing a male-structured body, Christ owned the XY genetic karyotype and all that this gives rise to, including male genitals, the bone and muscle structure proper to men, and a male-structured brain designed to send male-specific neurotransmitters and to release male-specific biochemicals and hormones that largely determine male-specific behavior. The Feminist Emasculation of Christ Hence, the unwarranted and unfounded claim by which certain feminist voices assert that giving weight to the particularity of Jesus’s maleness propounds a “naïve physicalism” (or “naïve biology,” we might say) and succumbs to “collaps[ing] the totality of Christ into the human man Jesus,” as Elizabeth A. Johnson puts it.64 Another, Rosemary Radford Ruether, asking whether a male savior “can save women” and laying narrow hold of the claim of Gal 3:28 (“there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”), concludes remarkably: “The maleness of Jesus has no theological significance.”65 For these feminists, the undifferentiated, ahistorical humanity of Christ takes precedence over “the encapsulated ‘once-for-all’ historical Jesus,” as Radford Ruether states it.66 Given what has just been outlined, the problem inherent in such a position is only too apparent. Predicated on a view of human nature as undifferentiated by sex, or at least where sex plays no integral role in a human 63 64 65 66 For much more on this, see my “Thomas Aquinas on Sexual Difference,” 177–215. For how sexual difference and its meaning is determined by the “divine art” of the Creator,” see Michele Schumacher, “The Natural and Sacramental Significance of Human Sexuality and the Question of Admitting Women to the Ordained Diaconate,” The Thomist 85 (2021): 581–624. Elizabeth A. Johnson, “The Maleness of Christ,” in The Special Nature of Women?, ed. Anne Carr and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Concilium 6 (London: SCM, 1991), 108–16, at 113 and 115; see also Johnson, “Redeeming the Names of Christ,” in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (San Francisco: Harper, 1993), 115–37, and Anne Carr, “Feminist Views of Christology,” Chicago Studies 35, no. 2 (1996): 128–40. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Christology: Can a Male Savior Save Women?,” in Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983), 116–38, at 137. For a general overview of feminist Christology, see Michele Schumacher, “Feminist Christologies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 408–24. See Radford Ruether, “Christology,” 138: “Christ is not necessarily male, nor is the redeemed community only women, but a new humanity, female and male.” Radford Ruether expressly favors a Christ abstracted from his historical existence: “Christ, as redemptive person and Word of God, is not to be encapsulated ‘once-for-all’ in the historical Jesus” (138). Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 833 individual’s proper identity, this feminist position is marred from its inception by a deficient anthropology—and, by extension, a deficient Christology. To emasculate Christ, to abstract his maleness from his humanity, as if the human nature he assumes were somehow undifferentiated by sex or as if his maleness were nothing more than an accessory “add-on” playing no integral role in his otherwise “human” actions, is to fall prey to the trap of docetism. It is purely and simply to surrender Christ’s real and full humanity. Correspondingly, the soteriological consequences of such a semi-docetic emasculation of Christ are no less dire. To insist that Jesus’s maleness has no theological significance is at bottom to say that his humanity has no theological significance—which is to annul human salvation. Human salvation was accomplished in all that Christ did and suffered in the flesh, to paraphrase Aquinas, and Christ’s flesh was male flesh.67 Like odd and even, where each shares fully in the essence of number, while at the same time carrying numerical signification that the other does not, so men and women belong to the same human species, while marking two distinct “modes” of being human (note: two distinct modes, not two dualistic modes, as some feminists allege).68 Because men and women belong to the same species, the salvation that Christ accomplished in his male flesh extends to all, men and women alike. The feminist objection to Jesus’s maleness is wholly without theological or anthropological merit. The Risen Christ Retains His Male-Structured Body We should note that maleness belongs not merely to Jesus’s earthly existence, but to his glorified resurrected state as well—important for the issue at hand, since, in acting in persona Christi, the ordained priest acts more specifically in the person of the risen and glorified Christ. Against an Eastern patristic tradition, represented principally by the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa), that asserted the dissolution of sexual difference in the resurrection (on 67 68 “Christ gives life to the world through the mysteries that he accomplished in his flesh.” Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 4 (Marietti no. 914); see also Super Ioan 5, lec. 5 (Marietti no. 791). The comparison of male and female to odd and even comes from Thomas himself, drawing upon Aristotle (see In X metaphys., lec. 11, no. 2128), as noted by John Finley, “The Metaphysics of Gender: A Thomistic Approach,” The Thomist 79 (2015): 585–614, at 607. For the feminist view, see Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Imaging God, Embodying Christ: Women as a Sign of the Times,” in The Church Women Want, ed. Elizabeth A. Johnson (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 45–59, at 52. Johnson’s point is that denying women access to the priesthood is to favor a faulty, dualistic anthropology. Butler addresses this objection at length in Catholic Priesthood, 44–47. 834 Paul Gondreau account both of a Platonic-inspired disregard for the body and of the fact that in Christ “there is neither male nor female” [Gal 3:28]), Aquinas unhesitatingly affirms the opposite: sexual difference shall remain in our risen bodies.69 Thomas writes: The diversity [of sex] befits the perfection of [our] species. . . . And therefore just as humans will rise again in diverse statures, so too, in diverse sexes. . . . The difference between the sexes and [genital] members will be for restoring the perfection of human nature [ad naturae humanae perfectionem reintegrandam] both in the species and in the individual.70 Though Aquinas does not affirm this explicitly of the risen Christ, the truth of the humanity that the Word assumed demands nothing less. The risen Christ retains his male structuring in view of “the perfection of [his] human nature”; it “serves to restore the integrity of [his] human body,” to cite Thomas from another passage addressing the same.71 Indeed, if the Christ who rose from the tomb was not the male Jesus whose body was put to death by crucifixion, it was not the same body with its punctured wounds that was nailed to the Cross—a denial of the reality of the resurrection and the plain witness of the Gospels, where Christ says: “Put your finger here [Thomas], 69 70 71 See the important essay by Verna Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 41, no. 2 (1990): 441–71. Basil, for instance, asserts: “For there is no male or female in the resurrection, but there is one certain life and it is of one kind, since those dwelling in the land of the living are well pleasing to their Master” (Homily on Psalm 114 [PG 29: 492C]; cited in Harrison, 451). Gregory of Nazianzus writes: “This is the great mystery planned for us by God, who for us was made human and became poor, to resurrect the flesh and recover his image and refashion the human, that we might all become one in Christ, . . . that we might no longer be male and female” (Oratione 7.23 [PG 35: 785C]; cited in Harrison, 459). Gregory of Nyssa affirms the same even more stridently; see his On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep (Gregorii Nysseni Opera 9.63; cited in Harrison, 469). As for these Cappadocians’ Platonist-inspired regard for the body as alien to our human makeup, Harrison concludes that this “is probably why his [Christ’s] maleness never became an issue in Greek patristic Christology” (458). In IV sent., d. 44, q. 1, a. 3, qa. 3, and qa. 4, ad 2 (trans. Beth Mortensen, Peter Kwasniewski, and Dylan Schrader, in Commentary on the Sentences, Book IV, 43–50 [Green Bay, WI: Aquinas Institute, 2018], 74–75; with adaptations). SCG IV, ch. 88: “None of those members [i.e., sexual members] will be lacking [in the bodies of those who rise again], although they will not have their use; yet not without purpose, since they will serve to restore the integrity of the human body [ad integritatem naturalis corporis restituendam]” (trans. Laurence Shapcote [Green Bay, WI: Aquinas Institute, 2018], 541). Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 835 and see my hands [with their nail prints]; and put out your hand, and place it in my side” ( John 20:27). The risen Jesus who “showed his hands and his feet” to his apostles (Luke 24:40) was not an androgynous or epicene, undifferentiated individual; he was, and remains, a man, a male individual with all the biological structuring, all the bodily integrity, that this entails, albeit in a glorified mode. From his conception to his everlasting glorification, Christ’s male-structured body remains a constitutive part of his human identity (just as the Virgin Mary’s female-structured body remains a constitutive part of her human identity after her assumption “body and soul” into heaven). “Christ himself was and remains a man,” asserts Inter Insignores §5. Acting In Persona Christi: Conformity to Christ’s Maleness “Whom at that point [of the Last Supper] he [ Jesus] was making priests of the new covenant.” So asserts the Council of Trent in addressing the moment when the apostles were consecrated by Jesus for priestly ministry.72 More to the point of this essay, the priestly ministry for which the apostles were consecrated—a ministry passed on through the laying on of hands in the sacrament of holy orders—is grounded fundamentally in Christ’s own priesthood, which the venerable phrase in persona Christi (to act in the very name and person of Christ, ultimately on account of the character received 72 Tanner, Decrees, 2:733. See also canon 2 of the same decree: “If anyone says that by the words, Do this in remembrance of me, Christ did not make the apostles priests, . . . let him be anathema” (2:735). Even before the Last Supper, Benedict XVI observes how the language of the New Testament shows that the apostolic office was marked from its inception for priestly ministry: “These words of the Evangelist [in Mark 3:14, literally ‘he made twelve,’ though commonly translated as ‘he appointed twelve’] take up the Old Testament terminology for appointment to the priesthood (cf. 1 Kings 12:31; 13:33) and thus characterize the apostolic office as a priestly ministry” (Jesus of Nazareth, 1:171; see 2:89–90 for more on the apostles’ consecration for priestly ministry at the Last Supper). In this vein, Thomas J. Lane observes: “Christ never used the words ‘priest’ of the apostles, because, before the consciousness of the apostles’ sharing in the priesthood of Christ could arise, it was necessary for the early Christians to understand that Jesus himself was a priest and that his death was his self-sacrificial priestly offering. It would be some time after Jesus’ death before Christians would think of the ministers of the New Covenant, the apostles and their co-workers, in priestly terms” (The Catholic Priesthood: Biblical Foundations [Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2016], 122–23; see 107–15 for a thorough treatment of the apostles’ consecration for priestly ministry at the Last Supper, with particular focus on John’s Gospel). 836 Paul Gondreau in holy orders) seeks to signify.73 Summarizing the ordained priest’s participation in Christ’s priesthood, St. John Henry Newman writes: Christ’s priests have no priesthood but His. They are merely His shadows and organs, they are His outward signs; and what they do, He does; when they baptize, He is baptizing; when they bless, He is blessing.74 In Persona Christi during the Eucharistic Consecration If we turn to the Eucharistic celebration, the words of consecration emerge as the precise moment in which the priest acts in persona Christi—an act that, of import for the topic of this essay, defines the ordained priesthood and marks its principal purpose: “The sacrament of orders is ordained to the consecration of the Eucharist,” is how Aquinas expresses it.75 St. Thomas, in fact, adverts to the phrase in persona Christi only in reference to the consecration of the Eucharist; he employs the phrase per virtutem Christi, “by the power of Christ,” for the other sacraments (such as baptism): “Such is the dignity of this sacrament [of the Eucharist],” he writes, “that it is performed only in the Person of Christ [nisi in persona Christi].”76 Though 73 74 75 76 Butler observes that the notion of the ordained minister acting in persona Christi originates with 2 Cor 2:10, as per Jerome’s Vulgate translation, and was affirmed in the third century by St. Cyprian of Carthage (Catholic Priesthood, 79). The character received in holy orders signifies an indelible mark on the soul, an ontological conformity to Christ, thereby deputing the ordained man to act in Christ’s person, as his instrument, in those acts unique to the ordained. See Guy Mansini, “Episcopal Munera and the Character of Episcopal Order,” The Thomist 66 (2002): 369–94. John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols. (London: Rivingtons, 1868), 6:242; cited in Lane, Catholic Priesthood, 180. ST III, q. 65, a. 3. Later, Aquinas is even more explicit: “Priests are consecrated for the purpose of celebrating the sacrament of Christ’s Body. . . . It belongs to a priest to consecrate the Eucharist, which is the principal purpose of the priesthood” (q. 67, a. 2). Relatedly, Aquinas elsewhere affirms: “The power of consecrating this sacrament [of the Eucharist] on Christ’s behalf is bestowed upon the priest at his ordination; for thereby he is put on a level with them to whom the Lord said, ‘Do this in memory of me’” (q. 82, a. 1). Then, in q. 82, a. 7, ad 3, he affirms the same with reference to the formula in persona Christi: “The priest, in consecrating the sacrament, speaks as in the Person of Christ [in persona Christi], whose place he holds by the power of his Orders.” See Bernard Marliangeas, Clés pour une théologie du ministère (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978), 97. ST III, q. 82, a. 1; see also q. 78, a. 4: “These words [of consecration] are uttered in the person of Christ”—though here the phrase is ex persona Christi. For the other sacraments, see, e.g., Aquinas’s treatment of baptism, wherein he speaks of the minister Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 837 subtle, Aquinas’s use of in persona Christi only in reference to the Eucharist affirms a qualitative difference between the minister’s instrumental role in the Eucharistic celebration and that in the other sacraments. This stands in line with Thomas’s assertion that the Eucharist “is of greater worth than the other sacraments.”77 Hence, the observation by the theologian Bernard Marliangeas that the Eucharistic consecration, on Aquinas’s account, offers “the purest case” of the priest’s power to act in persona Christi.78 Inter Insignores, for its part, affirms that, indeed, the power of acting in persona Christi reaches its “supreme expression” in the celebration of the Eucharist (§5). Reinforcing this qualitative difference, Aquinas highlights another singular feature of the Eucharist relative to the other sacraments, still concerning the words pronounced during the consecration: “[Whereas] the forms [i.e., the words] of the other sacraments are pronounced in the person of the minister [e.g., ‘I baptize you’], . . . the form of this sacrament is pronounced as if Christ were speaking in person [‘This is my body’ and ‘This is the chalice of my blood’].”79 When considering the all-male priesthood, this reciting 77 78 79 acting “instrumently [instrumentaliter] by the power [tantum per virtute] of Christ” (q. 67, a. 4). We should note that he does combine both phrases in q. 83, a. 1, ad 3: “The priest also bears Christ’s image [imaginem Christi], in whose Person and by whose power [in cuius persona et virtute] he pronounces the words of consecration.” Also, in his discussion of Christ’s priesthood in q. 22, a. 4, Thomas, without mentioning the Eucharistic celebration, observes that “the priest of the New Law works in [Christ’s] person [in persona ipsius].” ST III, q. 78, a. 4. Marliangeas, Clés pour une théologie, 99. Vatican Council II would extend the formula in persona Christi to the whole ministry of the ordained priesthood, as noted by Samuel J. Aquila, “The Teaching of Vatican II on In Persona Christi and In Nomine Ecclesiae in Relation to the Ministerial Priesthood in Light of the Historical Development of the Formulae” (STL thesis, Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm, 1990), 56; see, e.g., Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§7 and 33, its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, §§10 and 28, and its Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis, §§2 and 13. ST III, q. 78, a. 1. A bit later in article five, he similarly writes: “The priest pronounces [the words of consecration] by way of recital [recitative], as though they were spoken by Christ.” Aquila (current archbishop of Denver) notes that the “strong sense” of the phrase in persona Christi, especially in reference to the Eucharist, developed in the Dominican school immediately preceding Aquinas; for instance, the Dominican Guerric de Saint-Quentin (†1245), in his work De sacramento altaris, appears to be the first to note the difference between the priest’s words in the other sacraments and those in the Eucharist, qualifying the latter as being pronounced in persona Christi (“Teaching of Vatican II,” 20–21); see also Marliangeas, Clés pour une théologie du ministère, 68. Albert the Great also employs the phrase in persona Christi only in reference to the Eucharistic consecration (see Aquila, 21, and Marliangeas, 70). 838 Paul Gondreau of Jesus’s own words in the first person and in reference to his body proves decisive. Let us trace this out. Bearing the Image of the Male Christ (Imago Christi Masculi) As we have already seen, a human body (including Christ’s) is by virtue of its biological structuring a sexed body, a body differentiated by the male or female sex. Accordingly, to say “my body” is necessarily to draw reference, whether explicitly or implicitly, to one’s male or female sex. It is impossible, nonsensical even, to abstract the male or female sex, as with the entire biological structuring, from the particular body to which the words “my body” refer, as determined by the presence of either the XX (female) or XY (male) genetic karyotype in each cell of that body. Whence the manifest conclusion: the pronouncement of “my body” at the time of the Eucharistic consecration refers to the particular, differentiated body of Jesus, the male-structured body that was present at the Last Supper, put to death on the Cross the following day, and risen from the tomb three days later—and now glorified in heaven. Note that the priest at this moment acts not in nomine Ecclesiae, as if the words “my body” refer to the Body of Christ the Church, composed of both men and women united as equals (whence Gal 3:28: “There is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”). Rather, to act in persona Christi with express reference to Christ’s differentiated, historical body necessarily implies the male sex of that body. To hold otherwise would be to espouse, however inadvertently, an undifferentiated humanity in Christ—a recycled semi-docetism. As regards the sex of those ordained to the priesthood, the crucial step comes in the fact that the priest, standing in for the person of Christ, pronounces the words of consecration in the first person; he speaks as if he were Christ himself—and thereby “bears Christ’s image” (to quote both Aquinas and Inter Insignores) in a unique way.80 Because the priest speaks as if Christ’s own body, a male body, were his (the priest’s) own, this “icon” or imago Christi extends to Jesus’s manhood/maleness. Reciting the words “my body,” the priest conforms himself implicitly yet incontrovertibly to Christ’s maleness (as well as to Christ’s priesthood, since the words of consecration mark and re-present Christ’s priestly offering of himself ). The priest, in other words, makes Christ’s body—a male body—his own, he identifies himself 80 ST III, q. 83, a. 1, ad 3. See Inter Insignores §5, writes: “The priest . . . acts not only through the effective power conferred on him by Christ, but in persona Christi, taking the role of Christ, to the point of being his very image, when he pronounces the words of consecration.” Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 839 with Christ’s male body. He bears the imago Christi masculi, the image of the male Christ. Women as the Imago Christi Masculi? How this applies to the exclusion of women from the ministerial priesthood should appear obvious. Since the priest acts as the imago Christi masculi when pronouncing the words of consecration, it would be most unseemly, most unfitting, for a woman to bear this image, to make Christ’s male body her own through the reciting of the words “This is my body.”81 From the perspective of what Alasdair MacIntyre calls the metaphysical biology of Aquinas’s thought, where biological structuring (inclusive of sexual design) is essential to one’s human makeup as in accordance with our body–soul/ matter–spirit composite nature, it would be metaphysically untenable and absurd—to say nothing, again, of most unfitting—for a woman to make Christ’s male body her own.82 Hence, the wise institution of the all-male priesthood by the male Christ (who yet favored the equal dignity of women), so much so that maleness becomes, by Christ’s design, essential (or of absolute necessity) to holding the office. Fitting Sacramental Representation of Christ Note that the priest makes Christ’s male body his own not literally, but sacramentally, that is, symbolically or by way of sign (Aquinas observes that sign, signum, is defining of the sacraments in general): “The priest is a sign,” affirms Inter Insignores.83 And in Thomas’s sacramental theology, the notion of fittingness (conveniens) is closely associated with signs or symbols, since 81 82 83 Though arguing (correctly) that “a feminist theology of ordained ministry takes seriously human embodiment,” the feminist theologian Susan S. Ross yet insists (erroneously) in the very same breath and seemingly without sensing the contradiction that sexual difference remains “irrelevant” to ordained ministry (“God’s Embodiment and Women,” in LaCugna, Freeing Theology, 185–209, at 203; cited in Schumacher, “Natural and Sacramental Significance,” 585). See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 148; see also the preface to his Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999). For more on Aquinas’s holding tenaciously to the biological dimension of human sexuality on account of his primordial commitment to an underlying hylemorphic view of the human being, see my “Thomas Aquinas on Sexual Difference,” 177–215. See Inter Insignores §5: “The Christian priesthood is of a sacramental nature: the priest is a sign, . . . The whole sacramental economy is in fact based upon natural signs.” For the relationship between sacraments and signs in Aquinas, see ST III, q. 60, a. 1: “Sacraments imply the habitude of sign [habitudinem signi], and in this way a sacrament is a kind of sign.” See also q. 78, a. 4 ad 3. 840 Paul Gondreau some signs or symbols prove better, or more suitable, than others, particularly when we recognize that “sacramental signs represent by natural resemblance [ex naturali similitudine].”84 Hence, as regards the Eucharist, Thomas affirms that bread and wine are a more suitable sign, or more “fitting matter” (materia conveniens), since this sacrament is for “eating” (manducatio), while the words of consecration constitute the “fitting form” (conveniens forma), given that these words “signify the actual conversion of the bread into the body of Christ.”85 So, in like manner, what I am arguing is that only a male priest acts as the “fitting minister” (minister conveniens) of the Eucharist, given that the priest bears the imago Christi masculi during the Eucharistic consecration. Only a male priest shares a “natural resemblance” with the male Christ, in whose male person he acts and as befits a sacramental sign.86 Among the Scholastic masters, it is in fact Bonaventure, not Aquinas, who makes this argument: In this sacrament the ordained person is the sign of Christ the Mediator; since the Mediator belongs only to the male sex, he can only be represented by the male sex; therefore, the capacity for receiving Orders belongs only to males who alone can represent him by nature and, having received the character [of Orders], can effectively bear the sign [of Christ].87 As an “outward” sacramental sign of Christ’s maleness, the priest’s signifying of this maleness “should be self-evident” (given the principle of natural resemblance), as Butler writes, “not needing further interpretation.”88 With consecration of the Eucharist defining the ordained priesthood and marking its principal purpose, the male sex emerges, then, as the sexus conveniens, the fitting (and necessary) sex, of the office of the priesthood itself. 84 85 86 87 88 In IV sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 2, qa. 1, ad 4 (p. 653). ST III, q. 74, a. 1 (for the bread and wine); q. 78, a. 2 (for the words of consecration; see a. 3 for how the words “This is the chalice of my blood” are the proper form of the consecration of the wine). See Inter Insignores §5: “When Christ’s role in the Eucharist is to be expressed sacramentally, there would not be this ‘natural resemblance’ which must exist between Christ and his minister if the role of Christ were not taken by a man: in such a case it would be difficult to see in the minister the image of Christ.” St. Bonaventure, In IV Sent., d. 25, a. 2, q. 1 (cited and translated in Butler, Catholic Priesthood, 82). In this regard, it should be pointed out that, relative to the time period, Bonaventure had an uncharacteristically favorable view of women; for more on this, see the important work by Healy, Woman according to Saint Bonaventure. Butler, Catholic Priesthood, 82. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 841 The All-Male Priesthood: A Fitting (and Absolute) Necessity We can state the case more strongly. On Aquinas’s account, Christological and sacramental fittingness operate in view a kind of necessity, what we can call a conditional or fitting necessity. Thomas defines this type of necessity as “when the end [finis] is attained better [melius] and more suitably [convenientius], like when a horse [or a vehicle, we would say today] is necessary for a journey.”89 He distinguishes conditional or fitting necessity from absolute necessity, “when the end cannot be without it, as food is necessary for the preservation of human life.”90 Sometimes one finds both types of necessity linked together, though in different respects, as in the case of the all-male priesthood, as we shall now see. In Aquinas’s theological vision, conditional necessity (the necessity of the end being better and more fittingly achieved), especially as it concerns the economy of salvation, carries enormous weight—the weight of God’s providential will. This becomes readily apparent when we enumerate some Christological examples of conditional or fitting necessity that Aquinas offers, all of which track closely the Creed, and thus read like a highlights reel of the chief mysteries of human salvation. Though not absolutely necessary, it was nonetheless conditionally or fittingly necessary, Aquinas affirms: that God became incarnate in order to redeem the human race; that Christ took on bodily defects and certain defects of soul (like passibility); that he was circumcised, baptized, performed miracles, and led a life of austerity and poverty; that he suffered to redeem the human race, specifically through his Passion and death; that he descended into hell; that he rose from the dead; and the list goes on.91 In short, on Aquinas’s account, the notion of necessary fittingness (conveniens) drives the entire God-made-man “event,” from the Incarnation itself (Deus factus est homo) to the whole course of Christ’s life and glorious exaltation (acta et passa Iesu).92 This extends to the sacraments, which, as dynamic actions of the person of Christ (the foundation of the 89 90 91 92 ST III, q. 1, a. 2. ST III, q. 1, a. 2. Other passages in which Thomas addresses this distinction in relation to Christ include ST III, q. 46, aa. 1–3. In the order of mentioned sequence: ST III, q. 1, a. 2; q. 14, a. 2; q. 15, a. 4; q. 37, a. 1; q. 39, a. 1; q. 43, a. 1; q. 40, aa. 2–3; q. 46, aa. 1 and 3–4; q. 50, a. 1; q. 52, a. 1; q. 53, a. 1. The Christological section of the ST is famously divided between the study of Deus factus est homo (qq. 1–26) and that of the acta et passa Iesu (qq. 27–59); for more on this division, see my “The Theological Mysteries of Christ’s Life in Aquinas’ Summa,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, ed. Philip McCosker and Denys Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 240–54, and Jean-Pierre Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères: la vie et l’œuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée, 1999). 842 Paul Gondreau priest’s acting in persona Christi), continue his saving mission in time.93 Little wonder that one scholar observes how a “torrent of suitabilities” (or of fittingnesses) engulfs the entire Christological and sacramental sections that make up the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae.94 How this bears on the all-male priesthood should appear obvious. To say the male priest, because he bears the imago Christi masculi, is the “fitting minister” (minister conveniens) of the Eucharist is to affirm that it is conditionally or fittingly necessary (an iconic fittingness) in its strong Thomistic sense—just as, say, it was conditionally or fittingly necessary for God to become man in view of human salvation. And with consecration of the Eucharist defining the ordained priesthood and marking its principal purpose, the male sex emerges, to repeat but in even stronger terms, as the sexus conveniens, the necessary fitting sex, of the office of the entire ministerial priesthood. Hardly accessory to the ministerial priesthood, maleness is essential to it.95 Maleness, in fact, is not simply fittingly necessary for the ordained priesthood; it is also absolutely necessary, that is, essential to it in the “hard” sense (cannot be otherwise). This follows upon Christ’s institution of the office. Though Christ may have chosen maleness for the ordained priesthood for fitting reasons, once he has instituted the all-male priesthood, it cannot be otherwise, and thus cannot change. Maleness becomes, upon Christ’s institution, a strictly requisite feature of the priesthood. Analogously, though God may have determined, for fitting reasons, to redeem the human race by the Incarnation of his Son, it is now absolutely necessary to be saved only 93 94 95 In the prologue to the tertia pars of the ST (the Christological and sacramental part of the ST), Thomas writes: “We should consider the Savior of all and the benefits bestowed by him on the human race. To this end, we must consider the Savior himself and then the sacraments by which we attain to our salvation.” For other passages affirming the sacraments as dynamic actions of the person of Christ, see: ST III, q. 60, prol.; q. 62, a. 5; q. 64, a. 3. For more on this, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception, trans. Benedict M. Guevin (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 59. See Gilbert Narcisse, “Les enjeux épisté­mologiques de l’argument de convenance selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in Ordo sapientiae et amoris. Image et message de saint Thomas d’Aquin à travers les récentes études historiques, herméneutiques et doctrinales, ed. C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1993), 143–67, at 146–47); see also Narcisse’s larger work, Les raisons de Dieu: Argument de convenance et esthétique théologique selon saint Thomas d’Aquin et Hans Urs von Balthasar (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1997). For how an ontological (and not merely “functional”) conformity to Christ’s maleness belongs to all three degrees of ordination, and with particular focus on the diaconate, see Schumacher, “Natural and Sacramental Significance,” 614–24. Christ’s Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi 843 through faith in Christ, “for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Similarly, that priests be male is fitting—this follows from the structure of the sacrament of the Eucharist and the way signs work in relation to it. But now, because of the wise decision of Christ, it is absolutely necessary that priests be male. A More Robust Fittingness than Christ as Bridegroom of the Church The other argument of fittingness for the all-male priesthood that theologians frequently offer is that of the male priest more fittingly representing Christ the Bridegroom and Head of the Church (also an iconic fittingness).96 The argument presented here thus complements the Bridegroom argument. Between the two, however, the argument I have advanced provides an ontologically deeper, and thus more metaphysically robust, link between Christ’s maleness and the maleness of the ordained priesthood. The argument presented here shows how the priest makes Christ’s male body his own in a deeper metaphysical sense, inasmuch as the priest conforms himself to Christ’s maleness via a substantial compositional part of Christ’s human nature (his signate matter, i.e., his individuated and differentiated body). The Bridegroom argument, on the other hand, holds that the priest identifies himself with Christ’s maleness via a purely accidental feature of Christ’s humanity (important though it be), that of Bridegroom. Conclusion High-ranking churchmen like Archbishop Hesse can express a willingness to “think about and discuss” the idea of women’s ordination if they wish (see the introduction to this essay), but such openness is theologically naïve and misguided from its inception. Men who enter the ordained priesthood become conformed to the person of Christ in a qualitatively unique way, inasmuch as they become identified with his maleness by virtue of their sacramental (Eucharistic) function. As maleness is essential to Christ’s humanity, so is it to the ministerial priesthood. To favor women’s ordination is at bottom, then, to fall into Christological error (semi-docetism). By showing that sound theological argument stands on the side of the all-male priesthood, I have lent theological muscle to John Paul II’s definitive ruling out of the admissibility of women to priestly ordination. Hardly a “paper that stifles,” Ordinatio Sacerdotalis instead safeguards the 96 This argument can be found, e.g., in Inter Insignores §5, as well as in Butler, Catholic Priesthood, 83–84 and 90–92. 844 Paul Gondreau Christological and anthropological foundations of the priesthood; it upholds the necessary link between the Incarnation—inclusive of the assumed male sex—and the ministerial priesthood. In this way, the speculative argument advanced in this essay helps provide a theological account for why Jesus could, on the one hand, lift up women as equal to men in personal dignity and social status and yet, on the other, accept only men as apostles, that is, institute an all-male priesthood. In the final analysis, the exclusion of women from the ministerial priesthood is, in the words of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, “to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe” (§3). This essay’s principal thesis is to suggest that the male sex assumed by the incarnate Lord sits at the core this plan. Inter Insignores §4, for its part, puts the emphasis on fidelity to the manner of acting by the same Christ who instituted the priesthood and the sacraments: “When [the Church] judges that she cannot accept certain changes [regarding the sacraments, inclusive of the priesthood], it is because she knows she is bound by Christ’s manner of acting. Her attitude, despite appearances, is therefore not one of archaism but of fidelity: it can be truly understood only in this light.” As this essay has sought to argue, affirming fidelity to the all-male priesthood is to affirm fidelity to the Incarnation itself—in its full concrete reality—and thus fidelity to how the “plan ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe” is expressive of that reality. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 845–888 845 The Call for New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage and the Thought of St. Thomas Lawrence J. Welch Conception Seminary College Conception, MO Theologians across the theological spectrum have called attention to the urgent need for a new reflection on the theological and sacramental character of marriage. Peter Hünermann, known for his strong criticism of magisterial teachings on marriage, and the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, known for his equally strong defense of them, have both drawn attention to this need. At an international symposium in September 2015, held in Rome prior to the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family, Hünermann gave a presentation entitled “On the Specific Theological Character of the Sacrament of Matrimony.”1 The symposium aimed at providing a critical and scholarly discussion of new and constructive perspectives for the Church doctrine on marriage and family life in time for the 2015 synod on the family.2 Some of Hünermann’s work from this paper also came to be known from an interview in Commonweal magazine where he summarized some of the main points of his symposium presentation.3 In the interview, he also revealed that before the 2015 synod he 1 2 3 Peter Hünermann, “On the Specific Theological Character of the Sacrament of Matrimony,” in Authentic Voices, Discerning Hearts, ed. Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi and Aldegonde Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn (Vienna: LIT, 2016), 133–50. The numerous presentations by theologians and experts were intended to be of service to the bishops and to the agenda of the 2015 Fourteenth Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, popularly known as the “Synod on the Family.” Grant Kaplan, “From Tübingen to the Tiber: A Conversation with Peter Hünermann,” 846 Lawrence J. Welch was invited to speak with Pope Francis about the theology of marriage. Understandably, this meeting heightened interest in the German theologian’s thought. Hünermann argues that “the specific character of the sacrament of marriage, which is very closely connected to the dying of the marriage bond, . . . has scarcely been the object of theological reflection, [and] is almost unknown in the consciousness of the bishops.” 4 Hünermann appeals to St. Thomas as a way forward for understanding the theological character of marriage. This appeal is situated within a wider examination5 that offers an elaboration and new interpretation of “the specific dogmatic characteristics of the sacrament of matrimony that emerge in today’s situation from a critical comparison of the encyclical Casti connubii and the Catholic theological tradition, especially the theology of St. Thomas.”6 Sharply critical of the encyclical, Hünermann sees it as having saddled the Church with a legalistic concept of marriage elevated above history that is too far removed from the Catholic theological tradition and St. Thomas’s theology of marriage. The year before his death, Cardinal Caffarra gave the 2016 graduation address at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Washington, DC.7 Among the challenges he identified for the institute to address was the 4 5 6 7 Commonweal, September 22, 2016, commonwealmagazine.org/tübingen-tiber. The interview appeared in print version on October 7, 2016. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 133 Hünermann calls attention to how Pope St. John Paul II emphasized the “living tradition of the ecclesial community throughout history.” He recalls that the Pope spoke of the continuous renewal of this message but did not specify the differences of the innovation in comparison to earlier magisterial positions. In Familiaris Consortio, the Pope defends Humanae Vitae but does not cite Casti Connubii. But Humanae Vitae is the dogmatic foundation of Familiaris Consortio. Hünermann asks how we are to understand and interpret Familiaris Consortio. Does it depart from certain points of Casti Connubii? Declarations from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith claimed that Casti Connubii continues to supply the dogmatic foundation. Hünermann is not so sure that it should or does. He believes that “dogmatic clarification” is important especially in view of the claims of some theologians and of some bishop conferences in their submissions to the synod of bishops. In order to attain a dogmatic clarification, Hünermann compares Casti Connubii and its definition of marriage with the wider theological tradition. He goes to on to identify what he believes are the specific dogmatic characteristics which surface from this critical comparison and proposes a new interpretation of them. In the last section of his paper, Hünermann offers some observations on “the modern form of the sacrament of marriage.” Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 143. Cardinal Carlo Caffaro, “The Memory that Generates the Future,” commencement address at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Washington, DC, May 10, 2016, johnpaulii.edu/about/our-mission/memory-that-generates-the-future/. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 847 need for theological reflection on the sacramental character of marriage. Referring to his earlier work, he pointed out that theology after the Council of Trent “lost the awareness of sacramental ontology, of the real transformation produced by the sacrament in the persons of the spouses [res et sacramentum].”8 Furthermore, according to Caffarra, the “theology of the conjugal covenant was supplanted by the notion of a contract, as a human act by which two persons commit to one another.” The sacramental character was thought of as consisting of the assurance of divine graces given to fulfill the contract. Caffarra claimed that, “consequently, the words of Jesus ‘What God has joined together, let not man put asunder,’ lost all their realistic force. Absolute indissolubility, once the sacrament was perfected [=a ratified, consummated marriage], became essentially indefensible.”9 The primary interest of this paper is to respond to the call for a renewed theological reflection on the specific character of the sacrament of marriage. I wish to take up Caffarra’s suggestion to focus on the sacramental character (res et sacramentum) on the one hand, and on the other hand, Hünermann’s suggestion that a kind of ressourcement from St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology of marriage can be of great help for a fresh theological reflection on the specific character of the sacrament of marriage. Although I agree with Hünermann that a renewed consideration of the thought of St. Thomas can be a way forward, I differ from him on how it can be. Hünermann notices that St. Thomas speaks of the grace of the sacrament of marriage as a helping grace.10 St. Thomas does indeed speak this way of the grace of the sacrament, but as I will show Hünermann underestimates the both the nature and significance of the elevation of marriage in the order of grace in the Angelic Doctor’s theology of marriage. The aim of the present paper is twofold. First, it will examine and critique the main claims of Hünermann as they appear in his symposium paper and in his Commonweal interview. My attention in the first part will focus primarily on a critique of Hünermann’s understanding of St. Thomas and less on his new interpretation of the specific dogmatic characteristics of the sacrament of marriage. In his paper “On the Specific Theological Character of the Sacrament of Matrimony,” Hünermann begins with a criticism of Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubii in comparison to the wider historical theological tradition in which he privileges the theology of St. Thomas on marriage. For this reason, I will begin my examination and evaluation of 8 9 10 Caffaro, “Memory that Generates the Future.” Caffaro, “Memory that Generates the Future.” Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 138. Hünermann refers to Summa theologiae [ST] suppl., q. 42, a. 3. 848 Lawrence J. Welch Hünermann’s claims about Casti Connubii and then proceed to his more detailed interpretation of St. Thomas. In the second part of the paper, I will propose how St. Thomas’s theology of marriage can provide some important resources for a contemporary theology of marriage but in a way different way from Hünermann’s proposal. I believe that Caffarra was right to call for a fresh and deeper reflection on the sacramental ontology of marriage, one that is attentive to how the spouses are transformed in the sacrament. However, I also believe these realities cannot be fully addressed apart from explaining the way in which the sacrament of marriage itself imparts grace. It is here that the thought of St. Thomas can still be of help for a theology of marriage today. He understood the sacraments not as human actions pointing to God or asking God to give grace, but rather, as Dominic Holtz summarizes, “as divine acts, applying the work of salvation effected by the deeds and experiences of the Incarnate Word to the faithful in the church, which itself is the body of the Incarnate Word.”11 Cafferra’s call for a fresh reflection on the sacramental ontology of marriage can be better met with an understanding of sacraments as being efficacious because God moves them to effect grace, rather by thinking that they move God to confer grace. Aquinas’s mature theory of sacramental causality12 points a way forward because of how it entails understanding the sacramental sign of marriage as being the personal acts of the couple moved by God to cause the marriage bond which gives a grace that is nothing less than a participation in the conjugal charity of Christ for his Church. The theology of St. Thomas can provide a context for explaining how the couple is involved in the movement of the causality of grace and how they are transformed by it. A retrieval of Aquinas’s mature theory of sacramental causality applied to theology of the sacrament of marriage conceives of the movement of the spouses’ mutual consent to consummation as being caught up in the movement of incarnate Son moving the couple toward an ever-deeper participation in his conjugal charity for the Church. St. Thomas’s theory of sacramental causality can be of great assistance for explaining how the marital sacrament is not merely an interpersonal encounter but a transformative intrapersonal encounter13 of the spouses with Christ in his conjugal 11 12 13 Dominic Holtz, “Sacraments,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 454. As I explain below, much of St. Thomas’s theology of marriage was written prior to his mature theology of sacramental causality, and therefore this mature theory was never fully applied to it. St. Thomas left the ST unfinished and his treatment of the sacraments there uncompleted. I owe this insight that the sacraments are not merely interpersonal but also intrapersonal New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 849 charity and union with the Church. In the marital sacrament, Christ wishes to realize in the spouses the conjugal charity that he realized for the Church on the Cross. In the words of Pope John Paull II’s Familiaris Consortio: “Conjugal love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained, conjugal charity, which is the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ who gave Himself on the Cross.” 14 Casti Connubii: Marriage Elevated above History? In his interview and his article, Hünermann makes a critical comparison between Casti Connubii and what he identifies as the theological tradition. He believes the encyclical has a narrow conception of marriage as a sacrament and that it is not informed by systematic theology, but by canon law. As such, it cannot meet the complexities that face marriage today. According to Hünermann, Casti Connubii offers a theological definition in the form of three statements in §§5–7. He identifies the decisive affirmation in its theological definition of marriage as being: “Marriage is instituted by God himself, and is also strengthened, confirmed, and elevated by Christ, ‘the restorer of nature.’” He draws out this decisive affirmation from §5: “Matrimony was not instituted or restored by man but by God: not by man were the laws made to strengthen and confirm and elevate it but by God, the Author of nature, and by Christ our Lord by Whom nature was restored, and hence these laws cannot be subject to any human decrees or to any contrary pact even of the spouses themselves. This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture [Gen 2:27–28; 2:22–23; Matt 19:3ff.; Eph 5:23ff.]; this is the constant tradition of the Universal 14 to Holz, “Sacraments,” 454. His insight is particularly applicable to the sacrament of marriage, as I hope to show. Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (1981), §13. It is important to recognize that the love of marriage is conjugal love, a mutual love between a man and woman which does not look only to the good of the beloved other but transcends this good because it is ordained to share love and life itself with a new human person. I have in mind here of what Humanae Vitae §9 says about fecundity as being a distinctive characteristic of conjugal love. If mutual love in marriage is not understood as a conjugal mutual love marked by the characteristic of procreation, it can become difficult to explain what is unique about this mutual love in marriage in relation to other forms of mutual love. It also becomes difficult to articulate why this mutual love cannot be between two members of the same sex. 850 Lawrence J. Welch Church; this the solemn definition of the sacred Council of Trent [session 24].” For Hünermann, “this means that marriage is not in any way subject to the free will of the human person.”15 He points to the encyclical’s affirmation “that the nature of marriage is entirely independent of the free will of man.”16 The problem with this understanding is that it wrenches the reality of marriage out of human history, “wholly elevated above time.”17 Therefore the only answer the encyclical can give to the questions of societal conditions, necessities, and errors is to an appeal to “God’s idea and norm” for marriage.18 Conceived in this way, such an understanding of the sacrament of marriage is narrow, and therefore cannot adequately speak to the historical complexities of marriage today. Hünermann begins his description and interpretation of the modern properties of the sacrament of marriage by acknowledging the theological tradition which holds that God instituted marriage as an office of nature and a lex naturalis. Although its origin is from God, marriage is like any other institution immersed in the flow of history. Its constituent elements can change according to time, place, and culture. Human nature gives the human being an inclination, in which the creative will of God comes to expression. But this inclination is not “unambiguous and unilinear.”19 Free will must go with this natural inclination. This leads Hünermann to make a bold claim: “This means, therefore, that the concept of the sacrament of matrimony inherently means that the absolute presupposition of this sacrament is the historical development of marriage, which is generated from the inclination of the nature of the human person and by the shape given to human life in its various cultural forms.”20 Hünermann says that, applied to our contemporary situation, this means that marriage and family life open out from the present biophysical and biopsychic givenness of the two sexes. Family life unfolds from the condition of the child today with its lengthy journey to sexual maturity and adulthood. These realities of marriage and family life realized and stabilized in certain cultural and societal forms. Hünermann observes that there is a “long sequence of the historical forms” of marriage and the family. The forms of marriage and family mentioned in 15 16 17 18 19 20 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 136. Casti Connubii §6; Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 135. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 136. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 136. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 143. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 143. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 851 the Old Testament find their place in this sequence, as well as the monogamous forms of marriage found in the early Christian communities. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw bourgeoisie forms of marriage which also belong to the long sequence of historical forms, as does modern marriage founded on partnership. What does this mean for the sacrament of marriage? Hünermann argues that: The consequences for the sacrament of marriage is that it is a reality that must be updated, because the forms of its constitutive presupposition change in the course of history. It is important to be aware of this. The sacrament of marriage is not simply the “system of marriage” instituted once and for all by God; it is a sacrament that must be understood and lived ever anew. This is rather different from what Father Hürth envisioned in Casti connubii. Marriage as a sacrament must take into itself contemporary elements—in a constitutive, that is to say, an essential manner.”21 Furthermore, this assumption of contemporary elements into sacramental marriage is also necessary because we are not given a foundation of marriage and family life either in creation narratives or in the teaching of Jesus.22 Rather the Scriptures have consequences for marriage that place it in a new framework. Hünermann maintains that both the Bible as a whole and the New Testament specifically proclaim that faith in God helps to realize what is required in marriage. The creation stories in the book of Genesis do not speak explicitly about marriage and family, but presuppose them as already existing realities. Genesis offers values to them such as the equal dignity of women, reciprocal complementarity, and fruitfulness that give meaning to human sexuality. The same dynamic goes for the words of Jesus too. It is worth quoting Hünermann on this claim: The same applies to the understanding of Jesus’ logia about marriage and family. Here, too, marriage is placed in a new overall framework that has consequences for marriage. Jesus links to the preaching of the dawning of the kingdom of God the sharp rejection of adultery and of the legitimated praxis of divorce for any reason, or for one of a more narrowly limited number of reasons. This divorce contradicts the original will of God. Here too, there is no “foundation of marriage 21 22 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 144. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 145. 852 Lawrence J. Welch and family” or of a system of marriage and family: this is neither presented nor envisaged. In the kingdom of God, in faith, there is no legitimization for adultery. A marriage that is entered into in faith in the kingdom of God gives no one the right and authority to exalt himself to be a judge over this union between husband and wife, and to declare it null and void for this or that reason. In faith, no husband can dismiss his wife for the marriage because she frequently burns the soup—in other words, for some arbitrary reason. Nor is there a narrowly limited group of reasons that would justify such a “dismissal” of husband and wife. Does this mean that the words of Jesus can be the basis of a perfect legal system that applies to every possible case and solves the most various cases? No—one cannot say this, precisely when one looks at the different answers that have been given to this problem in the history of the church East and West.23 It is certainly true that the Church in her magisterium has had to discern the meaning and implication of the words of Jesus for certain cases—the Lord himself mentions the exception of porneia (Matt 19:9). But the magisterium has taught definitively in the face of many challenges that no one has the power two dissolve a marriage between two Christians that has been ratified and consummated. We will see that Hünermann proposes that the magisterium substantially reinterpret this constitutive element of indissolubility. Hünermann, in effect, proposes something quite radical with his claims that neither in Genesis nor in the teaching of Jesus do we find a foundation of marriage and family and that marriage as a sacrament must take contemporary elements into itself in a constitutive and essential manner. Taken at its word, the latter claim means several things all of which would involve a substantial change in the essential constitutive elements of marriage. The claim would mean what was an essential constitutive element for marriage in the past may not be one for today or the future. Historical circumstances might require that an essential constitutive element be reinterpreted to mean something different from what it meant in the past. The way forward Hünermann proposes for understanding the theological character of marriage amounts to a historicist approach. I have in mind the kind of historicism that understands truth mainly to be that which is achieved in the singular historical situation. Human beings and institutions existing in their own historical phase must discover or achieve the true constitutive elements of a thing which emerges in their time, place, and 23 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 145–46. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 853 cultural situation. But these true constitutive elements are radically contingent in their sociocultural and historical contexts. Truth becomes relative to these contexts and frameworks. As Reinhard Hütter has put it: To think that the discursive labor of the intellectus dei has become passé in light of the recently discovered “law of historicity” is to commit the historicist fallacy—that the discovery of the radical contingency, that is, historicity of truth claims in their distinct socio-linguistic and socio-cultural contexts implies per se the contingency or relativity of the truth claims themselves. 24 But if truth is conceived in this way, then there can be no unity of truth in history, because the movement of history moves beyond the singular event and context where truth is found. The historical process prevents there from being any unity of truth. Obviously, taken to its logical conclusion this understanding of the relationship between history and truth is destructive of Catholic dogmatics. The meaning of dogma becomes relative to historical circumstances. Once these circumstances change, the meaning of dogma itself becomes reformable. If the constitutive elements of marriage change according to the historical and social circumstances, then the meaning of marriage as a sacrament no longer remains the same throughout the whole world or throughout the whole of time.25 While acknowledging the historical character of her doctrine, the Church has consistently and firmly defended the permanency of her doctrines and the permanent meaning of their formulae.26 To go any further into the problem of the relation of revealed truth to history would take this study beyond its limits.27 For our purposes, let 24 25 26 27 Reinhard Hütter, “Progress, Not Alteration of the Faith, Beyond Antiquarianism and Presentism: John Henry Newman, Vincent of Lerins, and the Criterion of Identity of the Development,” Nova et Vetera (English) 19, no. 2 (2021): 335. Hütter points out that to affirm the historicity of truth is to reject the criterion of identity which affirms “the continuity and substantial identity of the subject” (“Progress,” 355). He refers here to Vincent of Lerins and the teaching of the First Vatican Council, which quotes Vincent in Dei Filius: “That is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding (‘in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia’)” (364). Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), §§12–13; Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), §16; Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (1965), §§24–25; Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998), §87; Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith, Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), §5. See Reinhard Hütter’s excellent analysis of “Theology as a Historical-Hermeneutical 854 Lawrence J. Welch it be said that a historicist approach which understands the inclination for marriage, and the historical free will that accompanies it, as meaning that the “forms of its constitutive presupposition change in the course of history”28 is not a way forward. A theological historicity which is capable of “discerning unity of doctrine itself and of the Catholic ethos that lives by it”29 must inform a renewed understanding of the theological character of the sacrament of marriage.30 St. Thomas on Indissolubility: An Alternative to Casti Connubii? Before examining how Hünermann understands St. Thomas, I want to scrutinize another important claim the German theologian makes about Casti Connubii. It is important to address it because Hünermann presents the encyclical’s teaching on indissolubility as being at odds with the understanding of St. Thomas. In the Commonweal interview, Hünermann claims: 28 29 30 Process” in his Dust Bound for Heaven (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 319–31. Much of Hütter’s criticism of Walter Kasper is relevant to what Hünermann proposes. Hütter points out that, when theology is done as a historical-hermeneutical process: “The prima veritas is God’s future eschatological mystery, to which the kerygma points; and tradition is the historically concrete application of the kerygma. Therefore, dogma is always relative to its particular time. All propositions are functions of the promise of a future that is not yet at hand, hence historically conditioned by this future and therefore to be interpreted in light of it. Because there is no perennial supernatural given of the faith, there can be no contemplation of the faith that rises above the flux of history toward God. Consequently, theology cannot per se acquire a sapiential character that views all historical change in light of God’s transcendent, eternal wisdom. The gift of truth has been promised, but not yet given” (329). Such non-sapiential theology certainly stands outside of the Thomist theological tradition. On the problem of historicism and the historicity of dogma, see also Guy Mansini, Fundamental Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 132–39. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 144. Guy Mansini, “The Second Vatican Council Then and Now,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 3 (2020): 989. Mansini also recalls that Newman observed that the unity and continuity of doctrine and ethos are themselves objects of faith. It is certainly true that the sacrament of marriage has been and is lived in a plurality of historical forms. Clearly, the married couple to whom John Chrysostom preached and ministered to lived out the sacrament of marriage in a different historical form from that of two “career” couples who live out the sacrament today in the United States or Germany. Nevertheless, the continuity and substantial identity of the sacrament of marriage remain in which unity, indissolubility and openness to fertility are all essential to it in every historical form. While the Church may deepen her understanding of these essential elements through her contemplation of the sacrament of marriage, the meaning of them will, per Vatican I, remain in the same sense and understanding. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 855 In Casti connubii, Hürth says that marriage is transformed in sacramental reality in that it becomes indissoluble. Thomas does not argue in that sense. For Thomas, the unity of matrimony and hence its indissolubility comes from its very nature, given by God the creator. In the sacrament of marriage God gives his help, but this help is not a supernatural transubstantiation of indissolubility. [In this sense, it is not analogous to how bread and wine are transformed at the consecration] God’s helping grace does not erase what matrimony is in itself [as a natural covenanted relationship freely entered into].31 Hünermann would have us believe that, unlike St. Thomas, Casti Connubii does not understand indissolubility as something that comes from the very nature of marriage when God instituted it at creation.32 A close reading of Casti Connubii shows that Hünermann has misinterpreted what Pope Pius XI teaches about indissolubility. The Pope does teach that, because of the restoration brought about by Christ, only a consummated Christian marriage is absolutely indissoluble, that is, indissoluble without any exceptions. But nowhere does he deny that indissolubility is a property of marriage from the beginning at creation, from nature of marriage itself. Had Pius taught otherwise, not only would he have diverted from St. Thomas’s teaching, but he would have denied the previous teaching of the Church and that of his predecessors.33 But he does not. On the contrary, he reaffirms it throughout the encyclical in an unmistakable way. In §4, Pius signals that he upholds the traditional understanding of indissolubility as originating in the very nature of marriage. He says that 31 32 33 Kaplan, “From Tübingen to the Tiber” (p. 29 in print version). Hünermann refers here to Franz Hürth, S.J., who he says was the main drafter of Casti Connubii. The words in brackets are those of the editors of Commonweal. Hünermann thinks an important conclusion should follow from understanding indissolubility as rooted in the nature of marriage: “But if indissolubility refers to the nature of marriage, it is quite clear that [due to a failure of human cooperation] it can break down. Situations can arise where it is impossible to continue in marriage. If there are children and so on, one has to deal with the individual situation and attempt to find a pastoral solution.” In “Specific Theological Character,” 136n11, Hünermann does not repeat this claim, but when he cites Casti Connubii’s teaching on the indissolubility of the vinculum, he refers the reader to only two passages (§§31, 45) that discuss the indissolubility of the sacramental bond. The encyclical, of course, does not speak only of the supernatural bond, but of the natural bond as well. This would also involve thinking that Pius intended to deny the 1917 Code of Canon Law (for example, can. 1013, §2) and Church jurisprudence, which taught that indissolubility comes from the nature of marriage. 856 Lawrence J. Welch his encyclical confirms the teaching of Pope Leo XIII’s on marriage in the encyclical Arcanum. There, Leo clearly affirmed that indissolubility was rooted in the nature of marriage itself when he said that unity and perpetuity were manifested as a property of marriage at creation and that “this doctrine was declared and openly confirmed by the divine authority of Jesus Christ.” A little later in the encyclical, Pius goes on to quote his predecessor Pius VI on the very point of indissolubility as anchored in the nature of marriage itself prior to its sacramental elevation. Hence it is clear that marriage even in the state of nature, and certainly long before it was raised to the dignity of a sacrament, was divinely instituted in such a way that it should carry with it a perpetual and indissoluble bond which cannot therefore be dissolved by any civil law. Therefore, although the sacramental element may be absent from a marriage as is the case among unbelievers, still in such a marriage, inasmuch as it is a true marriage there must remain and indeed there does remain that perpetual bond which by divine right is so bound up with matrimony from its first institution that it is not subject to any civil power. And so, whatever marriage is said to be contracted, either it is so contracted that it is really a true marriage, in which case it carries with it that enduring bond which by divine right is inherent in every true marriage; or it is thought to be contracted without that perpetual bond, and in that case there is no marriage, but an illicit union opposed of its very nature to the divine law, which therefore cannot be entered into or maintained. (Casti Connubii §34) After affirming the teaching of his predecessor, Pius goes on to comment: And if this stability seems to be open to exception, however rare the exception may be, as in the case of certain natural marriages between unbelievers, or amongst Christians in the case of those marriages which though valid have not been consummated, that exception does not depend on the will of men nor on that of any merely human power, but on divine law, of which the only guardian and interpreter is the Church of Christ. However, not even this power can ever affect for any cause whatsoever a Christian marriage which is valid and has been consummated, for as it is plain that here the marriage contract has its full completion, so, by the will of God, there is also the greatest firmness and indissolubility which may not be destroyed by any human authority. (§34) New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 857 There is no need to multiply texts. Obviously, if Pius XI did not understand unity of marriage and its indissolubility as coming from the nature of marriage, then he could not claim that the bond of natural marriage is perpetual. There is no disagreement between the Pope and St. Thomas on this point. Hünermann’s claim to the contrary is mistaken. These passages in the encyclical clearly show that the Pius reaffirmed the traditional teaching on the indissolubility of marriage as rooted in the nature of marriage itself, from the beginning. Furthermore, in the comments of the Pope we see he taught that, in sacramental marriage, the natural bond is elevated, making it completely indissoluble. There is a difference between the two bonds. The indissolubility of the natural bond admits some exceptions34 but the indissolubility of the bond in sacramental and consummated marriage has the greatest firmness and admits no exception and cannot be destroyed by anyone because of its elevation in Christ. Pius explains that the reason why Christian marriage has this greatest firmness and indissolubility can be seen in the mystical signification of Christian marriage which is fully and perfectly verified in consummated marriage between Christians. For, as the Apostle says in his Epistle to the Ephesians [Eph 5:32], the marriage of Christians recalls that most perfect union which exists between Christ and the Church: “Sacramentum hoc magnum est, ego autem dico, in Christo et in ecclesia,” which union, as long as Christ shall live and the Church through Him, can never be dissolved by any separation. (§36) There is nothing in the teaching of Casti Connubii as Hünermann imagines, nothing that conceives of the help God gives in the sacrament of marriage as amounting to a supernatural transubstantiation of indissolubility. On the contrary, the sacramental elevation of the marriage bond is presented as the supernatural raising of a preexisting reality. It is not comparable to transubstantiation, in which the substance of something is transformed into another substance. What about St. Thomas’s teaching on the sacramental bond of marriage? Is Casti Connubii’s teaching about the sacramental bond being more firm than the natural bond of marriage in conflict with the teaching of the 34 Pius undoubtedly refers here to Pauline Privilege and to natural marriages dissolved in favor of the faith. He also refers to the Church’s long-standing teaching in which consummation is required for the completion of marriage and absolute indissolubility of the bond (ratum et consummatum). See note 85 below. 858 Lawrence J. Welch Angelic Doctor? No, it is not. St. Thomas teaches the same thing. For example, in the supplementum to the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas says: As stated above, the marriage of unbelievers is imperfect, whereas the marriage of believers is perfect and consequently binds more firmly. Now the firmer tie always loosens the weaker if it is contrary to it, and therefore the subsequent marriage contracted in the faith of Christ dissolves the marriage previously contracted in unbelief. Therefore the marriage of unbelievers is not altogether firm and ratified, but is ratified afterwards by faith in Christ.35 In another place in the supplementum, St. Thomas presents a consummated sacramental marriage as being completely and altogether indissoluble because of what it signifies: Before carnal intercourse [carnalem copulam] marriage signifies the union of Christ with the soul by grace, which indeed is dissolved by a contrary spiritual disposition, namely sin. But after carnal intercourse it signifies the union of Christ with the Church, as regards the assumption of human nature into the unity of person, which is altogether indissoluble.36 Casti Connubii and St. Thomas agree that the marriage bond in a sacramental marriage has a greater firmness and is altogether indissoluble because it signifies the union between Christ and the Church. 37 So, it cannot be claimed as Hünermann does that St. Thomas offers an alternative to the encyclical on the issue of indissolubility which theology today could somehow return to as a way forward. Furthermore, it is apparent that St. Thomas and Casti Connubii agree that the grace of the sacrament of marriage elevates and perfects the natural reality of marriage in its unity and indissolubility. In fact, the encyclical 35 36 37 ST suppl., q. 59, a. 5, ad 1. All translations from the works of Thomas are taken from the online versions of the Aquinas Institute at aquinas.cc. ST suppl., q. 61, a. 2, ad 1. I have lightly altered the translation to bring it closer to the Latin original. Of course, St. Thomas means that it is possible for the union of Christ with the soul by grace to be dissolved by sin, not that this will necessarily always happen in the life of a Christian. This text is important for other reasons in St. Thomas theology of marriage. I will return to it again later in this paper. Casti Connubii §44 and St. Thomas also agree on the point that this signification of the union of Christ and the Church is completed in consummation. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 859 understands the grace of the sacrament as elevating and perfecting not just the bond of marriage, but the natural powers of the married couple as well.38 We will see that this concurs with St. Thomas’s understanding of the work of grace in Christian marriage. At this point, I turn to Hünermann’s more detailed interpretation of St. Thomas’s theology of marriage. Gratiam Adiuvantem in the Sacrament of Marriage Hünermann points out, rightly, that St. Thomas, did not follow Peter Lombard and others who held that, although marriage is a sacrament, it does not mediate grace. For St. Thomas marriage does mediate a grace. What kind of grace? Hünermann points to a passage in the supplementum where St. Thomas speaks of a helping grace (gratiam adiuvantem). 39 In article3 of question 42, the saint replies to the question of whether marriage confers grace. After reviewing three opinions, St. Thomas states that the most probable one says that matrimony contracted in the faith of Christ confers grace. Referencing St. Bonaventure, 40 St. Thomas says a helping grace (gratiam adiuvantem) is said to be given for accomplishing what is required in marriage. Hünermann quotes St. Thomas: “Accordingly, through marriage, thanks to divine institution, the human being is given the ability to make use of his wife for the procreation of children; and given the grace without which he cannot do this in the appropriate manner.” Hünermann argues The aid of God, who is the friend of the human being, corresponds thus to the mutual aid that the marriage partners offer each other, 38 39 40 Casti Connubii §40: “By the very fact, therefore, that the faithful with sincere mind give such consent, they open up for themselves a treasure of sacramental grace from which they draw supernatural power for the fulfilling of their rights and duties faithfully, holily, perseveringly even unto death. Hence this sacrament not only increases sanctifying grace, the permanent principle of the supernatural life, in those who, as the expression is, place no obstacle [obex] in its way, but also adds particular gifts, dispositions, seeds of grace, by elevating and perfecting the natural powers. By these gifts the parties are assisted not only in understanding, but in knowing intimately, in adhering to firmly, in willing effectively, and in successfully putting into practice, those things which pertain to the marriage state, its aims and duties, giving them in fine right to the actual assistance of grace, whensoever they need it for fulfilling the duties of their state.” Hünermann, “Specific theological Character,” 138. He refers here to ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3. St. Thomas seems to be referring to St. Bonaventure, Commentary on the Sentences IV, d. 26. 860 Lawrence J. Welch when this aid is enacted in faith. The aid of this “friend” accompanies the human being from the creation onwards.41 Two things should be said in reply to Hünermann’s interpretation of St. Thomas. First, a careful reading of article 3 shows that St. Thomas did not understand gratiam adiuvantem, helping grace, to be like the “aid” that accompanies the human being in the created order. The wider context should be recalled. In article 1, St. Thomas establishes that marriage is a sacrament: “A sacrament denotes a sanctifying remedy against sin offered to man under sensible signs. Wherefore since this is the case in matrimony, it is reckoned among the sacraments.” This “sanctifying remedy” against sin is clearly something more than the divine aid that accompanies the human being from “creation onwards,” because it enables human beings to overcome sin against marriage, something that the hardened hearts of spouses could not do prior to the elevation of marriage to the level of a sacrament. Second, in article 2 of the same question, St. Thomas discusses how marriage inclines to a good which varies according to the different states of man. In the New Law, marriage was instituted “insofar as it represents the mystery of Christ’s union with the church, and in this respect it is sacrament of the New Law.” Understood against this background, the gratiam adiuvantem, the helping grace, given in marriage, spoken of in article 3, does not correspond to the divine “aid” or love that accompanies the human creature at creation. It confers something more, something more for the supernatural life. When St. Thomas discusses whether the sacraments of the New Law derive from the power of the Passion of Christ in the Scriptum on Lombard’s Sentences, he teaches that sacramental grace is ordered principally to two things: taking away the defects resulting from past sins and perfecting in the soul things having to do with divine worship. This is true for all sacraments and therefore would include the sacramental grace, or the gratiam adiuvantem, that article 3 of question 42 in the supplementum says is conferred in 41 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 138–39. In a footnote, Hünermann refers his reader to ST I-II, q. 110, a. 1. It is hard to see how this text supports Hünermann’s claim. In q.110, a. 1, St. Thomas takes up the question of whether grace sets up something in the soul, but he does not mention a helping grace. Perhaps Hünermann meant to refer readers to a. 2, where St. Thomas speaks of a helping motion and of sanctifying grace as a help. But this helping motion is something greater than an accompaniment from creation onward, because St. Thomas says that it is infused in the soul of man, which enables him to move to toward the acquisition of the supernatural good. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 861 marriage.42 Clearly, for St. Thomas, the grace of the sacrament of marriage confers something greater than the aid of God that attends human beings from creation onwards. The Meaning of the Sacramental Sign of Marriage Hünermann believes that St. Thomas’s clarification over against Hugh of St. Victor and Lombard that marriage does mediate grace led to a sharper definition of the specific sacramental sign of marriage. Hünermann sees great significance in St. Thomas’s argument that the relationship of Christ to the Church is not contained as a sign in marriage itself. Hünermann cites the supplementum, q. 42, a.1, ad 2, where St. Thomas teaches that Christ’s relationship with the Church and its indissolubility are non contentum in the sacrament itself (although the passage he intends is actually ad 4, not ad 2).43 What are the consequences of this claim for the sacramentality of marriage? For one thing, Hünermann says it shows that the relationship between Christ and the Church “is something that goes beyond the significance of marriage itself, something that is seen only where marriage is lived in faith.”44 This is of course true, but Hünermann thinks this means that the sacrament of marriage “differs very fundamentally” from the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, which “are signs that point directly to Christ and his redeeming work, signs that mediate this grace.”45 He says that it is only in the realm of faith that marriage can be seen as a sacramentum Christi. In this sense, “marriage is a sacrament of the second rank, which is founded only on baptism and eucharist, as the fundamental sacraments.”46 As we have seen, Hünermann understands St. Thomas to teach that marriage mediates a helping grace, but he thinks at the same time that this does not amount to the sacramental sign of marriage mediating the grace of the redeeming work of Christ as the fundamental sacraments of baptism and Eucharist do. There are numerous problems with Hünermann’s interpretation of St. Thomas here. As I will show later, St. Thomas does in fact teach that the sacrament of marriage points directly to Christ’s redeeming work on the Cross and mediates this grace when he claims that the sacrament of marriage can confer grace because Christ represented marriage by his Passion.47 There 42 43 44 45 46 47 ST III, q. 62, a. 5. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 139. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 139. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 139. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 139. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3, ad 1. 862 Lawrence J. Welch are also problems with how Hünermann understands St. Thomas’s teaching about the relationship between Christ and the Church and its indissolubility being non contentum in the sacrament itself. Things are more complicated than Hünermann indicates. St. Thomas applies the distinction between the reality signified and contained and the reality signified and not contained to the other sacraments besides marriage. 48 He presents the sacramental marriage bond (res et sacramentum) as the reality that is contained in the sacrament, which in turn signifies the union between Christ and the Church. Hünermann does not pay full attention to the context of St. Thomas’s teaching, and thus distorts it. He does not tell his readers that, when St. Thomas says that union between Christ and the Church is not contained in the sacrament, this claim occurs in the context where he takes up the question of whether marriage is a sacrament in q. 42, a. 1, of the supplementum. St. Thomas’s teaching about the union of Christ with the Church not contained in the sacrament occurs in this context and is found in the response to the fourth objection. There it is objected that marriage is not a sacrament because sacraments are supposed to cause what they signify, but marriage does not cause what it signifies—the unity between Christ and the Church—and therefore marriage is not a sacrament. St. Thomas replies that the union of Christ with the Church is not the reality contained in the sacrament, because no sacrament can cause that kind of reality. Nevertheless, the union of Christ with the Church is signified in the sacrament. St. Thomas says that the sacrament of marriage has another reality both contained and signified which it causes. He states what this is in reply to a related fifth objection, in which it is objected that in marriage there is no res et sacramentum, that is, no contained reality and sign, because marriage does not imprint a character. In reply, St. Thomas affirms that, in the sacrament of matrimony, like all the sacraments, there are found three things: the sacramentum tantum, the res et sacramentum, and the res tantum.49 In marriage the res et sacramentum is the bond between husband and wife. This bond is 48 49 St. Thomas applies this distinction to the other sacraments as well, and not just to marriage. See ST III, q. 80, a. 4, where St. Thomas explains that, in the Eucharist, under the sacramental species, there is signified and contained the reality of Christ himself, and there is signified but not contained the mystical body of Christ, which is the communion of the saints. Both realities are very closely linked. Similarly, in the sacrament of marriage, the reality signified and contained (the marriage bond) is closely linked with the reality signified but not contained (the union between Christ and the Church). See ST suppl., q. 42, a. 1, ad 4–5. ST suppl., q. 42, a . 1, ad 5. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 863 the reality contained and signified and caused in marriage. Therefore, in this way marriage is a sacrament that causes what it signifies. St. Thomas’s claim that Christ’s relationship with the Church and its indissolubility are non contentum in the marital sacrament must be read in the context in which it occurs if we are to properly understand the meaning of it for his theology of marriage. St. Thomas’s point about non contentum is to explain how marriage is a sacrament and how it causes what it signifies and, as such, as he explains a bit later in article 3 of question 42, is cause of grace50. Furthermore, sacraments confer grace by virtue of their sanctification. According to St. Thomas, all the sacraments including marriage have their sanctification from the Passion. He also explained that marriage is conformed to the charity of Christ in his Passion.51 And in a passage from the Summa contra gentiles, which Hünermann himself cites, St. Thomas says: And seeing that the sacraments cause what they signify, we must believe that the sacrament of matrimony confers the grace to take part in the union of Christ with his Church on those who are joined in wedlock, since it is most necessary that they should so seek carnal and earthly things as not to be separated from Christ and his Church.52 Clearly, St. Thomas means the sacrament of marriage does point to Christ and his redeeming work and as a sign that mediates this grace unless one thinks that Christ’s unity with his Church is not part of his redeeming work! It is true that the sacrament of marriage is founded on baptism and the Eucharist as Hünermann says, but this certainly does not mean, especially for St. Thomas, that the marital sacrament does not mediate the grace of the charity of Christ on the Cross. In his commentary on Ephesians, St. Thomas explains the signification of the one-flesh union of husband and wife. The spouses are one flesh in three ways: by love, per affectum dilectionis; by shared lives, per conversationem; and by sexual union, per carnalem coniunctionem, which is a sign of a sacred reality, the union (coniunctionis) between Christ and the Church.53 50 51 52 53 ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3. In the sed contra, St. Thomas says: “Definition and thing defined should be convertible. Now causality of grace is included in the definition of a sacrament. Since, then, matrimony is a sacrament, it is a cause of grace.” ST suppl., q. 42, a. 1, ad 3. Summa contra gentiles [SCG] IV, ch. 78. In Super Eph 5, lec. 10, St. Thomas writes: “The third is their carnal union: ‘and they shall be two in one flesh,’ that is, in their carnal intercourse. For in any act of generation there is an active and a passive power. In plants both powers are in the same plant, but 864 Lawrence J. Welch Commenting on Eph 5:31–33, St. Thomas says that there are passages in the Scriptures that refer principally to Christ and to others who are “types” of Christ. St. Paul’s explanation of the meaning of the one-flesh union spoken of in Gen 2:24 falls precisely into this kind of category. The indissoluble marriages of Christians show them to be true “types” of Christ. Taking this point further, St. Thomas argues that, when St. Paul says, “Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular love his wife,” this refers first to Christ, “but not only about him since it must be interpreted and fulfilled in other persons as types of Christ.” 54 On this point, Peter Elliott has remarked rightly that, for St Thomas: The sacramental signification demands a response that it be fulfilled in the lives of married Christians as types of Christ (de alias vero in figura Christi). Married people are the “others” (aliis) who signify the Christ–church bond in marriage. His comments on Ephesians also broaden the idea of sacramentality, thus leaving the way open for a developed theology of continual mutual ministry of Grace and marriage, Grace as a lived sacrament.55 If close attention is paid to how St. Thomas explains the sacramental signification of marriage and the marital bond, and the conferral of grace, then it becomes clear that Hünermann’s interpretation of what these things mean is mistaken. We have seen that, while St. Thomas did teach that while the union of Christ and the Church is not caused or contained in marriage or in any other sacrament, he did not thereby mean that marriage between baptized Christians is a cause of grace which only points to Christ’s redeeming work but does not participate in it. Hünermann’s representation of St. Thomas’s theology of the sacramental sign is misleading because it ignores how St. Thomas explains that the consent of two baptized Christian causes a bond in the order of grace, the res et sacramentum, which after consummation signifies the one-flesh union between Christ and the Church. To ignore this essential part of St. Thomas’s teaching is to present a distorted picture 54 55 in the perfect animals they are distinguished. And hence in the act of generation among animals the male and female become, as in plants, only one and the same body. [Paul] goes on to interpret this mystically, and he says ‘this is a great sacrament,’ it is the symbol of a sacred reality, namely, the union of Christ and the Church. ‘I will not hide from you the mysteries of God’ (Wis 6:24).” Super Eph 5, lec. 10. Peter Elliot, What God has Joined (New York: Alba House, 1990), 98. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 865 of his contribution to the Catholic theological tradition about the specific sacramental sign of marriage. Consent, Contract, and the Consequences for Indissolubility Hünermann also argues that St. Thomas makes an important distinction between the marital consent and contract which he believes should lead us to a better understanding of consent. He believes that this distinction implies that consent and its specific indissolubility are precarious. Hünermann points out that St. Thomas says that the marital consent and union are declared ad modum, “in the manner of,” the obligation in material contracts.56 Furthermore, he draws attention to where St. Thomas defines marital consent according to Hugh of Saint Victor: “Those who enter marriage must give their consent in such a way that they receive one another spontaneously (freely); this is expressed when they do not contradict one another in the celebration of matrimony.” Hünermann claims that St. Thomas here delineates marital consent as being enacted in the reciprocal giving and receiving of one another. This is said to stand in contrast to the form taken in contracts. The marital consent differs from contracts because it is a consent to an indissoluble bond. In Hünermann’s words: Although this consent begins in time and has a beginning, it cannot be made only for a certain space of time. It is (as we might say) a reciprocal, unconditional “yes” in freedom. Contracts are very different from this consent, which has a “holistic character” that needs to be “made true,” and to prove itself, in each present moment.57 This means, according to Hünermann, that consent and its specific indissolubility are “highly precarious” because they are threatened by all kinds of situations, events, and decisions made by the spouses themselves. Hünermann claims this consent can be “killed off.” He admits that St. Thomas does 56 57 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 140. Hünermann does not give a citation from the works of St. Thomas, but he seems to be referring to ST suppl., q. 45, a. 2, ad 3. Hünermann does not mention how St. Thomas says that, just as material contracts are not feasible unless the parties express their will to each other in words, so the consent to that which makes marriage must also be expressed in words. Nor does Hünermann mention that St. Thomas says that what the expression of words is to marriage is what the outward washing is to baptism. See the response in q. 45, a. 2. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 140. 866 Lawrence J. Welch not draw these conclusions or engage in such reflections, but he says that they are a consequence of the specific character of sacramental marriage.58 St. Thomas, however, cannot be pressed into the service of Hünermann’s understanding of marital consent and indissolubility. Not only does St. Thomas not engage in reflections about it being possible for consent to “killed off ” in all kinds of situations, but he also denies that it can be. Instructive on this point is St. Thomas’s answer to the objection that, because marital consent is often changed, inseparability is not always a condition of marriage. Although the consent which makes a marriage is not everlasting materially, i.e., in regard to the substance of the act, since the act ceases and a contrary act may succeed it, nevertheless formally speaking it is everlasting, because it is a consent to an everlasting bond, else it would not make it marriage, for consent to take a woman for a time makes no marriage. Hence it is everlasting formally, inasmuch as an act takes the species from its object; and thus it is that matrimony derives its inseparability from consent.59 St. Thomas makes a distinction here between the material and the formal aspect of consent. Hünermann overlooks this distinction. St. Thomas knows that there can be later acts, decisions, or modes of conduct which are contrary to consent, but these things do not negate or “kill off ” consent because it is a consent to an everlasting indissoluble bond. This seems to be very different from Hünermann’s understanding of consent, in which consent “can be killed off,” making it and indissolubility very precarious realities. Nevertheless, Hünermann believes his interpretation of St. Thomas’s distinction between consent and contract can be a corrective to Casti Connubii, which he claims affirms that marital consent is a contract.60 Hünermann cites no passage in the encyclical to support his claim. He says that the encyclical is incorrect on this point and that “marital consent is merely expressed or attested in the form of a contract.”61This means, according to Hünermann, that the consent can cease to exist and be a failed consent. It is a “theological absurdity,” he insists, to think that consent can continue to exist in the form of a contract when marriage for all practical purposes is broken down. Hünermann minces no words and says that “this must be rejected by the church’s magisterium.” He argues that this is not to deny the 58 59 60 61 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 140. ST suppl., q. 49, a. 3, ad 4. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 147. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 147. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 867 “indissolubility of consent,” but it does mean rejecting a mistaken notion of indissolubility.62 What indissolubility exactly is for Hünermann is hard to pin down, but he clearly believes that the magisterium needs to make a correction of how it has traditionally understood it. Of course, the doctrinal tradition does not speak of the “indissolubility of consent,” but of the indissolubility of the marriage bond. Furthermore, nowhere in Casti Connubii does Pius teach that consent itself is a contract. Were the Pope to have done so, he would have contradicted the Church’s doctrine which teaches that the consent brings the marriage contract into existence. In Casti Connubii §6, the Pope says: “For each individual marriage, inasmuch as it is a conjugal union of a particular man and woman, arises only from the free consent of each of the spouses; and this free act of the will, by which each party hands over and accepts those rights proper to the state of marriage, is so necessary to constitute true marriage that it cannot be supplied by any human power.” The consent is not the contract, but the cause of it. We find the same teaching in St. Thomas.63 Hünermann, on the other hand, has a very different understanding from both St. Thomas and Casti Connubii regarding consent as something that can later be “killed off,” not to mention a different concept of indissolubility as well. Lastly, Hünermann calls attention to what he believes St. Thomas teaches about the various goals at which marriage aims: the good of nature, the political good, and the good of the Church. Hünermann calls these the “pluri-dimensionality” of marriage. They should lead us to question how new perspectives about them might surface in the modern age. He argues that the relationship of marriage and family to these goods and their interconnection with other social realities will undoubtedly change. When they eventually occur, they it will have an effect on the sacrament of marriage.64 This, of course, is undeniable. The question is: what kind of effects does Hünermann have in mind? His claim appears related to his wider claim, discussed earlier, about the historical development of marriage which must involve incorporating contemporary elements in a constitutive and essential manner. But 62 63 64 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 147–48. ST suppl., q. 45, a. 1: “Wherefore, since in matrimony there is a kind of spiritual joining together, insofar as matrimony is a sacrament, and a certain material joining together, insofar as it is directed to an office of nature and of civil life, it follows that the spiritual joining is the effect of the divine power by means of the material joining. Therefore, seeing that the joinings of material contracts are effected by mutual consent, it follows that the joining together of marriage is effected in the same way.” See also ad 2: “Matrimony is not the consent itself, but the union of persons directed to one purpose, as stated above (q. 44, a. 1), and this union is the effect of the consent.” Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 148. 868 Lawrence J. Welch here Hünermann focuses instead on how the “decisive basis of stability” of marriage partnership has shifted.65 In previous historical types of marriage, the societal, economic, and cultural circumstances and situation helped to provide a strong assurance of the stability of marriage. In the modern type of marriage partnership, the relationship itself between the couples themselves is the decisive basis of stability. The consequence of this shift is that modern marriage is highly vulnerable. If a marriage partnership is to last a lifetime through various phases, from the family phase with young children to the empty nest and in between, then, what is needed prior to marriage is a time of preparation and testing. Therefore, Hünermann calls for catechumenate in preparation for the sacrament of marriage where dispositions for marriage might be identified, understood, and practiced.66 While Hünermann identifies some important texts for St. Thomas’s theology of marriage, he does not prove to be a reliable interpreter of them. In the next section, I will examine these texts and others in the Angelic Doctor’s theology of marriage with an eye to suggesting how they can help contribute to deeper understanding of the sacramental ontology of marriage and marriage as a transformative instrument of grace. Sacramental Causality and Ontology in St. Thomas’s Theology of Marriage It is worth recalling that St. Thomas’s thought on marriage and the sacrament of marriage is found mainly in the Scriptum and in a chapter of the Summa contra gentiles.67 The saint stopped writing the Summa theologiae in the middle of his examination of the sacraments and did not actually write a section on the sacrament of marriage. Thus, his theology of marriage comes to us in something of an unfinished and incomplete state. Complicating matters further is that St. Thomas’s earlier theory of sacramental causality informs his theology of marriage in the Scriptum. There, sacramental causality is explained in terms of dispositive instrumental causality. However, as is well known, there is a development in his theory in his later works. This 65 66 67 Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 148. Hünermann, “Specific Theological Character,” 149. In IV sent., dd. 26–36; Summa contra gentiles [SCG] IV, ch. 78. The commentary on the Sentences was completed sometime in the mid-1250s. St. Thomas commented on the Sentences during his period of teaching in Paris from 1252 to1256. The Summa Contra Gentiles was completed by 1265. See Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, His Person and Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 328. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 869 involves a shift from explaining the sacraments as causes of grace according to dispositive instrumental causality, in favor of a perfective instrumental causality. In the latter theory, the sacraments are understood not merely to dispose the recipient for the influx of grace, but as principles that effect grace because they participate in the power of God as primary cause. This explanation of sacramental causality results in a greater unity between sign and cause.68 Nevertheless, none of these things are ever fully applied by St. Thomas to his theology of marriage. Several scholars have traced this development of St. Thomas’s theory of sacramental causality.69 I intend to give only a basic description of the essential points of this development for the purpose of applying it to his theology of sacrament marriage. Of course, this is something St. Thomas never did because he did not finish his Summa theologiae. I believe that adapting St. Thomas’s theology of marriage to his later theory of sacramental causality can contribute to a deeper understanding of the sacramental ontology of marriage and the nature of the transformation it works in the persons of the spouses. When adapted to his theology of marriage, St. Thomas’s theory of perfective instrumental causality leads to an understanding of the marital act as an instrumental cause of the sacramental perfection of the marital bond, the res et sacramentum, which is nothing less than a unique participation in the corporeal, one-flesh union of Christ with the Church. As such, the marital bond is now the basis for the graces needed for living the conjugal life by the power of the self-sacrificial love of Christ for his bride, the Church. Before turning to St. Thomas’s theories of sacramental causality, it will be helpful, for sake of context, to look briefly at how the saint understood the sacramentality of marriage in relation to the Passion of Christ and the sacramental signification of marriage itself. The Cross as the Place of the Institution of Marriage as a Sacrament and Its Sanctification The Fathers were unanimous in understanding that sacraments are essentially and inseparably connected to the person of Christ. What St. Leo the Great proclaimed is representative: “What was visible in Christ has passed over 68 69 As pointed out by Reginald Lynch, “Cajetan’s Harp,” The Thomist 78 (2014): 104. Lynch, “Cajetan’s Harp,” 65–106; Lynch, The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017). See also Bernhard Blankenhorn, “The Instrumental Causality of the Sacraments: Thomas Aquinas and Louis-Marie Chauvet,” Nova et Vetera (English) 4, no. 2 (2006): 255–94. 870 Lawrence J. Welch into the sacraments of the church.”70 The sacramental theology of St. Thomas deepened the understanding of this inseparable link. For St. Thomas, the sacraments are actions of Christ through his ministers. The sacraments extend the sacred humanity of Christ in time and space. They are the historical continuation and application of the power of the Incarnation and the power of the charity of Christ in his Passion. St. Thomas says that “the merit and power of Christ operates in the sacraments.”71 As Bertrand-Marie Perrin has observed, what is unique about the sacrament of marriage in the thought of St. Thomas is that not only is its efficacy is found at the Cross, but its institution is located there as well. 72 This understanding can be seen in the Angelic Doctor’s treatment of marriage as a sacrament in two places in the Scriptum where he replies to questions as to whether marriage is a sacrament and concerning its institution under the New Law.73 It is objected that, if the sacraments derive their efficacy from the Passion, then marriage cannot be a sacrament, because marriage has pleasure attached to it but not pain. St. Thomas not only replies that marriage is conformed to Christ’s Passion according to charity, but he also claims that Christ suffered on the Cross for the sake of the Church so that she might be joined to him in a spousal unity. Although marriage does not conform to the Passion of Christ in suffering, yet it does conform to it in the love by which he suffered for the Church in order that she might be joined to him as bride.74 In another passage, St. Thomas answers the objection that marriage does not have the power to confer grace. Sacraments confer grace by virtue of their sanctification, but according to the objection, marriage has no sanctification essential to it, and therefore it does not confer grace. St. Thomas replies: Just as the baptismal water by virtue of its contact with Christ’s body is able to touch the body and cleanse the heart, so is matrimony able to do so through Christ having represented it by his Passion, and not principally through any blessing of the priest.75 70 71 72 73 74 75 Leo the Great, Sermon 74, no. 2 (PL 54:398; trans. mine). ST III, q. 64, a. 3. Bertrand-Marie Perrin, “L’Institution du mariage dans le Scriptum de Saint Thomas,” Revue thomiste 108 (2008): 599–646. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, aa. 1–2; ST suppl., q. 42, aa. 1–2. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3; ST suppl., q.42, a. 1; ad 3. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3, ad 1. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 871 On the Cross, through his great charity, Christ accomplished the joining of the Church to himself. He thereby represented marriage and conformed it to his love. Therefore St. Thomas insists that marriage has a sanctification it receives from unitive love of Christ for his bridal Church. There is a new source of love for marriage and a new norm for conjugal love in the spousal union of Christ and the Church. The sacrament of marriage has the power to sanctify because Christ’s body touches it insofar as he represented marriage by his Passion. After establishing that marriage is indeed a sacrament that confers grace, St. Thomas proceeds to take up the question about the institution of marriage.76 It is objected that, because marriage is of the natural law, there is no need for it to be instituted before sin. St. Thomas replies that marriage varies according to the diverse states of humanity, and it is fitting that marriage is instituted in different ways for these states. It had its institution before sin as ordered to the procreation of children, something that was necessary even when sin did not yet exist. It had its institution after sin at the time of the natural law as a remedy against the wound of sin. It had its institution under the law of Moses according to personal disqualification of close kinship. St. Thomas then says: “[Marriage] was instituted in the new law insofar as it represents the mystery of Christ’s union with the Church, and in this respect, it is a sacrament of the new law.” In sum, Christ represented marriage in the charity of his Passion, the charity by which he accomplished his union with the Church, his bride. In doing so, he raised marriage to a sacrament and gave it its sanctification. For St. Thomas, both the sacramental institution and the sanctifying efficacy of marriage coincide on the Cross.77 Sacramental Signification in the Sacrament of Marriage In his explanation of the sacramentality of marriage in the Scriptum, St. Thomas insists that, in the sacrament of marriage, as in all the sacraments, the three things are found: sacramentum tantum, the outward visible sacred sign; res et sacramentum, the reality both contained and signified in a sacrament; and res ultima (other times called the res tantum), which is the 76 77 In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 2. Perrin comments on this point: “The moment when this efficacy was constituted and signified must therefore be that of the institution of the sacrament, that is to say, when the union of Christ and the Church took place on the cross: so, the blood and water flowing out of the side of Christ then symbolized this efficacy of grace” (“L’Institution du mariage,” 626; trans. mine). 872 Lawrence J. Welch grace that is given.78 For St. Thomas, the mutual consent of the couple is the sacramentum tantum, the marriage bond is the res et sacramentum, and the grace of the sacrament is the res ultima.79 The mutual consent of the couple, expressed in words, is what the outward washing is to baptism.80 He argues that consent does signify something sacred, but it does not signify the union of Christ with the Church. St. Thomas says that the consent signifies “[Christ’s] will, by which it happened that he was conjoined to the Church.”81 The consent of the couple is the efficient cause of marriage and brings about the marriage bond, which is the res et sacramentum. St. Thomas makes a point crucial to his theology of marriage when he answers the objection that marriage is not a sacrament because sacraments are supposed to cause what they signify, but marriage does not cause what it signifies—the unity between Christ and the Church. St. Thomas answers that the union of Christ with the Church is not the reality contained in the sacrament. Obviously, no sacrament can cause this union.82 But the sacrament of marriage has another reality both contained and signified which it causes. This reality is the bond between husband and wife, the res 78 79 80 81 82 In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 5; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 1, ad 5. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 5; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 1, ad 5. Thomas speaks of “externally acts appearing” in reference to the sacramentum tantum. That the sacramentum tantum includes the consent is clear from St. Thomas’s insistence in that consent is the efficient cause of marriage. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 2, ad 2. The sensible, spiritual action of the mutual consent of the couple does what the matter does in the other sacraments. On this point, see In IV sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1, sol., ad 1: “Among bodily medicines, some consist in the patient’s only enduring or receiving something, like surgery on a wound or the application of a bandage, while others consist in the patient’s active exertion, like exercises and things like that. In just the same way, among the sacraments some do not require any act from the one who is sanctified for the sacrament’s substance, except incidentally, like removing anything that prevents it, as is seen in baptism and confirmation and the others like them. But some sacraments do require the act of the one who receives the sacrament, essentially and per se, for the essence of the sacrament, as is seen in penance and marriage. Therefore, in those sacraments that are completed without our act, it is the matter that causes and signifies, like a medicine applied from without. But among those sacraments that require our act, there is no matter of this kind, but the acts themselves appearing outwardly do here what the matter does in the other sacraments. Now, how those things that are outwardly performed are the cause of sanctification in penance will be clear from what follows. To be sure, in this definition ‘material element’ must be taken in a general way for the sensible cause, whether it is a certain corporeal matter, a certain sensible act.” In IV sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, sol. 1, ad 2; ST suppl., q. 45, a. 1, ad 2. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 1, ad 4. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 873 et sacramentum.83 Therefore, in this way is marriage a sacrament that causes what it signifies. Furthermore, for St. Thomas the marital bond, the res et sacramentum, is twofold. It is spiritual and carnal and involves two forms of signification. In a passage sometimes overlooked, St. Thomas responds to the question of whether, before a marriage has been consummated, one of the spouses can enter religious life without the other’s consent. Before carnal intercourse [carnalem copulam] there is only a spiritual bond [tantum spirituale vinculum] between the spouses, but afterwards there is a carnal bond [vinculum carnale] between them as well.84 Moreover, in a passage we have seen before and that is worth returning to again, St. Thomas claims: Before carnal intercourse [carnalem copulam] marriage signifies the union of Christ with the soul by grace, which indeed is dissolved by a contrary spiritual disposition, namely sin. But after carnal intercourse it signifies the union of Christ with the Church, as regards the assumption of human nature into the unity of person, which is altogether indissoluble.85 83 84 85 In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 5; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 1, ad 5. In IV sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 2; ST suppl., q. 61, a. 2. I have lightly altered the translation to bring it closer to the Latin original. As Elliot has commented: “This sublime archetype is derived, as we have seen, from the Unity of the Holy Trinity and realized in the Hypostatic Union, the inseparable unity of the Divine Nature and the human nature in Christ” (What God has Joined, 164). In IV sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 2, ad 1; ST suppl., q.61, a. 2, ad 1 I have lightly altered the translation. Here St. Thomas draws on an explanation that can be traced to Hugh of St. Victor (†1140). Pope Innocent III drew on this distinction and explanation in his letter to the bishop of Albano on September 6, 1260. See the Liber Decretalium I, ch. 5, title 21. For a translation, see Theodore Mackin, The Marital Sacrament (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 316–17. Behind the explanation was a concern to explain how the marriage of Joseph and Mary was a true marriage and the long-standing tradition dating to Alexander III’s interpretation of the Lord’s command, “What God has joined, no man must separate,” as referring only to consummated marriages. Based on this interpretation, it was possible for the Pope to dissolve unconsummated sacramental marriages for a spiritual purpose such as the entrance into religious life and vows. See Alexander III’s letter to the bishop of Salerno excerpted in Henrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum: Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed., English ed. Robert 874 Lawrence J. Welch For this reason, St. Thomas says that a spouse in an unconsummated marriage can enter religious life because the marriage bond is not completely indissoluble because it does not yet signify the unity between Christ and the Church, but signifies the soul’s union with Christ, which in principle is dissoluble by grave sin.86 For St. Thomas, the sacramental signification of marriage involves a movement to a kind of completion in and through consummation whereby the spouses in their marital bond share in Christ’s union with the Church in a way they did not prior to consummation. St. Thomas explains earlier in the Scriptum that consummation, or carnal union, is not essential to the marital union.87 Mutual consent is the efficient cause of marriage, and the joining together in sexual union is the result of matrimony. In answer to the objection that the marriage union exists prior to marital intercourse and therefore cannot be dissolved, St. Thomas replies: “The marriage union, before consummation, is indeed perfect as to its primary being, but is not finally perfect as to its second act, which is operation. It is like bodily possession and consequently is not altogether indissoluble.” 88 Nevertheless, as we have seen, St. Thomas also emphasized that consummation in sexual union is necessary for marriage to be a complete sign of Christ’s indissoluble union with the Church. It is not until marriage has been consummated that the bond becomes carnal and completely indissoluble in Christ. Just as the consent causes the spiritual bond, so with consummation, which is the bodily enactment of consent, there is caused the one-flesh union between man and wife which is completely and altogether indissoluble because it signifies and participates in the one-flesh union between Christ and the Church. In the Scriptum, the Angelic Doctor also takes up the question of whether marriage confers grace. He insists that, because marriage is a sacrament, it 86 87 88 Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 755 (p. 247). Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] §1142. The soul here is, of course, a Christian soul united to the body of Christ, the Church, so it might be said that the spiritual bond does signify in a limited way the union of Christ with the Church. St. Thomas, though, wants to explain that what makes the sacramental bond completely indissoluble is its elevation and participation in the one-flesh union of Christ and the Church. In IV sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 4; ST suppl., q. 48, a. 1. I follow the translation of ST suppl., q. 61, a. 2, ad 3; In IV sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 2, ad 3. Cf. ST suppl., q. 42, a. 4; In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 4. What St. Thomas says here is true for all marriages even those that are not sacramental. What I am contending is that St. Thomas’s understanding of the sacramental signification in marriage being perfected in the bodily self-donation of consummation builds on this very point about the nature of marriage itself. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 875 is a cause of grace.89 At one point in his explanation, St. Thomas considers an objection. The acts of bride and bridegroom cannot be the cause of grace because it would be the heresy of Pelagius to claim that our human acts cause grace. He compares the sacrament of marriage with baptism, pointing out that the water together with the form of words result not immediately in infusion of grace but in the imprinting of the character of baptism, the res et sacramentum. 90 So, in marriage, the acts and words which express the consent of the couple cause not a character, but a certain bond (nexum quendam) which is the res et sacramentum of sacrament of matrimony. “And a bond of this kind operates dispositively for grace by the power of divine institution.”91 In other words, the bride and bridegroom, who, because they are baptized in Christ, effect by their consent to matrimony a bond which inclines them and makes them ready for the conferral of grace. Aquinas compares the bond of marriage to the character of baptism. The infusion of grace follows the elevation of the marriage bond just as the infusion of the grace of baptism follows the imprinting of the baptismal character. Just as the water of baptism with the form of words does not bring about grace directly, but rather a character, so the external acts and the words expressing consent directly effect a certain bond of obligation, which is the sacrament of marriage; and a bond of this kind operates dispositively for grace by the power of divine institution.92 In the Scriptum St. Thomas explains the sacrament of marriage, as he does all the sacraments, as conferring grace in terms of dispositive instrumental causality. The marital bond does not participate in the actual infusion of grace, which is left to God, who alone can directly cause grace, a supernatural reality. In his later writings, St. Thomas moved from a dispositive to a perfective theory of sacramental instrumental causality, but he did not apply it to his theology of marriage, owing to the cessation of writing his Summa theologiae. After examining this development very briefly, I will propose how St. Thomas’s later understanding of sacramental causality in terms perfective instrumental causality might be applied to his theology of marriage. 89 90 91 92 In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3: “Definition and thing defined should be convertible. Now causality of grace is included in the definition of a sacrament. Since, then, matrimony is a sacrament, it is a cause of grace.” In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2; see also ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3, ad 2. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2. In IV sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2; ST suppl., q. 42, a. 3, ad 2. 876 Lawrence J. Welch Two Theories of Sacramental Causality We can distinguish two theories of sacramental causality in the thought of St. Thomas: his earlier theory of dispositive instrumental causality operative in his treatment of the sacraments in the Scriptum93 and his theory of perfective instrumental causality at work in his later writings.94 According to the theory of dispositive instrumental causality, the outward, visible sacramental sign causes the supernatural effect of res et sacramentum which disposes or prepares the soul of the recipient for the infusion of divine grace. However, St. Thomas explains that that sacramental sign is not an instrumental cause for the infusion of grace itself.95 Now a certain action befits material instruments like this by their own nature, as water cleanses and oil makes the body sleek; but furthermore, as they are instruments of divine mercy justifying us, they attain instrumentally to a certain effect in the soul itself, which corresponds first to the sacraments, like a character or something of that sort. But to the final effect, which is grace, they do not attain even instrumentally, except dispositively, inasmuch as what they attain to as efficacious instruments is a disposition, which is necessary in itself for the reception of grace. 96 Applied to baptism, for example, the washing of water causes the baptismal character, the res et sacramentum which disposes the recipient to the infusion of sanctifying grace. The visible sacramental sign, though, is not directly at work in the infusion of grace, which is caused by God alone. The 93 94 95 96 In IV sent., d. 1. q. 1, a. 4, sol. 1. St. Thomas took over the theory of dipositive instrumental causality from Alexander of Hales and St. Albert and developed it. See the discussion in Lynch, “Cajetan’s Harp,” 70–71, and Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” and Feingold, Touched by Christ: The Sacramental Economy (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 242–43. ST III, q. 62, a. 1; SCG IV, chs. 57 and 74. In IV sent., d. 1. q. 1, a. 4, sol. 1: “And thus other men say that two things result in the soul from the sacraments. The first is a sacrament-and-reality, like a character, or some adornment of the soul in sacraments in which no character is imprinted; the other is a reality alone, like grace. Therefore, with respect to the first the sacraments are causes bringing about effects in some way; but with respect to the second they are causes disposing with such a disposition that it is a necessity, unless there were an impediment on the part of the person receiving; and this seems more consistent with the theologians and sayings of the saints.” In IV sent., d.1. q.1, a. 4, sol. 1 (emphasis mine). New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 877 intention of St. Thomas here was to respect and safeguard the very nature of grace itself as a supernatural reality that only God has the power to cause. 97 He had not settled yet the problem of how God can use a natural efficient cause instrumentally to participate in the infusion of grace, such as how the washing of water in baptism can be a cause of the infusion of sanctifying grace and participation in the supernatural life. St. Thomas explained the action of God infusing grace in the sacraments as comparable to when God infuses the soul into the conceptus caused by the bodily union of man and woman.98 The work of the sacramental sign is analogous to the action of the parents which brings about the disposition of the matter, the conceptus, fitting for the infusion of the human soul by God. The parents do not create the human soul, which is a spiritual form that transcends the potency of matter. Similarly, the sacramental sign causes the necessary disposition for grace but does not accomplish the actual infusion of grace, which is directly the work of God alone. In his later works, in the Summa contra gentiles99 and the Summa theologiae,100 St. Thomas no longer speaks of a dispositive instrumental causality. No longer does he compare the infusion of grace to the creation of the soul. Rather, he explains the sacraments as instrumental causes of grace whereby, as instruments, they operate not by the power of their own forms, but by the form of the divine principal agent.101 God alone, to be sure is the principal cause of grace, but the sacraments can be instrumental causes which confer grace immediately because of their participation in the divine power of God. We must therefore say otherwise that an efficient cause is twofold, principal and instrumental. The principal cause works by the power of its form, to which form the effect is likened; just as fire by its own heat makes something hot. In this way none but God can cause grace: since grace is nothing else than a participated likeness of the Divine Nature, according to 2 Pet. 1:4: “He hath given us most great and precious promises; that we may be partakers of the Divine Nature.” But the instrumental cause works not by the power of its form, but 97 98 99 100 101 For a fuller discussion see Lynch, “Cajetan’s Harp,” 71–72, 81–84; Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” 260–62. In IV sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4, sol. 1. SCG IV, chs. 57 and 74. ST III, q. 62, a. 1. For a careful and in-depth studies of the development of the thought of St. Thomas on sacramental causality, see Lynch, Cleansing of the Heart, 67–143, and Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” 260–91. 878 Lawrence J. Welch only by the motion whereby it is moved by the principal agent: so that the effect is not likened to the instrument but to the principal agent: for instance, the couch is not like the axe, but like the art which is in the craftsman’s mind. And it is thus that the sacraments of the New Law cause grace: for they are instituted by God to be employed for the purpose of conferring grace.102 Just like the power of the craftsman moves the axe according to the design in his mind for the purpose of constructing a couch, so the power of Christ moves the sacramental sign to effect grace and a specific participation in his divine life. St. Thomas makes this point again in another passage where he considers the objection that the corporeal cannot act on a spiritual thing and since the subject of grace is the human mind, which is a spiritual reality, therefore corporeal sacraments cannot cause grace. St. Thomas replies that sacraments, which are corporeal and touch the body, can, by Christ’s institution and power, effect an instrumental action on the soul, and this is particularly fitting because of the unity of body and soul. An instrument has a twofold action; one is instrumental, in respect of which it works not by its own power but by the power of the principal agent: the other is its proper action, which belongs to it in respect of its proper form: thus it belongs to an axe to cut asunder by reason of its sharpness, but to make a couch, in so far as it is the instrument of an art. But it does not accomplish the instrumental action save by exercising its proper action: for it is by cutting that it makes a couch. In like manner the corporeal sacraments by their operation, which they exercise on the body that they touch, accomplish through the Divine institution an instrumental operation on the soul; for example, the water of baptism, in respect of its proper power, cleanses the body, and thereby, inasmuch as it is the instrument of the Divine power, cleanses the soul: since from soul and body one thing is made. And thus it is that Augustine says [De Genesi ad Litteram 12] that it touches the body and cleanses the heart.103 In the Summa contra gentiles, St. Thomas applies his theory of perfective instrumental causality where he explains the sacrament of holy orders. He 102 103 ST III, q. 62, a. 1. ST III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 2 (emphasis mine). New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 879 insists that the minister is an instrument which participates in the power of the principal agent who is Christ: Now the minister is compared to his master as an instrument to the principal agent, for just as the instrument is moved by the agent in order to produce an effect, so a minister is moved by his master to execute his will. Again, the instrument should be proportionate to the agent. Therefore, Christ’s ministers should be conformed to him. Now Christ wrought our salvation as master by his own authority and power, inasmuch as he is God and man: as man, he suffered for our redemption, and as God, his sufferings were made efficacious for our salvation. Consequently, Christ’s ministers needed to be men, and to share in his divinity by a kind of spiritual power, since the instrument shares in the power of the principal agent.104 In perfective instrumental causality, the power of the divine agent enables the instrument’s motion toward the final cause, joining it to the intended finality of his power. In baptism, for example, the natural motion of the water is moved by the power of the sacred humanity of Christ so that the visible washing causes the cleansing of the soul. The washing is directed by Christ’s power which effects that end. Unlike his theory of dispositive instrumental causality, which understood the sacramental sign (sacramentum tantum) to cause the res et sacramentum as the necessary disposition for grace, his later theory of instrumental causality still understands the sacramental sign causing the res et sacramentum but now it is seen as directly cooperating in the infusion of grace. Therefore, in baptism, the motion of the water causes the baptismal character, the res et sacramentum, which in turn directly cooperates in the infusion of grace and the cleansing of the soul. This understanding entails a greater unity between the sacraments as signs and causes. Now the water of baptism is both a sign of the end of baptism and a cause of the end (cleansing and sanctification), because the water and the character it effects are instruments that participate in the principal agent’s (Christ’s) finality of action. As Bernhard Blankenhorn has observed, this understanding of sacramental causality is an affirmation of a profound and radical creaturely participation in the divine operations of the Savior.105 104 105 SCG III, ch. 74. Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” 277. See also the discussion in Lynch, “Cajetan’s Harp,” 103–4. 880 Lawrence J. Welch Application of Perfective Instrumental Causality to the Sacrament of Marriage But what if we apply to the sacrament of marriage St. Thomas’s later understanding of sacramentality causality, perfective instrumental causality, in which the instrument participates in the motion of the divine principal agent? What would this mean for understanding for marriage as a cause of grace? What would it mean for understanding how the couple is involved in the movement of this causality of grace and how they are transformed by it? It would mean that, before consummation, a baptized couple’s exchange of consent in Christ still effects the spiritual bond, the res et sacramentum.106 This spiritual bond would no longer be understood as merely disposing the couple for grace. Now it would be understood as being an instrumental cause of grace, the grace for living a conjugal life together in Christ. At consummation, the bond of marriage still becomes a carnal bond signifying the indissoluble one-flesh union of Christ and the Church, but now the carnal bond, the res et sacramentum, is an instrumental cause of the infusion of grace necessary for conjugal, sexual married life, a grace given for an aspect of married life that did not yet exist prior to consummation. In the Summa contra gentiles St. Thomas explains: And just as in the other sacraments, something spiritual is symbolized by external actions, so in this sacrament the union of husband and wife signifies the union of Christ with the Church, according to the saying of the Apostle: “This is a great sacrament, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32). And seeing that the sacraments cause what they signify, we must believe that the sacrament of matrimony confers the grace to take part in the union of Christ with his Church on those who are joined in wedlock, since it is most necessary that they should so seek carnal and earthly things as not to be separated from Christ and his Church.107 106 107 It will be recalled here it is a matter of Catholic doctrine that the first effect of marriage (res et sacramentum) is not grace itself, but the conjugal bond. On this point, see for example. Familiaris Consortio §13: “The spouses participate in it as spouses, together, as a couple, so that the first and immediate effect of marriage (res et sacramentum) is not supernatural grace itself, but the Christian conjugal bond, a typically Christian communion of two persons because it represents the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and the mystery of His covenant.” SCG IV, ch. 78. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 881 The marital bond, which signifies the union between Christ and the Church, causes the grace necessary for the spouses to participate in that union. This grace is a participation in the sacrificial love of Christ for the Church. As we have seen, St. Thomas understands the charity of Christ on the Cross as the source of sanctification for marriage, and it is this grace that enables the spouses to accomplish the purposes of marriage and to pursue holiness. The conjugal love that characterizes marriage is taken into a higher level and transformed in the crucified charity of Christ. Aquinas’s theology on this central point resonates strongly with the teaching some eight hundred years later of Pope St. John Paul II, who wrote in Familiaris Consortio §13: “Conjugal love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained, conjugal charity, which is the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ who gave Himself on the Cross.” What St. Thomas helps us to see is that the indissoluble marital bond causes the participation of the spouses in the charity of Christ for his Church. As Paul Gondreau has pointed out, the thought of St. Thomas proposes that the sacrament of marriage heals and divinizes unitive love and procreation—the very thing that natural marriage and conjugal love is ordered to.108 In his commentary on Ephesians, we saw how St. Thomas understood the spouses as types of Christ who receive grace so that his love of the Church might be fulfilled and interpreted in them. In other words, the spouses with the help of grace of the sacrament should strive to make their marriage in all its particularity as a certain interpretation of Christ’s love for his Church. Here Elliot’s observation might be recalled about how St. Thomas broadened the idea of the sacramentality of marriage when he explained that the sacramental signification of marriage demands a response from the spouses that it be fulfilled in the lives of Christians as types of Christ. In this way, Elliot observes, St. Thomas opens the way for understanding sacramental marriage as continual mutual ministry of grace.109 Applying St. Thomas’s later theory of sacramental causality to his theology of marriage also reveals the place of the marital act in the sacramentality of marriage. If the carnal bond which signifies the union with Christ and the Church comes into existence only after consummation through intercourse, then this means that marital intercourse is the instrumental cause of the 108 109 Paul Gondreau, “The Redemption and Divinization of Human Sexuality through the Sacrament of Marriage: A Thomistic Approach,” Nova et Vetera (English) 10, no. 2 (2012): 398. Elliot, What God has Joined, 98. 882 Lawrence J. Welch carnal indissoluble bond which in turn is an instrumental cause of grace. Here we see the significance of sexuality in the sacramentality of marriage both in its making and in its permanent state.110 Marital intercourse is included in the sacramental instrumental causality of the carnal bond, the one-flesh union, and in the ongoing, permanent sacramentality of marriage as subsequent acts of intercourse re-present the moment of consummation, deepening the marital communion between husband and wife. As such, the marital act draws its efficacy from the power of Christ’s love on the Cross which, as we have seen, for St. Thomas is the very reality that elevates marriage to the level of a sacrament. While the indissoluble carnal bond comes into being through one act of consummation, the living out of the truth of the permanent state of the sacramentality of the marriage bond is a task that faces the spouses. Throughout the sexual life of the bride and bridegroom, sexual intercourse can be a kind of re-presentation of consummation. Of course, in their sexual life, a married couple must engage in intercourse rightly if it is to be a representation of the bodily enactment of consent and therefore enter into the sacramentality of marriage.111 This understanding about the significance of marital intercourse in the sacrament of marriage strongly resounds with what St. Thomas says 110 111 Cf. Casti Connubii §110, citing the teaching of Robert Bellarmine on the sacramentality of marriage. The sign and language of the body, as St. John Paul II taught, can be corrupted, thus excluding it from the sacramentality of marriage. On this point see Familiaris Consortio §32. It might also be observed that contracepted intercourse deliberately excludes one of the elements of consent, namely, procreation, and therefore cannot re-present the consummation that causes the indissoluble carnal bond of sacramental marriage. In other words, contracepted intercourse cannot enter into the sacramental signification of marriage and cannot be holy. It would also be the case that, at the beginning of marriage, a contracepted first act of intercourse would be powerless to establish the carnal bond that signifies the one-flesh union between Christ and the Church. It would fail to be a complete bodily enactment of consent because it would deliberately exclude one of the essential elements of consent to marriage, namely, procreation. A contracepted act of intercourse corrupts the natural sign of the marital act. To put things a bit more technically, if we accept as St. Thomas says that, prior to consummation, the marriage union is perfect as to its primary being but not to its second act which is operation, namely, intercourse (ST suppl., q. 61, a. 2, ad 3; In IV sent., d. 27 q. 1, a. 3, sol. 2, ad 2), then contracepted intercourse cannot make the marriage union perfect in its second act because it excludes procreation, something which is essential to the perfection of the marital union in its primary being. This means that, on a natural level, a contracepted act of intercourse renders the marital act unable to enter into the sacramental signification of marriage. Cf. CCC §106: “A valid marriage between baptized persons is called ratified only if it has not been consummated; It is called ratified and consummated if the parties have performed between them in a human manner the New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 883 about it in the Scriptum, where he claims that marital intercourse is not only good, but holy because of the sacrament. He makes this claim in response to objections that the goods of marriage (fides, proles, and sacramentum) do not excuse the marriage act from sin: Now a human act is said to be good in two ways. In one way by goodness of virtue, and thus an act derives its goodness from those things which place it in the mean. This is what faith and offspring do in the marriage act, as stated above (a. 2). In another way, by goodness of the sacrament, in which way an act is said to be not only good, but also holy, and the marriage act derives this goodness from the indissolubility of the union, in respect of which it signifies the union of Christ with the Church. Thus it is clear that the aforesaid goods sufficiently excuse the marriage act.112 Taken together with what St. Thomas says about the charity of Christ on the Cross for his bride being a new source of sanctification for marriage, we can see a kind of reciprocity regarding the holiness of the marital act. On the one hand, its holiness is derived from the indissoluble bond of marriage, which signifies Christ’s union with the Church. On the other hand, the indissoluble bond, the carnal bond as St. Thomas calls it, comes into existence through the marital act, an act which already is touched and empowered by Christ’s love for the Church. Conclusion Any contemporary theology of marriage that wants to explain the transformation of the spouses in the sacrament cannot escape the question of how the sacrament imparts grace. The question is important to address because the spouses are the ministers and recipients of grace. How is grace imparted through them as ministers? To answer that the acts of the spouses in the sacramental rite move God to give them grace or to appeal to a moral power at work which pleads with God to give grace113 are very limited 112 113 conjugal act which is per se suitable for the generation of children, to which marriage is ordered by its very nature and by which the spouse is become one flesh.” In IV sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1; ST suppl., q. 49, a. 4. I have in mind here the theory of moral causality. This theory, or theories, claims there is a moral power inherent in the sacraments that is mysterious, and which induces God, who is the unique source of grace, to bestow grace. The sacraments are thought to participate in a mysterious way in the intercession of Christ on behalf of sinful 884 Lawrence J. Welch avenues for answering the question about the way in which the marital sacrament confers what it signifies. In other words, these approaches escape the question of how the human actions of the incarnate Son of God operate through the signs and actions of the sacrament of marriage. To hold that the sacraments move God to give grace would be, in the case of marriage, to deny the spouses a participation in the power of sacred humanity of the Son of God to effect grace. But this would in turn also narrow the spouses’ participation in the movement of their transformation in the sacrament. By contrast, in St. Thomas’s mature theory of perfective instrumental causality, the sacraments are efficacious because Christ, the incarnate Son of God, moves them to effect grace. The action of the sacrament, as we have seen, cooperates in the action of the divine principal agent, that is, in the action of the incarnate Son of God. Far from being in opposition to one another, a strong unity between the sacramental sign and causality is apparent. Only when sacramental signs are fully constituted can we speak of a sacrament as a cause of grace. So, in marriage the sacramental signs are fully constituted only if there is a free and rational mutual consent of the baptized couple. Christ operates through them and their acts of consent to effect a marital bond which in turn causes and bestows grace.114 Conceiving of the incarnate Son of God as working with and through the couple provides a firm basis for understanding their participation in the sacrament which effects grace. It has been objected that St. Thomas’s conception of sacramental causality depersonalizes the sacraments because the language of causing and producing effects is a kind of categorical mistake that has no real place in the order 114 humanity. An influential proponent of this theory was Melchior Cano (1509–1560). He held that the moral power inherent in the sacraments was the blood of Christ which operates as a meritorious cause to plead with God to give the grace merited by the sacrifice and Passion of Christ. While the blood of Christ has, of course, merited our salvation, as Lynch has pointed out, there can be no creaturely participation in the meritorious persuasion operative in the sacrifice of Christ itself. Therefore, it would seem that sacramental signs and actions, in which the blood of Christ is at work, would be instruments that dispose the recipients for grace. In the words of Lynch, “If the persuasive ‘moral cause’ is the merit of Christ’s blood contained by the purse of the sacraments, how then is grace conferred through the action of the sacraments?” (Cleansing of the Heart, 170–82, at 181). For a similar criticism see Feingold, Touched by Christ, 478–81. Negatively speaking, there are things that one or both of the spouses could do that would vitiate consent, thus corrupting the sacramental sign, and therefore there would be no marital bond and grace would not be effected. For example, see CCC §111, no. 2. If, however, either or both of the parties by a positive act of the will exclude marriage itself, some essential element of marriage, or some essential property of marriage, the party contracts invalidly. New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 885 of love.115 But, as I have tried to show, when applied to the sacrament of marriage, St. Thomas’s mature theory of sacramental causality does not end up affirming God acting outside of the human existence of the spouses, pushing them through the exercise of an ahistorical instrumental causality, but rather operating through them to initiate a participation in the charity of Christ that was realized on the Cross. Blankenhorn has observed: One can also consider this opposition of production language and love in light of the doctrine of grace. I am only raised to the divine life and initiated into the life of charity by Christ’s gift of himself on the Cross and the application of its fruits to me. I do not enter a relationship with the Triune God with my own charity. Rather, God begins this relationship by infusing a similitude of himself into me through the power of Christ’s mysteries.116 The sacrament of marriage understood according to perfective instrumental causality illustrates Blankenhorn’s insight. Through free consent and consummation, the couple is initiated into a participation in Christ’s union with the Church, and through it, God gives the couple a share in the conjugal charity of Christ, which slowly transforms their conjugal love according to its pattern and logic. The sacrament of marriage is then an intrapersonal encounter in which there is the participation, realization, and interpretation in the lives of the spouses of the conjugal charity that has already been fully realized in Christ for his bride, the Church. Moreover, the freedom with which the couple ratifies and consummates their marriage is strictly dependent on the human freedom of Christ and shares in it. So, it is the exercise of a more perfect freedom. And has more perfect effects, as to indissolubility and grace itself.117 The Angelic Doctor’s theology of marriage, especially when it is informed by his later understanding of sacramental instrumental causality, leads to a greater understanding of the sacramental ontology of marriage in several ways, and thus can be a fruitful resource for a contemporary theology of marriage that is attentive to how the spouses are transformed in the 115 116 117 Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan, S.J., and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1995), 44. For a succinct critique, see Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” 255–94. Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” 282. I wish to thank Guy Mansini, O.S.B., for helping me to see this point in St. Thomas’s theology of marriage. 886 Lawrence J. Welch sacrament. The first, as we have just seen, is his approach to the sacraments as efficient causes of grace whereby Christ, the Son, is active in them through his sacred and historical humanity. This provides a firm and fruitful basis for understanding the intrapersonal transformation of the couple in Christ. Properly interpreted St. Thomas’s mature theory of sacramental causality can be of great assistance for explaining and understanding how the couple participates in the historical actions of Christ as ministers and recipients of grace. The movement of the consent to consummation is caught up in the movement of Christ’s sacred humanity moving the couple toward an ever-deeper participation in conjugal charity for his bride the Church. This participation, however, does not mean thinking that there is an automatic all-at-once transformation in the couple. St. Thomas’s theology of marriage is supportive of what Pope Francis observes in Amoris Laetitia: “There is no need to lay upon two limited persons the tremendous burden of having to reproduce perfectly the union existing between Christ and his Church, for marriage as a sign entails ‘a dynamic process, . . . one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God’” (§122; quoting Familiaris Consortio §9). Pope Francis makes a strong case and call for the cultivation of the virtues necessary to sustain a lifelong sacramental marriage (§122). The thought of St. Thomas can lend powerful support to this call. In this cultivation of virtues, the spouses are not left to themselves. They are not engaged in a Pelagian project of perfecting by their own power alone the virtues necessary for a fruitful sacramental marriage. Rather there is a graced cultivation of these virtues which enables the couple to sustain a lifelong sacramental marriage. To recall only some of them that Francis mentions: an enlarged capacity to forgive that supplants resentment and tries to understand the weaknesses of one’s spouse; a tender patience with the imperfections of one’s spouse and an acceptance of being imperfectly loved by her or him; a trust that liberates from the desire to control and dominate the other spouse; a developed capacity to contemplate joyfully the innate beauty and distinctive sacredness of one’s husband or wife (§122). For St. Thomas, the grace of the marital bond gives the conjugal love between wife and husband participation in the conjugal charity of Christ which is the form of these virtues and holds them together. A growth in these virtues is a mark of a growth of charity in Christ. In this way we can speak of a transformative intrapersonal relationship of the spouses with Christ in his conjugal charity and union with the Church. St. Thomas’s theology of marriage helps us to see that the marital sacrament is a precision instrument of grace that transforms the spouses in their personal uniqueness in relation to him and to one another. His New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage 887 interpretation in his commentary on the letter to Ephesians that the love of Christ is something to be interpreted and fulfilled in the lives of spouses as types of Christ is a beautiful insight that calls out for development. With his understanding of consummation as the perfecting of the sacramentality of the marriage bond, the res et sacramentum, St. Thomas can also speak to us today about the question of the significance and place of the marital act within the sacramentality of marriage. His theology of marriage illuminates the sacramental meaning of the indissolubility of the bond as well. Indissolubility appears not as a rule, but as something intrinsic to the marital bond that is elevated by the historical freedom of Christ and which causes a share in a specific aspect of his life, that is, in his indissoluble unity with the Church. St. Thomas’s thought provides a firm foundation and direction for developing a theology of the sacramentality of marriage that can offer a way forward for understanding how the grace of Christ produces a real transformation of the spouses, who come to participate in a unique way in his loving unity with his bride, the Church. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 889–918 889 Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. Saint Louis University Saint Louis, MO Vincent L. Strand, S.J. The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Is the political future of the West a postliberal one? For the past decade, numerous prominent thinkers in America and Europe have been debating this question. Matters that not long ago were merely of historical interest, such as Pope Gelasius I’s understanding of the relation between sacral authority and royal power, Thomas Aquinas’s thought on monarchy and Robert Bellarmine’s theory of the pope’s indirect authority in temporal matters are now increasingly studied for their potential answers to contemporary political questions. This development, which would have been nearly unimaginable just a decade earlier, unsurprisingly has been led by Catholics. We say “unsurprisingly” in view of the long pre-modern tradition of Catholic political thought, as well as the Church’s long struggle against liberalism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the current postliberal writers explicitly connect themselves to both of these aspects by using the term “integralist” to describe their position.1 1 Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., a leading promoter of integralism, provides an oft-cited definition of “Integralism in Three Sentences” on the integralist website The Josias: “Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power 890 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. This “new integralism” represents a radical departure from the mainstream of Catholic political discourse of the last half century, which has largely sought rapprochement with Western liberalism. A group of writers, led by John Courtney Murray, George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Robert George, have held that the American constitutional order is rooted in the natural law tradition, and therefore is basically friendly to Catholic political thought. The Church’s role in American life, they say, is upholding the natural law as a public moral philosophy, while embracing the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment as a matter of principle, in accordance with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. This “Whig Thomism,” which for decades represented the predominant outlook of conservative American Catholics, must now face the challenge of a different sort of Thomism represented by the integralists.2 While the engagement between Whig Thomists and integralists has received most of the attention from scholars and journalists alike, another postliberal option has emerged in recent years. Its source is a group of Catholic thinkers associated with the Communio theological movement. Their political vision, which has no single name or label, has a complex and subtle relationship with the thought of earlier Communio writers, most of whom shared the Whig Thomist desire for reconciliation with Western liberalism. 2 and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power” (thejosias. com/2016/10/17/integralism-in-three-sentences/). See also Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae, 2020). Representative pieces include John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1960); George Weigel, Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy (New York: Paulist Press, 1989); Michael Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1993); Robert George, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001). Recent defenses of this outlook include Daniel E. Burns, “Liberal Practice v. Liberal Theory,” National Affairs 53 (Fall 2019): 127–41; Robert P. George and Ryan Anderson, “The Baby and the Bathwater,” National Affairs 53 (Fall 2019): 172–84; Robert Reilly, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2020). For criticism of these recent works by the Communio authors we are considering in this article, see D. C. Schindler, The Politics of the Real: The Church between Liberalism and Integralism (Steubenville, OH: New Polity, 2021), 294–303; Michael Hanby, “The Birth of Liberal Order and the Death of God: A Reply to Robert Reilly’s America on Trial,” New Polity 2, no. 1 (2021): 54–85. For an overview of Whig Thomism, see Jesse Russell, “‘Whig Thomism’ and the Making of the Catholic Neoconservative Movement,” Politics and Religion 14, no. 2 (2021): 294–315. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 891 The appearance of a Communio postliberalism therefore represents a significant development within this intellectual tradition. The most important representative of the earlier Communio perspective on political questions is Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently been lauded as the “most important Catholic thinker of the twentieth century” on matters at the intersection of theology and politics.3 In an article titled “Ratzinger’s Republic” that appeared in these pages in 2020, we identified a significant tension in his thought about the Church’s contribution to political life.4 Exploring Ratzinger’s writings on natural law, we demonstrated that two currents are present. In accord with his fundamental theological commitments about nature and grace and about faith and reason, Ratzinger often questioned the effectiveness of arguments from natural law. He claimed that, since reason is historically conditioned, and therefore in the current order marked by sin, reason needs grace and faith to function properly. Yet, on other occasions, Ratzinger strongly endorsed arguments from natural law, highlighting its role as the foundation of a just democratic political order. We traced this ambivalence about natural law back to a dilemma at the heart of Ratzinger’s political thought. On the one hand, in accord with his thinking about the relations of nature and grace and faith and reason, Ratzinger argued that the state needs the Church to supply moral values that the state cannot furnish on its own. On the other hand, he believed it belongs to the very nature of the Church to be separate from the state, and he endorsed nonconfessional, religiously pluralistic states.5 In light of these two commitments, Ratzinger argued that the contribution Christians are to make to the state is to supply moral values that were discerned under the influence of grace and divine revelation but that must be stripped of their divinely revealed character to yield a rational kernel that can be affirmed by all people, independent of religious faith; in Ratzinger’s thought, the natural law serves the purpose of providing such a confessionally neutral moral apparatus.6 We questioned the coherence of the late Pope’s theory. Is his presentation of natural law consistent? Does Ratzinger’s proposal really 3 4 5 6 Russell Hittinger, “How to Inherit a Kingdom: Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought,” The Institute for Human Ecology’s first annual Lecture on Catholic Political Thought, delivered at the Catholic University of America on October 6, 2022, published in the present issue of Nova et Vetera (English) 21, no. 3 (2023): 971–90, with Scott Roniger as co-author. Vincent L. Strand, S.J., and Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J., “Ratzinger’s Republic: Pope Benedict XVI on Natural Law and Church and State,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 2 (2020): 669–94. Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 679–83. Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 683–85. 892 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. respect his commitment to the religious neutrality of the state, given that he thought Christianity alone can provide the moral foundation the state needs? Is his political thinking consonant with his theology of nature and grace and of faith and reason?7 Our friend and confrere Fr. Stephen Fields claims to have resolved this dilemma.8 The answer, he believes, is found in Benedict’s concept of “nature as theologically analogous.”9 Fields also claims that this concept of nature as analogous can mediate between our position and the interpretation of Benedict offered by Kevin M. Doak, to whom we were replying in “Ratzinger’s Republic” in light of Doak’s criticism of Strand’s 2017 article “On Method, Nature and Grace in Caritas in Veritate.”10 The present article aims to integrate this series of exchanges about Ratzinger’s political thought in the pages of Nova et Vetera into the larger postliberal discussion described above. We will proceed in two stages. First, we will show why Fields’s attempted resolution of Ratzinger’s dilemma does not work. We do not think that Fields has understood our argument about Ratzinger, nor sufficiently demonstrated that the theology of grace he ascribes to Ratzinger really belongs to the late Pope, nor proposed a coherent model of nature and grace. Second, we will show how a group of writers—namely, David L. Schindler, D. C. Schindler, Michael Hanby, and Andrew Willard Jones—have turned Anglophone Communio thought in a postliberal direction. In doing so, they have implicitly acknowledged and sought to resolve the dilemma of Ratzinger’s political thought, though without mentioning him by name. “Nature as Analogous”? Fields frames his article as an attempt to mediate between two “Benedicts,” what he calls “Doak’s Benedict” and “the Benedict of Strand and Conedera.”11 Suggesting that there is a single “Benedict” in our article is puzzling. We 7 8 9 10 11 Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 685–93. Stephen M. Fields, S.J., “Nature as Analogous: A Response to the Doak-Strand/Conedera Symposium on Benedict XVI and the Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera (English) 19, no. 3 (2021): 769–90. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 770–71, 778–79. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 770, 778–79, 783–84; Kevin M. Doak, “Globalism in Natural Law Theory,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 2 (2020): 653–78 (this criticism appears especially on 653–55); Vincent L. Strand, S.J., “On Method, Nature and Grace in Caritas in Veritate,” Nova et Vetera (English) 15, no. 3 (2017): 835–52. Fields also uses “the Strand-Conedera Benedict” (“Nature as Analogous,” 775–78, 781, 783–84). Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 893 explained in “Ratzinger’s Republic” that, within Ratzinger’s thought, there are two currents (or as Fields would say, “two Benedicts”) concerning the interconnected set of questions about nature and grace, faith and reason, natural law, and Church and state.12 Doak had presented Benedict as a robust defender of natural law and the capacities of nature and reason. We affirmed this reading and, in fact, amplified it by marshalling a host of texts in which Ratzinger gives a vigorous defense of natural law.13 But we also presented many instances where Ratzinger questioned the efficacy of natural law, especially apart from grace and divine revelation.14 Our article asked if and how these two strands of Ratzinger’s thought cohere. Fields’s presentation of a single “Strand-Conedera Benedict” seems to miss this. His attempt to adjudicate between “Doak’s Benedict” and the “Strand-Conedera Benedict” is, in essence, repeating what we did in “Ratzinger’s Republic.” If Fields attempts the same task that we undertook, our respective articles go about this in different ways. We examined numerous texts from Ratzinger spanning his long career. Fields’s article, in contrast, involves little exegesis of Ratzinger’s writings. To a certain extent, Fields acknowledges this. In the concluding section of his article, he proposes a nature–grace model that “develops Benedict’s mediating position” but “does not appeal to Benedict for direct authority.”15 Yet Fields has not demonstrated that what he calls “Benedict’s mediating position” is really the thought of Benedict. After Fields offers an exegesis on the Council of Trent’s teaching on nature and grace (which includes no references to Benedict), Fields says that he will “explore how Benedict develops the Council in light of the eschatology of John’s Gospel” in a section entitled “Benedict’s Analogy of Nature.”16 But this development is Fields’s and not Benedict’s. The section cites Ratzinger four times, but none of these references justify Fields’s claim that “Benedict, by situating nature within the Johannine tension between realized and future eschatology, constructs an analogy that, like Trent’s, accounts for nature’s dynamic plasticity.”17 In short, the model of “nature as analogous” that Fields 12 13 14 15 16 17 Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 674–79. Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 674–75. Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 675–79. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 787. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 781. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 781–84. The four references are Benedict’s: (1) noting that Deus Caritas Est is a reflection on the pierced side of Christ as the “font of wounded love”; (2) quotation of Theodor Adorno that progress is moving “from the sling to the atom bomb”; (3) judgment that conversion draws human beings together into communion; and (4) claim that love must be the origin and end of the justice at the foundation of the social order. The citations are to Pope Benedict XVI, Deus 894 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. claims gives coherence to Ratzinger’s political thought is not Ratzinger’s, but Fields’s own conception of nature and grace imposed onto Ratzinger. Granted that the model is Fields’s own construction, does it, nevertheless, speculatively resolve the tensions found in Ratzinger? The distinctive feature of Fields’s theology of nature and grace, which he develops at length in his book Analogies of Transcendence: An Essay on Nature, Grace & Modernity, is his concept of prevenient grace.18 Prevenient grace is given at creation and endows nature with its single, supernatural end. It is possessed always and everywhere by all human beings.19 This understanding of prevenient grace distinguishes Fields’s nature–grace model from the respective positions of Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, and neo-Thomist theologies that affirm the concept of pure nature. Fields shares de Lubac’s criticisms of the pure-nature theory that distinguishes between a natural end that belongs to human nature qua nature and a supernatural end that is given with grace. In the shared judgment of de Lubac and Fields, this theory wrongly conceives of grace as a foreign, external imposition on nature; moreover, because a being’s end determines its species, the human end cannot be altered by grace from a natural to a supernatural end without changing the human species.20 Like de Lubac, Fields affirms a single, supernatural end.21 However, appealing to Steven Long’s criticism that the Lubacian theory turns nature into an empty receptacle for grace, Fields thinks de Lubac’s model risks relegating nature to a totally vitiated entity akin to how the Reformed tradition—as, for example, represented by Karl Barth—views nature.22 Against this tradition, Fields insists that it is imperative to posit a “vitally stout” concept of nature.23 If Fields has his reservations about de Lubac’s position, he is even more 18 19 20 21 22 23 Caritas Est (2005), §§12, 34, 36, 37; Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), §22; Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 51–52. Stephen M. Fields, S.J., Analogies of Transcendence: An Essay on Nature, Grace & Modernity (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016). Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 141–142. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 57; Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 787. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 169. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 772–73, 776, 786; Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 10–109. For a convincing criticism of Long’s claim that the Lubacian model turns nature into a vacuole for grace, see Michael Maria Waldstein, “Balthasar and Other Thomists on Barth’s Understanding of Predestination,” in Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations, ed. Steven A. Long, Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2016), 250–56. Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 775. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 895 critical of Rahner’s theory of the supernatural existential: Rahner wrongly clings to the belief that man has two ends, one natural and one supernatural, and dissolves the theological significance of nature by defining it as a mere remainder concept (Restbegriff).24 To construct his own model of nature and grace, Fields turns to Max Seckler to develop an analogical approach in which the natural instinct of faith is the meeting point between divine and human freedom.25 Fields combines Seckler’s theory with Rahner’s Realsymbol to suggest that nature and grace are analogical (with nature serving as grace’s sacramental medium), and that grace itself is analogical.26 Specifically, Fields proposes an analogy between prevenient grace and sanctifying grace in which the former is a disposition for the formal action of the latter.27 Again following Seckler, Fields contends that the natural desire for God and prevenient grace, while formally distinct, are materially the same, and together they constitute sanctifying grace’s material cause.28 This leads to Fields’s decisive move: human nature receives its supernatural end not from the endowments of nature itself (as de Lubac claims), nor from the gift of sanctifying grace (as neo-Thomists claim), but from prevenient grace, which is universally given to human nature, both in the sense that all human beings receive prevenient grace and in the sense that all human beings possess prevenient grace at all times—what Fields describes as “the ubiquity of prevenient grace.”29 Prevenient grace endows human nature from the moment of creation with its one and only end, which is a supernatural end. This gift orders human beings proximately to justification through baptism (whether by water or desire) and ultimately to the beatific vision.30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 169, 71–72. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 110–14. Fields relies on Edward Schillebeeckx’s presentation of Max Seckler’s Instinkt und Glaubenswille nach Thomas von Aquin found in Schillebeeckx’s Revelation and Theology, trans. N. D. Smith, 2 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967–68), 2:30–75. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 114–23. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 119–21. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 121–22; Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 789. Fields criticizes Rahner’s supernatural existential, yet the theories of the two Jesuits share a deep commonality. Both believe that man exists in a permanently graced condition, even if he is in a state of mortal sin. See: Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 141–42; Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 789; Karl Rahner, “Nature and Grace,” in Theological Investigations 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 181. For Rahner’s mature treatment of the supernatural existential, see his Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 126–33. Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 126–28. 896 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. Fields’s distinctive idea that prevenient grace is universally present in human nature is the key principle of his attempted integration of the two currents of Benedict’s thought on natural law. As we have seen, Benedict at times is pessimistic about the efficacy of natural law arguments apart from grace. But in Fields’s model, nature never exists apart from grace. Grace is always present, assisting nature to know the natural law and live in accordance with it.31 Therefore, these concerns are allayed. At the same time, the grace here under consideration is not limited to the sanctifying grace enjoyed by the just who participate in the sacramental life of the Church. Thus, Fields can affirm the efficacy of natural law arguments beyond the domain where divine revelation is known and affirmed or where sacramental grace is dispensed by the Church.32 In short, Fields’s conviction about the ubiquity of grace allows him, as it were, to have it both ways: human beings cannot know and live the natural law without grace, yet we can be optimistic about the capacity to know and live the natural law even among those who do not affirm divine revelation and are separate from the Church and her sacraments, because all men are always and everywhere assisted by God’s supernatural gift of grace. We applaud Fields’s attention to the question of how prevenient grace prior to justification bears on the debate over supernatural finality, a point which has been insufficiently considered in the nature–grace disputes.33 Nevertheless, we do not think that his model posits an intelligible concept of nature, and therefore do not believe it resolves the issues in Ratzinger’s political thought. A main aim of Fields’s theology is to demonstrate the need for “a robust concept of nature.”34 Yet his model undermines this 31 32 33 34 See Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 789. See Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 136: “God’s salvific purposes operate outside the juridic borders of the institutional church, both as the prevenient grace that gives all human beings an instinct of faith and as the baptism of desire that, in addition to the usual water, can also justify.” Fields’s confidence in the action of grace beyond the Church is seen in his belief that, through “non-Christian forms of human worship,” prevenient grace can mediate sanctifying grace (233). Whether this view is overly optimistic and unduly separates grace from categorical Christianity and the Church is beyond the scope of our current inquiry. Scholars who defend the theorem of pure nature and hold that a supernatural finality is conferred only with sanctifying grace have tended to overlook the question of how grace (specifically prevenient actual grace) received prior to justification impacts the question about a supernatural end. Fields is correct to highlight the relation between prevenient grace and sanctifying grace, for as Aquinas would remind us, the distinction between prevenient and subsequent grace does not divide grace in its essence, but only in its effects (Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 111, a. 3, ad 2). Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 243. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 897 intention, inasmuch as it suggests that human nature has no end apart from grace. As we have seen, Fields rejects the position shared by Rahner and the neo-Thomists that human nature possesses a natural end that grace elevates into a supernatural end, and de Lubac’s position that human nature qua nature has a supernatural end. Fields says human nature has only a single, supernatural end that is conferred by prevenient grace. But this leads to the conclusion that human nature qua nature has no end at all, neither natural nor supernatural. It is hard to understand what “nature” means in such a schema. A thing with no end is per se unintelligible and unknowable, void of meaning or sense. This ateleological notion of nature undermines the coherence of Fields’s accounts of the Church–state relation and of the natural law. Fields defends Murray against the criticisms of David L. Schindler (which we will consider below) and insists that the state should remain neutral toward religions, for the obligation to seek the truth belongs to individuals, not to the state. In an effort to protect what is proper to the state from the overreach of the Church, Fields insists that nature has “its rightful ends” and that “the church suffers when, in a misguided effort to consecrate the profane, it inappropriately encroaches upon nature’s distinct purposes.”35 However, given Fields’s opinion that nature qua nature has no end, it is not clear what these “rightful ends” and “distinct purposes” are. In a similar way, it is not clear how Fields’s ateleological concept of nature provides a basis for a sound theory of natural law. In a key passage, Fields writes: If Benedict emphasizes the natural law as the foundation of the political order, it is not because he inconsistently underplays the bias of sin and the need for grace. It is because, consistent with nature’s analogy, he staunchly asserts and defends the natural capacity of human reason and volition as the very basis of grace leading to salvation. Without humanity’s natural ability to know the true, the good, and the just, and to act upon them, the Catholic doctrine of grace collapses into the Reformed position. Accordingly, metaphysics can ground a universal justice knowable without direct advertence to grace. Equally, metaphysics needs grace’s purifica­tion. Nature’s innate power to know and freely act, its innate power to undermine what it can know and do, and its innate power to be purified coexist.36 35 36 Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 137–38 (see further the surrounding context of 134–40). Fields, “Nature as Analogous,” 783. 898 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. Fields’s belief that nature has no intrinsic finality undermines the very things he claims are necessary for a coherent theory of natural law, namely, nature’s innate ability to know and to act freely. If nature has no finality apart from grace, it is nonsensical to speak of these powers, or to suggest that metaphysics can provide a theory of justice apart from grace. At some level, Fields seems to be aware of this. In Analogies of Transcendence, he claims that, without grace, human beings can neither know anything nor accomplish any good, even goods of utility such as building a house or planting a vineyard; indeed, he explicitly criticizes Aquinas for holding that human beings in a state of corrupt nature can accomplish such goods.37 It is important to see that this deep pessimism about the capacities of nature qua nature logically follows from Fields’s distinctive belief that nature qua nature has no telos. Even if Fields maintains a certain logical consistency by asserting that nature can neither know nor will the good without grace, this comes at the cost of falling into the very Reformed position Fields seeks to avoid. If nature has no intrinsic finality, nature cannot be, as Fields claims, a free center of action with the power to reject grace or to assent to grace and thereby cooperate with it.38 In the end, the central claim of Fields’s nature–grace model—namely, that nature qua nature has no end, but receives a single, supernatural end only through prevenient grace—undercuts the very capacities of nature that Fields thinks are necessary for natural law to serve as the basis for the political order. This model, therefore, is unable to offer the speculative resources needed to address the incongruities of Ratzinger’s political thought. The Postliberal Hinge: David L. Schindler If Fields’s account does not resolve the dilemma in Ratzinger’s thought on nature–grace and politics, are there alternative solutions? We now turn to the recent contributions of Communio thinkers to the postliberal discussion. In a way, their work has resolved Ratzinger’s dilemma, but because they have 37 38 Fields, Analogies of Transcendence, 17–25, 132–33; Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2, corp. Fields says: “The coexistence of prevenient grace with nature does not prejudice nature’s freedom by vitiating its ability either to reject or cooperate with grace, either prevenient or sanctifying, to which prevenient grace is ordered” (“Nature as Analogous,” 780). It is not the coexistence of prevenient grace with nature that leads to this vitiation, but the idea that nature has no end. Furthermore, it is hard to understand what nature’s “rejection” of prevenient grace means for Fields: at most it means ignoring the promptings of prevenient grace calling the human person to justification; it cannot mean that nature loses prevenient grace, given that prevenient grace is ubiquitous for Fields (789). Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 899 not often mentioned him by name, both the dilemma and its resolution have gone largely unnoticed. It is significant for the history of Communio thought that their postliberal turn entails the repudiation of Ratzinger’s key political ideas. We will trace this development, first in the thought of David L. Schindler and then in a trio of later authors: his son D. C. Schindler, Michael Hanby, and Andrew Willard Jones. Before we do so, however, an explanation of what we mean by calling these men “Communio thinkers” is in order. Hans Urs von Balthasar, de Lubac, and Ratzinger founded the international theological review Communio in 1972 after finding themselves out of step with the progressivist direction of the journal Concilium.39 While the Communio movement has not developed into a strict school (indeed, its proponents tend to be averse to school theology) and its individual authors retain their distinct voices, there is, nonetheless, a detectable Communio theological style and substance characterized by the following themes: a radical and thoroughgoing Christocentrism; a Church-as-communion ecclesiology grounded in Trinitarian communio; concern about the dangers of “extrinsicism” and “pure nature” in the relationship between nature and grace; an integration of mystical and speculative theology; a stress on the theological significance of Mary for other dogmatic topics (theological anthropology, ecclesiology, etc.); an appreciation for the thought of Aquinas (especially the analogia entis) combined with a generally critical stance toward the various iterations of neo-Thomism; a desire to incorporate the insights and positive elements of modern philosophy, literature, and art; sensitivity to the cultural and pastoral questions of the times coupled with a desire to address them from the riches of the Church’s sources; and belief in the Church’s need for dramatic renewal in the modern era, which includes a basically positive assessment of Vatican 39 For this history and an overview of the hallmarks of Communio theology (especially vis-à-vis Thomism, Concilium theology, and liberation theology), see Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 91­­–138. For the founders’ commentary on Communio’s establishment and aims, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Communio—a Program,” trans. W. J. O’Hara, Communio 33, no. 1 (1992): 153–69; Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 109; Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances That Occasioned His Writings, trans. Anne Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 150; Joseph Ratzinger, “Communio: A Program,” Communio 19, no. 3 (1992): 436–49; Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 144–45; Ratzinger, Theology of the Liturgy: The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence, ed. Michael J. Miller, trans. John Saward et al., Joseph Ratzinger Collected Works 11 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 358–64. 900 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. II. The Schindlers and Hanby, through their editorial and authorial involvement in the English-language edition of Communio and their professorships at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, DC (itself a center of Communio thought), and above all through their intellectual concerns, commitments, and favorite authors, are the intellectual heirs of Communio’s founders, even if they part ways from them on certain points. This is less obvious in the case of the historian Jones, but the Christocentrism and nature–grace framework (which broadly can be described as Lubacian) present throughout his works justifies placing him among the Communio thinkers.40 David L. Schindler was the hinge for the postliberal turn in Communio thought. Schindler shared much in common with Ratzinger in terms of theological aims, method, style, and content. At the same time, however, he made a critical contribution to the current postliberal phenomenon, and in so doing, quietly distanced himself from Ratzinger’s political thought. In a series of exchanges with Weigel in the late 1980s, as well as in his book Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation, Schindler advanced the thesis that liberalism, especially as articulated in the American constitutional order, does not establish “articles of peace” in pluralistic societies that enable their members to pursue their own conception of the good life.41 Instead, he claimed, liberal regimes operate on basically godless assumptions, and they form the souls of their citizens 40 41 Although the political writings of D. C. Schindler, Hanby, and Jones increasingly appear in the journal New Polity: A Journal of Postliberal Thought, these pieces continue to be characteristically Communio. For Jones’s Christocentrism, see Andrew Willard Jones, The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2021), xiii–xviii; for his Lubacian nature–grace inclinations, see Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017), 397–448; Two Cities, 296–298, 321. In a podcast on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s death, Jones mentions the importance of the Communio theologians Ratzinger, de Lubac, and Balthasar in his religious and intellectual formation (“Pope Benedict Special,” with Jacob Imam, New Polity podcast, January 20, 2023, newpolity.com/podcasts-hub/b16). See George Weigel, “Is America Bourgeois?” Crisis, no. 1 (October 1986): 5–10; David L. Schindler, “Is America Bourgeois?” Communio 14, no. 3 (1987): 262–90; Schindler, “Editorial: On Being Catholic in America,” Communio 14, no. 3 (1987): 213–14; Weigel, “Is America Bourgeois?: A Response to David Schindler,” Communio 15, no. 1 (1988): 77–91; Schindler, “Once Again: George Weigel, Catholicism and American Culture,” Communio 15, no. 1 (1988): 92–121; Schindler, “Response to Mark Lowery,” Communio 18, no. 3 (1991): 450–72; Weigel, “Response to Mark Lowery,” Communio 18, no. 3 (1991): 439–49; Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996). Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 901 accordingly. Schindler’s main target was the work of Murray, who not only paved the way for the revision of Church teaching on religious liberty, but also, as a conciliar peritus, helped draft Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae.42 Schindler objected to Murray’s interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae in terms of a defense of the American constitutional order.43 In his debate with Weigel, Schindler arguably made the first “postliberal” salvo against Whig Thomism, but its time had not yet arrived. In the early 1990s, when Western confidence was running high in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, relatively few Catholic intellectuals or churchmen were receptive to Schindler’s dim assessment of liberal theory and practice. Schindler was, moreover, an enthusiast of Pope John Paul II and of his chief ally, Cardinal Ratzinger, whom Schindler saw as carrying forth an interpretation and implementation of Vatican II generally in line with Communio thought. The fact that Ratzinger’s political thought is organized around key liberal ideas, as we have shown in “Ratzinger’s Republic,” was simply a nonissue.44 Only when Christians in America began experiencing a series of routs on “moral values” issues, especially homosexuality and transgenderism, starting around 2010, did Catholic intellectuals start taking Schindler’s antiliberalism more seriously. If Schindler rejected the Whig Thomist interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae represented by Murray and Weigel, what was his alternative, and what significance does it have for Communio’s postliberal turn? The answer is found in Schindler’s long 2015 essay “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: An Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae on the Right to Religious Freedom.” Here Schindler explains the conciliar declaration in terms of the intrinsic relationship between truth and freedom, rather than according to immunity from coercion as a negative juridical freedom, a view he associated with Whig Thomism. 42 43 44 Schindler clearly does not agree with the view that Murray took a backseat to Jacques Maritain in the drafting of Dignitatis Humanae, as he identifies Murray as the “first scribe” of the crucial third schema that shifted from an ecumenical to a civil-political perspective; see David L. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: An Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae on the Right to Religious Freedom,” in David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy Jr., Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, a New Translation, Redaction History, and Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 39–209, at 41. For the view that Murray was of lesser importance, see John R. T. Lamont, “Catholic Teaching on Religion and State,” New Blackfriars 96, no. 1066 (2015): 688–91. Schindler, Heart of the World, 60–62. Strand and Conedera, “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 679–83. 902 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. Schindler’s interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae rests explicitly on what he calls a “communio ecclesiology,” which he credits with integrating the laity into the essential meaning of the Church. In contrast with the typical preconciliar view of the laity as a function or extension of the priestly-institutional dimension of the Church, communio ecclesiology understands the holiness of the Church as including the laity as present in the world. “Thus the laity, in their proper reality as lay, are meant to bear ‘subjectively’ the ‘objective’ sacramental reality of the Church into the world.”45 Schindler claims that Vatican II made such an ecclesiology, which he identifies with the thought of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, its own.46 Communio ecclesiology has numerous implications for Schindler’s political thought. Borrowing from Balthasar, Schindler distinguishes between the “Marian” and “Petrine” dimensions of the Church, saying that the former precedes the latter.47 The “Church-lay” (by which Schindler means the Marian and lay dimension of the Church) is meant to remain present in the world, seeking to open from within all temporal structures and processes of civil society to the eternal reality as revealed in Christ. These include, he notes, the state structures that are a distinct but integral expression of civil society. The Church-lay, furthermore, rightly seeks favored status for the “Church-Peter” (the clerical hierarchy) that may include privileged recognition in the constitutional order, so that it may remain distinct as a transcendent, objective-sacramental reference for society and the state.48 According to Schindler, the Church-lay and the Church-Peter are both intrinsically responsible for the temporal order and the eternal order, but each retains a distinct priority. In regard to direct and proper responsibility for eternal order qua eternal, the Church-lay is subordinate to the Church-Peter; in regard to direct and proper responsibility for temporal order qua temporal, the Church-Peter remains subordinate to the Church-lay. He adds that the Church exercises political power only in the form of initiatives of the Church-lay operating from within temporal structures and processes.49 Though this account obviously relies upon concepts and writings from earlier Communio authors, it also revises them in significant ways. Three examples may serve to demonstrate the point. The first concerns Schindler 45 46 47 48 49 Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 137. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 136–37. A representative piece from Balthasar is the essay “The Marian Principle,” in Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 101–13. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 138. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 140. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 903 himself. “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity” endorses the political establishment of Christianity in a way that is not obvious in his earlier writings. In an excursus on the topic, Schindler advocates in the political sphere “a privileging of the authority of the Church as the sacrament of man’s ultimate end and meaning,” and claims that the laity’s “effort to order all temporal reality in light of the ultimate end of human existence as revealed in Jesus Christ” includes “not only societal structures, but the structures of the state and its law as well.”50 In Heart of the World, he seemed to have eschewed the establishment of any juridical relationship between Church and state while repeating the warnings of de Lubac and Balthasar against integralism.51 The deep criticism of liberalism had not yet been paired with the affirmation of political establishment that Schindler proposed in “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity.” Second, Schindler reinterpreted for his own purposes the work of de Lubac, specifically an article from the 1930s on political questions.52 The main aim of this article had been refuting Bellarmine’s theory of indirect temporal power, which despite the protests of its proponents, entails that “the Church has real political authority, a certain temporal jurisdiction.” De Lubac regards such a claim as unacceptable.53 He describes theories of this ilk as erroneous and scandalous, going so far as to say that their proponents “are tempting the Church, just as Satan tempted Christ in the desert.”54 This is because making the civil power a mere instrument of spiritual power “demeans the Church as well as humiliates the State.”55 In many respects, this article is reminiscent of the work of both Murray and Ratzinger. De Lubac’s article contains, however, an ambiguity that is similar to Ratzinger’s dilemma, for the French Jesuit says that “the Church ennobles the 50 51 52 53 54 55 Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 140, 142. Schindler, Heart of the World, 5, 7, 44, 84, 87. Henri de Lubac, “The Authority of the Church in Temporal Matters,” in Theological Fragments, trans. Rebecca Balinski (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 199–233. Sarah Shortall says that de Lubac’s proposal in this article contains “an entire revolution in Catholic political theology” (Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021], 59). De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 203. De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 210. Ratzinger offers a similar interpretation of Jesus’s temptations in the desert; see Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 39–43. De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 210. 904 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. State, inspiring it to be a Christian State . . . and, thus a more human one.”56 He endorses the idea of Christian influence in all dimensions of human life, including politics, and calls for “the foundation of a new society, one that is both more human and more Christian.”57 De Lubac connects the relationship between Church and state to the relationship between nature and grace, saying that “grace seizes nature from the inside and, far from lowering it, lifts it up to have it serve its ends. It is from the interior that faith transforms reason, that the Church influences the State.”58 He argues that the Church’s interventions in this regard are entirely spiritual and work only by acting on consciences.59 This foregrounding of conscience is similar to Ratzinger, but neither of them offers much further explanation about how grace’s transformation of the state from within actually works.60 According to Schindler, de Lubac both anticipated and is illuminated by Vatican II’s ecclesiology and Christology. Schindler explains that, while the Church-Peter is denied proper jurisdiction over temporal affairs, it still exercises authority over the Christian consciences of the Church-lay, as de Lubac clearly states in his article.61 It is far from clear, however, that de Lubac understood these relationships in Schindler’s terms: a Christian laity exercising its proper jurisdiction by opening all temporal structures and processes of civil society, including state structures, to the eternal reality as revealed in Christ, while also seeking favored status for the clergy in the constitutional order. In fact, de Lubac’s preferred example for the clergy’s legitimate exercise of authority over the consciences of the Christian laity is Pope Leo XIII’s ralliement, whereby the Pope in the 1890s commanded French Catholics to abandon the monarchist cause and their “systematic and illegal opposition” to the Third Republic, a notoriously anticlerical regime.62 Whereas the French Jesuit in the 1930s had appeared to be making an argument against cooperative juridical relationships between Church and state, Schindler reinterpreted de Lubac’s ideas to argue for such relationships. A third example of Schindler’s revision of Communio thought is found in his reading of Ratzinger. Schindler enlisted Ratzinger in support of his 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 212. De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 211, 220, 230; de Lubac, “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred,” in Theology in History, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 238–239; de Lubac, “Christian Explanation of Our Times,” in Theology in History, 443. De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 212. De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 230–31. For our criticism of Ratzinger on this point, see “Ratzinger’s Republic,” 692. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 142. De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 231–32. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 905 interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae, without acknowledging their obvious disagreements.63 In his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict famously proposed a “hermeneutic of reform, of renewal in the continuity of the one-subject church” for interpreting Vatican II and specifically addressed the issue of religious liberty.64 Schindler opposed the interpretation of this address offered by Martin Rhonheimer, who claims that religious liberty, even as a civil right, can be neutral with respect to metaphysical-religious claims.65 Schindler, by contrast, saw Ratzinger as understanding religious liberty in light of the connection between freedom and truth and as an expression of fidelity to the Church’s deep tradition.66 He agreed with the late Pope’s claim that the martyrs of the Church died not only for Christ, but also for freedom of conscience, precisely because the God they worshiped transcended the state. According to Schindler, Benedict’s remarks in the Christmas address thus primarily concern the nature of the Christian faith and its transcendent order of truth rather than the nature of the state.67 In Dignitatis Humanae, the Church is concerned above all with being faithful to her own identity as Church. As Schindler puts it, “making an essential element of modern thought her own, in a word, means affirming that element all the while reconfiguring it where necessary in light of her own tradition.”68 While there are good grounds for seeing in the 2005 address a concern for the relationship between freedom and truth, Schindler ignored a key idea found in this same source: following World War II, Pope Benedict said, “Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern secular state could exist that was not neutral regarding values but alive, drawing from the great ethical sources opened by Christianity,” and that such a state “would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for 63 64 65 66 67 68 Schindler and Healy Jr. dedicate Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity to Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI. Schindler’s enlistment of Ratzinger is also on display in David L. Schindler, “America’s Technological Ontology and the Gift of the Given: Benedict XVI on the Cultural Significance of the Quaerere Deum,” Communio 38, no. 2 (2011): 237–78. Pope Benedict XVI, “Interpreting Vatican II,” Origins CNS Documentary Service 35, no. 32 ( January 26, 2006): 536. See Martin Rhonheimer, The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy and on Catholic Social Teaching, ed. William F. Murphy Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 106–9. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 110–11. Schindler, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity,” 111. 906 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. the freedom to practice their own religion.”69 This is the very notion of the liberal state that Schindler spent decades opposing. He likewise ignored another consistent feature of Ratzinger’s political thought, which is the insistence that, as a result of Christianity’s desacralization of the state, historical Christendom does not provide a legitimate template for Church–state relations. Put simply, Ratzinger applied “communio ecclesiology” to political questions in a rather different way from Schindler’s. David L. Schindler was the key figure for the postliberal turn of Communio thought, especially because he tried to bring along his predecessors with him. This required him to make a selective reading of Ratzinger, which was possible precisely because of the basic unresolved dilemma in the latter’s thought. Schindler took the side that fit with his own theory without acknowledging the disagreement with the other, liberal side. As we have argued from the beginning, this is the basic problem with scholarship on Ratzinger. Rhonheimer, Doak, and Fields have also done partial readings of him, except that they take the liberal side. One must be attentive to both sides to avoid this mistake.70 Full Turn: D. C. Schindler, Michael Hanby, and Andrew Willard Jones If David L. Schindler’s postliberal turn distanced him from Ratzinger, a subsequent generation of Communio thinkers is even more critical of the late Pope’s political ideas, even if they do not mention him by name. D. C. Schindler, Michael Hanby, and Andrew Willard Jones share key theological principles with Ratzinger but obtain very different results when applying 69 70 Benedict XVI, “Interpreting Vatican II,” 537, 538. A similar problem affects Daniel E. Burns’s study of Ratzinger’s thought. Although he insightfully explores the connections between Augustine, paleo-Platonists, and Ratzinger on political questions, Burns overlooks Ratzinger’s indebtedness to the Enlightenment and liberalism. His views on religious liberty may not square with those of John Rawls, but Ratzinger surely reads Augustine through the prism of twentieth-century anxiety about confessional regimes. See: Daniel E. Burns, “Ratzinger on the Augustinian Understanding of Religious Freedom,” Communio 44 (Summer 2017), 296–322; Daniel E. Burns, “Augustine and Platonic Political Philosophy: The Contribution of Joseph Ratzinger,” in Augustine’s Political Thought, ed. Richard Dougherty (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2019), 245–72. By contrast, Russell Hittinger highlights Ratzinger’s esteem for the Enlightenment’s defense of human reason and the need for natural law dialogue to reconnect with it; see F. Russell Hittinger, “Natural Law and Public Discourse: The Legacies of Joseph Ratzinger,” Loyola Law Review 60, no. 2 (2014): 241–71. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 907 them to political questions. These three authors marshal evidence and arguments from history, philosophy, and theology to make a distinctive contribution to the American postliberal discussion. Schindler and Jones have each written multiple books and articles laying out their case, whereas Hanby has a series of articles.71 Perhaps the most striking feature of these works—which also makes for the greatest contrast with Ratzinger—is the deep and relentless rejection of liberalism in all its forms and manifestations. All three men are convinced of the perverse and even diabolical character of liberal ideology and regimes, and of the understanding of religious freedom and separation of Church and state that liberalism promotes. Schindler and Hanby point to seismic shifts in the understanding of God, metaphysics, nature, and teleology that took place in the early modern period, with particular attention to the thought of John Locke, whom they regard as a key theorist of American liberalism.72 Jones provides a groundbreaking study of 71 72 The most relevant include: Schindler, Politics of the Real; D. C. Schindler, Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017); Schindler, “Sources of Authority: The Roots of the Great American Identity Crisis,” New Polity 3, no. 2 (2022): 17–23; Schindler, “Integralism as Fragmentation: A Response to Pater Edmund Waldstein,” New Polity 2, no. 2 (2021): 21–32; Schindler, “Catholic Politics and the Analogy of Authority,” Communio 48, no. 4 (2021): 799–824; Schindler, “Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue,” Nova et Vetera (English) 16, no. 4 (2018): 1353–69; Schindler, “Liberalism, Religious Freedom, and the Common Good: The Totalitarian Logic of Self-Limitation,” Communio 40, no. 2 (2013): 577–615; Jones, Two Cities; Jones, Before Church and State; Andrew Willard Jones, “The Weakness of Caesar and the Power of the Cross: How Martyrdom Defeats Tyrants,” New Polity 3, no. 1 (2022): 53–66; Jones, “The Priority of Peace and the Problem of Power,” Communio 48, no. 2 (2021): 307–54; Jones, “A Liturgical Cosmos: The Sense of Scripture and the Meaning of Politics in the World of Pope Innocent III,” New Polity 1, no. 2 (2020): 31–49; Jones, “The End of Sovereignty: An Essay in Christian Postliberalism,” New Polity 1, no. 1 (2020): 25–48; Michael Hanby, “Are We Postliberal Yet?,” New Polity 3, no. 3 (2022): 11–27; Hanby, “American Revolution as Total Revolution: Del Noce and the American Experiment,” Communio 48, no. 3 (2021): 450–86; Hanby, “Birth of Liberal Order”; Hanby, “What Comes Next,” New Polity 1, no. 3 (2020): 77–87; Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” First Things, no. 301 (March 2020): 43–50; Hanby, “Our Post-Political Future,” The Lamp, no. 2 (Assumption 2020): 25–30; Hanby, “Before and After Politics: The Technocratic Fate of Liberal Order,” The Political Science Reviewer 43, no. 2 (2020): 511–30; Hanby, “The Civic Project of American Christianity,” First Things, no. 250 (2015): 33. Both thinkers place Locke within the intellectual shifts of the period, rather than treating him as their source (Schindler, Freedom from Reality, 13–127; Hanby, “Birth of Liberal Order,” 65–73). 908 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. the Middle Ages and contrasts the sociopolitical models of that period with the liberal ones that emerged in subsequent centuries. Schindler portrays modern thinkers’ understanding of freedom, political order, and the role of religion as “diabolical” in the etymological sense of “to divide” or “to set apart or at odds.”73 Freedom is separated from truth and goodness, people are separated from each other, social life is separated from tradition properly understood, and so forth. His exploration of contemporary American social life aims to show that liberalism’s flight from reality is even more catastrophic, because more insidious, than the rejection of Christianity found in the continental revolutionary tradition.74 Liberalism, he claims, is an undoing of the synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome that Catholic Christianity represents. This undoing means that the constitutive elements of the synthesis, even if they are carried forward in the Western tradition, lose their proper relationship to each other and manifest themselves as social pathologies.75 In a magisterial essay in reply to Robert Reilly’s defense of the American founding, Hanby seeks to demonstrate that the key political thinkers behind this event took for granted the mechanization of nature and reason that had already begun in the seventeenth century. This development amounted not so much to a rejection of the Christian tradition, but to “a radical transformation of that tradition at every level—theological, metaphysical, natural, scientific, ecclesiastical, cultural and sociological—a transformation that cannot be papered over by appeal to similar sounding texts separated by centuries.”76 Although there are differences between the respective methods of Schindler and Hanby, their arguments and conclusions against liberalism go hand in hand.77 In his study of the reign of Louis IX, Jones portrays a world “before Church and State,” that is, before liberalism had fashioned these categories as they are understood now. Although his idea that spiritual and temporal authorities were deeply intertwined in the Middle Ages is not novel, Jones breaks new ground in arguing that medieval political thought and practice did not entail a contest over sovereignty. Neither popes nor emperors, much less “Church” and “State,” were struggling with each other for absolute dominion over all aspects of social and political life, and the corresponding 73 74 75 76 77 Schindler identifies six features of a philosophical understanding of the diabolical, which are then explored at length (Freedom from Reality, 7, 158–71). Schindler, Freedom from Reality, 193–275; Schindler, Politics of the Real, 61. We are left, Schindler says, with subjectivist faith, abstract nature, and formalistic, procedural political order (Schindler, Politics of the Real, 294). Hanby, “Birth of Liberal Order,” 69. It is notable that Schindler dedicates Politics of the Real to Hanby. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 909 prerogative to surveil, catalogue, and regulate all human interactions.78 Instead, civil and ecclesiastical authorities respected custom and tradition when they intervened in legal disputes, and generally aided those entities, such as the family, guilds, and confraternities, that are called “pre-political” in contemporary parlance.79 In Jones’s view, the notion that the medieval powers were engaged in a struggle over sovereignty owes to the triumph of Hobbesian ideas, especially primordial violence.80 All three authors see their postliberal political visions in terms of a concrete application of their principles of nature and grace.81 Like their predecessors de Lubac and Ratzinger, they are concerned about the problem of “extrinsicism” in neo-Scholastic thought and portray nature and grace as overlapping spheres that have different formal objects. Although Schindler takes a partially sympathetic approach to the integralist thought of Edmund Waldstein, he says that ultimately Waldstein understands nature and grace in extrinsicist terms, and therefore conceives of the political order as the coercion of the state by the Church.82 In the process, Schindler seeks to vindicate Balthasar’s warnings against integralism, as well as his father’s characterization of the nature–grace and Church–state relationships.83 Hanby faults the traditionalist right for subordinating temporal to spiritual goods by imposing them from above and from without in an extrinsicist manner.84 The penultimate chapter of Jones’s Before Church and State seeks to integrate the political thought of Augustine and Aquinas in such a way that the relationship between nature, sin, and grace is correlated with the ordering of society in the age of Louis IX.85 Jones makes related criticisms of the neo-Scholastic understanding of throne-and-altar alliances.86 For all three thinkers, the issue is maintaining an intrinsic relation between nature and grace, which was the primary concern of de Lubac, and according to David L. Schindler, is the foundation of Vatican II as interpreted by Communio theology.87 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 Jones, Before Church and State, 2–20; Jones, “End of Sovereignty,” 415, 424. Jones, Before Church and State, 177–217. Jones, Before Church and State, 13. See Schindler, Politics of the Real, 260: “What we are ultimately dealing with here is the political instantiation of the classic nature-grace question.” Schindler, Politics of the Real, 288. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 284–86. Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” 46. Jones, Before Church and State, 397–448. Jones, Two Cities, 296–97. David L. Schindler, “Threads Interview with David Schindler,” La Nouvelle Théologie (blog), April 6, 2005, ressourcement.blogspot.com/2005/04/threads-interviews-davidschindler_06.html. 910 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. Although the political thought of D. C. Schindler, Hanby, and Jones has been assessed primarily as an alternative to integralism in the postliberal conversation, it is also significant as a development of the Communio tradition. Whereas de Lubac and Ratzinger were no less favorable to the political disestablishment of Christianity than Whig Thomists, now leading Communio thinkers join integralists in opposing it. Schindler, Hanby, and Jones claim that, as a matter of its own internal logic, Christianity must be politically established, and that Christendom, particularly its high medieval iteration, provides the basic template for this.88 The present Communio thinkers, moreover, argue for political establishment precisely in terms of their distinctive understanding of the relationship between nature and grace, one that they largely share with de Lubac and Ratzinger. In other words, these writers think that their forebears were basically right about the relationship between nature and grace, and basically wrong about how to apply this relationship to political questions. Lest this claim appear tendentious, it must be observed that Schindler, Hanby, and Jones reject a number of Ratzinger’s political theses, without mentioning him by name. One of Ratzinger’s key claims is that Christianity desacralized the state, so that the separation of religion and politics is part of its inherent logic.89 Schindler acknowledges that Christianity introduced God’s radical transcendence, and so taught the ancients that the world is not God and that man is not naturally divine. He adds, however, that transcendence is not separation, and that the new eschatological dimension does not exclude the institutionalization of Christianity, but demands it. Relying on the work of Jones, he approvingly cites the arrangements of the Middle Ages, where the king was never a priest himself, but was called “vicar of Christ” just as the pope was, and was consecrated as a mediator of the Church’s sacramental order to the people.90 These are exactly the sort of arrangements that Ratzinger rejected.91 Schindler considers the proposal that religion is a common good with an essentially social character in the sphere of civil society, without being regulated by state institutions except in the barest sense. This is, in a nutshell, 88 89 90 91 Schindler, Politics of the Real, 281; Jones, “End of Sovereignty,” 436; Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” 48. Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 146–47. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 257–59. Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 144; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, 156–57; Ratzinger / Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:39–40. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 911 Ratzinger’s dominant approach to the topic.92 Schindler replies that this proposal entails an inversion of the relationship between the whole and the parts, such that the integral common good (as represented by religion) becomes a part within the political good, which in turn becomes the whole as the only one given a priori.93 In other words, Schindler regards the relationship between state and civil society that Ratzinger took for granted as another liberal distortion based on the inversion of true principles of order. Schindler rejects another view that Ratzinger put forth: that the English, Scottish, or generally Anglo-American version of liberalism is gentler and more accommodating than the line of thought and praxis that derives from Rousseau.94 Schindler calls the former “no less a radical revolution,” and even claims that it is a much more radical revolution than Marxism, because it allows Christian tradition to exist in an unreal form.95 In a similar vein, Hanby’s “The Birth of Liberal Order” opposes the civic project of American Christianity, which he says consists of embracing Anglo-American liberalism.96 Both writers say that America is anti-Catholic at its roots.97 Ratzinger agreed with Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde’s thesis that the modern liberal state is a societas imperfecta; that is, it needs moral values that the political sphere itself cannot secure.98 In Politics of the Real, Schindler builds his own political theory around the idea that political order as such constitutes a societas perfecta, an expression borrowed from Aquinas. He explains that being a societas perfecta is the inescapable essence of political order, because it institutionalizes man’s highest end, and so establishes the horizon of the common good.99 In other words, political order is always concerned with the whole, and always plays a decisive role in forming citizens’ souls regarding what is true and good. Consequently, reconceiving of the political order as a societas imperfecta destroys it, “because transforming it suggests it is being given a new form, a new order, and nothing incomplete can be a principle of order.”100 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, 201; Joseph Ratzinger, Faith and Politics: Selected Writings (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018), 104–5. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 90–92. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 266; Ratzinger, Faith and Politics, 142. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 267, 61. Hanby observes that this project spans both the theological and philosophical differences between Protestants and Catholics and the political differences between left and right (“Birth of Liberal Order,” 55). Schindler, Politics of the Real, 306; Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” 49. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, 194. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 267. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 265. 912 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. Jones observes that, in the 1950s, many saw the liberal democracies as living according to the moral law without an established religion, and thus without the revelation and grace that the Church had always asserted was necessary even for keeping the natural law; perhaps, he muses, the Church had been too harsh with the liberal strand of Enlightenment thought.101 As we have shown, Ratzinger made these claims throughout his political writings, most notably in the Christmas address of 2005.102 Jones replies by noting that the elites of the late twentieth century, like those of the Roman Empire, understood that the masses needed to believe in the gods and in the myths that justified the status quo: “This explains why we see in the post-war West the seemingly bizarre combination of elite thought dismantling the ‘Enlightenment Project’ piece-by-piece, exposing it for the fraud that it was, even while simultaneously buttressing the myths of ‘progress,’ ‘human rights,’ ‘freedom,’ and disinterested ‘science’ within the popular culture.”103 For Jones, the Enlightenment project is a “fraud” cynically exploited by elites to maintain their hegemony. This is a stinging rebuttal of one of Ratzinger’s central political ideals. It is difficult to say if Schindler, Hanby, and Jones have Ratzinger in mind when they formulate these criticisms. On the one hand, these ideas are the common property of a wide swath of Catholic commentators, and Ratzinger is better known for his work in other fields than in politics specifically. On the other hand, Ratzinger had a unique platform for expounding these views, and it seems unlikely that the three authors are unfamiliar with them, or that they could be totally unaware that they disagree with him on numerous fundamental points. What is certain, however, is that their work completes the postliberal turn in Anglophone Communio thought. Whereas David L. Schindler sought to enlist the work of his immediate predecessors in articulating his political vision (and thereby downplayed their disagreement), D. C. Schindler, Hanby, and Jones reject Ratzinger’s key political ideas, even if they do not mention him by name. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic It seems that the dilemma we identified in Ratzinger’s political thought has been resolved, though perhaps in an unexpected way. In applying their basic theological principles to political questions, the Anglophone Communio 101 102 103 Jones, Two Cities, 292. Benedict XVI, “Interpreting Vatican II,” 537–38. Jones, Two Cities, 293. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 913 writers here discussed have eliminated one of the terms of Ratzinger’s dilemma: the commitment to liberalism. For David L. and D. C. Schindler, Jones, and Hanby, the liberal state and its intellectual underpinnings do not need defending, much less reconciliation with Catholic Christianity, for these authors see the former as the enemy of the latter, and indeed of all human flourishing. The contrast is sharp: if Ratzinger is convinced that “the logic of liberalism” necessitates an “acknowledgement of the God of the Christian faith” and that “liberalism loses its own foundation when it leaves God out,” D. C. Schindler avers that “at the theological core of liberalism is the most radical rejection of Christianity possible,” Hanby thinks that “liberalism’s original purpose . . . was the prevention of a Catholic political order, that is, a political order in which God is God,” and Jones describes liberalism as “fundamentally incompatible with Catholicism . . . a sort of anti-Catholicism.”104 To be sure, there are historical reasons for this development. Ratzinger came of age in the mid-twentieth century and shared the general optimism about liberal democracy in countries that had been liberated by the United States during the Second World War. He thought it was time to abandon Church–state theories that were increasingly a source of embarrassment and that no longer had any real purchase in political life. By contrast, contemporary Communio thinkers have been affected by the mounting evidence of hostility between liberalism and Catholic Christianity. In such circumstances, it seems increasingly plausible to a larger group of intellectuals that, without a robust, public, and politically established Christian faith, the Western peoples cannot avoid sliding off into irrationality and social pathology. Yet we do not think that historical explanations alone are sufficient. The intellectual vitality of postliberal thought lies in its ability to bring back the metaphysical and theological priorities of the Catholic tradition to the study of politics and to explain the unmistakably anti-Christian developments in liberal thought and regimes. Despite their differences on nature and grace, integralists and the Communio thinkers here discussed agree that Christianity ought to be politically established as a matter of its own internal logic, and they look to the history of Christendom for examples of such an establishment. The Communio writers have shown more convincingly than Ratzinger that there is a basic continuity between their coordinating theological ideas on nature and grace, faith and reason, and ecclesiology, on the one hand, and their views of social and political order, on the other. It is 104 Ratzinger, Faith and Politics, 19, 20; Schindler, Politics of the Real, 8; Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” 48; Jones, Two Cities, 212. 914 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. counterintuitive for Ratzinger to share those same coordinating theological ideas while condemning historical Christendom and arguing for religion within the limits of pure reason when it comes to politics. Quite simply, David L. and D. C. Schindler, Hanby, and Jones are superior as Communio thinkers on political questions. Their concepts are clearer, their mapping of nature and grace, faith and reason, and Church and state is more coherent, their penetration into the underlying philosophical and theological problems is deeper, and their respect for the tradition of Catholic political thought is more apparent. The postliberals also have the upper hand in explaining recent anti-Christian liberalism. To account for this phenomenon, Ratzinger would point to the eclipse of God in the West and to factors internal to the Church that have weakened her public witness. At the level of Church–state arrangements, however, conditions after Vatican II were ripe for a period of flourishing according to Ratzinger’s narrative: the Church had finally abandoned her outdated and illegitimate claims to political power and returned to the teaching of Jesus and the early martyrs; the state had shown its capacity to live a healthy secularity according to the natural law, without recognizing the truth of the Christian religion or the need for its public worship. But the Catholic moment never came. Instead, regimes everywhere, especially in the West, have steadily dismantled legal respect for the natural law (to say nothing of the divine law), and Catholic politicians have not been conspicuous for resisting this development. One must conclude that the promise Ratzinger saw in the postwar regimes has been dashed. The narrative that Communio postliberals offer to explain these outcomes includes Ratzinger’s points about the eclipse of God and intra-ecclesial confusion and decadence, but situates these in a broader and deeper argument that demonstrates how recent anti-Christian developments express the unfolding of liberalism’s internal logic. Increasing numbers of young American Catholics have found this narrative compelling, which helps explain their exodus from Whig Thomism into various forms of Catholic postliberalism, including integralism.105 105 George Weigel regards the recent emergence of integralism as “one of the strangest phenomena in this season of many discontents” and levels the charge of Hegelian “historical determinism” against those who see in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision about same-sex marriage an unfolding of liberalism’s internal logic (“Games Intellectuals Play,” First Things [online], May 5, 2020, firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/05/ games-intellectuals-play). The issue at stake, however, is not determinism, but whether the postliberal or the Whig Thomist narrative is more compelling. Jones rightly points out that, “if Weigel’s version of the story is the best one, if the Church really did discover her true self by embracing liberalism, then we cannot face our current situation without acknowledging total failure” (“Catholic Ironies,” review of The Irony of Modern Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 915 Nevertheless, it is critical to see the distinctive place of the Communio writers in the current discussion. They are not integralists, for two main reasons. First, they reject the integralist understanding of the relationship between Church and state as the subordination of the latter to the former. The Communio authors regard this as yet another instance of the neo-Thomist tendency toward an extrinsicist understanding of nature–grace, which translates into a confusion of the relationship between authority and power. According to D. C. Schindler, this explains the inordinate attention that integralists give to the concepts of subordination and coercion. The Communio authors are far more ambivalent about the exercise of coercive power and where it stands in the order of priorities, an outlook they share with de Lubac and Ratzinger.106 Second, D. C. Schindler, Hanby, and Jones criticize some integralists for moving too quickly from the speculative to the practical level. They think not only that the political establishment of Catholic Christianity is impossible under present conditions, but even that the desire for it as a means of “renewing America” evinces a pragmatism characteristic of the liberal inversion of priorities. The liberal order is so deeply corrupt, and so deeply corrupting of the people who live within it, that its tremendous power cannot be wielded for good in any comprehensive way. All three men draw attention to the noxious effects of technology and social media, and Hanby in particular faults certain writers for shifting too readily from the speculative to the practical and for turning integralism into an online 106 Catholic History, by George Weigel, First Things, no. 297 [November 2019]: 47). At the same time, Weigel does well to ask the postliberals where the teaching of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI about the democratic political order fits into their proposal. The Communio postliberals do not contradict the authoritative papal magisterium, but their opinions about the political order differ from those of Ratzinger and, perhaps, Wojtyła, although considering the latter is beyond our current scope. In a long footnote, D. C. Schindler distances himself and Hanby from the charge that they mean to replace power with the humility of the Cross, maintaining that “the official, juridical, public, and objective form of the Church is absolutely essential, and this will inevitably require the exercise of power in some respects” (Politics of the Real, 290n118). But he provides little in the way of specifics. Disagreement over the issue of coercive power is evident in the back-and-forth argument between Schindler and Waldstein over integralism; see Schindler, “‘Societas Perfecta’: Neither Integralism Nor Disintegralism,” New Polity 1, no. 3 (2020): 24–45 (republished with some modifications as ch. 8 of Politics of the Real, 241–91); Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Politics as a Sketch for the Church,” New Polity 2, no. 1 (2021): 6–32; Schindler, “Integralism as Fragmentation”; Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “The Analogy of Perfection,” New Polity 3, no. 1 (2022): 11–25. See also the exchange of letters between Jones, Hanby, and Waldstein in First Things, no. 326 (October 2022): 3–6. 916 Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J. & Vincent L. Strand, S.J. brand.107 These Communio thinkers are manifestly not building a political platform or pursuing a concrete electoral project. Although they may reject the term, Schindler’s and Hanby’s approach to contemporary politics can be described as quietist.108 Jones offers more of a plan of action, but in terms of a “missionary insurgency” against the liberal order.109 Some commentators have faulted postliberals for their alleged pessimism about America. The Dobbs verdict, according to this line of thinking, vindicates the strategy of working patiently within the system to achieve concrete results, rather than devising ineffective critiques.110 D. C. Schindler’s reply is that genuine prudence is concerned primarily with truth, and only secondarily with the possible realization of that truth: “To suggest that it is worthwhile to reflect on some matter only to the extent that such reflection can make a worthwhile change or generate some desired outcome is to promote disorder in the strict sense, to make confusion a ‘public thing.’”111 Hanby asks: “How often have the defenders of liberalism faulted its critics for failing to propose a viable alternative, as if impotence to found another social order absolved us of the obligation to think deeply about this one?”112 In other words, these thinkers are staking a claim on the truth of things, 107 108 109 110 111 112 D. C. Schindler, “Social Media Is Hate Speech: A Platonic Reflection on Contemporary Misology,” Humanum 9, no. 2 (2020): 33–38; Jones, Two Cities, 337–47. Hanby identifies Sohrab Ahmari, Gladden Pappin, and Adrian Vermeule as culprits (“Are We Postliberal Yet?”). We think, however, that Hanby’s apparent rejection of the “postliberal” label in this article is unconvincing. Neither his refusal to identify with the term, nor his desire to avoid being swallowed up by the dynamics of social media and journalism, make his thought any less postliberal. D. C. Schindler and Jones, by contrast, have freely used the label to describe their work; see, e.g., Schindler, Politics of the Real, 98–105, and Jones, “End of Sovereignty” (which is subtitled, “An Essay in Christian Postliberalism”). In offering a proposal that is “neither a stratagem of power nor a strategy of self-preservation, but the recovery of a mystical vision, an intellectual apprehension of God at the innermost heart of reality,” Hanby admits that this might seem like quietism, but insists that it is the opposite of quietism (“For and Against Integralism,” 50). Nevertheless, we think that the appellation “quietism”—as long as this is understood not as spiritual quietism but as political quietism—helpfully characterizes Schindler’s and Hanby’s work and points to their distance from some contemporary integralists who have a more ambitious and immediate practical political schedule. Jones, “End of Sovereignty,” 410. George Weigel, “Dobbs and the Vindication of American Democracy,” First Things (online), June 29, 2022, firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/06/dobbs-and-thevindication-of-american-democracy. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 302 (emphasis original; for the overall point, including on prudence, see 300–302). See Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” 46. Beyond Ratzinger’s Republic: Communio’s Postliberal Turn 917 rather than on what will “work” in present circumstances.113 Hence, a Communio “politics of the real” is more of an intellectual inquiry than a political schedule of any kind. The fact that both Ratzinger’s dilemma and its resolution have gone largely unnoticed surely owes, at least in part, to the esteem he rightly earned among a wide swath of Catholic intellectuals. We too hold him in esteem, but we also think that such esteem does not preclude the exploration of problems in his thought. The basic dilemma of his political thought has proved so intractable that a number of his brightest intellectual heirs have moved quietly, yet unmistakably, beyond Ratzinger’s republic into the fascinating yet uncertain future of postliberalism. 113 One could imagine any of our trio of postliberal Communio thinkers replying to these criticisms with the words of L. Brent Bozell: “The future belongs only to those who keep in touch with reality—that is, those who manage to keep open to Christ, who is Reality. You are certainly entitled to observe that the old Christian forms for sanctifying the public life have themselves become obsolete, and thus do not provide a sufficient guide for the future. But that is only to say that the quest for new forms will be difficult and will require all the energy and imagination and grace that are now in us and whatever more time will provide” (“Letter to Yourselves I,” in The Best of Triumph [Fort Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 2001], 10–11; originally published as “Letter to Yourselves,” Triumph, March 1969, 11–14, and republished in Communio 23, no. 4 [1996]: 812–816, with a laudatory introduction from David L. Schindler). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 919–942 919 A Skeptical View of Integralism Elizabeth Corey Baylor University Waco, TX No observer of the American right could say that the past decade has been boring. In recent years, people who formerly called themselves conservatives have become integralists, “national conservatives,” “common good” conservatives, and “postliberals.” They reject the fusionism that formerly brought libertarians into alliances with paleo- and neo-conservatives. They argue that principles of limited government and individual rights no longer suffice in an age that has suffered the left’s Gramscian march through the institutions (Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, 1891–1937). Among the most prominent of the new dissenters are certain Catholic conservatives who argue not only that “liberalism” has failed, but that that the remedy for its failure lies in a reintegration of religion and politics. Many of these writers argue that liberalism itself is a religion, or at least a quasi-religion, that should be opposed by real religion, which is Catholic Christianity.1 Liberalism’s political liturgy, they maintain, is one of individual rights, freedom, and unfettered choice; but liberalism is a bad religion that leads to moral decline. It must be resisted by holding to the true liturgy, an 1 Liberalism, argues Adrian Vermeule, “is fundamentally theological. It wants to constantly celebrate the ritual of the overcoming of the past, the overcoming of darkness, the overcoming of repression in order to produce this perpetual liberation of the human person” (“Liberalism and the Rule of Law,” The Postliberal Order, December 8, 2022, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/liberalism-and-the-rule-of-law). Chad Pecknold writes that we are “ruled by a liberal dictatorship who demands of us a most perverse kind of worship. It is sometimes said that the progressive regime we live under is liturgical, or pseudo-religious, or some even will loosely refer to a ‘progressive integralism’” (“The Religious Nature of the City,” The Postliberal Order, January 24, 2022, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/the-religious-nature-of-the-city). 920 Elizabeth Corey authentically religious one of obedience to Catholic doctrine and a revival of traditional morality in the public square. Who is responsible for enforcing this new liturgy? Why the new theorists themselves, of course, who believe that they are the recipients of privileged gnosis. These theorists have no qualms about asserting the desirable unity of politics and religion. Indeed, their primary interest in government seems to be in prescribing a religiously inspired morality for those they would govern. No mere rule-of-law regime will do. As journalist Sohrab Ahmari has boldly asserted: “Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy.”2 The confidence of these former conservatives is remarkable, and they are in fact making converts of young men everywhere. The clarity of their moral vision is undeniably attractive to a certain kind of soul. If the highest good for mankind is salvation, as Christians believe it is, then why not strain every nerve to achieve it, not only in worship but also in political action? Chad Pecknold has summarized the postliberal integralist view as follows: “We must recognize that our cities simply are religious. Our most fundamental political conflicts are religious and theological. Thus, Christians who care about their neighbor must not be indifferent to the sacred bonds of the city, but must oppose civic sacrilege, and work to reorient the domestic and civic altars alike to God’s heavenly city.” He concludes with a rousing peroration: “As pilgrims with our faces set towards Christ, the bright sun of justice itself, our cause is just. We have a great hope even in this temporal order which is passing away; we have a high calling to order not only our souls, but also to order our cities rightly, on earth as it is in heaven.”3 The only task that remains, on this telling, is to put this vision into practice. It is never easy to follow the words of Jesus himself in the Lord’s Prayer. Yet the skeptic in politics might be excused for a bit of throat-clearing and perplexity about precisely what is being argued, and about how such a grand vision is to be accomplished, or whether it is even desirable. In the pages that follow, I identify an alternative way of thinking about politics that is significantly less exalted than integralism. This more “skeptical” alternative is potentially capable of achievement, given the political institutions currently in place in the United States. It is also significantly more respectful of the political and moral pluralism that now exists and seems unlikely to disappear. 2 3 Sohrab Ahmari, “Against David French-Ism,” First Things, May 29, 2019, firstthings. com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism (emphasis mine). Pecknold, “Religious Nature of the City” (emphasis mine). A Skeptical View of Integralism 921 Following the lead of British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, I consider two opposed ways of thinking about politics, which Oakeshott called, in On Human Conduct, “enterprise and civil association,” and elsewhere “faith and scepticism.” With this framework in mind, I consider the dark and pessimistic view of modern society held by the postliberal integralists. I turn next to evaluating the postliberal claim that government and religion ought to be joined in an elite-controlled, quasi-parental state. I conclude by returning to Oakeshott, offering some caveats about the possibility of a skeptical view of politics. In a world where everything seems political, is there still a place for the skeptic in politics?4 Oakeshott’s Ideal Types Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) was one of the most important British political philosophers of the twentieth century. His philosophical aim was always to get to the very essence of a thing, whether poetry or politics, and his method was often to write in terms of ideal types.5 He also strictly separated the realms of philosophy and practice, claiming that philosophical reflection merely illuminates what is going on in the world and does not guide it. He saw philosophy as a “radically subversive” activity that could not be put in the service of any practical goal. “If we expect from political philosophy conclusions relevant to politics,” he wrote, “the result will be either a political philosophy in which the reflective impulse is hindered and arrested by being made servile to politics, or a political activity in which the reflective impulse . . . has lost its virtue.” 6 Philosophy, on this telling, does not direct or inform the practice of political actors. Its aim is “merely” to understand. In theorizing politics, Oakeshott employs ideal types to capture a set of tendencies, inclinations, and motivating ideas that political actors exhibit in varying degrees. In day-to-day life these may be mixed together, often appearing ambiguous. A public official, for instance, may declare himself a staunch progressive while in practice he pursues a moderate course; or someone may claim no label at all and act primarily on the basis of pragmatic considerations. In such cases we see mixtures of types, alloys of political ideologies and platforms. Oakeshott, however, abstracts from ordinary human activity, with all 4 5 6 Oakeshott uses the British spelling of “sceptic.” I will use the British spelling only when quoting him directly. This use of “ideal” implies, of course, not “best,” but rather “in the realm of ideas.” Michael Oakeshott, Religion, Politics and the Moral Life, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 155. 922 Elizabeth Corey its inconsistency and lack of clarity, to set out the fundamental tendencies that compose a purer kind of idea. Only with these ideal types in mind does he eventually turn back to theorizing practice, showing how the types make their appearance in life as we actually experience it. He uses induction to construct his types, followed by deduction from these types, to show what they illuminate in ordinary social and political life. Examples of this method appear in his contrast between the morality of custom and the morality of reflection in his essay in Rationalism in Politics called “The Tower of Babel,” and the distinction between enterprise and civil association in On Human Conduct. For the purposes of this paper, most relevant is the distinction between faith and skepticism in The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism. Oakeshott relies on concrete political history and texts in the inductive process of constructing his ideal types. In this concrete evidence he finds that some societies drew on traditional modes of morality even in the midst of social change; others, like revolutionary France, were more prone to formulating principles that claimed to guide practice. Oakeshott maintains that the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, for example, were documents invented by people who thought they were doing “reflective” morality—that is, setting out for the first time a set of principles for political action. But they were actually just distilling and repackaging an older English political experience.7 It was old wine in new bottles. Oakeshott’s ultimate aim, however, is not the construction of a blended form, choosing some characteristics from one ideal type and some from the other to construct something new. Instead, he sees these types as explanatory or descriptive of actual political practice in all its ambiguity. In some ways, for example, a person may be more “habitually” moral, and in other ways more “reflective.” Any particular person exists as some combination of the two tendencies. Perhaps one is reflectively moral in a crisis (“what should I do in this ethical dilemma?”) but habitually moral in all the normal goings-on of life. We exist between the poles, but do not exactly synthesize them into a new, coherent form of morality. Certain people and social movements do, however, incline strongly toward one or the other of these types; and the types themselves offer explanatory clarity and insight into how people understand themselves and their 7 See the discussion of the American founding in his essay “Rationalism in Politics,” found in Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991), 32–33. A Skeptical View of Integralism 923 projects. As John Grove has argued persuasively, these types provide an apt lens for understanding the contemporary integralist movement.8 The Politics of Faith In The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism, Oakeshott presents his reader with two quite different political orientations. The “politics of faith” should not be mistaken for modern Christian politics generally, and certainly not for “the Christian Right.” The politics of faith is also not an approach to religion and public life that respects believers of any and every faith. Instead, the “politics of faith” is a technical phrase into which Oakeshott pours his own meaning. What precisely is this meaning? The faith referenced here is faith in government to move mankind toward a state of greater perfection. In the politics of faith, “human perfection is sought precisely because it is not present; and further, it is believed that we need not, and should not, depend upon the working of divine providence for the salvation of mankind.” Human perfection is both sought and achieved by faith “in human power.” It depends upon “our own unrelaxed efforts.” Ultimately, it is motivated by the idea that “man is redeemable in history.” It is “both relevant and revealing to speak of this style of politics as ‘Pelagian.’” 9 Despite its name, this vision is markedly at odds with orthodox understandings of religious faith. First, the politics of faith tends to immanentize ultimate fulfillment, and second, it requires human effort, not divine action. It betrays both dissatisfaction and impatience with the world and unwillingness to accept our mortal condition. Instead of enjoying the goods that are presently available, people invest themselves in future outcomes which range from the ethical and religious—“moral virtue or religious salvation”—to the temporal: prosperity, abundance or basic welfare.10 Both kinds of outcomes share several characteristics: a focus on the future, a notion of perfection bolstered by moral confidence in the rightness of pursuing it, and the idea that government must be the chief enabler of this pursuit. Government, indeed, is at the center of the vision proffered by the politics of faith. Government is never auxiliary to the activities that are already going on, no mere umpire or judiciary. Instead, the institutions of government offer the “means for arriving at the ‘truth,’ for excluding ‘error’ and for making the 8 9 10 See John Grove, “The Post-liberal Politics of Faith,” National Affairs 55 (Spring 2023). Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 23. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 24. 924 Elizabeth Corey ‘truth’ prevail.”11 Government is omnicompetent, and it positively welcomes power: “No quantity of power will be considered excessive.”12 Its office is “to direct and integrate all the activities of its subjects.”13 According to this understanding, the intermediate institutions that formerly stood between government and the individual should gradually disappear; centralization of power is not a problem but an advance. Although the politics of faith should never be simply conflated with religious faith, as I have noted above, this style of politics nevertheless appears in two idioms: the economic and the religious. In the economic version of the politics of faith, the powers of government are directed toward economic well-being and prosperity for society as a whole. This, at present, is by far the more common and recognizable version of a politics of faith. Every modern government aims at achieving economic goods. The perfection sought in this version of the politics of faith consists of a high standard of living, and values that promote it are frugality, industry, and diligence. The less obviously recognizable idiom of the politics of faith is the religious version. Here, government attempts not to raise the general standard of living but to impose a particular religious pattern of activity upon its subjects. Its aim is to save souls. Government’s task becomes the enforcement of a model of conduct and religious observance because it is “believed to have been found in the Bible.”14 One might think here of Jean Calvin’s Geneva as a model for a religiously inspired politics of faith. And what of the governors themselves? They are confident and self-assured, not given to doubt or humility. They do not shun office, but seek it. Governing attracts those who are “not men of moderation and self-control, . . . but either the neurotic and the frustrated who know no bounds or the parvenu who is easily intoxicated by the chance of doing big and clever things.”15 Governors or would-be governors are those people who have clearly done some thinking—and who think not just about their own good but about the good of everyone else. Or, perhaps more accurately, they are not so much concerned about the real, self-chosen goods of others, but rather would like everyone to pursue their favored goods. Given enough power, they just might be successful. 11 12 13 14 15 Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 27. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 28. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 46. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 59. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 102. A Skeptical View of Integralism 925 The Politics of Skepticism Oakeshott’s contrary ideal type is the “politics of scepticism.” In this understanding of politics, government is deprived of its role as director of a society’s activities, no longer determining the “common good” for all. Instead, governing is reconceived as something mundane, rather unexciting, and absolutely necessary. It springs not from a doctrine of human nature, but from a particular “reading of human conduct,” which is varied and pluralistic. As Oakeshott explains it, the skeptic in politics begins with no overarching theory, but merely observes that “men live in proximity with one another and, pursuing various activities, are apt to come into conflict with one another.”16 Government’s aim is to minimize the opportunities for conflict. For the skeptic, therefore, governing is not so much a legislative or executive, but rather a “judicial” activity.17 To quote the famous but much-neglected words of Alexander Hamilton, a judiciary has “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.”18 And while no existent judicial power has ever wholly conformed to this ideal, something like it is what Oakeshott admires in the politics of skepticism. Politics here is not a winner-take-all contest, where the victors impose their vision upon everyone else, but instead a relatively boring enforcement of rules of conduct, trade, and contracts. Nobody, in skeptical politics, would desire office for the power it brings; instead, they govern out of duty, remembering that those who occupy government offices are men “of the same make as the subjects they rule—men, that is to say, who are always liable, when they become governors, to . . . impose upon the community an ‘order’ particularly favourable to their own interests.” For this reason, writes Oakeshott in an understatement, it would be prudent to “be sparing of the quantity of power invested in government.”19 As a corollary to this minimalist understanding, Oakeshott claims that the proper role of government is only to maintain order, not to pursue grand projects. The superficial order obtained thereby “is not everything; . . . we shall do well not to spend upon it more of our resources than is necessary for 16 17 18 19 Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 32. Oakeshott observes that Parliament originated as a court of law in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and concludes that, “where governing is recognized as the activity of a court, the office of government” will not be understood “as the imposition of a comprehensive pattern of activity upon all the subjects of the realm” (Politics of Faith, 77–79). Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 33. 926 Elizabeth Corey its preservation.”20 Or, as he wrote in a 1939 essay “The Claims of Politics,” politics “is a highly specialized and abstracted form of communal activity; it is conducted on the surface of the life of a society and except on rare occasions makes remarkably small impression below that surface.”21 So far from being the most important activity a person might take up, it is among the least personally meaningful. And it does not require a particularly sharp mind. “A limitation of view, which appears so clear and practical, but which amounts to little more than a mental fog, is inseparable from political activity.”22 Indeed, the philosophical attitude is often directly at odds with the disposition to engage in political action, as philosophers from Plato to Oakeshott have repeatedly observed. This restrained vision—that political activity is important for ensuring order but far less worthy of enthusiasm than most people think—constitutes an unusual political philosophy, to be sure. Political activity, writes Oakeshott, “is one among a hundred other [activities] and it is superior to the whole complex . . . only in . . . overseeing all from the standpoint of public order.”23 He is unconvinced that politics is mankind’s most important activity, or that government is uniquely suited to impose “a single moral or other direction, tone, or manner upon the activities of its subjects.”24 Yet this minimalist understanding of governing does not imply that individuals should never pursue ambitious projects of their own; they are certainly free to do so, and indeed Oakeshott thinks they will. He hopes, however, that a coterie of government elites might not attempt to impose “a single moral or other direction, tone, or manner” upon the activities of those they govern. Oakeshott’s vision is respectful of the variety among human beings in occupation and self-understanding. The skeptic in politics need not believe “as a matter of principle, in the absolute value of variety in human conduct.” Rather, he observes only “that such variety exists” and that neither he nor anyone else has the authority “to destroy it.”25 To sum up, then: Oakeshott’s two ideal political types are faith and skepticism. Faith in this context means faith in government and its purposes, in the moral rightness of promulgating and imposing a particular mundane, moral or religious vision upon those governed. In this vision, ambitious men eagerly seek office; they hope by political action to transform the world. Skepticism 20 21 22 23 24 25 Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 32. Oakeshott, Religion, Politics and the Moral Life, 93. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 93. Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” 432–33. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 35. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 36. A Skeptical View of Integralism 927 offers a markedly different vision in which government is deprived of most of its character as a source of excitement and purpose. It is reconceived as an activity aiming merely at the maintenance of order. Government respects human difference and the variety of endeavors that people choose to pursue. Governors exercise restraint and moderation, a disinterestedness which, Oakeshott laments, is always absent.26 Contemporary integralism—of the sort advocated by American academics and journalists—is a clear example of the politics of faith. Oakeshott takes great pains to point out that real-world politics almost never fall exclusively within one or the other of the ideal types; yet it is difficult to find anything in integralism that is at all skeptical. Most notably, integralism explicitly links politics and religion, and therefore also politics and morality. American integralists have few qualms about seeking a certain kind of earthly perfection, or at least improvement toward a more explicitly Christian polity. Integralism also has a clear vision for society as a whole, and integralists want to put that vision into practice. This vision “is determined by [the] ruler’s a priori vision of human flourishing,” and integralists “don’t shrink from declaring that they know what a healthy society looks like or that it is government’s job to refashion society with that end in mind.”27 Perhaps most strikingly, government itself is the prime mover in the achievement of this vision. Integralism is not a bottom-up movement, but instead top-down. In the words of Adrian Vermeule: “Promoting a substantive vision of the good is, always and everywhere, the proper function of rulers.”28 I am well aware that marshalling Oakeshott’s arguments about a proper understanding of politics will be of no use at all in persuading the integralists themselves that their vision is mistaken or only partially correct. Oakeshott and others like him constitute precisely the classical liberal world that integralism opposes by definition. Commentators have pointed out that the most appropriate objections to integralism must come from within the Catholic tradition itself if they are to gain any traction.29 Nevertheless, legitimate critique may also come from outside the Catholic 26 27 28 29 Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 38. As Grove observes, the politics of faith “was the dominant style of politics when Oakeshott was writing, and it remains so today” (“The Post-liberal Politics of Faith,” 136). Grove, “The Post-liberal Politics of Faith,” 135. Adrian Vermeule, “Beyond Originalism,” The Atlantic, March 31, 2020, theatlantic. com/ideas/archive/2020/03/common-good-constitutionalism/609037/. Kevin Augustyn, “The Integralist Argument Is Wrong, Even If You’re Catholic,” Discourse, January 27, 2022, discoursemagazine.com/ideas/2022/01/27/ the-integralist-argument-is-wrong-even-if-youre-catholic/. 928 Elizabeth Corey intellectual world, on the basis of somewhat different first principles, based not in theory but in commonsense: that the integralist view of contemporary American society is profoundly one-sided and in certain respects simply wrong, and that individuality and freedom, rightly understood, are great goods. Importantly, the integralist vision appears to rest on a diagnosis of our present social and cultural situation as entirely and unremittingly bad, a point that I shall dispute. For those who stand outside integralism, therefore, there is benefit in seeing and identifying several central tendencies of the movement: its unfailing negativity toward all aspects of liberal modernity and its eagerness to use “top-down” government power in service of integralist aims. Let me take these two points in turn, before returning to Oakeshott’s types at the end. Integralism’s Declinist Diagnosis If integralism offers the therapy for the ills of liberal modernity, who or what has caused the predicament of contemporary social and political life? To read the contemporary American integralists as a more or less unified whole is to see that central to their project is the categorization of all non-integralists into groups that exhibit glaring defects and share responsibility for what integralism describes as America’s thoroughgoing decline. They generally classify all non-integralists as liberals, which is bad enough, since “liberalism” is understood as the source of all social ills. But among liberals there are both progressive “left-liberals” and “right-liberals.” Certain individuals are particularly noxious representatives of these groups: Nikole Hannah-Jones for the left-liberals and David French for the right-liberals. Right-liberals are sometimes referred to as “Con. Inc.,” a derisive name for Establishment conservatives at places like American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and The Wall Street Journal. Integralists often accuse such people of “amnesia” and “obfuscation.”30 Both groups fear state power, writes Vermeule, but only when it suits them. Progressive “left-liberals,” Vermeule observes, fear the state when the topic is abortion, as opposed to “hate speech.” But the right-liberal who cites Edmund Burke and Oakeshott “remains resolutely silent about the endless disruption of traditional ways of life and local communities by transnational corporate power.” Each, “in his or her own way tells us, quite clearly, what 30 Patrick Deneen, “On Common Good Constitutionalism: A Discussion of Adrian Vermeule’s Pathbreaking Book on Its Anniversary,” Postliberals (podcast), February 21, 2023, MP3 audio, 3:38, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/on-common-goodconstitutionalism. A Skeptical View of Integralism 929 program is served by the rhetoric of skepticism.”31 Vermeule does not believe that either group’s skepticism about political power is actually sincere. The implication is that each group, if able, would use power for its own purposes in order to crush opponents. Integralism sees left-liberals as primarily responsible for the enormities of modern culture: the sexual revolution, the transgender movement, the diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) regime, the corruption of language, and Drag Queen Story Hour. But the right-liberals do not fare much better. Just as an intra-Church fight is often uglier than a dispute between denominations, the integralist critique of “Con. Inc.” displays exceptional vitriol. In critiquing right-liberals at Ius and Iustitium, for example, an anonymous writer accuses French and his friends of “setting upon” those integralists “who would vindicate tradition, truth and sanity.” French and company, this anonymous writer claims, are “throw[ing] their lot in with progressives who would, given the chance, gladly confiscate and trans-mutilate their children.”32 Patrick Deneen comments that right-liberals are “toothless” in their opposition to progressivism, offering only “a flaccid ‘originalism’ that consistently drifts leftward.”33 Right-liberals, he continues, “are engaged in long term hospice care of a terminal patient—America.”34 In his characteristic take-no-prisoners style, Ahmari asserts that “American conservatism is … a failure” and launches into a Covid-era jeremiad worth quoting in full: We’re prisoners in our own abode. On TV, a perpetual carousel of experts blasts bad news and grim statistics. Our children, if we have them, are absorbed in their own screens, barred from the swing and the see-saw even as the warm weather beckons them outside. We 31 32 33 34 Adrian Vermeule, “Skepticism and the State,” The Postliberal Order, December 21, 2022, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/skepticism-and-the-state. Anonymous, “The Iron Law of Tolerance,” Ius and Iustitium (blog), February 27, 2023, iusetiustitium.com/the-iron-law-of-tolerance/. Patrick Deneen, “Abandoning Defensive Crouch Conservatism,” The Postliberal Order, November 17, 2021, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/abandoning-defensivecrouch-conservatism. Patrick Deneen, “Conservative Hospice Care,” The Postliberal Order, December 29, 2021, https://postliberalorder.substack.com/p/conservative-hospice-care. Vermeule has a similar diagnosis: “The problem is not whether liberalism is in some abstract sense desirable, for its eventual demise is inevitable. The only practical problem is how to shorten and lessen the birth-pangs of liberalism’s successor” (“Integration from Within,” American Affairs 2, no. 1 [2018], americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/integrationfrom-within/). 930 Elizabeth Corey might be furloughed or laid-off, and even if lucky enough to be working remotely, we watch anxiously as the pink slips climb the social ladder: How long can I hang on to my rung? We can’t sleep at night. We’re glued to the ghostly blue glow of our smart devices, endlessly scrolling the social feed, futilely arguing with strangers. A huge number of us also switch our browsers to incognito mode, to watch fleshy, moaning digital phantoms; the medium has somehow conditioned us to forget that these are real human beings, engaging in an act rightly ordered to bringing new life into the world. Outside, the streets are deserted; the few faces we encounter, masked, suspicious, alien. Flying police robots blare orders at citizens. And if we’re unlucky enough to live in urban cores, we’re at grave risk of having life and property destroyed by rioters and antifa terrorists exploiting a genuine case of police injustice. Liberty, indeed. And in the words of Chad Pecknold, since we are “cracking up at the brutal end of liberal order, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves tyrannized by all manner of Lust—libido—sexual, economic and political.” Government buildings are now “regularly lit up with false flags, which reflect not only a fundamental disordering of the familial substrate, but also the temple which worships its lusts. These are the banners of a society which has turned its back on God — the banners of Sodom, Herod and Nero.”35 Integralists never understate moral peril. These overwrought descriptions of modern life emerge from an experience of the world that is digitally mediated, especially through the platform of Twitter. Such descriptions derive their force from the selective and polemical inclusion of certain facts and not others. Such cultural declinism has long been a tendency and a temptation for many on the political right. It is a simple and persuasive narrative that makes sense of cultural failures and defeats: things were better in the past; bad people have seized power; now political and cultural trends are moving in the wrong direction. For the integralists, the obvious conclusion of this line of reasoning is that they must seize power and change the trajectory. As Vermeule has put it: “What is at stake is no less than authority, the full authority of a reasoned political order, composed of both temporal and spiritual powers in right relation to the natural and divine law, that would put a mere Rome to shame.”36 35 36 Chad Pecknold, “Unfurling the Right Banners,” The Postliberal Order, December 23, 2022, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/unfurling-the-right-banners. Adrian Vermeule, “Liberalism’s Good and Faithful Servants,” Compact, February 28, 2023, compactmag.com/article/liberalism-s-good-and-faithful-servants. A Skeptical View of Integralism 931 The counterview is simple and obvious, though unpopular among integralists and others who advance the declinist view: contemporary culture is not a uniform parade of horribles.37 One can easily list both advances and declines. The declines are evident because they are constantly highlighted, especially by right-leaning commentators with an agenda to pursue. But the advances are often downplayed or overlooked altogether. One could cite the substantial improvement in the developed world’s standard of living and the elimination of absolute poverty for many millions of others; notable advances in healthcare and cures for certain types of cancer; the rise of Christianity in the Global South; the rejuvenation of Catholic and traditionalist Anglican parishes in the United States among millennials; the rise of Christian classical schools and charter schools as an alternative to public education, and the list goes on. Still, a tempered and temperate view like this one does not possess the appealing simplicity of the declinist view.38 It neither incites people to vigorous action nor yields a clear and unambiguous vision of culture that can be put in one’s pocket, to be taken out and deployed when needed. This temperate view is usually held by adult conservatives who tend toward moderation and away from radical political action. Such conservatives hope to preserve the many social goods that are often taken for granted, goods that persist even amidst other signs of decline. I have no intention of making the opposite claim from declinism—that America’s social and cultural fortunes are advancing and that things are always and everywhere getting better. But there are legitimate objections to the pervasive declinist view that underlies the integralist project. The first objection has to do with the range of vision assumed by integralist declinism. The examples quoted above from Deneen, Pecknold, Vermeule, and Ahmari emerge from assessments that focus on the political “horizon.” Looking only at the horizon—that is, at national politics and national trends, at events highlighted by major media outlets and featured on social media— tempts an observer to see only the most awful happenings: the shootings, the 37 38 For a brief history of declinism in America, see Alan W. Dowd, “Declinism,” Hoover Institution, August 1, 2007, hoover.org/research/declinism. The integralist declinist view goes generally as follows: “America was flawed from the start. The focus on individual rights comes at the expense of community and the common good, and the claim that government exists to preserve individual liberty creates an inexorable move toward moral anarchy. These tendencies have moved us so far from traditional decency and public order that there is little of worth left to ‘conserve’” ( Joseph E. Capizzi, “Integralism and International Order,” Providence, September 6, 2018, providencemag.com/2018/09/catholic-church-integralism-international-order/). 932 Elizabeth Corey overdoses, the floods and droughts, the excesses of politics. Of course these are real events, and they do not go away because we ignore them. Yet declinists are prone to the dangers of “confirmation bias” and “negativity bias.” Once one has decided that political and social life is in freefall, then it is easy to consult only sources that confirm that judgment (confirmation bias). When stories and topics are chosen selectively to emphasize certain pathologies of culture, they reinforce that particular narrative in the minds of those who share such stories. Eventually, if we read enough of this, we come to believe it is everywhere. As Thucydides wrote long ago: “It is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.”39 Declinists are also especially prone to “negativity” bias, which means that, “in most situations, [they judge] negative events [to be] more salient, potent, dominant in combinations and generally efficacious than positive events.”40 In layman’s terms, catastrophes are always more noteworthy than ordinary happy events. If someone has decided that the world is an inhospitable and dark place, then this judgment will generally be confirmed by the great number of dark and depressing things that do happen on any given day. Nevertheless, such events generally do not constitute ordinary human lives in particular places with others whom one actually knows. A careful look at what may be taking place in local communities yields the observation that civic organizations, churches, synagogues, families, and schools are undertaking many constructive projects, despite the apparent chaos of the wider world. Declinist narratives, in contrast, tend to be cast at levels of abstraction that do not reflect life as it is lived by actual human beings. One might read endlessly about the harms of transgenderism or the overreach of the DEI movement on university campuses. This repeated exposure would, of course, have a significant impact on a person’s continuous assessment of the world around him. And yet this person may never have experienced anything like the dramatic events about which he spends so much time reading. A second insight, which follows from this quasi-localist view, is that it is easy to underestimate the diversity of life in contemporary America, especially if one lives in a large urban area or on the coasts. Large corporations and woke capital do not dictate behavior in every arena of life; and though Target, Starbucks, and Apple are ubiquitous in cities everywhere, certain regions of the country are far more naturally conservative than others. In 39 40 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: Dover, 2017), 215. Paul Rozin and Edward B. Royzman, “Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 4 (2001): 297. A Skeptical View of Integralism 933 other words, the paganism of large cities on the East and West Coasts is not necessarily what one sees in Texas or Nebraska. Nor are colleges and universities monolithic. Although one often hears about the most progressive schools or the ones at the center of scandals, many professors and students pay little attention to such stories and go about their business without feeling that they are under siege. The landscape of higher education includes not only progressive schools like Oberlin, Reed, and Yale, but also countercultural campuses like Wyoming Catholic, the University of Dallas, Ave Maria, and Hillsdale. Secondary schools vary just as widely—from the elite Ivy League-feeder kindergartens of New York City to the many campuses of the Classical Christian school renaissance. Dutch immigrants with large families still live in Holland, Michigan, and northern California; the Bruderhof community has established itself in upstate New York and elsewhere; and many young Catholics, Anglicans, and Evangelicals across the country are having children at the rate people did in the early twentieth century. People are always learning to play the violin, to weld, and to fly-fish. They start new journals and engage in charitable and philanthropic work. They tutor kids after school, build businesses, get married, become athletes and scholars. Sometimes they recover from addictions and begin new lives. In short, they are attending to life on the personal and communal level. If one looks only at social media, international politics, or the national news, then one might be tempted to despair. But unless we work in government or journalism, events in these realms usually do not constitute the stuff of our daily lives. This alternative story matters because integralism depends for its moral force upon a severe declinist view, which provides the foundation for integralism’s decidedly nonliberal remedial proposals. If, indeed, we are at the “brutal end of liberal order” and crisis is immediately at hand, then maybe there is a case for drastic measures. If, however, the case against liberalism has been overstated, or if there might yet be resources within the liberal tradition that could be profitably used for good, then perhaps a more temperate, “bottom-up” rejuvenation of culture is a more appropriate response. This does not initially seem as inspiring as integralism’s call to action, to be sure. Political moderation is never exciting.41 By contrast, the declinist story, bolstered by the divide-and-conquer attacks on former adversaries who have now been exposed as frauds and 41 See for example, Aurelian Craiutu, Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 934 Elizabeth Corey obfuscators, justifies the stamping out of pluralism and the tearing down of institutions that still function.42 From the perspective of integralism, moral pluralism is really just another name for moral error.43 In its breathless moral panic, integralism is the mirror image of far-left environmentalism and extreme racial and sexual DEI movements. All these movements—left and right—identify society-wide problems that are at least grounded in reality; all exaggerate the problems; all are assured of the truth and goodness of their causes; and all would be happy to stamp out their opponents. As Ahmari has candidly stated, civility and decency are second-order virtues that can be dispensed with in an emergency. Such is the posture assumed by partisans of the “politics of faith.” Integralism’s Embrace of Elite Government Power This declinist story of breakdown and dysfunction provides the moral justification for the integralist project to reorder society. This is why they cannot embrace the idea of incremental changes. Only a fundamental rejection of the existing liberal order will satisfy, because it is liberalism itself that has caused the problems. Their proposed solution therefore emerges not from social, church and familial rejuvenation, or from within existing political structures, but instead through strong government directed by powerful elites. There is no little irony in the fact that American integralists hate progressive elites with a white-hot passion yet are keen to act as elites themselves.44 As Vermeule observes: “Committed minorities have often been able to set the terms of political life for large, relatively apathetic majorities.”45 This 42 43 44 45 Typical of the attacks on former allies is this from an author who goes by 1P5 Editor: “But just as strongly, the true integralist will be the enemy of the conservatives when he comes for their mindless accumulation of wealth, their usury, their fractional reserve banking, their diabolical stock market, and their war on the poor” (“Integralism is Christendom, Pt. I,” One Peter 5, January 31, 2022, onepeterfive.com/integralism-ischristendom-pt-i/). James Dominic Rooney writes that integralists “judge [ John] Rawls’ ‘fact of pluralism’ a symptom of social disunity and therefore a political problem, not a neutral social datum around which to structure politics.” “Illiberal Integralist Elites,” Law & Liberty, January 3, 2023, lawliberty.org/illiberal-integralist-elites/). See Patrick Deneen’s critique of elitism: “Americans of both parties once believed that no center of power in America should become so concentrated that it could force its views on every other citizen” (“Replace the Elite,” First Things, March 2020, firstthings. com/article/2020/03/replace-the-elite). Adrian Vermeule, “‘It Can’t Happen’; or, the Poverty of Political Imagination,” The Postliberal Order, November 19, 2021, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/it-cant-happenor-the-poverty-of. A Skeptical View of Integralism 935 has ensured many progressive victories; why then should a small group of integralists not do the same, from the opposite ideological direction? The difference, of course, is that integralists are in possession of capital-T Truth: “We are in a vastly better speculative position than those 1970s transgressive minorities: we have a true vision of the good, and the religion that truly integrates and elevates,” asserts Chad Pecknold.46 In addition to these truth claims, integralism’s elitism also derives from a certain view of human nature: they view most adult human beings as incapable of governing themselves, not unlike minor children. Instead of understanding others as equals who prioritize different goods, integralists prefer to act as authoritative parents. Vermeule explains this approach without apology: “Law is parental, a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits. Just as authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them—perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them.” Subjects, he confidently continues, “will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.”47 It is not clear what justifies this presumption of future thankfulness, but civic peace depends upon it. However, the case for elitism is not merely that elites can and should exercise their parental authority in the interest of morally malformed political children. Ruling also requires knowledge and expertise that ordinary citizens simply do not possess. In the integralist case, notes James Dominic Rooney, this expertise may be partially grounded in knowledge of Catholic doctrine. But at bottom it is the familiar “illiberal picture of political legitimacy.” In this illiberal picture, “only a sub-set of actual citizens are reliable reasoners about what is in the common interest, and so only such a subset is relevant to the justification of public policies. Call this subset ‘the experts.’” If legitimate political authority—and perhaps even basic political participation—depends on expertise, then all nonexperts can exist only in the role of subjects, not citizens. Rulers, writes Rooney, “can and ought to act for [the subjects] without their consent, even to the point of using coercive laws or policies for their benefit, over their objections.”48 Rooney does not approve this view himself, but he sets it out even more starkly than do the 46 47 48 Pecknold, “Religious Nature of the City.” Vermeule, “Common Good Constitutionalism.” Rooney, “Illiberal Integralist Elites.” 936 Elizabeth Corey integralists. It is exactly the illiberal or “postliberal” model that they would like to put into practice. Yet the integralist model of parental rulership is problematic in a deeply pluralist nation like the United States. One wonders first whether it is legitimate, and second, whether it has any hope of success. Most people would likely agree that biological parents certainly have an obligation to shape and form their children in the interest of giving them a vision of a well-lived life and the means to achieve it. Yet children do not remain minors forever, eventually entering into legal adulthood whether or not we judge them ready. At this point, they have the burden (and opportunity) of making choices for themselves and of handling the consequences that flow from those choices. In general, at this point, they are better positioned to make choices for themselves than are their parents, though of course they may take advice and guidance from all kinds of authorities. Something like this is what we normally mean by calling them “free,” or saying that they possess liberty. Here is the heart of the conflict I have been describing. For integralism, liberty is not an opportunity, but a problem. People often do not make the choices that integralists recommend; instead they do things that integralists see as misguided, at best, and positively sinful, at worst. Their solution for this problem is therefore to curtail liberty through strong parental government. But the fundamental question remains unanswered: why should any normal adult accept the idea that government officials and citizens are simply analogous to parents and children? Parents have a uniquely personal and close tie to children they “rule.” Parents demonstrate both love for their children and interest in their unique, individual goods. Parents have more knowledge and experience than their children and are capable of specifying and pursuing the common good of the family. By contrast, “the state” is amorphous, distant, and uniformed about particulars. It knows nothing of individuals and their circumstances. Vermeule nevertheless argues that a powerful executive state “is a means of protecting the many from exploitation by the oligarchic few,” and that “the many [will] support and ally themselves with a powerful executive . . . in order to protect themselves from economic and social exploitation by optimates, oligarchs, nobility, corporations, or other self-interested private powers.”49 Clearly he has “woke corporations” and progressive elites in his sights. A powerful executive, staffed with “good” people, can indeed do a great deal. One has to suppose that he sees himself as part of that executive power. 49 Adrian Vermeule, “The Many, the Few, and the State,” The Postliberal Order, January 14, 2023, postliberalorder.substack.com/p/the-many-the-few-and-the-state. A Skeptical View of Integralism 937 Perhaps, he muses, the decadent liberal framework itself can be repurposed for integralist ends: “It may thus appear providential that liberalism, despite itself, has prepared a state capable of great tasks, as a legacy to bequeath to a new and doubtless very different [nonliberal] future.” The very bureaucracy that liberalism has created “in pursuit of a mirage of depoliticized governance may, by the invisible hand of Providence, be turned to new ends, becoming the great instrument with which to restore a substantive politics of the good.”50 Far from embracing bottom-up reforms of politics and culture, this vision explicitly embraces government as the essential impetus for reform. This view happily dispenses with old conservative shibboleths about the evils of big government. Bureaucracy—if infiltrated and controlled by the right people—could become our friend, “the strong hand of legitimate rule.”51 But obvious questions arise. Where is the assurance that this powerful executive (and the bureaucracy and judiciary it controls) will act in the interest of “the many”—who are likely anyway to have markedly conflicting interests? What protection is there for “the many” if the executive power reverts to the “bad” people? And why should we suppose that this powerful executive state is truly wise and virtuous, not made up of the kinds of flawed human beings who usually turn up in positions of authority? As Oakeshott wryly observes in the essay “On Being Conservative,” it is “beyond human experience to suppose that those who rule are endowed with a superior wisdom which discloses to them a better range of beliefs and activities and which gives them authority to impose upon their subjects a quite different manner of life.” And, he remarks, “we tolerate monomaniacs, it is our habit to do so; but why should we be ruled by them?”52 A more traditional, sober—and still Catholic—view of politics maintains that political authority “is justified only insofar as it serves [the common good]” and is “inherently instrumental and limited.” Its aim, writes Melissa Moschella, is “to promote the good of the individuals and communities that make up society indirectly, by creating the conditions within which they can freely pursue their own goods.” In this familiar notion of subsidiarity, “political society is a society of societies, which must respect the integrity and authority of the smaller societies (families, churches, businesses, civic associations) that compose it.” Political authority must remain limited because many goods “such as friendship, integrity, and religion can only be achieved by freely directing oneself toward them, and because this freedom is itself a 50 51 52 Vermeule, “Integration from Within.” Vermeule, “Common Good Constitutionalism.” Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” in Rationalism in Politics, 427–28. 938 Elizabeth Corey crucial condition for human flourishing.” For this reason, Moschella continues, “the natural law account recognizes that liberty is an essential instrumental good that governments must respect precisely because the political common good—which includes the goods of the individuals and smaller communities that make up the political community—cannot be achieved without it.”53 Recall that Oakeshott’s politics of skepticism calls for quasi-judicial government, where substantive purpose is removed as far as possible from government activity. It aims at fostering just the kinds of familial and civic groups that Moschella has described above. The politics of faith, in contrast, requires not only the pursuit of a particular vision of moral virtue but also that government (and therefore governors) should direct its subjects in the paths of virtue. The institutions of government are the “means for arriving at the ‘truth’ . . . and for making the ‘truth’ prevail.”54 Yet again, why should ordinary people believe that government, especially a largely unaccountable bureaucracy, will be in any position to take on such questions of substantive purpose and truth for individuals? Integralism’s answer depends upon assumptions of inferiority and inequality among those who are ruled. Given the declinist moral catastrophizing that stands in the background, integralists see their political prescriptions as a kind of therapy for illness. It is worth quoting Oakeshott in full on this point. He does not have integralism in mind, of course, but he is most definitely describing the politics of faith more generally: Where it has been believed that the most important characteristic of human beings is that they are alike victims of an identifiable disease and that this derangement, so far from being of cosmic significance, is a historic morbid condition which they have brought upon themselves, and where this has been joined with the belief that the “common good” may be identified as the recovery of sanity . . . and that cure is within human capacity, then the way is open for the recognition of a state as a contingent association of sufferers, for attributing to the government of a state a prophylactic and a therapeutic office, and for identifying “politics” with the promotion of this reading of the human condition.55 53 54 55 Melissa Moschella, “Natural Law, the Common Good, and Limited Government: Friends, Not Foes,” Public Discourse, April 10, 2022, https://www.thepublicdiscourse. com/2022/08/83850/ (italics mine). Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 27. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 309 (emphasis mine). A Skeptical View of Integralism 939 On this reading, power—even great power—is required for effective government. Skepticism and restraint are impediments to success. Ambition is prized, not shunned; and restraint is cowardice. Those who disagree with the integralist view are accused of lacking “political imagination.”56 Conclusion I have argued that contemporary integralism is a vivid example of the politics of faith. As John Grove has also observed, Oakeshott’s ideal types of faith and skepticism capture our contemporary situation better than do the contemporary terms “conservative,” “liberal,” and “progressive” because all these terms are presently in flux. Not in flux, however, are certain human inclinations which show up consistently across time and across the political spectrum. Perhaps the most natural of all political inclinations is the belief that, “if only I were put in charge,” then things would go well and public virtue would increase. Hans Urs von Balthasar observes this candidly in reflecting on integralism: “Who among us has never succumbed to the temptation to enforce spiritual matters by worldly means?”57 Progressives want to ban gas stoves and gasoline engines; integralists abortion and gay marriage. I do not mean to say that the bans are equivalent in importance or that these things are exactly “spiritual” matters; but both emerge from positions of complete moral confidence paired with strong desires for enforcement power. We might ask both groups, as Oakeshott does, “what am I so certain about that I would direct all the energy and activity of mankind to attaining?”58 One of Oakeshott’s most vivid political images is the Tower of Babel, which he uses as the title of two separate essays. In the first of these, he describes a morality of self-conscious ideals that is opposed to the more natural, organic morality that may grow up over time among a people. He argues that such self-conscious morality is brittle, prone to breakage, and less resilient. It is apt to be imposed from above by people who see themselves in the vanguard of moral change. It is the kind of morality that directs the politics of faith. Contemporary American integralism demonstrates not only faith in government to advance moral goals but also a worldly Christian faith (contradictory as that may seem) that prizes temporal, political victory in 56 57 58 See Vermeule, “It Can’t Happen.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Integralismus” (1963), trans. Charles Hughes Huff and Anne Carpenter, theologyandsociety.com/integralismus/. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 76. 940 Elizabeth Corey the guise of religion. To put it pointedly, integralists appear to be motivated by a love of power, not by humility. For as Balthasar explains in his astute criticism of integralism, the movement strives by all means, visible and hidden, public and secret, first to gain political and social power for the church, and then to proclaim the Sermon on the Mount and Golgotha from this secured citadel and pulpit. This seemingly purely tactical “first” inherently contains, consciously or unconsciously, a higher value. The end value, for whose sake first and foremost the money, earthly power, and organization is collected, hoarded, and launched, inevitably gets caught in the tow of the putative value of the means, if the end value is just the humiliated lamb, the crucified love.59 Integralists have little patience for the gentle skepticism that might inform a very different kind of Christian faith—one that faces the mystery of existence and is informed by John Keats’s “negative capability,” that ability to exist in the midst of “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”60 Yet at least one aspect of “the politics of skepticism” must be admitted as deficient, at least if we are seeking solutions for contemporary political problems. Skeptical politics, by definition, are not aimed at problem-solving. They focus on maintenance and incremental reform. And, although I have criticized integralism for its one-sidedness in diagnosing the overall condition of our culture, integralists are not wrong that there are many serious political and social problems in contemporary America. One wonders whether the restraint and respect for others required by skeptical politics— toward political allies and enemies alike—is feasible in a polarized situation like our own. This indeed is precisely integralism’s critique of traditional conservatives: in abiding by the rules of civilized society, we have ceded the battle to those who are willing to be warriors. Why not be warriors in turn, and vanquish the enemy once and for all? Even if we are inclined toward Oakeshott’s skeptical politics, as I am, we might nevertheless wonder whether this vision has any real purchase in the present day. After all, the politics of faith “was the dominant style of politics when Oakeshott was writing, and it remains so today.”61 Skepticism calls 59 60 61 Balthasar, “Integralismus.” John Keats, “Letter to his Brothers” (1817), mason.gmu.edu/~rnanian/Keats-Negative Capability.html. Grove, “Postliberal Politics of Faith,” 136. A Skeptical View of Integralism 941 for self-restraint, respect for others, and moderation in our expectations of worldly success. Skeptical politics demands “neither love nor gratitude but only respect,” and thus it likely “will receive indifference or even contempt.” The judicial, not executive, character of skepticism will be perceived as a “hindrance.”62 It gives no mandate for aggressive, reforming action; it spawns no movements; it is unexciting by design. These are its permanent defects and virtues. The defects of skeptical politics account for the tremendous appeal of integralism, particularly for the young men who embrace it. These youthful religious traditionalists are full of spirit and energy, unafraid of combat, and eager to take strong stances again what they (often rightly) perceive as the degeneration of American culture. Integralism offers them the opportunity to be part of a countermovement. Skepticism makes no such offer. It will frustrate those “who have a favourite project to promote or impose.”63 Still, I think the survival of this understanding of politics offers hope to those of us who wish to offset the grand dreams of enthusiastic reformers by more modest, but more possible, changes. Oakeshott’s politics of skepticism offers a vital reminder that political activity does not constitute all of life, and certainly not the most important part. It reminds us that our inheritance is always full of advances and declines, things to celebrate and lament in turn, and that no simple story should satisfy us. It also cautions us against investing too much of ourselves in worldly, political affairs, when the most important things lie elsewhere. Whether we are going to be destroyed by political enemies or by an atomic bomb, let those things—when and if they come—“find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”64 This is a permanent insight that constantly needs restating. 62 63 64 Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 109. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 33. C. S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948), in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harper Collins, 1986), 91–102. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 943–970 943 Aquinas and Black Natural Law Thomas S. Hibbs Baylor University Waco, TX In 1857, after the United States Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott, Frederick Douglass chastised the court for arrogating to itself the role of God, that of being absolute judge. While the Supreme Court has its own authority, he argued, “the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. Taney can do many things but he cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil good and good, evil.”1 The passage is one of many in Vincent Lloyd’s Black Natural Law that underscore the appeals of African American leaders, as part of their critique of slavery and segregation, to a higher or more fundamental law than that of human law. Lloyd describes the function of natural law reasoning, which he traces through the writings of Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr., in this way: From the careful examination of a “particular view of human nature” and its implications, they “apply those implications to the specifics of an ethical or political debate.”2 That sounds similar to the way some contemporary Catholic proponents of natural law depict their own deployment of it. Early in the book, Lloyd suggests that “European and Catholic natural law traditions can learn much from the black natural tradition.”3 Concerning what might be learned, he focuses on an expansive conception of reason in the African American tradition, a conception of reason that is integrated with the role of emotion or passion and that is not 1 2 3 The Frederick Douglass Papers, vol. 3 of Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979–1992), 167, quoted in Vincent Lloyd, Black Natural Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, viii. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, viii. 944 Thomas S. Hibbs individualistic, but communal. He also underscores the epistemic privilege of the oppressed, the way suffering injustice attunes us to justice. Beyond the themes mentioned explicitly by Lloyd, I would add the paradoxical claim that natural law teaching is not just about the accessibility of fundamental precepts of justice, but also about the human capacity for moral blindness and the way in which the violation of the natural law is in important ways its own punishment. Because of the regularity of such blindness, attention to the obstacles to the perception of the natural law must become “part of the very activity of natural law.” The ways in which these matters are articulated by African American authors can be, as Lloyd suggests, highly instructive. I would add that Lloyd’s treatment of natural law in the African American tradition can also be fruitful for recovering neglected features of Aquinas’s account. In what follows, I want to take up each of these themes and set them in conversation with the texts of Aquinas. As Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, has urged, seeing one’s own tradition from the perspective of another, can, at a minimum, help us see it more clearly.4 As MacIntyre also notes, any such attempt faces the difficulties of translating from one tradition or community of inquiry to another. I must, accordingly, stress the limitations to the current essay, which can be nothing more than a preliminary investigation. I will largely be taking Lloyd’s interpretation of the authors he studies as my assumed starting point, although in some cases I will offer my own reading of texts and authors he considers.5 What I will provide will be no more than an initial conversation, a first reading of Lloyd’s theses in relation to germane themes and arguments in Aquinas. A much longer exchange, based on an immersive study of selected African American texts and the chief commentaries on them would be needed to advance the 4 5 See Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), particularly the chapters “The Rationality of Traditions” (349–69) and “Tradition and Translation” (370–88). In another essay, he argues that an indispensable part of an undergraduate education is to “come to terms with cultures radically different from our own . . . intellectually and imaginatively” through learning “the language, the way of life and thought, the works of literature and other arts” (“The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University,” Commonweal, October 16, 2006, commonwealmagazine.org/end-education). For an argument relevant to the present essay, see Ryan Newsom, “Alasdair MacIntyre and Radically Dialogical Politics,” Political Theology 17 (2016): 243–63. I have written a bit about these matters: “W. E. B. DuBois and Socratic Questioning,” Expositions 2, no. 1 (2008): 35–58; “Subversive Natural Law: MacIntyre and African-American Thought,” in The Death of Metaphysics, Death of Culture, ed. Mark Cherry (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 135–50; and “The Liberating Power of the Humanities,” Modern Age, Summer 2017, thomashibbs.org/20474/humanities-liberating. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 945 conversation further. Before doing so, however, I want to provide a further reason that Catholic natural law thinkers should be eager to engage the Black natural law tradition, a reason derived from Joseph Ratzinger’s reflection on the strange situation of natural law in the modern world. Ratzinger on the Vanishing Evidence for Natural Law and the Engagement of Wisdom Traditions As the contemporary Catholic natural law theorist Russell Hittinger has shown,6 Ratzinger, as a ressourcement theologian, is a critic of “rationalism,” with “little confidence” in the older, “moral-juridical manualist and casuistical approach to natural law, which was prominent in casuistical approaches.”7 In fact, he thinks that any contemporary deployment of natural law must come to terms with the fact that, in the modern world, “what is moral has lost its evidence.”8 That fact complicates the question whether natural law can provide the basis for a universal ethic. Ratzinger’s response is sobering. Given his emphasis on reason or logos as distinctive of the Christian approach to inquiry, his skepticism about the possibility of rational debate over moral norms might seem odd. Indeed, he speaks of Christianity as a logos tradition. Christianity “has not identified its precursors in the other religions, but in that philosophical enlightenment which has cleared the path of traditions to turn to the search of the truth and towards the good, toward the one God who is above all gods.”9 The use of the term “enlightenment” is ambiguous. There is a philosophical enlightenment in classical antiquity which is a precursor of Christian theological reflection. There is also a modern Enlightenment concerning which Ratzinger has a twofold assessment. An early form of the modern movement, according to Ratzinger, maintains a connection to logos, while a later and now prominent form is evacuated of logos.10 In the latter, which reduces nature to sub-human chemical and biological processes, nature as the ancients and medieval thinkers understood it has 6 7 8 9 10 Russell Hittinger, “Natural Law and Wisdom Traditions,” The Muslim World 106 (2016): 313–36. Hittinger, “Natural Law and Wisdom Traditions,” 319. Joseph Ratzinger, “Consumer Materialism and Christian Hope,” in Teachers of the Faith: Speeches and Lectures by Catholic Bishops, ed. Tom Horwood (London: Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, 2002), 78–94, at 87. Joseph Ratzinger, “Europe’s Crisis of Culture,” address at the Convent of St Scholastica, Subiaco, Italy, April 1, 2005; Italian at chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/27262; English at popebenedictxvi.blogspot.com. Cited in Hittinger, “Natural Law and Wisdom Traditions,” 330. 946 Thomas S. Hibbs been “capsized.”11 In this context, natural law is not useful as a basis for conversation. Ratzinger thus issues a caution, perhaps even a rebuke, to the excessive optimism of those who would seek to deploy natural law in the contemporary public square as a basis for moral or political consensus. Ratzinger proposes that we recover natural law as surfacing in various communities or traditions, what he calls “wisdom traditions,” resulting in a “new emphasis on natural law not merely as a set of legal prohibitions but also as a search or path.”12 However much he may be committed to the tradition of logos, he is deeply critical of rationalistic attempts to formulate natural law apart from its embeddedness in particular traditions. What we need is a kind of inquiry that can mediate between universal and particular. As Peng Yin writes, in an essay on comparative theology, contemporary discussions would be more fruitful if we had access to an alternative to the Lockean language of toleration, which tends to “devalue distinctiveness,” and the multiculturalism of difference, which ignores “commonality.”13 The engagement with other wisdom traditions is a “dialogical” endeavor, a “search for common principles” through an appropriation of “converging pathways of existence.” Hittinger notes that, in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, the composition of which Pope John Paul II largely entrusted to Ratzinger, the term “search” occurs some sixty times.14 Wisdom traditions also recognize that practices are needed for the pursuit of truth; the search is not simply a matter of applying detached reason to a set of questions. Instead, the quest involves both intellectual and moral formation. Natural law is here envisioned as a starting point for the dialectical engagement of different cultures in light of the specific quest for the good embedded within them. 11 12 13 14 Joseph Ratzinger, “That Which Holds the World Together: The Pre-Political Moral Foundations of a Free State,” in Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 53–80, at 60–61; see also 69. Quoted in Hittinger, “Natural Law and Wisdom Traditions,” 326. Precisely such a conversation across wisdom traditions can be found in Anver Emon, Matthew Levering, and David Novak, Natural Law: A Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Trialogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Pen Ying, “Matteo Ricci’s Legacy for Comparative Theology,” Modern Theology 38 (2022): 548–67, at 548. The essay includes a reflection on Aquinas, particularly his understanding of creation and natural religion, as informing Ricci’s project. The essay is in part a response to Willie James Jennings, “Acosta’s Laugh,” in The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 65–118, which argues that “traditioned imperialist modernity . . . is articulated within and is born of an Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition” (71). Hittinger, “Natural Law and Wisdom Traditions,” 325. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 947 Again Ratzinger: Appropriation of the “evidences” of natural law, either by the individual or by a culture, is a “slow process requiring action and reflection—in a wisdom tradition, an apprenticeship.”15 It seems to me that Lloyd makes a compelling case for seeing the tradition of Black natural law as a wisdom tradition and a tradition that shares Ratzinger’s willingness to engage the Enlightenment while at the same being cautious or even suspicious of it. Reason, Emotion, and Community Lloyd makes at least two important points about the role of emotion in the African American natural law tradition. The first has to do with “the role of emotion in discerning natural law.”16 Perception is not merely a matter of abstract reasoning; it involves emotion and imagination. The second, related to the first, has to do with the resistance to reductionist views of human nature, which would single out one capacity to the exclusion of others.17 Lloyd quotes from King’s reflection on the distinctive elements of human nature, which include reason, memory, and imagination. King’s “subtle, multi-faceted account of human nature” recapitulates common themes in the African American tradition. The need to appeal to the various faculties and capacities of human nature gives rise to the varied genres in which many of the figures write and speak.18 Du Bois writes in “different registers,” while King’s sermons connect with his audience on an emotional and not just an intellectual level.19 The point is to provide multiple points of access 15 16 17 18 19 International Theological Commission, In Search for a Universal Ethics: A New Look at Natural Law (2009), §§53; 38. What Ratzinger says here about dialogical engagement with traditions of wisdom calls to mind MacIntyre’s account of tradition-constituted inquiry and the responsibility of adherents of one tradition to engage with other traditions. See note 4 above. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, ix. Of course, much depends here on what we mean by reason. In certain strains of the Enlightenment, reason is construed as instrumental and/or egoistic, or at least in abstraction from the rest of human nature. Precisely these conceptions of reason come under attack in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, in which characters embody a variety of modern Western conceptions of rationality and ethics; see Peter Roberts, “Education and the Limits of Reason: Reading Dostoevsky,” Educational Theory 62 (2012): 203–23. Interestingly, Dostoevsky had a significant impact on some African American writers; see Maria Bloshteyn, “Rage and Revolt: Dostoevsky and Three African-American Writers,” Comparative Literature Studies 38 (2001): 277–309. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 102. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 58. 948 Thomas S. Hibbs to natural law and to convince the whole of human persons, not just their detached reason. Aquinas of course takes reason to be normative. Following Aristotle, he holds that happiness is activity of soul in accord with reason. The precepts of the natural law are precepts of reason. But, as is implicit in the brief discussion of Ratzinger that we just concluded, the meaning of the term “reason” is far from univocal across traditions of inquiry. Aquinas does not think of reason as disembodied, as primarily calculative or utilitarian, or as somehow cut off from our bodily nature. The rational soul is the form of the body; its operation is naturally and appropriately dependent on the senses and the imagination; it has no direct Cartesian access to its own essence or operations; and in its encounter with the world, it is moved by wonder. In the practical order, it is not abstract principle that ordains specific acts, but prudence, which discerns what is salient in concrete circumstances, that commands what is to be done (Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 47, a. 8). Prudence cannot operate without the proper formation of the passions. We shall have occasion later on to address in detail the role of emotion or passion at the foundation of certain key virtues and vices that succor or hinder the practice of justice. For now, I want to underscore the role of passion in the teaching of natural law itself. Early in the discussion of the natural law, Aquinas stipulates that, “according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2).20 To say that the precepts of the natural law are self-evident is not to say that each person has already consciously formulated them. We can, moreover, be aware of the natural law at one level and unaware at another. So, in response to the question whether the natural law is the same in everyone, he responds that it is at the level of the most general precepts. However, in precepts that are more proximate to the order of action, knowledge can vary, “since in some the reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature” (a. 4). Even more starkly, in response to the question of whether the natural law can be abolished from the human heart, he writes: As to those general principles, the natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men’s hearts. But it is blotted out in the case of a particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from applying 20 English quotations of the Summa theologiae come from the Fathers of the English Dominican Province translation (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), with occasional minor changes. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 949 the general principle to a particular point of practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion, as stated above [I-II, q. 77, a. 2]. But as to the other, i.e. the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted out from the human heart, either by evil persuasions; . . . or by vicious customs and corrupt. habits. (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 6) Now, most of what Aquinas says here about the passions seems negative, in the sense that he attends to the ways in which disordered passions can undermine the application of the natural law in particular cases. Yet he also insists that the presence of appropriate passions can intensify the goodness of an act. The presence of certain passions, cooperating with the judgment of reason, “increases or decreases the goodness or malice of the act” (ST I-II, q. 24, a. 3). Given that we are creatures of intellect and body, it is important that we be moved as a whole to the good: it belongs “to the perfection of moral good” that we should be moved not only in the will but also in the passions. He adds that the presence of an appropriate passion “is a sign of the intensity of the will, and so indicates greater moral goodness.” We can and should also choose and move ourselves “to be affected by a passion in order to work more promptly” (ad 1). Because some passions are of their very nature in accord with virtue or vice, they can be good or evil in their species, “as is clear in the case of shame which is base fear; and of envy which is sorrow for another’s good” (a. 4, corp.). Thomas follows Aristotle in thinking that moral virtue involves an education or persuasion of the passions. Aquinas is not a Stoic. Moral virtue is not a matter of reason subduing or silencing the passions, but of educating them so that the human person takes delight in what is good and just. For virtue, it is not enough that we operate in accord with the judgment of reason or that we fulfill what is due in merely an external way. Virtue requires that we act from a well-formed character, which presupposes rightly ordered passions. Of course, the relationship between law and virtue in Aquinas is a complex one. One might think that bringing in virtue as part of the account of natural law is to introduce something alien to natural law. But Aquinas quite explicitly subsumes the acts of virtue under the natural law in the sense that “To the natural law belongs everything to which man is inclined according to his nature” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 3). Lloyd stresses not only reason’s connection to emotion and imagination but also its formation within a community. Cooper, Lloyd writes, was “immersed in a world of Christian text and practice,” including the formative 950 Thomas S. Hibbs singing of religious hymns.21 In her own philosophy, she stresses the indispensable role of “public sentiment,” which “precedes and begets all laws, good or bad”; she highlights the distinctive role of “women as teachers and molders of public sentiment.”22 In her writings, reason’s need for emotion and for communal formation corrects the tendency of reformers to “fall for rationalistic moral codes or prepackaged programs aimed at correcting injustice.”23 Communal practices shape the vision of the other authors whom he considers. For example, the language and practices of King and his followers reflect their formation in their churches. Aquinas shares a communal understanding of natural law; indeed, following Aristotle, he holds that human beings are by nature social. Unlike many modern social-contract theorists, who begin with individualistic assumptions, and thus treat the political order as entirely artificial, Aquinas assumes that politics is natural, an outgrowth of the instinct for sociability inherent in human nature. The very order of the precepts of the natural law, which as we have seen reflect an order of inclinations, evinces the social nature of human beings. There is a hierarchy among them which reflects the human connection to all beings, to all animals, and then to what is proper to the human species. The first has to do with the tendency of all beings to “preserve their own being.” We must be careful here not to equate this with an individualistic desire for self-preservation. Aquinas states that the inclination is to preserve its being “according to its nature,” and “thus whatever is a means of preserving human life . . . belongs to the natural law”—not my life, but human life. The second level includes matters belonging to all animals, such as sexual intercourse and the education of offspring. Once again, the accent is upon activities common to other beings and to the other-oriented activity of raising children. Finally, there are the inclinations proper to human nature, to know the truth about God and to live in community (ST I-II, q. 92, a. 4). At every level in the order of precepts, community is evident, including in knowing the truth about God, since that is a public good the response to which is communal worship. The very nature of law, for Aquinas, is to be ordered to the common good. Every law aims at a kind of friendship. The “precepts of the law,” Aquinas writes, “are diversified according to the various kinds of community” (ST I-II, q. 100, a. 2). Aquinas understands different kinds of political community in terms of different constitutions or regimes. Politics is ordered to 21 22 23 Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 34. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 48. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 48. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 951 the common good, not the private good. Aquinas goes so far as to say that individuals naturally love the common good more than they love their own private good. This is one reason why the virtue of justice is said to be the preeminent moral virtue. Aquinas quotes Cicero, who says that the splendor of virtue is most evident in justice (II-II, q. 58, a. 12). Unlike the other moral virtues, which perfect the soul of the agent, the primary good realized in justice is the good of the other. It involves giving to each what is his or her due. It is hard to imagine a stronger contrast on this point between Aquinas and peculiarly modern, individualistic conceptions of law. Finally, Lloyd argues that “human nature is ultimately unrepresentable.” Non-reductionist ways of describing human nature allow for a “marking of what is in the world but never fully captured by it.”24 Aquinas too recognizes the complexity of human nature, indeed the impenetrable mystery of each individual human person. His account of the unity of soul and body is an alternative to the two dominant modern accounts of human nature (materialist and dualist), both of which are reductionist. The very complexity of the human good, the multiple and unpredictable ways in which it can be realized, underscores the danger of reductionist accounts. In modernity, isolationist individualism often combines with ambitious projects of social engineering. The complex conception of human nature helps to ward off reductionist attempts to delimit human nature, or at least some members of the species, in ways that would seek to justify inequitable treatment. In his interpretation of Douglass, Lloyd writes that slavery limits human nature and “names it with a dollar sign”; it reduces human beings to property.25 Douglass holds, that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.26 Similarly, Du Bois’ insistence on the two-ness of African Americans is in part a plea for the recognition of the complex humanity of slaves; they are not merely what their supposed superiors say they are. In fact, they see more 24 25 26 Lloyd, Black Natural Law, xi. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 21. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, with introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Dell, 1971), 95. 952 Thomas S. Hibbs and more deeply than slave owners or defenders of segregation. see about the oppressed or even about themselves. Vice, Its Own Punishment One of the chief contrasts between pre-modern and modern conceptions of natural law has to do with the claim in the former that vice or violation of the natural law undermines human happiness or flourishing. Vice is in some sense its own punishment. Aquinas’s clearest statement runs thus: “Although sometimes the wicked do not undergo temporal punishment in this life, yet they suffer spiritual punishment. Hence Augustine says (Confessions I): ‘Thou hast decreed, and it is so, Lord—that the disordered mind should be its own punishment’” (ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2, ad 2).27 The point drops out not only in modern natural law but also in some contemporary Catholic conceptions of natural law. Yet it is surprisingly and instructively present in the African American natural law tradition. In an attempt to demonstrate a connection between Aquinas and the American regime, scholars sometimes trace a lineage back from the founders through Locke to Aquinas.28 The crucial mediator here is thought to be Richard Hooker. But in the key passage from his Second Treatise, in which Locke relies on Hooker to demonstrate that natural obligations rest on the “equality of men by nature,” Locke quotes the latter as saying: The like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, being of one and the same nature? . . . My desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully the like affection.29 27 28 29 See Scott Roniger, “Is There a Punishment for Violating the Natural Law,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 94, no. 2 (2020): 273–304. Justin Dyer, Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). John Locke, Second Treatise, in Classics of Moral and Political Theory (Hackett, 2011), 713. Locke here cites Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, bk. 1, ch. 2 (of the state of nature). Aquinas and Black Natural Law 953 We should notice here that Hooker’s argument is grounded in reciprocity of treatment. The logic of punishment for violation of the fundamental obligation of nature rests entirely on the threat of external, reciprocal punishment: “If I do harm, I must look to suffer.” What drops out here is the supposition, generally shared among pre-modern moral thinkers, that vice harms the perpetrator, not just the victim. Over and above the link between the violation of others and the expectation of external sanction, there is the insight into the diminished soul of the perpetrator. The thesis goes all the way back to Plato’s Apology, in which Socrates tells his accusers: “If you kill the sort of man I say I am, you will not harm me more than yourselves.”30 He proceeds to make an even stronger claim, namely, that a “good man cannot be harmed either in this life or in the next.”31 Neither Aquinas nor anyone in the African American natural law tradition embraces Socrates’s bold conflation of virtue with invulnerability to harm. In fact, the African American experience exacerbates the sense of the tragic longing for justice, of the horrifying gap between justice and happiness in this life. There is, however, a more plausible claim, namely, that vice damages the perpetrator, that it is in some measure its own punishment and that one form the punishment can take is as a kind of moral blindness. Lloyd quotes Douglass as saying that those who “study mankind with whip in hand will always go wrong,” and that slavery encourages “cruelty and a false sense of superiority.”32 He goes so far as to assert that the confederates are “entangled with the chains of their own slaves.”33 The theme runs from Douglass to King, who notes that segregation harms the segregator as well as the segregated. The point is echoed in other African American authors. For example, James Baldwin writes, “whoever debases others is debasing himself,” while Toni Morrison speaks of the way “the treatment of slaves degrades the owner.”34 During a trip through the south, Baldwin was struck by the condition of white southerners. Trying to find language to describe what he sees, he turns to Dante’s lines from Dante’s Inferno: “So many, I had not thought death had undone so many.” Baldwin also trenchantly commented on the American penchant for historical amnesia: “Those who 30 31 32 33 34 Plato, Apology 31d. Plato, Apology 41d. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 14. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 14. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Vintage, 1992), 83, and Toni Morrison, The Origin of the Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 29. 954 Thomas S. Hibbs willfully refuse to remember become moral monsters.”35 Here the intellectual and the emotional, the rational and the moral are inextricably intertwined. What is the evidence that Aquinas recognizes the possibility of moral blindness? Given his conviction that the human soul is naturally ordered to truth and goodness and that the precepts of the natural law are self-evident to all, it would seem that he might not have much to say about this. That impression is deeply misleading. He argues, in fact, that, under specific conditions, conditions that are quite common, we can indeed hate the truth. In such cases, “a particular truth” can be “considered as hurtful and repugnant.” For example, the entertaining and acting on a particular truth might be an obstacle the fulfillment of some desire that we have. Or a truth might reveal something about ourselves that we prefer would remain hidden. Aquinas quotes Augustine: we “love truth when it enlightens,” but “hate it when it reproves” (ST I-II, q. 29, a. 5; quoting Confessions 10.23). Aquinas speaks explicitly of “blindness of mind,” which is evident in our deliberate averting of our attention from a relevant truth. We can, for example, be distracted from considering and/or performing an obligatory act by our desire for pleasure or our fear of the burdens associated with the act. These are fairly obvious cases. More damaging instances occur when our will deliberately turns away from the consideration of a truth. Aquinas cites Psalm 34:4—“He would not understand, that he might do well” (ST II-II, q. 15, a. 1). Moral blindness not only blocks our access to truths relevant to our personal good; it also and especially undermines our access to truths concerning injustice. Aquinas makes explicit the connection between moral blindness and injustice in his discussion of the vice of suspicion. Aquinas calls suspicion a “perversity or disorder of the affections” that has to do with thinking ill of someone based on “slight indications” or what we might call insufficient evidence. If we are inclined to evil ourselves, Aquinas notes, then we are likely to suspect others of evil-doing. We can also be ill-disposed toward another, and thus suspicious, because of envy or anger. Aquinas also ranks suspicion by degrees of malice or harm. The first and most mild type occurs “when a man begins to doubt of another’s goodness from slight indications.” The second arises from making a judgment of certitude about someone’s evil without sufficient evidence. If this concerns a serious matter, Aquinas argues that it is a grave sin, entailing “contempt of one’s neighbor.” The most heinous form of suspicion occurs in the legal system, when “a judge 35 See Eddie Glaude, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s American and its Urgent Lessons for our Own (New York: Crown, 2020), 202. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 955 goes so far as to condemn a man on suspicion” (ST II-II, q. 60, a. 3). All of these degrees of suspicion can be found in various racist practices.36 In Aquinas’s reflections on moral blindness, we find an amplification of his teaching on the ways the natural law can be abolished from the human heart. Lloyd makes a profound point in his elaboration of Douglass’s teaching that we have a distorted perception of human nature: “We are estranged from ourselves.” He adds that a “prerequisite to implementing the natural law is ridding ourselves of such distortions.” The task is not just to open our eyes and look; first we have to remove “obstructions to grasping.”37 But this is no easy matter. In fact, it “is such a large task that it actually comes to entail much of the work of natural law itself.”38 The last point is crucial and largely neglected in natural law discourse. There is something perplexing, paradoxical, and horrifying about the human capacity to blind itself to precepts that are self-evident to us. For Aquinas, this is one of the reasons for the revealed law, which in its moral content, reiterates what is already accessible through the natural law. In this context, revealed law calls us to a kind of recollection of what we already in some sense know. Our moral forgetfulness, our capacity to disown what we know, is one of the reasons for the use of varied genres of writing and modes of speech in communicating with different audiences about the natural law. There is a need for irony, for drama, and for rhetoric to move us to see what we have forgotten. The mere apprehension of universal principles of moral right are not sufficient; we can affirm them at one level and deny them at another or affirm them in one context and fail to apply them consistently in another. Given the emphasis in Enlightenment morality on such abstract principles, 36 37 38 In thinking about what Aquinas might say about racism, I am indebted to Therese Cory, “A Thomistic Approach to the Evils of Racism,” Church Life Journal, March 15, 2022 (churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-thomistic-approach-to-the-moral-evilsof-racism/), and “A Thomistic Approach to Structural Racism,” Church Life Journal, April 26, 2022 (churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-thomistic-approach-to-structuralracism/). Much more would need to be said about the question of structural sin, or in this case structural racism. I would begin with what Aquinas says about the possibility of the precepts of the natural law being blotted out of the human heart through “vicious customs and corrupt habits” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 6). There are various sources or causes of the occlusion of the precepts; some of these causes can be communal practices. I am grateful to Anne Jeffrey for her comments about occlusion and for her helpful criticisms of an early draft of this essay. The Frederick Douglass Papers, vol. 5 of Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979–1992), 142–43, quoted in Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 12. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 12. 956 Thomas S. Hibbs there is reason to be suspicious of the adequacy of such an approach to matters of justice. In certain forms of Enlightenment thought, there is a blindness to moral blindness, a naïve disregard for the depths of evil in the human heart. While Aquinas did not know the Enlightenment, he was aware of our capacity to disown knowledge. John Henry Newman, a modern Catholic author, faces such Enlightenment views in his reflections on the dominant education system of his time.39 As one commentator on Newman’s educational theory puts it: “The whole foundation of Bentham’s utilitarian University College in London was premised on the idea that knowledge does make men better morally; as early as the 1830’s Newman was a consistent critic of this fallacy of the march of the mind.”40 Enlightened utilitarians suppose that “our true excellence comes not from within, but from without; not wrought out through personal struggle and suffering; but following upon a passive exposure to influences over which we have no control.”41 They are blind to 39 40 41 Although it is not directly relevant to this essay, it seems to me important to note the overlap between classical conceptions of liberal education and the remarkably rich reflections on liberal education in the authors whom Lloyd examines. Both the tradition of Aquinas and the African American tradition resist the reduction of education to an instrumentalist model. This is another example of the ways in which there is a closer affiliation between Aquinas and African American thought than there is between either and dominant American paradigms. American education is dominated by instrumental (Benjamin Franklin) and pragmatic ( John Dewey) theories of education. Lloyd notes that Cooper was not just an advocate but also an avid practitioner and teacher of liberal education. Her views put her in conflict with Booker T. Washington’s more utilitarian model of education. She insisted that the goal is to educate human beings, not machines. In this dispute, she is closer to W. E. B. Du Bois, who in a chapter in The Souls of Black Folk, offers perhaps the greatest defense of liberal education ever penned by an American. Douglass focused on education as crucial to his own path to freedom. Even while enslaved, education gave him a sense of interior freedom, a sense of his own intellectual capacity and dignity as a rational being. Liberal education, Du Bois writes, develops the fundamental human longing to ponder the “riddle of existence.” Du Bois had argued that the “true college will ever have but one goal—not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes” (The Souls of Black Folk, with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. [New York: Bantam Classics, 1989], 58). As Lloyd notes in his discussion of Du Bois on education, the problem is how to inculcate in youth a sense of the good, the true, and the beautiful and “crucially how they are interchangeable” (Black Natural Law, 87). Paul Shrimpton, The Making of Men: The Idea and the Reality of Newman’s University in Oxford and Dublin (Leominster, MA: Gracewing), 470. St. John Henry Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” in Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects (London: Basil, Montagu, Pickering, 1872), 266. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 957 “the enormities of evil.”42 The theoretical view of the power of theory to counter evil ignores the need for moral struggle and the human vulnerability to self-deception or moral blindness.43 The contradiction between abstract, Enlightenment precepts and moral practice is the implicit subject of Douglass’s famous speech delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, on the topic of the significance for the Negro of the celebration of July Fourth.44 In a marvel of political rhetoric, Douglass celebrates the achievement of the revolution and its defining document, The Declaration of Independence. He notes America’s many achievements. Then, in a shocking shift in tone, he bluntly inquires whether those who invited him sought to “mock” him by “asking him to speak.”45 Instead of being an occasion for shared rejoicing, the Fourth serves only to underscore the gap between free and slave. He asks: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”46 Anticipating the objection that he should not indulge in incendiary rhetoric but in dispassionate reasoning, he observes that there is no real need to make the argument on behalf of human equality, as the Declaration itself settles that. The horrifying perplexity is the contradiction between principles recognized and the absence of change that should result from the principles. The affirmation of principles at one level is no guarantee that their relevance will be apprehended or applied in every particular circumstance. Basic precepts, as Aquinas argues, can indeed be abolished from the human heart, most shockingly in those who claim to embody the highest standards of justice. Douglass excoriates both the religious and the political practices of Americans: At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. . . . The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation 42 43 44 45 46 St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, ed. Frank M. Turner (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 142. See Newman, Idea, 91: “Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man.” Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” in The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2016), 50–71. Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 56. Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 60. 958 Thomas S. Hibbs must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.47 Here we return to the theme of the topic of the complexity of human nature, to Lloyd’s insistence that not just reason, but also emotion and imagination are operative in the recognition and implementation of the natural law. The ironic shift in Douglass’s speech is designed, just as it is in Socrates’s own ironic indictments of Athens, to turn the listeners back upon themselves—from self-congratulation to self-examination, and from celebration to penitential remorse. The very fact that we affirm abstract principles, so prominent in Enlightenment moral and political theory, can be conducive to moral blindness, because it can contribute to self-congratulation about our moral awareness and judgment. It can thus serve to conceal the glaring gap between what we purport to affirm in the abstract and how we actually live. The failure to mediate between universal and particular here is a moral failure, not merely an epistemic one. Occlusion of the moral law can take many forms. Here the stubborn and recalcitrant resistance takes the form of a disregarding, willful or not, of an obvious application of universal to particular. Yet, he concludes on a note of hope and continues to find encouragement in the Declaration.48 Douglass’s dialectical engagement of Enlightenment principles is at once affirming and critical, even suspicious. Epistemic Privilege Implicit in Douglass’s oration on Independence Day is a claim to a kind of epistemic privilege: he is asserting that he knows what his audience does not and that this knowledge is rooted in his experience of injustice. One of the ironies of Douglass’s claim and strategy is that he is attempting to unsettle the claims to epistemic privilege in his white audience, who suppose that their own knowledge of the Declaration is sufficient and certainly superior to that of African Americans. But what is meant by epistemic privilege? We might begin with Du Bois, who speaks at length about the “color line.” There is not, however, a neat divide between the worlds of the two races. The need to navigate a white world for African Americans creates what Du Bois calls two-ness, implicit perhaps in the plural use of the term “souls” in his book, The Souls of Black 47 48 Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 69. For a bracing interpretation of the Declaration that takes quite seriously contemporary debates, see Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2015). Aquinas and Black Natural Law 959 Folk.49 He writes: “Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretense or revolt, to hypocrisy or radicalism.”50 He speaks of the gift of second sight, indicating that African Americans see better and more than white Americans. Lloyd adds that “continuing to persevere through overwhelmingly harsh conditions and deprivation offers insight into what is necessary to count as human and into human capabilities.”51 In his comments on King, he observes that “oppression makes it easier to see God’s image and God’s law.”52 Just as the momentary experience of being subject to in justice, or witnessing others being subjected, can make anger flash in our hearts and render us more keenly cognizant of a lack of justice, so too, and in an even more profound way, oppression provides insight into injustice. Oppression indicates something more than a passing experience of an unjust act; it involves sustained subjection to injustice. Persons afflicted in this manner are all the more aware of the harms that they and others suffer; they may also see the dehumanization of the oppressor in ways to which the oppressor is oblivious. What happens after the initial insight is crucial for Du Bois and King. For Du Bois, the internal conflict of two-ness is both gift and curse. It gives insight, but it is also a source of pain and can be a temptation to destructive violence, channeled internally or externally. Du Bois sees three possible paths: revolt and revenge, conformity, or a determined effort at self-realization.53 The third is the only one that refuses to allow the opponent to set the terms of the debate. Similarly, King presents nonviolent civil disobedience as an alternative to passive compliance and reactionary violence. A crucial preparatory element to civil disobedience is what he calls purification, which insures both that one will be able to endure the insults and injury without resorting to violence and that anger is focused on injustice rather than hatred 49 50 51 52 53 Kwame Anthony Appiah observes, “the title can be read in two ways—as the souls of a black people and as the souls of black people. Perhaps we are to think both of the souls of individual black folk and of the multiple souls contending for possession of the collective black folk. . . . Du Bois pulses with individualist and collectivist rhetoric, in an alternating current” (Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014], 77). Du Bois, Souls, 142. As David Levering Lewis notes, an important source for two-ness and internal division in Du Bois is Hegel’s dialectical philosophy, particularly his famous treatment of Master and Slave (W. E. B. Du Bois 1868–1919: Biography of a Race [New York: Henry Holt, 1993], 139–40). Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 71. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 99. Du Bois, Souls, 34. 960 Thomas S. Hibbs of persons. Thus, we might say that, for King, efficacious insight involves more than the suffering of injustice; it involves suffering accompanied by a certain kind of response, a response that combines knowledge and passion in an appropriate way. There is an additional point here that needs to be noted. Those who are not directly affected by the oppression to which others are subject should be slow to offer interpretations of that experience. Consider, for example, the debate between Hannah Arendt and Ralph Ellison over the case of fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, who, in September of 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education, sought to enter the previously segregated Central High in Little Rock. She was surrounded by a white mob spitting at her and yelling vile racist insults at her. In two 1959 essays in Dissent, Arendt was critical of the parents of the African American Little Rock students, for exposing their children to such abuse and forcing them into a group where they are not wanted. She poses to herself the question, “what would I do if I were a Negro mother?”54 In part, her criticism is derived from her own political theory, according to which there are three spheres: the private, the social and the political. In the social, to which she assumes schooling belongs, individuals are free to gather with whomever they prefer, in an exclusive way. Set aside the fact that the schools in question are government-funded public schools. Ellison sees a much deeper problem. Ellison objects to Arendt’s “presumption of an Olympic authority.”55 In an interview, Ellison expands on his criticism: At any rate, this too has been part of the American Negro experience, and I believe that one of the important clues to the meaning of that experience lies in the idea, the ideal of sacrifice. Hannah Arendt’s failure to grasp this ideal among Southern Negroes caused her to fly off into left field in her “Reflections on Little Rock” in which she charged Negro parents with exploiting their children during the struggle to integrate schools. But she has absolutely no conception of what goes on in the minds of Negro parents when they send their kids through those lines of hostile people. Yet they are aware of the overtones of a rite of initiation which such events actually constitute for the child, a confrontation of the terrors of social life with all the 54 55 See Hannah Arendt, “Reflections on Little Rock,” Dissent 6, no. 1 (1959): 45–56; Arendt, “A Reply to Critics,” Dissent 6, no. 2 (1959): 179–181. Ralph Ellison, “The World and the Jug,” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan with introduction (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 155–87, at 156. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 961 mysteries stripped away. And in the outlook of many of these parents (who wish that the problem didn’t exist), the child is expected to face the terror and contain his fear and anger precisely because he is a Negro American. Thus, he’s required to master the inner tensions created by his racial situation, and if he gets hurt—then his is one more sacrifice. It is a harsh requirement, but if he fails this basic test, his life will be even harsher.56 To her credit, in a typewritten letter, Arendt responded to Ellison by admitting that she simply had no idea of the complexity of the situation. Making prudential judgments in such cases requires abandoning the Olympian perspective and apprehending the concrete conditions of action in specific circumstances. It requires something like what Pope Francis likes to call encounter. What would Aquinas make of this claim to epistemic privilege? He clearly affirms one version of that thesis in his Aristotelian insistence that, as someone is, so does the good appear. We have already noted the way passion can increase the goodness of an act. Even more, it is a thesis common to Aristotle and Aquinas that the formation of one’s character determines to some extent what one sees or fails to see. Or, as Aquinas puts it, “the mind is drawn, on account of his affections, towards the things for which he has an affection, according to Mt. 6:21, ‘Where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also’” (ST II-II, q. 166, a. 1, ad 2). I want to address the question further by focusing on what Aquinas has to say about the virtue of mercy and about the character traits and passions that block or assist in the accurate perception of, and response to, situations that call for mercy. We should notice two things right away about Aquinas’s account of mercy. The first is that it is rooted in a passion, namely, sorrow, prompted by sadness over another’s misfortune. The second is that Aquinas has a much broader notion of mercy than we typically do. In “Aquinas on the Obligation of Mercy,” Shawn Floyd sets Aquinas’s account in contrast to the contemporary tendency to reduce mercy to forgiveness or the cancellation of a legal debt. Instead, as Floyd shows, mercy is one of the virtues that addresses “human neediness wherever—and in whomever—it exists.” He adds: And its beneficiaries are not exclusively (or even primarily) offenders or debtors. They are people who are destitute, sick, lonely, grieved, 56 R. P. Warren, Who Speaks for the Negro? (New York: Random House, 1965), 343–44. 962 Thomas S. Hibbs ignorant, and hungry. It is in this context that mercy seems most germane and capable of providing us with the guidance we need when faced with human neediness and suffering.57 The Latin term misericordia is not easy to translate; its literal meaning has to do with a suffering of the heart over the misfortune of another. It entails both feeling, being affected by the misery of others, and a willingness to try to assist the afflicted other (ST II-II, q. 30, a. 1). Feeling is indispensable but not sufficient. Indeed, between the initial movement of the passion and action, there is a need for judgment, according to Aquinas, judgment that indicates that the suffering endured is something that merits our response. So, we could be moved by sounds of pain and discover that the person is undergoing a dental exam or that a child is being reasonably deprived of screen time because of misbehavior. In these cases, no response on our part is necessary or appropriate. In other cases, however, reason would judge that a response is required. The account of misericordia takes aim at a false notion of self-sufficiency. Aquinas writes, “The proud are without mercy, because they despise others, and think them wicked, so that they account them as suffering deservedly whatever they suffer” (ST II-II, q. 30, a. 2). One of the illusions to which we are prone is the supposition that we are protected, by birth, inheritance, or achievement, from grave misfortune. Everyone is dependent and vulnerable in various ways. Aquinas writes, “The old and the wise who consider that they may fall upon evil times, as also feeble and timorous persons, are more inclined to mercy: whereas those who deem themselves happy, and so far powerful as to think themselves in no danger of suffering any hurt, are not so inclined to mercy.” Aquinas’s accentuation of the contingency of the goods we possess, their vulnerability to ordinary and tragic loss, goes well beyond Aristotle. Mercy brings these differences to the fore.58 Throughout his book, Lloyd talks about natural law as a basis for a 57 58 Shawn Floyd, “Aquinas and the Obligations of Mercy,” Journal of Religious Ethics 37, no. 3 (2009): 449–71, at 454. If mercy is not to be limited to forgiveness, it is also not to be equated with modern notions of pity, that is, with the feeling badly that someone else is worse off but doing so from a fairly safe distance. What Aquinas says about friendship is relevant: “He who loves another looks upon another as a second self, he counts his friend’s hurt as his own, so that he grieves for his friend’s hurt as though he were hurt himself ” (ST II-II, q. 30, a. 1, ad 2). On the various senses of mercy and compassion and the distinctive contribution of Aquinas, see John O’Callaghan “Fearless Mercy beyond Justice: Aquinas and Nussbaum’s Pity Tradition,” in Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture, ed. Raymond Hain (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019). Also see Aquinas and Black Natural Law 963 critique of ideology, especially the ideology rooted in power and wealth. Neither the exercise of power nor the mere possession of external goods is inherently vicious. Yet Aquinas distinguishes just from unjust rule in terms of whether the end is the common good or the good merely of the rulers. The desire for and the possession of power creates certain near occasions of sin, temptations to what Aristotle calls “graspingness,” the desire to have more than one is due. From his discussion of the illusion of self-sufficiency and the vice of avarice, it is clear both power and wealth can easily generate vices that blind us to the needs of others and that render us cruel and merciless (ST II-II, q. 159, a. 1, ad 3). The greatest risk of the possession of wealth is that it can breed the illusion of self-sufficiency (q. 84, a. 2). Wealth denotes the possession of things over which we have “absolute mastery” (q. 118, a. 2). Aquinas states that “the avaricious takes pleasure in the consideration of himself as the possessor of riches” (a. 6). Like pride, covetousness causes insensibility to mercy, because a man’s heart is not softened by mercy to assist the needy with his riches” (a. 8). Certain virtues make for epistemic privilege and certain kinds of experiences can predispose us to the virtues and make us acutely aware of their need. If avarice and pride are obstacles to mercy, even to perceiving the need for mercy, then poverty or detachment from the possession of external things and humility or a sense of the contingency of one’s own life and gifts are likely to incline one to be generous and merciful. Even more fundamentally, such dispositions enable one to recognize and be moved by the needs of others.59 Anger, Justice, and the Unity of the Virtues Now, the focus on love and mercy might seem to create inappropriate burdens on the victims of injustice, that they should love even as oppressors seize upon that love as a weakness to be exploited for further injustice.60 59 60 Robert Miner, “The Difficulties of Mercy: Reading Thomas Aquinas on Misericordia,” Studies in Christian Ethics 28, no. 1 (2015): 70–85. There are of course questions here about our capacity for empathy, the ways in which we tend to project our own interpretations of the predicament of others onto the question of what they need. For the limits to and distortions often involved in empathy, see Mary Scudder, Beyond Empathy and Inclusion: The Challenge of Listening in Democratic Deliberation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). See also Olivia Bailey, “Empathy with Vicious Perspectives? A Puzzle About the Moral Limits of Empathetic Imagination,” Synthese 199 (2021): 9621–47. There are important questions about anger and forgiveness, questions about who can or should forgive whom of what. On the complexities of forgiveness and its underlying 964 Thomas S. Hibbs Some are even tempted to argue that anger itself is inappropriate. But this is problematic, as is clear from the argument in Amia Srinivasan’s essay “The Aptness of Anger.” She defends a view of anger as a fitting response to “moral violation” and attempts to separate out the angry demand for recognition from a vicious desire for revenge: “To get aptly angry is not merely to appreciate the disvalue of an unjust situation or an immoral act. Anger is also a form of communication, a way of publicly marking moral disvalue, calling for the shared negative appreciation of others.”61 One of the typical objections to the expression of anger by those experiencing injustice is that it will be counterproductive to the aim of combating the injustice. Srinivasan responds that “it is not enough to think of it only in terms of its political efficacy. We must also think of it as an act in itself, an act that—when apt—registers and communicates the badness of injustice.”62 She returns repeatedly to the Stoic notion of anger as always destructive and never virtuous. Aquinas, as we have noted, is not a Stoic. In his discussion of the vice of anger, he asks whether it is lawful to be angry. He responds that it can be not only lawful, but virtuous: Inasmuch as the movement of the sensitive appetite is directed against vice and in accordance with reason, this anger is good, and is called “zealous anger.” Wherefore, Gregory says [Moralia 5.45]: “We must beware lest, when we use anger as an instrument of virtue, it overrule the mind, and go before it as its mistress, instead of following in reason’s train, ever ready, as its handmaid, to obey.” This latter anger, although it hinder somewhat the judgment of reason in the execution of the act, does not destroy the rectitude of reason. (ST II-II, q. 158, a. 1, ad 2). He also responds to the objection that such anger always entails a vicious desire for vengeance: “It is unlawful to desire vengeance considered as evil to the man who is to be punished, but it is praiseworthy to desire vengeance as a corrective of vice and for the good of justice” (ad 3). He even goes so far as to argue that the “lack of anger can be a sin” (a. 8). So, Aquinas thinks 61 62 importance for both offenders and victims, see Everett Worthington, Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application (New York: Routledge, 2006). For these texts, I am indebted to conversation with my Baylor colleague, Anne Jeffrey, and to her paper in progress on love of enemies. Amia Srinivasan, “The Aptness of Anger,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2018): 123–44, at 132. Srinivasan, “Aptness of Anger,” 138. Aquinas and Black Natural Law 965 that anger is, in some cases, not just permitted, but morally required. The determination of where and when and in what way the expression of anger is apt falls to the judgment of practical reason. Following Aristotle, Aquinas insists on the inseparability of the moral virtues and the virtue of prudence. When he defines each of the virtues, Aristotle adds that the temperate or courageous person will do the right thing in the right way, that is, in a way appropriate to the persons, situation, and so on. Thus, each of the virtues needs prudence. Conversely, without the formation of the passions through virtues like courage and temperance, the operation of practical reason will be derailed. In this way, Aquinas makes an argument for the unity of the virtues. Aquinas makes the case for the connection among the virtues in another way, based on a set of concrete observations about particular virtues and how they can be undermined. In his examination of the operation of particular virtues in specific settings, he detects ways in which they can be undermined or go astray. Thus, he leads us to reflect on the vices that might undermine a particular virtue; that reflection generates further thought about other virtues that might combat the harms caused by the vices. The thesis concerning the unity of the virtues gives rise to the following objection concerning the practice of justice. Must we possess all the other virtues in order to practice justice? Nothing in Aquinas’s account entails that one must have every virtue in the fullest in order to have any one at all. Instead, one can possess a virtue to one degree or another and one virtue more than another. The very understanding in Aristotle and Aquinas of the way virtue is inculcated indicates that it typically happens gradually. The teaching on training in virtue indicates further that, unless one practices it imperfectly, one will never practice it adequately. That truth about the need to practice to become adept applies to all the virtues. There is an additional consideration with regard to the virtue of justice. The good directly involved in the practice of many of the virtues is that of the agent. By contrast, justice is the good of the other. Now if one wants to be just and focus on harms being wrongly inflicted on others, it would seem odd to shift one’s attention to how well one is embodying the other virtues, particularly the self-regarding virtues. So, for example, anger at injustice can be excessive and harmful in the ways we have already discussed. But to be so concerned about the danger of inordinate anger that one fails to respond to a grave injustice is to be too focused on oneself and insufficiently on the good or harm of the other. In this way, one would fall short in the matter of justice, which is about the common good, not just an individual’s good. 966 Thomas S. Hibbs The focus on the common good raises the question of the role of political prudence, a topic to which Lloyd turns near the end of the book. Lloyd argues that the natural law tradition fosters “the measured, politically strategic instincts of the tradition. When too much is demanded too quickly, without practical wisdom and political calculus, we tend to deviate from natural law.”63 In fact, he goes so far as to attribute some of the decline of natural law thinking to a preference for eschatological urgency: The canonical formulations of black natural law do not begin by attacking specific laws. . . . They begin by reflecting on how human nature is distorted by institutions, laws, and social norms. . . . The black natural law tradition emphasizes the need for practical wisdom and patience in the implementation of natural law.64 The emphasis on political prudence certainly accords with Aquinas’s own thoughts about how to apply natural law to the concrete conditions of any political order. One of the worries is about unintended consequences of attempts at social engineering. At one point, Aquinas speaks of the difficulty of setting aside the “customs of a whole people” (ST I-II, q. 97, a. 3, ad 2). The ineradicable role of custom leads Aquinas in the direction of a sustained, detailed prudential engagement with particular regimes. In circumstances where the people is not virtuous, law forbids only “the most grievous vices” and its goal is to move the people to virtue, “not suddenly but gradually” (q. 96, a. 2, ad 2). The assumption of this article, which asks whether human law represses all vice, is that human law does indeed seek to inculcate virtue. The purpose of human law is to lead to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Aquinas worries that an overzealous imposition of virtue can lead citizens to despise the laws and thus “from contempt” to “break into evils worse still” (ad 2). Aquinas also thinks we are obligated to obey legitimately established laws, even in some cases unjust laws.65 We are here touching upon the question that provoked King to compose his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. King is arguing in part that the injustices he is opposing are not inconveniences, but rather the kind of “grievous vices” that Aquinas thinks the law is bound to forbid. King disobeys currently existing law while being willing to accept the penalty for the violation. Natural law can also make us 63 64 65 Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 145. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 146–47. ST, I-II, q. 96 (On the Power of Human Law), especially a. 4, “Does the Human Law Bind in Conscience?” Aquinas and Black Natural Law 967 aware of corrupt customs; as Aquinas notes, bad customs can erode awareness and implementation of the natural law. There is an overlap here with Lloyd’s suggestion that natural law reasoning “begins by reflecting on how human nature is distorted by institutions, laws, and social norms.”66 According to Lloyd, King is arguing that truths evident from a higher and more fundamental law inform and guide “social movement organizing” aimed at countering, alleviating, and eliminating unjust practices.67 Religion, Natural Law, and Hospitality One question that surfaces occasionally in Lloyd’s book and quite regularly in discussions of Thomistic natural law is the extent to which natural law is in fact a theological teaching. It is of the essence of law that it be promulgated. Thomas holds that the natural law is promulgated through creation itself, 66 67 Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 146. Lloyd, Black Natural Law, 147. There is a larger question lurking here, too large to be explicitly included in this paper, concerning what role experience and knowledge gained through centuries of political practice play in the current theory and practice of Thomistic political thought. It is of course an assumption of this essay that the study of quite varied political practices, virtuous or vicious, is not only possible but also salutary and necessary. For an affirmative argument, grounded in the Thomistic claim that politics is about the realization of unchanging human ends or goods which are realized prudentially in different ways in different contexts, “humans must conduct any political arrangement with a freedom toward institutions” and thus be open to learning from the experience of political life; see William McCormick, The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2023). McCormick says further: “Just as the church must be ambivalent toward temporal arrangements, . . . so, even within political life, humans must approach political forms with the prudence and humility of a student, acknowledging that they, both legislators and communities, always have more to learn” (218). The most important set of experiences in the Catholic reflection on these matters is that of Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians (Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, imprint of Cornell University Press, 1992). Also see Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indian (Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994). Alexis de Tocqueville is also relevant here, as he contrasts ancient and modern slavery, noting, in a way that complements Douglass’s reflections on the incompatibility of slavery with education, that modern slavery aims at the mind, not just the bondage of the body. See Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 361. Even closer to our time, the American Catholic experience of anti-Catholic prejudice, particularly after Catholics became a target of the Ku Klux Klan, led the Knights of Columbus in the 1920s to commission a series of books, including Du Bois’ The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America, as well as books on the role of the Jews and those of German nationality in the making of America. 968 Thomas S. Hibbs as God creates human beings with inclinations to ends congruent with their nature. Yet, the notion of creation need not be explicitly invoked in order to understand the basic precepts. I take it that Lloyd’s reading of the modern African American natural law tradition concurs with Aquinas’s view that the precepts of the natural law are accessible, however imperfectly, through reflection on human nature. Another way to pose this question is to wonder about the extent to which the recognition and implementation of the natural law rests upon participation in religious communities.68 In principle, this would not be necessary, and yet in the African American tradition, it is difficult to conceive of the rich articulation and development of natural law apart from the formative influence of the Black churches. The claim is palpable in the life and work of King. Lloyd argues that the radical King is the religious King, that his deepest insights are found in his early, explicitly theological reflections on justice and that he moved away from the explicit use of scriptural themes only because he felt the need to reach a more secular audience.69 The connection is also prominent in Cooper, who ties natural law to the recognition of the presence of the image of God in every human being. Du Bois’ account is generally more secular, but he concludes The Souls of Black Folk with a moving reflection on the sorrow songs. Du Bois finds in the tradition of the songs sung by slaves an undaunted faith in, and hope for, justice—a fundamentally religious impulse.70 68 69 70 Formation in practices that train us to remember and be grateful for divine generosity enable us to transcend cultural assumptions about scarcity and move to models of abundance. The importance of abundance is evident in Martin Luther King’s sermon “Our God is Able” (kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/our-god-able), as well as in Aquinas’s suggestion that divine mercy is the most powerful sign of God’s omnipotence (see ST II-II, q. 30, a. 4). As the Thomist Josef Pieper comments: “The just man who . . . realizes that his very being is a gift, and that he is heavily indebted before God and man, is also the man willing to give where there is no strict obligation. He will be willing to give another man something no one can compel him to give” (A Brief Reader of the Virtues of the Human Heart, trans. Paul C. Duggan [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991], 24). In his introduction to The Radical King (Boston: Beacon, 2015), Cornel West writes: “Like his great contemporary, Dorothy Day, . . . Dr. King understood radical love as a form of death—a relentless self-examination in which a fearful, hateful, egoistic self dies daily to be reborn into a courageous, loving, and sacrificial self. For both Day and King, this radical love flows from an imitation of Christ, a response to an invitation of self-surrender in order to emerge fully equipped to fight for justice in a cold and cruel world of domination and exploitation” (xvi). By ending with the barely articulate yearnings of the slaves, Du Bois unsettles assumptions about rationalist enlightenment, even as he counters the interpretation of his own Aquinas and Black Natural Law 969 Thomas’s distinction between acquired and infused virtue might lead us to think that attention to the virtue of mercy in a discussion of natural law is unwarranted. After all, Aquinas subordinates mercy to the supernatural virtue of charity. Yet, Aquinas cites Cicero, a pagan author, as an authority on mercy; so, he recognizes natural versions of the virtue as well. Moreover, the duty to assist those in need is entailed by the natural virtue of justice, as is clear from Aquinas’s discussion of conditions for and the limitations to private property.71 In response to the question whether it is lawful to steal in cases of necessity or dire need, he responds in the affirmative with a qualification. Since the goods of the earth are intended for the well-being of all, rightful ownership of property is not absolute or unlimited. In such cases, taking what is needed is not in fact theft. Noting that this teaching is part of the natural law, he writes, Whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor. For this reason, Ambrose . . . says, and his words are embodied in the Decretals (Dist. xlvii, can. Sicut ii): “It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom and freedom.” (ST II-II, q. 66, a. 7, corp.) The obligation to assist those in need is part of the natural law; such a duty is not limited to extreme cases, however. Aquinas thinks that one of the purposes of the individual possession of goods is so that we can assist others: “Since . . . there are many who are in need, while it is impossible for all to be succored by means of the same thing, each one is entrusted with the stewardship of his own things, so that out of them he may come to the aid of those who are in need” (corp.).72 71 72 work as elitist. The “historical knowledge” embodied in the spirituals “reverses the flow of knowledge and power” from any kind of elite and “the black masses.” As Appiah puts it, “the Enlightenment and the counter-Enlightenment contended in the breast of one man (Lines of Descent, 163). It is worth noting that the pagan world had a sense of the obligatory bonds of hospitality, bonds that are based simultaneously in a recognition of the vulnerability of all human beings and in divine will. See Steve Reece, The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993). Also see Hittinger, “Natural Law and Wisdom Traditions,” on the bonds of solidarity. The best discussion of Aquinas on property and economics is Mary Hirschfeld, 970 Thomas S. Hibbs In contemporary philosophy, MacIntyre sees in our shared dependence the basis for an obligation that he calls “just generosity”—that is how he translated misericordia. The virtue highlights the “care that we ourselves need from others and the care that they need from us” in a world where the goods of body and soul are tenuous and subject to deterioration and loss. Just generosity is in play in communal relationships that engage our affections; they extend “beyond the long-term relationships of the members of a community . . . to relationships of hospitality to passing strangers.”73 As the theologian Romano Guardini, who had an influence on Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, notes, the virtues needed to succor what MacIntyre calls just generosity are rooted in a “personal encounter in human need.”74 An indispensable virtue for someone who offers kindness to another is that he should have “reverence for the one who receives.”75 Otherwise, the receiver might experience humiliation and become resentful. In the very act of showing misericordia, there is equality and reciprocity, not just dependence of the receiver on the giver. Those who present themselves to us as in need of mercy remind us not so much of our superior position but of our shared condition, characterized for all human persons by fragility and mortality.76 73 74 75 76 Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), 126. See also Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law: Alasdair MacIntyre and Critics, ed. Lawrence Cunningham (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). The book includes an opening essay by MacIntyre, numerous responses, and then a final essay by MacIntyre. The volume was occasioned by a request from Cardinal Ratzinger (before his elevation as Pope Benedict XVI) to Notre Dame president John Jenkins for Notre Dame to bring together scholars to examine the question of unifying moral principles (see the preface by Lawrence Cunningham, vii). For a comparison and contrast between MacIntyre and Ratzinger, see Gerald McKenny’s essay in the volume, “Moral Disagreement and the Limits of Reason: Reflections on MacIntyre and Ratzinger,” which addresses Ratzinger’s position on 195–226 and MacIntyre’s response on 331–35. Romano Guardini, Learning the Virtues That Lead You to God (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute, 2013), 143. Guardini, Learning the Virtues, 144. See Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 191–92. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 971–990 971 How to Inherit a Kingdom: Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* Russell Hittinger Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. Scott Roniger Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA Prudence In 1890, in his Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo XIII wrote: “The political prudence of the Pontiff embraces diverse and multiform things, for it is his charge not only to rule the Church, but generally so to regulate the actions of Christian citizens that these may be in apt conformity to their hope of gaining eternal salvation” (§37). The title of the encyclical means on principles of Christian practical wisdom, the truths concerning the pursuit in this life of our supernatural end. Leo was also referring to the regnative prudence of the pontifical office, directing citizens qua baptized. Even if the direction is about political morality, the prudential directives presuppose sanctifying grace and a supernatural end. In other words, such prudence is here proffered under the formality of the New Law.1 In the concrete, directing those who have sanctifying grace to right *1 1 Our thanks to the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America for sponsoring the public lecture on October 6, 2022, and to Professor Émilie Tardivel and Fr. Aquinas Gilbeau, O.P., for their papers at the colloquium the next day. As Thomas teaches: “But that which is most prominent in the Law of the New Covenant and in which its power consists is the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is given through faith in Christ. And so the New Law is in the first instance the very grace of the Holy Spirit that is given to those who believe in Christ” (Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 106, a. 1). 972 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger judgment and action regarding what belongs or does not belong to Caesar is not easily given or received. The lines and entanglements are contingent and fluid. At a consistory immediately after World War II, Pope Pius XII remarked that the triumph of democratic forms of government has at least one advantage: “The distinction between the Church and even the democratic State becomes increasingly clear.”2 Divine providence includes two comprehensive communities, polity and ecclesia, which differ in their respective origin and end. In the thick of events, they are not always so clear. For the better part of two millennia, ecclesial and civil governments look very much alike from an institutional and sociological point of view. They share families, languages, costumes, arts and sciences, banks, moral principles, the same contemporary media—indeed, even sharing the same laws and international protocols. More than half of the European Union countries are under at least one concordat with the Holy See. Yet when we casually speak of “Church and state,” it is easy to imagine two teams in the same order of things. Even so, Pius XII acknowledged that democratic government makes clear(er) that the first subject of the polity is the populus, the people, whereas the first subject of the ecclesia is the Holy Spirit. Beginning with Leo (1878–1903), pontifical prudence had to reckon with the benefits and challenges of representative governments. Whenever public responsibility is vested in the citizens, the baptized citizens bear a greater burden of distinguishing what properly belongs to the Church and to civil government. For in representative governments the citizens are not vassals or retainers of the king and his court. Therefore it falls more directly upon the people to understand the difference between Church and civil government.3 Leo understood the world he inhabited. In Rerum Novarum (1891), he mused, "Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is" (§18). This marks an important change in papal letters after 1789. Christian wisdom has to be communicated not merely to Catholics who are subjects but also to Catholics who are citizens: in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, 2 3 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 37 (1945): 258–59: “If, on the other hand, we bear in mind the favorite thesis of democracy—a doctrine which great Christian thinkers have proclaimed in all ages—namely, that the original subject of civil power derived from God is the people (not the ‘masses’), the distinction between the Church and even the democratic State becomes increasingly clear” (trans. ours). See ST II-II, q. 10, a. 10, on whether an infidel ought to head a civil government whose citizens are baptized. Thomas’s answer is complicated. If we remove Thomas’s sociological supposition that the baptized are vassals bound to comply with the wishes of their masters the article might have reached a different conclusion. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 973 and so on. Thus, Leo observed in an allocution two years after Sapientiae Christianae: “Faith embodied in the conscience of peoples rather than restoration of medieval institutions is the way to final victory.”4 As it turned out, Leo’s greatest problem was the French Church and the Third Republic, which became more aggressively laicist with every passing decade, even though it was still under the 1801 concordat signed by Napoleon and Pius VII. For Leo, much was at stake, chiefly the law of divorce, which had been excised from the Napoleonic Code. Born in 1810, Leo had seen the historical events: the captivity of Pope Pius VII and then his release by the French, the demise of Napoleon, the loss of the papal states (the longest continuous temporal government in western Europe, until the summer of 1870), and Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf. He possessed those chief parts of prudence: memory, foresight, circumspection, and above all caution! Writing to the French Church in 1892, he observed that: Founded by Him who was, who is, and who will be forever, she has received from Him, since her very origin, all that she requires for the pursuing of her divine mission across the changeable ocean of human affairs. And, far from wishing to transform her essential constitution, she has not the power even to relinquish the conditions of true liberty and sovereign independence with which Providence has endowed her in the general interest of souls. . . . But, in regard to purely human societies, it is an oft-repeated historical fact that time, that great transformer of all things here below, operates great changes in their political institutions. (Au Milieu des Sollicitudes §17) Unlike the Church founded by Christ and marriage (both of which have divinely insculped and fixed forms and ends), political order has no fixed form. God the author of nature does not guarantee the perpetuity of a particular political form, monarchical or republican. Thus, Leo counseled the French Catholics to dial down the temperature of debate about the relative merits of monarchical versus republican forms. What was at stake was a laicist crackdown that could endanger the two societies that really are divinely insculped: sacramental marriage and the Church. This is exactly what happened a decade later. The Republic dissolved the concordat, expelled religious orders, closed Catholic schools, and provided for civil 4 Pope Leo XIII, Onorare le ceneri, March 1, 1892, Alloc. 974 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger divorce. Leonine prudence yielded a truce with Bismarck and a rollback of his Kulturkampf, but Leo could not direct the disputatious French. Even Immortale Dei (1885), the most doctrinal encyclical on these things, is carefully worded: “Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God” (§6; “individual members” meaning both French citizens and baptized Catholics.). He was not asking the Third Republic to make laws about religion (the concordat was still in place), much less to direct citizens to a supernatural end, but rather “not to hinder” and to “preserve unharmed and unimpeded” the religious practices of Catholics.5 Leo insisted upon restoration of the patrimonium Petri, the so-called papal states. His protégé Pius XI once dubbed the Chilean law of separation to be an “amicable coexistence,” for it allowed society to remain somewhat intact, even though it derogated from Church teachings on separation.6 Polities that followed the French laicist model, however, held that the state has a monopoly on human fraternity, all else being consigned to a private life. Even so, Leo and Pius not only refrained from direct criticism of republican government but indirectly supported it against elements of the Catholic right wing. Perhaps the strangest, but most interesting, take on separation of Church and state came from Émile Ollivier, a French minister of religious affairs, on the eve of the First Vatican Council and its recognition of the universal jurisdiction of the pope. Pius IX declined to invite Catholic sovereigns to send ambassadors (oratores) to the Council. The secretary of state, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, explained that there could be no principle of selection between “good” and “bad” Catholic sovereigns. Privately, he said that “Exclusively Catholic Governments had virtually ceased to exist.”7 In France, 5 6 7 Nor does Leo suggest that other Christian denominations, much less non-Christian religions, be kept unharmed and unimpeded. That will be the subject of the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 Dignitatis Humanae. Pius XI, Iam Annus (1925): “Tuttavia tale provvedimento è applicato in modo così amichevole da sembrare non già una frattura ma piuttosto una convivenza amichevole.” Lord Odo Russell to Earl of C., March 7, 1870, in The Roman Question, Extracts from the Despatches of Odo Russell from Rome, 1858–1870, ed. Noel Blakiston (London: Chapman and Hall, 1962), 404. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 975 Ollivier declared in the Chamber of Deputies that the pope had, in effect, introduced the separation of Church and state: “Yes, this is a new fact, a new deed indeed that the disseverance between the laical society and the religious society is put into effect by the pope’s own hand.”8 The ever mischievous ultramontane editor of L’Univers, Louis Veuillot, gleefully agreed—princes are now “outside the Church.”9 It was in this light that Ollivier would make bold to say in the same speech: “Undoubtedly, Gentlemen, I know that Rome earnestly wishes to separate itself from the State, but She does not want the State to separate itself from Her.” Rome never refuted that charge. Indeed, this was exactly the intent of the Vatican I: to pull the world’s bishops out of civil establishments and quasi-establishments and thus to make clear and effective the sui generis nature of the apostolic college, which does not belong to Caesar—no matter how friendly.10 Indeed, one-way separations can imply an establishment or restoration of proper order. When the Third Republic enacted its long set of laicist restrictions on the French Church (1880–1905), culminating in the cancellation of the concordat and the issuance of the Law of Separation (1905), the purpose was more akin to an establishment. Perhaps it was not as brutal as the Revolution’s Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), yet it did attempt to establish the diocesan clergy in a civil order.11 Leonine-era “pontifical prudence” on relations between the Church and civil governments must be seen like pieces on a chessboard—the tactics constitute a very important context for how the principles are formulated and applied. It was for all practical purposes inevitable that churchmen would in due course strip out the relevant sentences representing a spectrum of prudential judgments and arrange them in lists that might prove useful for purely doctrinal canons. In the 1940s, textbooks that were used to teach clergy, religious, and lay students in universities made such lists that had the ambience of Thomistic, or at least Scholastic, propositions. 8 9 10 11 Speech in Chamber of Deputies on 10 July 10, 1868, in Émile Ollivier, L’Église et l’état au Concile du Vatican, 3d ed., vol. 1 (Paris: Gamier Frères, 1877), 400. This work is still the best study of the evolution of Church–state relations and Vatican I; see also 1:49–48. Fredrik K. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the XIXth Century, 2 vols. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1906), 2:296. On one-way separations and other important discussions on the Vatican I era, see The Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism: On Law, Politics, & Human Nature, ed. John Witte and Frank Alexander, with introduction and chapter on Leo XIII by Russell Hittinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). See Sarah Shortall, Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), 24–25. 976 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger Take for example Henri Grenier’s three-volume work Thomistic Philosophy.12 It is one of the better textbooks of that period. The author is prudently short-winded on the subject, which does not amount to more than ten pages, placed at the very end of the three volumes. In the section on Church and state, we find several prescriptions for rightly ordered relations, and all but one are contingent, needing to be read in the sense of conditional clauses, “if . . . then.” He distinguishes, for example, obligations in light of (1) pagan states, not Christian, with no presupposition of baptism or sanctifying grace, which means that pagan political authority is intact under natural law, for neither sin nor grace takes away the natural avidity of human persons to form political society; (2) apostate Christian peoples, actively schismatic or rebellious Christian peoples, the conditions of which must be further delineated; (3) liberal states marked by the right of liberty of conscience or by one or another constitutional prohibition on the making of laws respecting religion.13 The categories can be expanded or contracted, but they could not provide a roadmap for a late late-twentieth-century student. An alert reader today will understand, at least in retrospect, why it was necessary to locate a principium fundamentale.14 Whoever does not have a stomach for such historical and social contingencies—not to mention reversals of fortune—on an issue of such magnitude, perhaps should not attempt to handle questions of Church and state. In what follows we want to locate a fundamental principle that can serve as a light—not at the end of the tunnel of contingencies, but one that illuminates our path at the very beginning. Separated by the Hand of God A truly first principle is that the Kingdom of Christ is separated both in ordinary human time and eschatologically. We use the term “separate” in just the way Joseph Ratzinger does, both as scholar and pope. “Jesus had actually achieved a separation of the religious from the political, thereby changing the 12 13 14 Henri Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3, 3rd ed., Cursus Philosophiae (Charlottetown, Canada: St Dunstan’s University Press, 1949), nos. 1158–71. Which calls to mind the U.S. Constitution 6.3, which prohibits any religious test for the holding office or trust, but which never uses the word separation. The freedom of the Church “is the fundamental principle [principium fundamentale] in what concerns the relationships between the Church and governments and the whole civil order” (Dignitatis Humanae §13). This is laid down in the second part of the document, sub luce revelationis, which concerns the eschatological framework. The moral principles based upon reason and the natural ordination to discover and hold the truth about God are developed in the first part. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 977 world: this is what truly marks the essence of his new path. . . . This brings us back to the question of the interweaving and the separation of religion and politics. In his teaching and in his whole ministry, Jesus had inaugurated a non-political Messianic kingdom and had begun to detach these two hitherto inseparable realities from one another.”15 So, too, for Wojtyła as scholar and pope: “Christ’s entry into the world reveals an economy altogether sui generis, proper to God alone. It is a divine economy, with its source in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”16 For our purposes in this essay, separated is the equivalent of being “set aside” not only as something holy, but just as importantly something accomplished by a divine rather than a human act.17 Hence, we put to one side the usual spectrum of juridical and moral meanings of separation, which, however varied and interesting, are events attributed to human choices and decrees. The title of our essay is “How to Inherit a Kingdom.” Christ’s teaching “my kingdom is not of this world” ( John 18:36) has always proved difficult to hearers of the Word, beginning with Jesus’s own disciples prior to Pentecost. It is one thing to understand that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:24) but quite another to understand two kingdoms that are not commensurate in their form, finality, or authority. While Caesar may represent and serve as a practical coadjutor of the natural law, he does not represent or govern the Church. Take for example Augustine’s pastoral and theological challenge after Alaric’s sack of Rome (410). While St. Jerome bemoaned that the “whole world is perishing in one city,” Augustine was annoyed that so many Christians blamed the catastrophe on Christ. From time immemorial deities were expected to protect the safety and prosperity of the city. By a virtually universal custom, religion bound not so much men and women to their gods, but their gods to the public common good. So, if the Empire is now overseen by Christian emperors, Ubi est Christus? For weak and for recently converted Christians, the sack of 410 suggested that an incompetent deity was on duty. Just when Christians had some political grip on imperial power, 15 16 17 Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 169–70. Ratzinger uses the German nouns Trennung (“separation”) and Lösung (“solution,” “unfastening,” “severance,” or even “a solution or resolution by decoupling”) to describe Jesus’s separation of the political from the religious, and he also uses the verbs trennen (“to separate”) and lösen (“to unfasten,” “to sever,” or “to uncouple”). These words are distinct from and stronger than Unterschied (“distinction”). Karol Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction (New York: Seabury, 1979), 49. ST I-II, q. 112, a. 1 (esp. ad. 1); II-II, q. 23, a. 2. 978 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger Rome itself was being shattered. Augustine understood that this complaint suggested that some of his flock had not understood Christianity. His main homiletic theme became “How to Inherit a Kingdom.” For example, in Sermon 113A, he quotes Matthew 25, “Come blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom.” Throughout these “catastrophe” sermons,18 Augustine admonishes his flock to give heed to the teaching of the Lord and his ministers who are preparing those who hear to receive a Kingdom not of this world rather than grieve for the stones of Rome. Augustine was insistent that they learn the dominical words, “my kingdom is not of this world.” In his tracts on the Gospel of John, he restates the words of Christ before Pilate: “Listen therefore Jews and gentiles; listen, circumcision; listen uncircumcision; listen, all earthly kingdoms: I am no hindrance to your dominion in this world. . . . What more do you want? Come to the kingdom that is not of the world by believing.”19 As for those who govern the Church, Augustine admonishes them to imitate Noah, Daniel, and Job, for each symbolizes faith that the Lord God delivers the faithful from tribulation.20 These sermons were swiftly reworked into book I of De civitate Dei. This is the sole book of the City of God that criticizes Christians, on grounds of both weak morals and even weaker faith. It is also worth remarking that, between Sermon 113A (September 410) and his writing of book I of De civitate Dei in 412, Pelagius appeared in North Africa after taking flight from his now uncomfortable habitation in Rome. Indeed, he becomes an object of the main question: How can one here below inherit the Kingdom, except by supernatural faith? This is the central question of the last decade of Augustine’s life. In making sense of Church and world (including the political powers), separation is a first-order term because it describes what is essential to the Kingdom: being set apart, having a supernatural end as well as supernatural 18 19 20 Those who grumble, in Sermon 296, no. 9. See also Sermon 113A, nos. 81, 397. St. Augustine, Sermon 115, no. 2, in Homilies on the Gospel of John, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New York: New City, 2020). Augustine worked on Tracts on John (In Evangelium Ioannis) while writing what we call his books of separation in De civitate Dei: 11 (angelic); 12 (human); 13–14 (body and soul); 15 (Cain and Abel); 20–22 (Noah and the rest, up to final judgment). St. Augustine, Sermon 397 (late 411?): “But Noah represents good leaders, who govern and direct the Church, just as Noah captained and steered the ark in the flood. Daniel, represents the holy celibates, Job represents all the married people who live good and upright lives. It is these three kinds of people, after all, that God will deliver from that tribulation” (in Sermons 341–400, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. [New York: New City, 1995]). To put it in another way, tribulation does not contradict Christian vocation. See also De civitate Dei 19.27 for the development on Job. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 979 capacities for achieving that end. More than seven centuries later, Thomas Aquinas relied heavily on Augustine’s understanding of what belongs to this world in contrast to the Kingdom. Here is St Thomas on John 18: “My kingdom is not of this world, that is, does not have its origin in earthly causes and human choice.”21 Leo XIII relies on this tradition: “It cannot be doubted, under safeguard of the faith, that the governance of souls was committed to the Church alone, in such wise that powers of the political order have no share whatever in it” (Sapientiae Christianae §27). As does Grenier, who contends that temporal happiness secured by rightly ordered politics is not, strictly speaking, a means to the end of eternal happiness, because no natural operation can be a part or direct means to the supernatural end. He puts it this way: “not as a means or a part, but only as a good inferior in nature to the good of a higher order.” Indeed, “the Church does not embrace all other societies as its parts—civil society is not a part of the Church.”22 Such is true even when Christians are members of the civil community. So far forth, they bring with them a wisdom about moral precepts and virtues that are common to human life. In due course, we will examine this distinction between morals and eschatology. Grenier makes a critical point. We never say that the civitas, polis, or imperium is separate from the families and associations that compose it. Rather, we affirm that the government is distinguished but not separated from the component parts—the living stones so to speak. For common sense, we say that, when some thing or group is integral, we affirm that its elements can be distinguished (even qualitatively) but not separated. The Kingdom in pilgrimage, however, does not consist of other societies as integral parts.23 It is difficult not to think of the Church as the highest region of a single differentiated society—perhaps as an international one for the progressives, and often a national one for conservatives.24 This is understandable, but 21 22 23 24 In Evangelium Ioannis, tract. 18, no. 2352. Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1165. Except for one, namely marriage, which (bearing in mind Matt 22:20) for the baptized is a sacrament that includes all the natural elements of matrimony. This is why the contest between temporal regimes and the Church will always come back around to marriage. See Russell Hittinger, “Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI,” in Christianity and Family Law: An Introduction, ed. Gary S. Hauk and John Witte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 323–43. For modern progressives, it is difficult not to think of the Church as a lower part of a single society, in the fashion of the Social Gospel inspiring but not determining the unfolding of history. On these issues, Ratzinger is once again helpful. In his discussion of John the Baptist’s preaching and baptizing as a preparation for Christ’s teaching and mission, Ratzinger describes the differences between the Zealots, the Pharisees, 980 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger wrong. The Church here below is set aside, separated, sanctified as a sign and preparation of its full eschatological union with the resurrected Christ. Supernatural union is not a superior version of temporal and natural happiness; nor is temporal happiness an inferior version of heaven. Therefore the word “integral” is not fit for doing the work of describing the Kingdom vis-á-vis the temporal powers. To attempt to do so puts us into trouble even before we start. Take for example Leo XIII’s remark in Immortale Dei: “There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man” (§14). Of course, soul to body “in man” is a substantial form. Societies on the other hand are unities of order. In a unity of order, each member possesses what is individually proper to himself—namely, certain operations and acts not reducible to the commonality.25 So Leo cannot have meant a strict analogy 25 the Sadducees, and the so-called Essenes. He says: (1) the Zealots “were prepared to resort to terror and violence in order to restore Israel’s freedom,” (2) the Pharisees were akin to recalcitrant conservatives who “endeavored to live with the greatest possible exactness according to the instructions of the Torah” and who “refused conformity to the hegemony of Hellenistic-Roman culture, which . . . was now threatening to force Israel’s assimilation to the pagan peoples’ way of life,” (3) the Sadducees were akin to elite liberals “most of whom belonged to the aristocracy and the priestly class” and who “attempted to practice an enlightened Judaism intellectually suited to the times, and so also to come to terms with Roman domination,” and (4) the Essenes withdrew to the Judean desert where they created “monastic-style communities, but also a religiously motivated common life for families. [They] also established a productive literary center and instituted distinctive rituals, which included liturgical ablutions and common prayers.” He says that “it appears that not only John the Baptist, but possibly Jesus and his family as well, were close to the [Essenes of the] Qumran community.” It is not a stretch to say that these four approaches to religion, culture and society, political government, and ultimately to the Messiah determine the way one sees the Church–state issue. Contra the Zealots, Ratzinger says that Jesus transformed “the ‘zeal’ that would serve God through violence . . . into the zeal of the Cross. Thus he definitively established the criterion for true zeal—the zeal of self-giving love. This zeal must become the Christian’s goal.” In the span of one chapter, Matt 22, Christ calls the Pharisees hypocrites and teaches them that they must render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and he tells the Sadducees that they “are misled because [they] do not know the scriptures or the power of God,” thus stretching their thinking into the eschatological realm, where “at the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven.” See, respectively, Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part One: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 12–14, and Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, 22. Thomas, In I eth., lec. 5. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 981 of substantial form. Political society does not have the “form” of the Church. This is proved by reading the next sentences: The nature and scope of that connection can be determined only, as We have laid down, by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobleness of their purpose. One of the two has for its proximate and chief object the well-being of this mortal life; the other, the everlasting joys of heaven. Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority. Jesus Christ has Himself given command that what is Caesar’s is to be rendered to Caesar, and that what belongs to God is to be rendered to God. Clearly, Leo does not mean that the two powers are related by substantial form, nor by higher souls or archons ruling lower ones. Stoics sometimes spoke of souls of social organisms. But Leo was not a Stoic. Perhaps the Letter to Diognetus exhibits at least a trace of Stoic rhetoric when it declares: “What the soul is to the body, Christians are in the world.” But in that very chapter, the author insists that Christians are in the world but not of it.26 The point that the apologist intends is very much like St. Thomas’s note: “Again, in order to dispose our affections, the Gospel contains things which involve that hatred of the world through which a man comes to have a capacity for the grace of the Holy Spirit. For as John 14:17 says, ‘The world [read: lovers of the world] cannot take in [capere] the Holy Spirit.’”27 That his Kingdom is not of this world is a dominical saying of supreme importance. Jesus’s disciples vehemently resisted this teaching until Pentecost; 26 27 Letter to Diognetus 6. Even more strongly, Christians “cannot be identified with the world.” Perhaps Leo’s soul to body is a metaphor, a meaning carried over to some other thing. The soul’s nobility is not diminished by the fact that it is not a bodily part. So too the Church’s domain is not limited by saying that it is not a part of the civil jurisdiction. It can inspire and move the members of the body politic without being a “part” in the jurisdictional sense. It is a metaphorical stretch, but see Henri de Lubac, “The Authority of the Church in Temporal Matters,” in Theological Fragments (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 211. For a more critical interpretation of Immortale Dei §14, see J. C. Murray, S.J., “Leo XIII on Separation of Church and State,” Theological Studies 14, no. 2 (1953): 209–10. ST I-II, q. 106, a. 1, ad 1. 982 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger over the course of Church history, many of their successors and our own brethren have been unnerved by the teaching. Ratzinger explains that, “for a long time now, Christians have tended to avoid quoting” the numerous New Testament texts that express the conviction that “our commonwealth is in heaven” (Phil 3:20) and that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Heb 13:14). He says that, especially in the twentieth century, many Christians have neglected this fundamental theme because they have made the mistake of thinking that these texts “appear to alienate man from the earth and prevent him from fulfilling his innerworldly task, which is also a political task.”28 If polity is natural and God-given, why should political authority not be a coadjutor of the Kingdom? The recurrent, perennial position (again, post-peccatum in real historical time) is pagan integralism, which flows in part from the natural human desire for immortality run amok after sin—a distorted expression of the natural desire for immortality.29 The highest practical expression of the desire for immortality is to participate in political life.30 It outlasts the individual, the family, and the tribe. Normal people will grieve the loss of their political society more than even the loss of their own lives. But the temporal regime of political order neither conquers death nor causes resurrection, the truly eschatological premises of the Kingdom. It was Christ who had to achieve the separation as a dimension of his overcoming of sin and its effects. We can even say that, if the higher life does not achieve separation by transcending the political, its activities are not being done badly; rather, they are not being done at all. Let us sharpen a distinction embedded in the word “separation.” First, 28 29 30 Joseph Ratzinger, Selected Writings: Faith and Politics, with a Foreword by Pope Francis, trans. Michael J. Miller et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018), 148–50. See also Augustine, De perfectione iustitiae hominis 15.35: “Because it is not so much when the Church is involved in so many evils, or amidst such offenses, and in so great a mixture of very evil men, and amidst the heavy reproaches of the ungodly, that we ought to say that it is glorious, because kings serve it—a fact which only produces a more perilous and a sorer temptation” (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 1, vol. 5 [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004], 172). See Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 60–66. See also Augustine, De civitate Dei 1, where he shows that the political virtues of the Romans mask the fear of death. For a brilliant discussion of counterfeit (political) virtues masking the fear of death, see Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 36–49. See Plato, Symposium 207a–12c, and Yves Simon, A General Theory of Authority (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 29. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 983 it can mean contradictory, or separate can be contrary. For example: the reign of sin and death is contradictory to the Kingdom even below, and the Church must be separated from it. But we can say that political life, just as such, is a good thing—not inherently sinful or death-dealing—but even so is contrary to (other than) the Kingdom. As Henri de Lubac helpfully puts it: “Temporal and spiritual power are not opposed as two contradictories.”31 This distinction between separation as signifying otherness and as signifying contradiction is propounded by Cardinal Wojtyła in his 1976 Lenten conferences for Pope Paul VI, published in 1979 as Sign of Contradiction. Commenting on the presentation in the temple, where Simeon prophesies that the child will be a sign of contradiction (Luke 2:28–35), Cardinal Wojtyła prays that the light of Christ will “give us strength and make us capable of accepting and loving the whole truth about Christ, of loving it all the more as the world all the more contradicts it.” On the other hand, “Christ’s entry into the world reveals an economy altogether sui generis, proper to God alone. It is a divine economy, with its source in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”32 Both senses of separation are distinguished without confusion. Christ initiates a sui generis economy that belongs to God alone, and he is a sign of contradiction.33 Paradoxically perhaps, if Christians are to fecundate the world, it cannot come by being united to the state, nor by becoming one with the reign of sin and death. Rather, the Church must achieve both kinds of separation as fully as possible. Separate from what is contradictory and separate from what is contrary. Along the lines of the merely contrary, Jesus says that there is no marriage or family in heaven (Matt 22:30). The mode of human fellowship in heaven does not include natural procreation and family. It is not contradictory, only sui generis. Politics, to the contrary, has its foundational principles in morals under natural law, custom, and various species of human law. The capacities and actions deployed to secure this order are connatural to human beings even if a proper political order is difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain. In sharp distinction, however, no person can direct another to the Kingdom without presupposing grace. Sacramentally, this means baptism, but more generally it means sanctifying grace. 31 32 33 De Lubac, “Authority of the Church,” 205. Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction, 8 and 49. See Pope Benedict XVI on Wojtyła’s Lenten conferences, emphasizing the meanings of contradiction (Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, December 22, 2005). 984 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger Ratzinger on Morals and Eschatology On these and other related questions, we propose that the most important Catholic thinker of the twentieth century is Joseph Ratzinger, both as bishop-cardinal and as pope. Perhaps the most neglected theological treatise within the memory of our generation is his work Eschatology. Ratzinger treats the fundamental distinction between morals by nature and the formal, efficient and the final causes of initiation into the Kingdom— properly understood as eschatology. First, the Church imitates Christ, who himself taught the rudiments of the moral law and virtue. Such teaching is given to all the nations. But the Kingdom, which is the locus of eschatology, is not an institution or association in the familiar sociological sense. The Kingdom is the Person of Christ, and its inhabitants are those who draw close to him by grace. It is not a sphere within other spheres, but an event.34 “The message of the Kingdom of God has something very important to say to politics. It is healthy for politics to learn that its own content is not eschatological. The setting asunder of eschatology and politics is one of the fundamental tasks of Christian theology.”35 Why call this an eschatological distinction? The true Basileus (the temple, the regnum,) is Christ, who is properly called autobasilea (self-ruling).36 For, when Christians are moved by the Holy Spirit to make that act of faith, it is truly an eschatological event.37 This is the sign of Jonah, for Christ’s teaching converges upon himself “as the ‘now’ of God.”38 Faith moves the soul to participate in an eschatological celebration that unites us to Christ and his Church. The Church is, as we have said, properly sui generis. Yet, if we are forced to speak very loosely of the “genus” of the Church as a graced, supernatural society in which we participate by faith, then we do well to follow 34 35 36 37 38 Ratzinger, Eschatology, 35. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 59. Elsewhere he says that “by merging with the state, the Church would destroy both the essence of the state and her own essence. The Church remains something ‘outside’ the state, for only thus can both Church and state be what they are meant to be. Like the state, the Church too must remain in her own proper place and within her boundaries. She must respect her own being and her own freedom, precisely in order to perform for the state the service that the latter requires.” He adds that it is precisely the eschatological premise, or “‘eschatological’ attitude that guarantees the state its own right while simultaneously resisting absolutism by indicating the boundaries both of the state and of the Church in the world.” See Ratzinger, Selected Writings: Faith and Politics, 148–50. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part One, 49. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 35. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 32. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 985 Fr. Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole, O.P., who says that the “sacramentality of the Church . . . gives us, as it were, the genus to which the Church belongs.” He repeats this point: “To say that the Church is a sacrament is to specify, as it were, the larger ‘genus’ to which she belongs.” Clearly, Fr. de la Soujeole is using “genus” in a quite extended sense, but understanding the Church as a sacrament, or as sacramental, enables us to see that, when we are united to her, we are set apart so as to be taken up into an efficacious sign of God’s presence in but not of the world.39 At the trial, however, Pilate assumed that Jesus was representing something other than himself, just as Pilate represents Caesar. Pilate was confounded.40 To Pilate, he says, “I am the truth.” In other words, I am not a threat to your political rule. I am not raising up an army against which you will have to fight, nor am I delivering a message from someone else, or about someone else, as do the prophets. I am neither Barabbas nor John the Baptist. This is eschatological. The completion is now, standing before you. Yet Jesus does 39 40 This point is beautifully summarized in Vatican II’s 1963 Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§8–14. For the texts cited, see Fr. Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole, O.P., Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 451, 468. One could argue that sacramental incorporation into Christ’s Mystical Body includes our supernatural participation in the metaphysical reality that God is radically separate from the world that he creates. It is precisely his infinite transcendence that “allows” God to be present to his creatures in a creative, noncompetitive, and fecundating way without alteration or augmentation on his part. God and the world do not form an integral whole, nor do the Church and the state. See Aquinas, Expositio libri Peryermeneias I, lec. 14, no. 20–22; ST I, q. 8, a. 1; q. 105, a. 5. Augustine and Thomas alike are intrigued by Peter’s use of the temporal sword in the garden. The servant of the high priest is named Malchus, “king” or “about to reign,” according to Augustine, In Evangelium Ioannis, tract. 112, no. 5. The healing of Malchus’s ear is in anticipation of the salvation of the cup that Christ will drink. Thomas emphasizes that Peter and the other disciples were not yet confirmed in their faith (Super Ioan 18, lec. 2, no. 2289). While Peter’s act could be justified as a protection of the innocent (a moral justification), the situation was yet another test of the disciples’ ability to live the evangelical life, such as when Christ sent them forth with no purse or bag or sandals (Luke 22:35). They have yet to learn that the Kingdom does not make use of the material sword. On this point, Ratzinger says, “This temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power. The struggle for the freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus’ Kingdom with any political structure, is one that has to be fought century after century. For the fusion of faith and political power always comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria” (Jesus of Nazareth, Part One, 39–40; see also Selected Writings: Faith and Politics, 200–202). 986 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger not impeach Pilate’s authority, not even the juridical power in capital cases.41 Although he has moral worries about the charges made against Jesus, Pilate is entirely clueless about the role of dying in the Kingdom. Jesus tells his apostles to take up their cross and follow him, but not even they understood until their faith was confirmed by the Holy Spirit. But Jesus does not tell Pilate to pick up his cross. It is not essential to the role of a political governor to die, whereas it is an act intrinsic to the Christoform order of the New Covenant (Matt 16:24–26).42 On this point, Pope Benedict observes: The transformation of human nature, and the world with it, is possible only as a miracle of grace. Where it is regarded as being, rather, the building-site where the house of politics is under construction, a rank impossibility is taken as the foundation for all human reality. . . . The Kingdom of God is not a political norm of political activity, but it is a moral norm of that activity. . . . In other words, the message of the Kingdom of God is significant for political life not by way of eschatology but by way of political ethics.43 Ratzinger stresses that “this separation—essential to Jesus’ message—of politics from faith, of God’s people from politics, was ultimately possible only through the Cross. Only through the total loss of all external power, through the radical stripping away that led to the Cross, could this new world come into being. Only through faith in the Crucified One, in him who was robbed of all worldly power and thereby exalted, does the new community arise, the new manner of God’s dominion in the world.”44 Imitating Christ in his 41 42 43 44 See David Lloyd Dusenbury, The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), esp. ch. 13 (“I Obstruct Not Your Dominion”). See also Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, 183–202. For the eschatological and political implications of martyrdom, see Erik Peterson’s essay “Witness to Truth,” in Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. Michael J. Hollerich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 151–81. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 59. For a very sharp warning that the political must not be confused with the Kingdom, see Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (1991) §25: “What Sacred Scripture teaches us about the prospects of the Kingdom of God is not without consequences for the life of temporal societies, which, as the adjective indicates, belong to the realm of time, with all that this implies of imperfection and impermanence. The Kingdom of God, being in the world without being of the world, throws light on the order of human society, while the power of grace penetrates that order and gives it life.” See also §§47 and 55. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, 170–71. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 987 love unto the Cross and his proclamation of truth leading to a nonpolitical messianic Kingdom will “enable us to situate the temporal order in relation to a transcendent order which gives the temporal order its true measure but without taking away its own nature,” and thus the Church “can maintain firmly both the unity and the distinction between evangelization and human promotion . . . . It is thus by pursuing her own finality that the Church sheds the light of the Gospel on earthly realities in order that human beings may be healed of their miseries and raised in dignity.”45 He adds: “Nevertheless, we must not be too hasty in condemning the ‘purely political’ outlook of [ Jesus’s] opponents. For in the world they inhabited, the two spheres—political and religious—were inseparable. The ‘purely’ political existed no more than the ‘purely’ religious.”46 Before Christ, integralism has a place in human history insofar as men and women do not understand the radically new Kingdom. Avatars Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Étienne Gilson’s Louvain lectures, which were published under the title The Metamorphoses of the City of God.47 His main theme is the problem of achieving a universal human society. He explores the problem through the thoughts of seven Christian, or at least Christian-inspired, thinkers.48 On this occasion, our interests will be given to Gilson’s understanding of eschatology. Let us set the scene. Gilson was addressing the political and ecclesial leaders in the West in the early 1950s. A kairos, a new moment had been declared for the terrene city in both its domestic and international tasks. These included: Decolonization, rebuilding of western Europe, the founding of the United Nations and the publication of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nuclear disarmament, and of course the readjustment of the Church’s evangelical mission. There were two decades of optimism, which subsided rather quickly by the late 1960s. Gilson set out to challenge 45 46 47 48 See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, approved by Pope John Paul II and signed by Prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Secretary Alberto Bovone (1986), §§62 and 65. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, 169. Étienne Gilson, The Metamorphoses of the City of God, trans. James G. Colbert (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Roger Bacon, Dante, Nicholas of Cusa, Tomaso Campenella, Abbe of Saint Pierre, Leinitz, August Compte. We will not treat any of these chapters, for we are narrowly interested in Gilson’s eschatology, which is in chs. 1, 2, and 10. 988 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger this moment. These lectures are a tenacious and lucid identification of the principles that we have already marked in this essay. His thesis and conclusion can be considered in this arresting thought: If a lesson emerges about the history of the City of God and the avatars it has assumed during the course of centuries, it is, first of all, that it cannot be metamorphosized. . . . What is common to these attempts is the substitution of a human bond for the bond of faith. . . . This occurs in the hope that [some] human bond will be universalized more easily than faith.49 In a 1933 lecture to students at St. Michael’s College (Toronto), Gilson summarized this very dilemma at work in Action Française. “These men will keep the Church even though they are at heart pagans. The state cannot live without the Church. . . . Consequently they will stick to the Church as a political means of keeping their own country alive.” Just as we pointed out earlier in connection with Ratzinger, Gilson insists that the Church cannot help a society unless it is actually the Church—“that is an entity which in no way can be subordinated to the French State.”50 Elsewhere, Gilson notes that this line of thinking is common among those who are “deeply interested in Rome but not in Jerusalem.” In making this point, Gilson brings us back around to Augustine’s admonition of his flock after 410. How does the Church assist the state? She can do so by teaching and living according to the principles of the moral order. Yet even these principles reflect a natural wisdom that is higher than political order. This in itself is a reminder of what is wrong with politique d'abord. Without its eschatology, the Church is not truly itself.51 There is no other way to know and to have the Kingdom except to participate by faith. On this score, in Metamorphoses, Gilson cites Thomas Aquinas: The Divine Wisdom, that knows all things most fully, has deigned to reveal these her secrets to men, and in proof of them has displayed 49 50 51 Gilson, Metamorphoses, 227. Florian Michel, Étienne Gilson, une biographie intellectuelle et politique (Paris: Vrin, 2018), 115n3. Gilson calls this fusion of politics and the Kingdom a “doctrinal teratology”—combining two things that create a “monster,” the opposite of what is integral. See Gilson, The Philosopher and Theology, trans. Cecile Gilson (New York: Random House, 1962), 58–59. See Florian Michel’s discussion of tératologie doctrinale in ch. 2 of Étienne Gilson, esp. at 115–17. Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought* 989 works beyond the competence of all natural powers, in the wonderful cure of diseases, in the raising of the dead, and what is more wonderful still, in such inspiration of human minds as that simple and ignorant persons, filled with the gift of the Holy Ghost, have gained in an instant the height of wisdom and eloquence. By force of the aforesaid proof, without violence of arms, without promise of pleasures, and, most wonderful thing of all, in the midst of the violence of persecutors, a countless multitude, not only of the uneducated but of the wisest men, flocked to the Christian faith, wherein doctrines are preached that transcend all human understanding, pleasures of sense are restrained, and a contempt is taught of all worldly possessions. That mortal minds should assent to such teaching is the greatest of miracles [maximum miraculum], and a manifest work of divine inspiration leading men to despise the visible and desire only invisible goods.52 Gilson remarks that faith is not naturally transmittable by simple rational demonstration, but rather stems from “consent in which the will takes a part, and this is precisely why the problem is posed of finding how to universalize it.”53 The supernatural virtue of faith is the Holy Spirit moving the will to move the intellect. It is not so much a search as it is an adherence to the divine Word. The Kingdom begins in creatures by the adherence to Christ. It is already eschatological. In this sense we should use the term “integral.” The human and divine share a life. It is the greatest of miracles. Distinguished, but inseparable in Christ. The “avatars” of Christendom, Gilson continues, substitute for the theological virtues an intramundane task or mission, what Ratzinger calls “building a better world work site.” This task comes under morals, the human participation in the eternal law, the fundaments of which are shared by all human beings. But, as Ratzinger suggests, “the entire confession of faith” is brought under the “single theme of hope.”54 Shorn of the “eschatological attitude” flowing from grace, we are left with a Social Gospel that waits upon the evolution of history without the adherence of supernatural faith and remains unmindful of what Gilson calls “the shadow of the Cross.”55 We will let Chantal Delsol have the last word. “In its pretention to establish itself as a civilization, Christianity ended up producing a monstrous avatar that is at the same time its alter-ego and its mortal enemy.” We take 52 53 54 55 Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 6. Gilson, Metamorphoses, 220. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 59. Gilson, Metamorphoses, 235. 990 Russell Hittinger & Scott Roniger her to be saying this: When the Christian Church sloughs off faith, it lets loose phony eschatologies in the world, avatars; but what is worse is that the Church herself becomes an avatar of the temporal powers.56 And thus separation in the proper theological sense is regarded as an evil. And it would be, if we were talking only about social things: marriage and family, polity, international order. In this essay, however, we are talking about how to inherit a Kingdom. Here, being set apart is the beginning of wisdom. 56 Chantal Delsol, La fin de la Chrétienté (Paris: Cerf, 2021), 149–50. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 991–1018 991 Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” James F. Keating Providence College Providence, RI A historically conversant reader interested in the current state of discourse regarding Catholicism and American politics will find a good amount of familiar discord. He will discover, for example, that the life issues continue to bedevil. Can a Catholic vote in good conscience for an abortion-rights candidate over a pro-life competitor if that candidate is more supportive of other policies in line with Catholic Social Teaching? This issue has, of course, been with the American Church for some time now, even if it has taken on renewed urgency given the coincidence of the overturning of Roe v. Wade with the presidency of Joseph Biden, the second Roman Catholic to hold that office and a recent convert to pro-choice stridency. The action of the Supreme Court and the battles within the various states will ensure that abortion remains at the political heart of American Catholicism for years to come. One can say something similar about other issues, such as immigration, gun control, and economic justice. None of this will be found to be particularly surprising. The same cannot be said, however, of the return of a more fundamental question, one thought to have been settled since the mid-1960s. That question is whether Roman Catholicism and American liberal democracy are incompatible to the extent that Catholics ought to seek, if possible, another constitutional arrangement, one more friendly to the Catholic cause. Our reader would be familiar with the standard narrative that, while the existence of a medieval Church in a modern polity that upholds religious freedom had been a matter of concern since the dawn of the Republic, it 992 James F. Keating became serious only in the first half of the twentieth century as the number of Catholics and their influence grew. Until that time, American bishops, such as Archbishop John Ireland (1815–1918), made a special point of speaking publicly on the benefits of American freedom for the Church, just as they made clear that Catholics could be as patriotic as any other citizen. If there were tensions, they came primarily from anti-Catholic bigotry and governmental overreach. Things changed, however, when the point at issue was no longer primarily a religious one of Catholic believers infecting their Protestant neighbors with erroneous doctrine, but rather the threat so many Catholics posed to the fate of American freedom itself. In a postwar America concerned with the spread of Soviet communism, Paul Blanshard found a ready audience for his scholarly anti-Catholic diatribes, American Freedom and Catholic Power (1949) and Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power (1951).1 Without much difficultly, he pointed to various statements of Gregory XVI and Pius IX condemning the separation of Church and state, the freedom of religious conscience, and democracy as the best governmental form. To top things off, he had Leo XIII’s Testem Benevolentiae, an 1899 letter to the Cardinal Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, warning him and his fellow bishops not to speak of the constitutional arrangement of the United States as a political ideal. While Leo had positive things to say about the American system, his admonition followed the traditional line: while constitutional protections of religious freedom are necessary when Catholics are in the minority, the ideal situation is a state that officially confesses and supports the Catholic religion. Of more recent vintage, Blanshard could quote the response of America’s best-known Catholic theologian, Monsignor John A. Ryan, to the question of whether non-Catholics would be permitted to practice their religion in this ideal state: If these are carried on within the family, or in such inconspicuous manner as to be an occasion neither of scandal nor of perversion to the faithful, they may be properly tolerated by the State, . . . Quite distinct from the performance of false religious worship and preaching to the members of the erring sects, is the propagation of the false doctrine among Catholics. This could become a source of injury, a positive menace, to the religious welfare of true believers. Against such an evil they have a right of protection by the Catholic State. . . . If there is only one true religion, and if its possession is the most important 1 Paul Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon, 1949); Blanshard, Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon, 1951). Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 993 good in life for States as well as individuals, then the public profession, protection, and promotion of this religion and the legal prohibition of all direct assaults upon it, becomes one of the most obvious and fundamental duties of the State.2 Blanshard’s work had its intended effect. When the Democratic Party nominated the Catholic John F. Kennedy for president, he was forced to confront the charge that his commitment to his Church was at odds with the responsibility of the office to uphold the Constitution. However, at the same time Blanshard was seeking to frighten his fellow Americans of the threat of Catholicism, a learned Jesuit, John Courtney Murray (1904–1967), was in the process of building a scholarly case that the papal teaching the critics of Catholicism employed did not represent the whole tradition of Catholic political thought.3 Legitimate concerns over the anti-Catholic character of the French Revolution, he argued, had obscured the contributions of writers from the Middle Ages and the early modern period who were more friendly to democratic freedoms without reducing the essential truths of the faith to the liberty of human decision. In addition, Murray could point to recent statements by Pius XII that suggested the possibility of doctrinal movement on the question of religious freedom.4 Although Murray faced severe criticism from more traditional theologians and even punishment from Church authorities, he developed a complex interpretation of the American Proposition in which governmental neutrality in religious matters was an expression not of hostility or indifferentism to religious truth, but rather an opportunity for Catholics to help shape the democratic consensus. He interpreted the First Amendment not as a political expression of liberal ideology, in which religious belief is a mere matter of personal choice, but rather the best way for the American polity to allow a plurality of competing voices to engage in argument over the governmental action. Murray presented his mature ideas in his 1960 2 3 4 Blanshard, American Freedom, 53; quoting John A. Ryan and Francis I. Boland, Catholic Principles of Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 35. John Courtney Murray, “Government Repression of Heresy,” in Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (New York: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1948), 26–98; Murray, “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Indirect Power,” Theological Studies 9, no. 4 (1948): 491–535; Murray, “Law or Prepossessions,” Law and Contemporary Problems 14, no. 1 (1949): 23–43; Murray, “The Problem of State Religion,” Theological Studies 12 (1951): 155–78. The key text is Pius’s address to Catholic jurists on December 6, 1953. 994 James F. Keating masterpiece, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition.5 With the powerful patronage of Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, Murray had the opportunity to influence the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae. His work constituted the greatest American contribution to the Council and a way for the American Catholic experience to affect the development of Church doctrine. Thanks to Murray’s efforts, there are unmistakable American echoes in the new teaching that “all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits” (§2). Too late for Kennedy, but it allowed Catholics ever afterwards to take their place within American political discourse unmolested for being Catholics. As Leon Hooper put it: With the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 promulgation of Dignitatis, American Catholics breathed a collective sigh of relief. For the first time in their three-hundred-year history, Catholics could publicly, unequivocally, and loudly proclaim the virtues of civil religious freedom without raising distrust among other Americans or condemnation by their church.6 If Catholics were thought to be a political threat, it was because of their individual opinions on matters of policy and party affiliation, and not because of any faith-induced rejection of the American project itself.7 Given this history, our curious onlooker can be forgiven for being surprised, and most likely alarmed, to learn that the standard narrative 5 6 7 John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflection on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1960; repr. New York: Routledge, 2005, with introduction by Peter Augustine Lawler). “General Introduction,” in John Courtney Murray, Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, ed. J. Leon Hooper, S.J. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 16. Versions of this narrative are easily found. Recent examples include: John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: Norton, 2003); D. G. Hart, American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020); Leslie Woodcock Tentler, American Catholics: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020); The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism, ed. Margaret M. McGuinness and Thomas F. Reznick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 995 has been upset, what was old has become new once more. The question of whether American Catholics are called by their faith to oppose the religious freedom embedded in the founding ideas of their country has returned. More shocking is that those arguing that Catholicism of its nature opposes freedom American-style are not anti-Catholic critics or Italian popes, but prominent intellectuals within the American Church itself. I have in mind those Catholic thinkers who fashion themselves “postliberals.” Their names are by now familiar: Patrick Deneen and Gladden Pappin (political theorists), Adrian Vermeule (legal scholar), Chad Pecknold (theologian), Sohrab Ahmari (writer and editor), and most recently, the philosopher D. C. Schindler. Although differences within the movement are important, they are all united in a desire to overturn the narrative described above and a belief that the critics of Roman Catholicism’s compatibility with the American polity were right after all. For them, Murray was wrong when he claimed in 1960: Catholic participation in the American consensus has been full and free, unreserved and unembarrassed, because the contents of this consensus—the ethical and political principles drawn from the tradition of natural law—approve themselves to the Catholic intelligence and conscience. Where this kind of language is talked, the Catholic joins the conversation with complete ease. It is his language. The ideas expressed are native to his own universe of discourse. Even the accent, being American, suits his tongue.8 Murray was wrong not only in his reading of the signs of the times, but more fundamentally in failing to recognize the depth of the problem America’s founding ideology presents to the philosophical and theological commitments that constitute Catholic faith. In the words of Schindler, American Catholics must confront the fact that “America is anti-Catholic at its root.”9 It is anti-Catholic because it is liberal, and liberalism represents a threat to the vitality of the American Church. Indeed, the problem is severe enough that it is worthwhile raising the question of whether Catholicism requires a government which employs its power to support the religious aims of the Catholic Church. The emergence of Catholic postliberalism and the debate it has incited requires some explanation. How has the discussion of the relationship of 8 9 Murray, We Hold These Truths, 55. D. C. Schindler, The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism (Steubenville, OH: New Polity, 2021). 996 James F. Keating Americanism and Catholicism taken such a radical turn? Moreover, why has it occurred within that part of American Catholicism that could be appropriately described as traditional?10 This essay seeks to give at least a partial answer by viewing Catholic postliberalism as a continuation of a debate among the between traditional Catholics in the 1980s over the legacy of Murray. This debate pitted supporters of Murray linked to First Things, a journal of public affairs, against his critics associated with the theological journal Communio, with the respective editors Richard John Neuhaus (1936–2009) and David L. Schindler (1943–2022) playing prominent roles. The heart of the debate was over whether Murray had rightly judged the compatibility of the American polity with the internal logic of Catholic faith. How one answered that question would determine the kind of engagement American Catholics could have with the political movements of the late twentieth century. Neuhaus and his supporters were convinced that Catholics could make common cause with non-Catholics conservatives in their defense of traditional morality, democratic capitalism, and a robust anti-Communist foreign policy. While some of their fellow partisans might make pragmatic arguments for this or that policy, Catholics would employ the more solid reasoning of natural law to support policies that uphold the true good for individual citizens and the common good for the nation as a whole. David L. Schindler, on the other hand, saw a deep divide between the American conception of “freedom” and what a Catholic must mean by the term. For Schindler, it was a matter of two contradictory “logics,” between which one must choose. Rejecting the notion that the Church ought to aspire to a seat at the table of America’s policymakers, he argued that the Church best transforms the world, and America in particular, by remaining the Church in its fullness. Of course, the 1980s was not that long ago, but temporal distance should not overshadow the difference between then and now. Much has changed, regarding both American polity and American Catholicism. The America of 2023 is not the America of the 1980s, and neither is the Church. It is this change, I submit, that accounts for the radicalization of those opposed to Murray’s project. The originating dispute occurred at a moment of general optimism and anticipation about the prospects for Catholicism in the United States, while Catholic postliberalism reflects the general frustration 10 The rise of anti-Americanism among Catholics on the left is discussed most recently in John T. McGreevy, Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis (New York: Norton, 2022), 307–26, and closer to the time in Gary Wills, Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971). Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 997 and even despair of our present moment. This is not to submerge the arguments at play in historical consciousness, but only to acknowledge that the question of how the Church ought to relate to any particular polity must take into consideration the historical character of both actors. Murray made a similar point about Church–state debates in the 1940s: Doubtless they will always go on; for the political theology of the Church (meaning the theology of her relations to the temporal order) will never be a fully “closed” theology. It cannot be, because it is political, and therefore stands in close relation to the contingencies and relativities of the political order, whose institutionalization is constantly dissolving. The premises and principles of this theology are indeed firm and unchanging, resting on foundations that stand outside time and the corrosiveness of political change. But there will always remain the task of purifying the developed, practically operative structure of this theology from the contingent elements that necessarily accrue to it in the course of the Church’s living through, and wrestling with, the political ideas and institutions of particular ages; there will remain, too, the task of organizing afresh this theology, to insure its exactness, its vitality, and its relevance to new contexts and its solidity against new attacks.11 By placing Catholic postliberalism within the history of postconciliar American Catholicism, we can gain a greater understanding of its emergence and, perhaps, avoid simply recycling old arguments in a new day. In what follows, I shall take the recent work of D. C. Schindler, the son of David L. Schindler, as representative of Catholic postliberalism. His recent The Politics of the Real: The Church between Liberalism and Integralism is, to my mind, the most developed articulation of this school of thought yet. The connection between father and son also makes the point of continuity nicely. It is my contention, then, that Catholic postliberalism is best understood as a sequel to a dispute that began nearly forty years prior, but as shaped by a new and worse historical situation. One could, of course, push the argument about the relationship between Catholicism and American liberalism back further. A better starting point might be the contributions of Orestes Brownson (1803–1876), abolitionist and Catholic convert from liberal Protestantism. He argued that the influence of John Locke on the Founding Fathers accounted for the catastrophic failure of the Constitution to 11 Murray, “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Indirect Power,” 491–92. 998 James F. Keating eradicate slavery. Ever the optimist, however, Brownson was convinced that, if one views the Constitution in light of the Declaration of Independence and its “self-evident” truth of divinely bestowed human equality, the possibility arises of reconstructing America’s philosophical underpinnings in a Catholic direction.12 Archbishop Gibbons took up this idea in his pastoral letter summing up the work of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884: “We consider the establishment of our country’s independence, the shaping of its liberties and laws as a work of special Providence, its framers “building wiser than they knew,” the Almighty’s hand guiding them.”13 It was upon this rock that Murray built his rock, and upon it that all subsequent discussions about this topic rest. That said, an explanation of the particularities of Catholic postliberalism points to a shorter timeframe, beginning with the proclamation of “the Catholic moment” and its demise. To tell this story, we must begin with the now. “The Catholic Moment” in Retrospect Being an American Catholic of traditional bent in 2023 is frustrating business. We believe with the confidence of divine faith that the Church has been endowed with a message that, if only accepted, would heal what ails our fellow citizens and elevate them to a life far superior to what our desiccated and decadent culture offers. Yet, we watch as destructive ideas and movements, absurd in their folly, dominate every lever of cultural power, holding our children in thrall by the seemingly invincible allure of technology, trashy entertainment, and a gender ideology that threatens to dismantle the premises of Catholic morality. When a pandemic struck our society, a moment of existential fear and disconnection perfectly suited for a Christian response, the leaders of the Church allowed the celebration of the Eucharist by the Body of Christ to be deemed an inessential activity with barely a chirp of protest against the intervening powers of the state. The failure to make a public stand for the freedom of the Church followed a familiar pattern of disengagement stemming from revelations of priestly sexual abuse in 2002. The scandal had been simmering since the 1970s but 12 13 A good place to start in learning about this oft-forgotten figure of American Catholicism is his American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny (New York: P. Oshea, 1866; repr. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2003). For a biography of Brownson see Patrick Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). The National Pastorals of the American Hierarchy, 1792-1919, ed. Peter Guilday (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1923), 256–60, at 258. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 999 exploded when The Boston Globe published a series of articles concerning the numerous crimes of Father John Geoghan against the Church’s young and episcopal malfeasance by Cardinal Bernard Law and his predecessors.14 At its heart, the clergy sex abuse crisis was a refusal of the Church to recognize the legitimate powers of the state. Instead of handing over priests who criminally molested minors to the civil authorities, bishops shielded them from the temporal consequences of their actions, even hiding their perfidy from fellow believers as known perpetrators were shuttled from one unsuspecting parish to the next. Once this domino fell, the Catholic faithful were forced to watch as one diocese after another was forced by lawsuits or the governmental indictments to open their records. The result was a rushing roar of unveiled malignance that has taken more than a decade to subside. Despite real progress made in protecting Catholic children from predators since then, the moral credibility of the bishops of the United States has not been restored to pre-2002 levels. It is not guaranteed that it ever will. If the bishops have been sidelined by the weight of past misdeeds, what about other elements of the vaunted Catholic subculture built up by the hierarchy in the first half of the twentieth century to ensure that new immigrants were not captured first by Protestantism and then by secularism? Alas, little remains of the Church’s own “Benedict Option.” Our clubs, schools, and colleges and universities are now mostly all but indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. The loss of our institutions of higher learning is, perhaps, most tragic. They are perfectly suited to the development of responses and alternatives to the destructive ideologies that have engulfed the Church’s young adults. Yet, while they have the potential to fortify young minds and souls with the treasures of the Catholic intellectual tradition, few do.15 This is not to deny or downplay the presence of vibrant experiments in Catholic education scattered across the nation and at every level. They exist and play a crucial role in the life of the American Church. However, there is no use in denying that the institutions built to provide the Catholic faithful with a cultural alternative to American secularism have themselves, by and large, succumbed to the very forces they were created to resist. Moreover, this has happened at the very time when the ordinary Catholic is in desperate need for guidance in navigating the aggressive toxins entwined 14 15 For the fuller history, see Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church (Boston: Little and Brown, 2002). The best book on the beginnings of the scandal remains Jason Barry, Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (New York: Doubleday, 1992). I relate the failed reception of St. John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae in “The Death of the Catholic University,” First Things, no. 332 (April 2023): 37–44. 1000 James F. Keating in American culture. Despite their best efforts, it is nearly impossible for Catholic parents to shield their children from the normalization of vices unthinkable a short decade ago. Redolent of St. Paul’s description in his letter to the Romans (1:32) of sin run amok in the pagan society of his day, our youth are enveloped through social media in an ongoing celebration of the moral death-works of vanity, materialism, abortion, and drug use. In addition, there are powerful and well-financed forces seeking to confuse the next generation regarding the most fundamental truths of sexuality and gender. This is a crisis far greater than that posed by COVID-19, but, like it, thus far an unmet moment of Kairos for the Catholic Church. The frustration arising from these dark developments is made all the greater in that, not so very long ago, American Catholics had reason to expect better days. The ascendency of St. John Paul II in 1978 came at a moment when American Catholicism was flailing about in a quixotic quest for worldly relevance by imitating the world. Whether in aligning the Church with secular political movements to create a better world or by seeking relevance through the adoption of some of the cheesier aspects of popular culture, such efforts revealed a lack of confidence that Catholicism was sufficiently attractive on its own. It was at this moment that John Paul burst onto the world stage with much needed vigor and evangelical creativity. He was in many ways exactly what the moment required. Trained in Thomism and conversant in the personalist philosophy that animated Vatican II, John Paul was equipped to present the Catholic faith in a way that brought the authentic accomplishments of the Council to bear on the ills of the late twentieth century, both those within and outside of the Church. While liberal Catholics were horrified with the thought that the gains of Vatican II would be turned back, more conservative Catholics became instant optimists. So great was the enthusiasm that Neuhaus, then still Lutheran, followed up his The Naked Public Square, which bemoaned the ways in which Christians had been excluded from political discourse, with a buoyant declaration that now, at long last, as his new title announces, The Catholic Moment had arrived.16 In support, the famed pollster George Gallup Jr. claimed to have shown empirically that “American Catholics were in the midst of a religious revival.”17 The stars of 1987 were aligned for a robust intervention 16 17 Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984); Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli, The American Catholic People: Their Beliefs, Practices, and Values (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 42. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1001 of Catholics into American political discourse, a moment for the Catholic Church to assume, in Neuhaus’ words, “its rightful role in the culture-forming task of constructing a religiously informed public discourse for the American experiment in ordered liberty.”18 This notion would inform First Things, a journal edited by Neuhaus and dedicated to the intersection of doctrinally orthodox religion ( Jewish and Christian) and American politics. Writers such as George Weigel and Michael Novak (1933–2017) explored the significance the papacy of John Paul II had for the unfolding story of the distinctly American brand of democratic capitalism. It seemed that Murray’s dream that Catholics would provide the service to the American republic for which they were uniquely capable was becoming a reality. The enthusiasm was infectious, and before long prominent members of the American hierarchy were speaking in a similar manner.19 Neuhaus’ bête noire, David L. Schindler, shared in the optimism, even as he vigorously disagreed with the Murrayite vision that animated the writers of First Things. In a highly critical review of Catholic Moment, he could allow: The book makes for enjoyable and even exciting reading. It is difficult for a Catholic, even a non-triumphalist sort, not to be moved by his suggestion: not to be stimulated into serious reflection upon the meaning of Catholic identity, particularly now in the present cultural situation in America and indeed the West, which seems . . . aptly described in terms of a modernity giving way to postmodernity.20 Like them, he breathed the same air of a Catholicism reinvigorated by the papacy of John Paul II. While these combatants had different visions of how the Catholic Church in the United States best relates to the American culture, each assumed a buoyancy on the part of the Church for its task that was, it turned out, unwarranted.21 Neither anticipated the extent to which the internal problems of the Church would dash hopes for renewal. This is so, even if for Schindler the collapse was something of a vindication. 18 19 20 21 Neuhaus, Catholic Moment, 284. A particularly clear example is the pastoral letter of Archbishop J. Francis Stafford to mark the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and the centennial of the diocese of Denver, “This Home of Freedom: A Pastoral Letter to the Archdiocese of Denver,” May 28, 1987; repr. Origins 17, no. 4 (1987): 53–63. David L. Schindler, “Catholicism, Public Theology, and Postmodernity: On Richard John Neuhaus’s ‘Catholic Moment,’” The Thomist 53, no. 1 (1989): 107. Ross Douthat has referred to this as “the master narrative of conservative Catholicism in the West” in his prophetic essay “The Crisis of Conservative Catholicism,” First Things, January 2016, firstthings.com/article/2016/01/a-crisis-of-conservative-catholicism. 1002 James F. Keating David L. Schindler versus the Neo-Conservatives In the mid-1980s and 1990s, David L. Schindler made something of a cottage industry criticizing the work of Neuhaus, Novak, and Weigel, a group he labeled “the neo-conservatives.” With respect to Neuhaus, Schindler questioned whether his understanding of “the Catholic moment” was sufficiently Catholic. He made a similar charge in his Heart of the World, Center of the Church against Novak’s attempt to offer a Catholic defense of wealth creation within a system of democratic capitalism.22 The complaint against Weigel concerned whether American culture could be plausibly described as Christian, much less Catholic. What links each of these dialogues, if they can be called that, is a lack of discernible progress. Schindler was convinced that Neuhaus, Novak, and Weigel could hold the positions they did only because of their embrace of a faulty metaphysics, a notion of holiness inappropriate for followers of Christ, and a view of nature disconnected from the order of grace. In other words, their bad positions were a result of not understanding the true nature of the Catholic faith they all shared. Those under judgment objected, of course, and each did so in their own way. All, however, struggled to pinpoint the precise nature of the conflict. While Schindler wished to speak on the level of fundamental metaphysical and theological convictions, Neuhaus, Novak, and Weigel were convinced that the dispute was not over anything so fundamental, but rather a disagreement within the realm of prudence. They rejected the either/or tenor of Schindler’s attack and maintained that more than one position on the proper relationship between Catholic and the American polity was possible. Of the three, Novak evinced the least patience with what he saw as Schindler’s mixture of politics and metaphysics.23 The most theologically confident of the group, Novak dismissed Schindler’s claim that his position on democratic capitalism was based on a Neo-Scholastic view of grace and nature. Like Murray, he was aware of mid-century criticisms of this system and sympathetic to proposals for greater integration of the two orders.24 22 23 24 David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996). The most direct exchange of view between Schindler and Novak is found their reactions to Michael Baxter’s “Catholic and Liberalism: Kudos and Questions for Communio Ecclesiology,” Review of Politics 60, no. 4 (1998): 743–64. Novak reacts in “Liberal Ideology, an Eternal No; Liberal Institutions, a Temporal Yes?” in the same journal issue (765–74), and Schindler in “Communio Ecclesiology and Liberalism” (775–86). Novak points to Murray’s editorship of Theological Studies during this time, and in particular his publishing of Bernard Lonergan’s ground-breaking articles on gratia operans (“Liberal Ideology,” 766). Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1003 Indeed, if a difference in expertise separated the two parties, it was in favor of Novak’s own study of the relevant fields of economics and political science. While Novak put forward specific political proposals, Schindler dealt with untested and “grand hypotheses about how grace ought to work in a ‘civilization of love,’ particularly with regard to politics and economics.” When he deigned to descend from the lofty heights of metaphysical speculation to the practical realm, the proposals offered were “lamely indistinguishable from those he criticizes.” This failure to be specific was especially urgent when speaking about an issue as serious as the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. This was no academic exercise, no ideal statement for a theological manual. The final Bill was the product of serious Protestant minds, chastened by the lessons of many experiments in religious liberty conducted in all the original colonies over some two hundred years. For them, it took a great deal of self-abnegation. In two vital areas they declared the lawmaking power of the Congress simply incompetent: Congress could pass no law establishing a religion (“a religion,” Madison clarified in the constitutional debate) or inhibiting the free exercise of religion. They denied themselves the power to do these things.25 There remain, Novak conceded, unresolved issues with respect to Catholicism and American democracy, and Schindler and others were free to criticize his or Murray’s analysis of what the founders achieved. They ought to do so, however, after acquiring the intellectual habits required for the task or at least be less polemical in their criticisms. After all, politics is not primarily a matter of having the correct theology. If it were, we should expect that Catholicism would have come up with something better: “No doubt the Founders were Protestant, and our understanding as Catholics is rather different. Yet I know of no Catholic body before them that built better.”26 Weigel was also perplexed on why the disparity of views regarding American culture was anything more than a matter of emphasis.27 Mark Lowry, 25 26 27 Novak, “Liberal Ideology,” 769. Novak, “Liberal Ideology,” 773. Schindler published a series of essays attacking the idea of a compatibility between America’s “bourgeois” culture and “Catholic-creedal Christianity”: “Is America Bourgeois?,” Communio 14 (Fall 1987): 262–90; Schindler, “Once Again: George Weigel, Catholicism and American Culture,” Communio 15 (Spring 1988): 92–120. The occasion was an article by George Weigel, “Is America Bourgeois?,” Crisis 4, no. 9 1004 James F. Keating in his appraisal of the back-and-forth between Schindler and Weigel, calls the resulting stalemate “tragic.”28 He notes that both men saw themselves as “working within the service of the Catholic Church as defined by her Magisterium.” Moreover, their disagreement was not about central dogmas of the faith, such as the nature of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, but rather occurred within the realm of Catholic social thought. Since “social doctrines are about living as a Catholic in the midst of some culture or other, at some point in history,” there is significant room for debate among upholders of orthodoxy. “The apparent flexibility in Catholic doctrine on the question of religious freedom is classic example of the inherent latitude within Catholic social thought.” Thus, when Schindler grants Weigel’s claim that Americans are generous, one might expect, Lowry argues, that Schindler would view this generosity as a participation, albeit in limited way, in the fullness of the Catholic understanding of this virtue. However, Schindler does nothing of the kind, but rather characterizes the way Americans give to charity or personally help those in need as rooted in what he calls “an ontology of extroversion,” and thus the “onto-logical” equivalent of selfishness. Thus, what seems like a virtue to the uninitiated, turns out to be, once its metaphysical frame is unveiled, a vice. Lowry is sympathetic to the metaphysical point Schindler makes and grants that Weigel, in his desire for “the Catholic moment,” fails to deal adequately with the distance between American religiosity and the fullness of Catholicism.29 However, Lowry can accept neither the dichotomous conclusion Schindler draws nor the insults that he directs at Weigel for his lack of interest in doing political theology in a metaphysical mode.30 Irony is at work, therefore, in Lowry’s conclusion that the non-metaphysical Weigel comes out as more attuned to the possibilities of participation than his scholarly interlocutor. There is also the issue of the practical import of the standard that Schindler applies in his judgment upon America. Weigel writes: 28 29 30 (1986): 5–10. For Weigel’s response to the first essay, see his “Is America Bourgeois? A Response to David Schindler,” Communio 15 (Spring 1988): 77–91. Mark Lowry, “The Schindler/Weigel Debate: An Appraisal,” Communio 18 (Fall 1991): 424–38. The responses by Weigel and Schindler in the same issue support this judgment. See Lowry, “The Schindler/Weigel Debate,” 429: “In sum, Weigel has measured American culture as good, maybe at times too good, but he has minimized the distance between the religiosity of that culture and Catholicism.” Schindler credits Weigel’s lack of interest in metaphysics as a “want of education” and an overall lack of sophistication (“Once Again,” 102). Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1005 This bring us to the largest question raised by David Schindler’s essay, namely, what kind of culture and polity would satisfy the criteria demanded by what he terms “Catholic-creedal Christianity?” If I read Schindler correctly, only a culture and polity that take “Catholic-creedal Christianity” as its basic religious and moral framework is satisfactory, by Catholic standards. . . . One senses here, however, tacitly, a return to the kind of Catholic monism that marked the approach of the Magisterium to issues of church-and-state prior to the Second Vatican Council and its Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae Personae.31 Thus, even if Schindler’s ideal had any chance of becoming part of the American story, it would run afoul of Church teaching were it to be anything more than a debate between Catholics. Murray, according to Weigel, is a much better guide on how Catholics can bring natural law arguments to the ongoing formation of the democratic consensus by which the government governs. Schindler, in his response, argued that his adherence to Dignitatis Humanae on religious freedom is separable from the question of “why a regime should favor an ontology more proper to a non-Catholic than to a Catholic religious confession.”32 Lowry is not convinced. One “cannot have Dignitatis Humanae and ask that the regime be weighted toward the integral ontological ordering of Catholicism” without sacrificing the idea of government by the consent of the people. America is, after all, made up of more than traditional Catholics. In sum, Lowry argues that Weigel, for his part, underestimated the tensions between what it would mean to have a truly Catholic moment and the dynamics of American liberalism. That said, Schindler failed to come to grips with the incompatibility between all talk of constructing a regime supportive of the Catholic view of freedom and the development of doctrine accomplished by the Second Vatican Council. Of greatest relevance for our purposes is Schindler’s appraisal of Neuhaus’s proclamation of the late 1980s as “the Catholic moment.” In his lengthy and thoughtful review of Catholic Moment, Schindler laid out Neuhaus’s argument and subjected it to severe, if respectful, criticism.33 He focused on Neuhaus’s preference for a paradoxical model of the Church–world relationship over the other possibilities laid out by Richard Niebuhr. Of special interest to Schindler is Neuhaus’s view that the transformational 31 32 33 Weigel, “Is America Bourgeois? A Response to David Schindler,” 87–88. Schindler, “Once Again,” 117. Schindler, “Catholicism, Public Theology, and Postmodernity.” 1006 James F. Keating model, whereby the Church transforms the world, “smacks of triumphalism,” since it assumes that the Church has all the knowledge required to move history forward, the only issue being finding a way to implement its vision. This model was favored by traditionalists prior to Vatican II, and by leftists after the Council in the form of theologies of liberation. Neuhaus, of course, knows that Christianity is of its very nature transformative, but insisted that, when this way of looking at things is primary, the Church becomes overly absorbed into the projects of the world, either uncritically accepting secular ideologies or claiming expertise is areas beyond its competence. Better to think in terms of paradox. On the one hand, the Church approaches the world with a rationality accessible to non-Catholics, and on the other, the Church knows by faith that reason has access to only a part of reality, and not its most decisive aspect, which is the eschatological reconciliation of all things in Christ. The Christian, therefore, “lives, as it were, in different worlds, different realities. Nature, reason, law, culture—all these mean one thing in relation to one reality, and quite another in relation to another.”34 Catholicism, given its long commitment to holding together faith and reason or grace and nature in ways that maintain the integrity of each side of the equation, is better equipped to straddle these realities than other versions of Christianity. Hence, the Catholic moment. The problem with this approach, for Schindler, is that there are not two realities for Catholics, but only one. There is no nature untransformed by grace and no reason unaffected by faith. The only existent order is one thoroughly infused and informed by God’s salvation of his creation through the gracious work of Jesus Christ and the animation of the Holy Spirit. This insight is the lasting contribution of Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar and constitutes for Schindler “an integral part of the received tradition of Catholic Christianity.”35 In this tradition, nature and grace or faith and reason are not related extrinsically, as if one can simply be added onto the other because each can be understood apart from the other, but intrinsically, “a unity which is simultaneous with their distinctiveness.” Here grace and nature do not relate as discrete parts of a larger whole, but as aspects of a single, organic whole, related in their very being. This understanding of reality yields not a paradoxical model of Church–world relation, but rather a transformational model: the Church transforms the world by offering the truth of reality as revealed in Christ. 34 35 Neuhaus, Catholic Moment, 21. Schindler, “Catholicism, Public Theology, and Postmodernity,” 114. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1007 In sum, then: on the organic-integrated understanding of the grace-nature relation suggested here, Catholic Christianity has an intrinsically cosmic dimension. Grace establishes an ontological orientation in the cosmos: orders every entity from within to God in Christ. It follows that Catholic Christianity has an intrinsic mission truly to enter into, to penetrate, all of human being and activity and hence all of culture: to help carry through this ordering of all of being to God in Christ. The Catholic Church, as a matter of its own inter-essence, must in this way be of the world and a transformer of the world, that is, even (precisely) as it is—and must remain—above (transcendent of ) the world.36 In contrast, Neuhaus limits the Church to engaging in a conversation premised on the terms of whatever culture it finds itself in. Schindler says that it is “only slightly too cynical” to suggest that Neuhaus’ preference for the paradoxical model over the transformational serves his desire “to justify the neo-conservative reading of the particular political-cultural project called the American experiment.”37 This allows the Church to transcend the world, to speaks words of judgment about its failures, but also to stop short of claiming to be able to “transform society and its structures.” To put the matter in its most radical terms, Neuhaus’s paradoxical understanding (of grace-nature and faith-reason) entails a privatizing of faith which is simultaneous with a “naturalizing” of nature and a “rationalizing” of reason. That is, Christianity can go public, can speak in and for the public order, but only in the name of a nature just so far unpenetrated by grace and a reason just so far unaffected (internally) by faith.38 In other words, Neuhaus’s Catholic moment presents an Americanized form of Catholicism, domesticated and shorn of its prophetic powers to challenge the liberal principles of America’s founding and the cultural formations that bear the mark of that founding. Schindler repeated many of these claims against Neuhaus in his Heart of the World, Center of the Church, and included an extended critical analysis of Murray, on whom Neuhaus relied.39 Schindler suggests that, instead of Neuhaus’s Murrayite Catholic moment, we ought to pursue one informed by the teaching of Pope John Paul II. 36 37 38 39 Schindler, “Catholicism, Public Theology, and Postmodernity,” 118. Schindler, “Catholicism, Public Theology, and Postmodernity,” 119. Schindler, “Catholicism, Public Theology, and Postmodernity,” 130. Schindler, Heart of the World, 43–88. 1008 James F. Keating It is to this suggestion that Neuhaus reacted with his 1997 First Things essay “The Liberalism of John Paul II.”40 In it he expresses frustration at Schindler’s attacks, and like Weigel, cannot quite understand the precise nature of the criticism of this otherwise “friendly fellow.” That said, he acknowledges a serious difference of approach: I do think there is an important difference between us. It is not, or at least it is not chiefly, a difference over Catholic theology. The difference, rather, is that Prof. Schindler and those who are associated with his criticism tend to put the worst possible construction upon the liberal tradition, and on the American cultural, legal, and political expression of that tradition. In doing so, I believe Prof. Schindler and his friends hand an undeserved victory to those who interpret the liberal tradition in ways that we all deplore. With John Courtney Murray, I suggest that our task is to contend for an interpretation of liberalism that is compatible with the fullness of Catholic truth. He grants without qualification that America was founded on a liberal tradition different from Catholicism, but since time travel is not yet a possibility, the best we can do is make a case that there is a way to understand America that does not exclude Catholic participation in its common life, but rather welcomes it. Given the number of powerful voices making the contrary argument in an attempt to limit Catholic influence, there is no good reason for American Catholics to give them aid or comfort. Rather, believers ought to expend their intellectual firepower on bad construals of liberalism and toward the articulation of ones more friendly to the deepest commitments of Catholicism. Doing this will entail coming to grips with the claims of antiliberal Catholics. The first such claim is that liberalism, with its ethos of not bringing religious claims into political discussions, tempts believers to privatize their faith. Neuhaus counters: “If we are hesitant to declare in public that Jesus Christ is Lord, the fault is in ourselves. We cannot plead the excuse that liberalism made us do it.” Christians living amongst liberals would hardly be the first faced with an enticement to hide their faith. A second claim is that liberalism presents itself as being procedural, the work of lawyers, but in reality hides an ideology that promotes a voluntaristic conception of social order and undercuts all objective claims to the good. Finally, it is said that 40 Richard John Neuhaus, “The Liberalism of John Paul II,” First Things, May 1997, firstthings.com/article/1997/05/the-liberalism-of-john-paul-ii. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1009 liberalism reinforces the worst aspects of capitalism, producing a “social order that is entirely and without remainder in the service of individualistic choices by the sovereign, autonomous, and unencumbered Self. The wages of liberalism is consumerism, and consumerism is all-consuming.” Neuhaus cops to each of these charges against liberalism as it has been articulated and practiced by certain advocates. He argues, however, that individually and collectively they represent distortions of liberalism rather than its soul. This is the argument that American Catholics are called to rather to make, unless, that is, they believe that the American Church requires a government founded on something other than liberalism. Although the above summary of the debate between David L. Schindler and his opponents hardly does justice to the issues involved, it makes the necessary point that no resolution was attained. Since the sides could not agree on a common definition of liberalism, the argument over the extent to which Catholics ought to fight against it was rendered moot. Neuhaus and company agreed that certain conceptions of American liberalism must be rejected by Catholics, as well as by their fellow citizens. At the same time, they asserted with confidence that the American experiment possessed within itself potencies well suited for Catholic engagement on how Americans ought to order their life together. This engagement, of course, would necessarily include a proposal for how Americans ought to think of the rights and freedoms endowed to them by the Creator and secured by the Constitution. Schindler, in contrast, saw such cheeriness for a Catholic moment as a refusal to appreciate the Catholic difference. Once that difference is seen and operationalized, the impossibility of a Catholic moment in late-twentieth-century America, or any time in American history, becomes obvious. The only question left is whether Catholicism demands a different kind of regime from the one the founders bequeathed. Neither side was interested in answering yes. However, that was then, this is now. A Catholic Postliberal Moment? This is not the place to go into the details of the varieties of Catholic postliberalism. Despite the newness of the movement, the literature by both its proponents and its critics grows daily and will continue to for the foreseeable future. It is enough to note what is new and what is not. What is familiar is the criticism of liberalism, although the increase in its sophistication and apocalyptic fervency is worth attention. When the Catholic postliberals speak of liberalism, they follow Alasdair MacIntyre in viewing it as a 1010 James F. Keating tradition, with intergenerational commitments and reinforcing rituals.41 This means that liberalism can be seen as being in direct competition with Catholicism, not simply as an intellectual alternative, but as another way of living in the world, backed up by governmental and economic power. Moreover, liberalism is reckoned to be in crisis, collapsing in on itself. The promise of neutral space in which citizens would be free to pursue whatever life goals they chose as long as it did not harm others is proving false. Instead of a bulwark against tyranny, liberalism in its last throes has become of source of it. A condensation of the postliberal prognosis can be found in Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed? Liberalism has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded. As liberalism has “become more fully itself,” as its inner logic has become more evident and its self-contradictions manifest, it has generated pathologies that are at once deformations of its claims yet realization of liberal ideology. A political philosophy that was launched to foster greater equity, defend a pluralist tapestry of different cultures and beliefs, protect human dignity, and, of course, expand liberty, in practice generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation, and undermines freedom. . . . To call for the cures of liberalism’s ills by applying more liberal measures is tantamount to throwing gas on a raging fire. It will only deepen our political, social, economic, and moral crisis.42 Catholic postliberalism, therefore, sees liberalism not so much as something with which Catholics should not make common cause, but rather as a direct threat to the continuation of Catholic faith itself. Far from worrying how to conceive of the character of a “Catholic moment,” the question is now whether the Church can long survive in a liberalism come of age. When Catholic postliberals consider the sorry state of Catholicism in twenty-first-century America, they prefer to focus on the Church’s cultural, economic, and political context rather than on behavior of the Church itself, “head and members.” This is not to say that they have no complaints about the postconciliar Church or the papacy of Francis, but rather they tend to blame America’s liberalism above all other factors. Enlightenment theories 41 42 Adrian Vermeule, “Liturgy of Liberalism,” First Things, January 2017, firstthings.com/ article/2017/01/liturgy-of-liberalism. Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 3. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1011 involved in the founding of the American republic contain toxins that will over time dissolve all individual and group commitments beyond the preference of the moment. Since Catholic faith upholds a world of objective beauty, goods, and truths which human beings are obliged to seek out and bind themselves to once found, it is properly seen as the exact opposite of liberalism. Catholic postliberals are aware, of course, that American Catholicism has had better days, but they take this as evidence that, while the poison may be slow acting, it is nonetheless sure. In other words, the Church is not to blame for its cultural impotency, but rather the liberalism that permeates every aspect of the American culture, and thus the religious lives of Catholics. It is this conception of liberalism that has led Catholic postliberalism to reintroduce the question of a Catholic state. I say this knowing full well that most postliberals wish to distinguish their position from that of the integralists, for whom the solution is the Church and the state integrated into a single whole. As Catholics wishing to be faithful to magisterial teaching on religious freedom, they have rightly avoided any direct endorsement of the reestablishment of the confessional state of old. Given this, it is not clear that they have advanced the argument beyond the stalemate of three decades ago. Let us take the example of D. C. Schindler’ The Politics of the Real. The Reality Politics of D. C. Schindler D. C. Schindler describes his project as an attempt to find a place for the Church “between Liberalism and Integralism.” It seems necessary, therefore, that he argue against each end of the spectrum with equal energy, rejecting both in their pure state but retrieving something in each. Given Schindler’s remarkable intellectual productivity, I hesitate to pass judgment on whether he will accomplish this feat. That said, a good deal of that energy has been spent on attacking liberalism and emphasizing its radical distance from a Catholic understanding of freedom. He is very, very good at it, and I cannot hope to do justice to his sophisticated and developing position in what remains of this essay.43 I shall rather simply focus on what he says in The Politics of the Real as it pertains to our question. 43 D. C. Schindler is proving to establish himself as one of the leading Catholic intellectuals of his time. Here are only some of his works on the topic of freedom: The Perfection of Freedom (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012); Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2017); Retrieving Freedom: The Christian Appropriation of Classical Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2022). 1012 James F. Keating Like his father, D. C. Schindler regards American liberalism not as a pragmatic way to order and ensure freedom in a religiously pluralist country, but rather as a metaphysics essentially hostile the Christianity. More than a tradition or set of reenforcing rituals, liberalism is anti-Christian theology. The liberals who founded the United States spoke of God as creator and bestower of human equality and rights. However, their conception of God, according to Schindler, is as potentia absoluta, a deity not of truth or reality, but empty and contentless potency. By adopting a God whose nature is power, liberalism upholds the primacy of potency over actuality, the possible and not yet real over the real. Thus: At the theological core of liberalism is the most radical rejection of Christianity possible, because it posits and enacts an undoing of the very thing that defines Christianity, that makes Christianity Christian, namely, the Incarnation of the Son of God, which is an “extension” of God, so to speak, into time and space, through an assumption of nature in its deepest reality, an extension-through-assumption that aims ultimately to embrace the whole of reality: the cosmic liturgy.44 In other words, liberalism is the political expression of a metaphysics of the unreal, one that reduces God to “a possibility” and asserts a universe without any order of goods beyond what human beings can fashion in their endless struggle for power. When potency is given primacy over reality, the real has no existence prior to choice but rather is only ephemerally created by choice. In this sense, liberalism is not a solution to civic violence, but an invitation to it. “The only way to resolve differences that are totally arbitrary is either through violence, the forceful imposition of one ‘particular opinion’ in a way that excludes others, or simply by putting all religious matters out of play in the actual order of existence, making them most basically a matter of private conviction, enclosed in a sphere now policed in the name of public order.”45 The only way that America could have evaded this outcome would have been if its founders had related “Nature’s God” to the only religious tradition grounded in the reality of this God, that is, the Catholic tradition preserved and embodied in the Catholic Church. It seems not too much to say that, for Schindler, the original sin of America is that it was not founded upon the Rock of Peter. Since that did not happen, every Catholic must choose 44 45 Schindler, Politics of the Real, 8. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 30. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1013 between these different and opposed ways of viewing freedom, God, and politics. Does this choice require support for a Catholic state in America? A reader of Politics of the Real can be forgiven for expecting the answer to be yes. When describing the form of Catholicism, Schindler goes beyond the typical integration of the Hellenic quest for the truth of reality and the Jewish desire to know the revealing God and adds the Roman “aspiration to gather all the peoples of the world into a harmonious whole, made secure by enduring legal institutions that were not subject to the vicissitudes of natural passions or cultural differences.”46 Catholicism is, accordingly, of its very nature political and can never be content to be set beside any polity, confined to a separate sphere. For all of its autonomy, all of its immanent integrity and proper powers, the political order, as the organization of human life in the world, is not a self-enclosed sphere juxtaposed to the reciprocally self-enclosed sphere of the Church; it is not a place outside of the Church and her mission, to which the Church is essentially indifferent and only “episodically” concerned whenever activity in this otherwise separate space happens to transgress into some explicitly religious or moral matter.47 Indeed, if faith is viewed as merely a choice made by individuals, instead of an entrance into a communal reality that already exists and whose reality is unaffected by that choice, this Church can be no more than a passing creation of a collection of individuals. It has no prior reality. Catholics, therefore, cannot accept an American understanding of religion as a sphere of freedom unmolested by a government that has rendered itself incompetent to access the value of the choices at hand. Contrary to Murray’s famous praise of the American government’s refusal, in the form of the First Amendment, to get involved in religious matters, Schindler insists that any polity not opposed to Catholicism must pursue a conception of the common good derived from the Catholic Church. The state must recognize the authority of the Church in some respect over itself. “To put the matter succinctly: the only way for the state to avoid making itself a religious authority in its service of the common good is officially to recognize the authority of an actual religious body.”48 Schindler leaves no doubt that the only candidate for this recognition is the Catholic Church. 46 47 48 Schindler, Politics of the Real, 11. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 17–18. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 96 (emphasis original). 1014 James F. Keating Schindler is aware, of course, that his proposal seems to imply the need for a confessional state in America with support for Catholicism written into the new constitution. While Schindler grants the high improbability, even absurdity, of this turn of events, he has many positive things to say about integralism as a “thought experiment.” He affirms the willingness of its proponents to “think all the way to the foundations” and a recognition of the need to recover “the greater Catholic tradition” to do so.49 To its credit, integralism recalls a forgotten dimension of Christianity: “The presence of the Church in the formal structures of the political order, the incarnation of the Christian spirit in the social forms that make up the ‘real world’ beyond the private sphere. It goes well beyond airy talk of the ‘common good’ or ‘justice as fairness.’”50 That said, he finds that the integralist approach to the Church– state relationship suffers a similar defect that one finds in the followers of Murray: a view of nature as extrinsic from grace. Integralists think of Church and state as two halves, each concerned with a difficult aspect of the common good and together constituting a whole. The sole difference is that, while Catholic liberals insist that the interactions of the two orders occur solely on the level of culture, with governmental power employed only for keeping the peace, integralists believe that the state can and sometimes ought to use its coercive powers in the pursuit of the religious part of the common good. In contrast to both, a politics of the real, with its more organic view of the nature–grace relation, holds that the state more deeply attains its end by positively relating itself to the Church, and vice versa. “The Church and state are both in themselves societates perfectae since both aim at the whole human good, differently. This means that they do not intersect only at the margins, as two separate spheres, but each has its place inside, and indeed at the very core, of the other, though it has this place both as radically distinct in itself, and as a whole comprehending the other in its turn. The polis emerges from the center of the Church, and the Church has her place at the heart of the world.”51 The end of the state is the human good, and the deepest meaning of that good has been revealed through the Church. Thus, the Church is part of the essence of the state without thereby compromising the integrity of either. At this point, it is fair to ask Schindler to move beyond the speculative realm and explain how the politics of the real will accomplish this without the state employing force in the cause of the true religion. Schindler insists 49 50 51 The integralist with whom Schindler engages is Pater Edmund Waldstein, a collection of whose writings can be found in Integralism and the Common Good: Selected Essays from The Josias, 2 vols. (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2021, 2022). Schindler, Politics of the Real, 241–42. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 275–76. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1015 that to think that the Church could be intrinsic to the working of the state only through coercion is to separate nature and grace. “The office of the Church, as it bears on the political, is not to enforce the good in the practical order but most basically to articulate it, to protect and defend its truth.”52 This, of course, is something with which Neuhaus could agree and spent his career contributing to the task. The question that divides is not whether the Catholic Church ought to put forward its vision of what is good for human beings as individuals, communities, or nations. This would be an agreed upon truth whether that contribution to public discourse is a thorough denunciation of liberalism as the devil’s own or an argument that there is a faint participation of liberalism in a superior understanding of what it means to be truly free. No, the crossing-line is whether one believes Catholicism requires a state that somehow places itself under the authority of the Church. No amount of metaphysical speculation is going to get around this most fundamental of choices. Here, however, Schindler waffles. That said, it is to his credit that he admits that his rejection of liberalism leads to an affirmation of state support of Catholicism: We are indeed affirming that, ultimately, a Catholic confessional state is the ideal—not in the sense that a modern, liberal state subordinates itself to the Church, but in the sense of a political order founded in the ecclesial order, at the center of which is the ultimate nature and destiny of man—but we make this affirmation indirectly and through an expansion of the intrinsic meaning of politics. . . . An ideal political order is one that understands itself to be at the service of the whole human common good, and this goal transcends itself, beyond the temporal horizon, opening up to the eschatological order, for the Church is directly responsible.53 In order to explain how his view differs from integralism, however, Schindler claims that a politics of the real, were it every to come to historical reality, would require a political form unknown to the modern world. In this counter-factual, the Church would not be called upon to exercise power of the state directly, at least not under normal circumstances, but rather to inform the political order “indirectly” and “intrinsically.” In that sense, the Church becomes most fully itself when the state “has the charge of realizing the Christian order in this world, the charge of organizing society 52 53 Schindler, Politics of the Real, 277. Schindler, Politics of the Real, 282–83. 1016 James F. Keating into a peaceful whole according to the measure of justice—understanding ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ here, not in the formalistic manner of liberalism, but as content-full goods, indeed supreme human goods.”54 In what amounts to a decisive concession to his liberal opponents, Schindler grants that a faithful Catholic could actively work towards this goal only if there is a development in Church doctrine on the question of religious freedom.55 It seems, then, that, for all the added sophistication, the argument has not moved much beyond its former stalemate. Conclusion So, are we having a Catholic postliberal “moment”? The answer is obviously yes, in the sense that the present circumstances of the Catholic Church in America have changed radically since Neuhaus’s declaration of a Catholic moment and something new is called for. The American Church is wounded, like the nation in which it dwells. The earlier confidence on either the side of the Church or the country is hard to believe for anyone not old enough to have experienced it. Neuhaus’s 1987 book reads like one from a different world. It is also worth noting that, less than ten years after the publication of Catholic Moment, a collection of essays appeared in the November 1996 issue of First Things entitled “The End of Democracy?”56 The contributors reacted to a series of Supreme Court decisions on abortion, assisted suicide, and gay rights that were deemed both violations of natural law and undemocratic. Russell Hittinger spoke for many of the contributors when he asked: “If the Court does not claim to act merely in its own name, but for the common good and the rule of law, how then should citizens regard the effort to link abortion with the legitimacy of the Court itself and thus, it would seem, with the legitimacy of our current political regime?”57 Although Neuhaus would continue his effort to affect American politics and culture until his death in 2009, the tone would change. No more talk of a Catholic moment. 54 55 56 57 Schindler, Politics of the Real, 289. Schindler hints at the direction this development might go by referring to a book coauthored by his father: David L. Schindler and Nicolas J. Healy, Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, A New Translation, Redaction History, and Interpretation of Dignitatis Humane (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). This impressive work of scholarship warrants more discussion. The essays as well as reactions can be found in The End of Democracy?: The Celebrated First Things Debate, with Arguments Pro and Con and “the Anatomy of a Controversy,” ed. Mitchell S. Muncy and Richard John Neuhaus (Dallas, TX: Spence, 1997). Muncy and Neuhaus, End of Democracy?, 18. Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of “the Catholic Moment” 1017 It is telling that his final book, in 2009, on the situation facing an American Catholic was entitled American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile.58 The times clearly call for a more critical reading of American liberalism, and the Catholic postliberals are to be credited with doing the necessary work. Their contributions are real and lasting. So is the pushback. Although rarely as philosophically or theologically recondite as their postliberal opponents, writers such as Robert P. George, Daniel E. Burns, Robert R. Reilly, and Ryan T. Anderson also provide a needed service.59 They add an indispensable dose of realism to what often seems like fantasies shorn of any connection to the real world. They also provide hope in dark times. Catholic postliberalism, at least in its apocalyptic mode, can lead to enervating despair among believers. Even if liberalism has failed, we must live faithfully among its ruins. Accordingly, Catholic liberals rightly press the issue of prudence. The collapse of American liberalism will most certainly lessen the freedom of the Church to preach and sacramentally embody the Gospel, as well as the liberty of individual Catholics to speak the truth in public. It is right to ask whether this is the moment for a Catholic undermining the American heritage of freedom of thought. In my view, Catholic postliberalism is at its best when it makes realistic policy proposals that, if enacted, would bring the American polity closer to the Catholic vision of the common good.60 Catholic liberals, on the other hand, are at their best when they take a step back from the practical and take stock of how fallen all political systems are, including the American one.61 Short of a change in Church teaching and world history, that will be the best we are likely to do. 58 59 60 61 For a biographical treatment of Neuhaus’s varying perspectives on the American project, see Randy Boyagoda, Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square (New York: Image, 2015). My list is limited by the writers with whom Schindler engaged: Robert George and Ryan T. Anderson, “The Baby and Bathwater,” National Affairs, Fall 2019, 172–84; Daniel E. Burns, “Liberal Practice vs. Liberal Theory,” National Affairs, Fall, 2019, 127–41; Robert R. Reilly, American on Trial: A Defense of the Founding (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2020). I find Sohrab Ahmari’s recent work in Compact magazine and Gladden Pappin’s in American Affairs particularly valuable in this regard. I look forward to Ahmari’s forthcoming Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It (New York: Forum, 2023). A writer who does this particularly well is Joshua Mitchell. See his American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time (New York: Encounter, 2022). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 1019–1042 1019 “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics William McCormick, S.J. Saint Louis University St. Louis, MO Nonspecialists are often surprised to learn that Aquinas’s thought on Church and state is a matter of obscurity. After all, Aquinas is the most famous medieval thinker in the West, and the question of Church and state is one of the best-known medieval political questions. And yet his thought on that polemical topic remains obscure. As John Watt puts it: “There are too many ambiguities in his doctrine and too many unanswerable questions about what he did or did not hold.”1 Why is his view not better understood? Part of its obscurity is the relative infrequency with which he writes on politics.2 Another is the relative lack of interest in medieval political thought among political scientists and historians of political thought, an obscurity dating back to the Renaissance.3 Those who do study Aquinas’s thought, moreover, have been mired in a controversy over two key texts: one from book II of his Scriptum or commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (d. 44, q. 2, a. 3, exp. text.), and the other in book II of De regno (On kingship), chapter 3 (no. 110). For brevity, I will use S for the Scriptum passage and R for the De regno passage.4 These two 1 2 3 4 John A. Watt, “Introduction,” in John of Paris: On Royal and Papal Power, trans. J. A. Watt (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 9–63, at 40. Mark F. Jordan, “De Regno and the Place of Political Thinking in Thomas Aquinas,” Medioevo 18 (1992): 151–68. James Hankins, Virtue Politics (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2019). References to De regno will be cited from De Regno, trans. I. Th. Eschmann (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949); translations from the Scriptum are taken from appendix II in this edition of De regno. The designations S and R to refer to the two disputed passages follow Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers,” Medieval Studies 20 (1958): 177–205, and Leonard Boyle, “The De Regno and the Two 1020 William McCormick, S.J. appear to contradict each other, and with respect to fundamental political questions. The debate over these two texts points to what most contributes to the obscurity of Aquinas’s teaching on Church and state: confusion about his vision of politics in human life. As I will show in this paper, Aquinas transcends modern categories of the “secular” and “belief ” in his treatment of politics. Aquinas valorizes the integrity of political activity: that autonomy is not just a concession to the modern condition. It is in fact when Aquinas is most theological that he is most open to that integrity. The integrity of the political speaks to the intrinsic goodness of that order: it mirrors God’s unity in its complex and ordered diversity. In this paper I examine R and S to show their concordance. I argue that they are complementary in what they prescribe for relations between Church and state, and indeed grounded in the same account of the origins of political authority. Through this investigation we will uncover key principles of Aquinas’s political thinking that show him to have a capacious vision of politics where humans achieve the actualization of their full beings as human. A key notion will be unitas ordinis, or unity of order: the form of human cooperation in political life. As we will see, that form strikes a middle path between the simple unity of the individual person and the orderless collectivity of a crowd. For Aquinas, that order is itself a common good of politics, and an intrinsic one at that, before any “extrinsic” common good achieved by the people through that order. Part of why this seemingly secular consideration is good is its theological importance: it mirrors God. Further, if Aquinas does not elaborate on political arrangements as much as one would like, nevertheless he offers sure guidance for the principles which ought to guide the prudent development of those arrangements in a particular time and place. Ultimately Aquinas shows that medieval political thought is in key respects not as alien and hostile to us as we might imagine, but in its own way equally concerned about the integrity of the political life.5 The Teaching of S Aquinas’s teaching on Church and state in S is widely accepted as his mature “two powers” teaching. Aquinas’s most famous work, the Summa theologiae [ST], would eventually replace Lombard’s Sentences, but in Thomas’s own thirteenth century it was that compendium of quotations and arguments 5 Powers,” in Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis, ed. J. R. O’Donnell (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 237–47. This paper advances the argument of my book on Aquinas’s De regno, The Christian Structure of Politics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022). “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1021 from Christian sources compiled by the twelfth-century theologian-bishop Lombard that was the standard theology textbook in the Latin West—the Ur-text for theological teaching and scholarship.6 The Sentences is perhaps the most important Western book no one has heard of. It was so influential not only because it collected a rich trove of arguments, but also because it posed a critical question for medieval and early modern theology: how these diverse sources were to be systematized. Lombard assembled a cornucopia of quotations out of which many later thinkers drew their own questions and onto which they imposed their own order. Thus Aquinas’s Scriputm is more than a commentary on Lombard: Aquinas used this text to develop his own thought.7 The argument of S is simple: spiritual and temporal power originate independently in God. They both possess the autonomy proper to fulfilling their task, which is to help humans seek their ends. In contrast with medieval theories that see politics as the maintenance department of the Church, on this account the spiritual power does not have complete authority over the temporal authority, and for two reasons: the temporal authority does not derive from the spiritual authority, and the temporal authority has a task that is distinct from that of the spiritual. The spiritual power does, however, have an indirect power over the temporal power in those things pertaining to the temporal.8 The question at hand in S is equally simple: “Should we always obey the higher rather than the inferior power?” Laurence Fitzgerald notes the importance of the context of the question, which is on obedience and authority.9 This was no abstract question, but a matter of urgency in the medieval West: what do princes owe to the pope? And what do subjects of princes owe the pope? Could the pope absolve subjects from loyalty to their ruler, for example? The fourth objection in S reads: If, then, it were true that we must obey the more superior power, the spiritual power would have the right always to release a man from his allegiance to a secular power, which is evidently not true. Aquinas prefaces his respondeo by making a distinction. There are two ways that the higher and lower power can relate to one another, he argues: the 6 7 8 9 Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 5. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 40–1. Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers,” 178–79. Laurence Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers,” Angelicum 56 (1979): 515–56, at 541. 1022 William McCormick, S.J. lower power can be derived from the higher power, or the lower and higher powers can be derived in common from “one supreme power.” This distinction matters because of what it implies about the roles of the two powers. If the lower power derives from the higher power, then that lower power is a creature of the higher power to be directed as the higher power sees fit. If the lower power does not derive from the higher power, however, then the lower power is not subordinate to the higher power in all things, but only insofar as the functions of the higher power bear upon those of the lower power, and specifically as that common source relates them. So which describes the relation between the spiritual and secular powers? Aquinas writes that it is the latter case: they originate independently in the same higher power, God. Thus, while the spiritual power is higher than the secular power, the secular power is not wholly and completely subordinate to the spiritual power, but only insofar as God has subordinated the temporal to the spiritual. This is a shorthand for something like this: the temporal is only subordinate to the spiritual insofar as the manner in which God has constituted it bears upon the spiritual.10 Thus the secular power is free to undertake its own activities, as Thomas says in the reply to the objection (ad 4), “in the things that belong to the bonum civile.” In S, as in many other works of the time, the test case of this doctrine comes with the pope, who is not simply one example among many of spiritual power, but its apex. Further, for much of the history of the papacy, the pope has had not only spiritual authority as head of the Church, but also temporal authority as sovereign of the papal states. The pope was often said to have the plenitudo potestatis, or “plenitude of power.”11 But what was the source of his temporal authority: an independent claim to temporal authority, or his spiritual authority? According to Aquinas in ad 4 of S, the pope represents a “special case,” as the “spiritual and secular powers are so joined in one person.” In other words, the spiritual authority of the pope does not by necessity grant him direct temporal authority. Temporal power may be instrumental to their spiritual power, and even today the Vatican city-state exists to assure the freedom of the pope in his exercise of that spiritual ministry.12 But that argument does not entail that his temporal power flows from his spiritual power. In fact, Aquinas argues in ST II-II, q. 10, a. 10, ad 2, that “the authority of 10 11 12 Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers,” 178; Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers,” 541–42. Charles N. R. McCoy, The Structure of Political Thought: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1963), 123. Thomas Reese, Inside the Vatican (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1023 Caesar precedes the distinction of faithful from unbelievers.” The historical differentiation of spiritual authority from temporal authority matters greatly for Aquinas: as political authority precedes Christian spiritual authority in time, so it maintains its own end or purpose even granting the superiority of the latter over the former.13 The teaching of S embodies a long-standing Christian tradition called “Gelasianism,” what is better known as the “two swords” doctrine for the opening words of the document in which it was most famously laid out.14 Gelasianism took shape with the fifth-century Pope Gelasius I’s rejection of the priestly status of the emperor.15 This tradition has two components: a dualism of Church and state, and the primacy of the spiritual above the temporal. A hallmark of this tradition is the “indirect power” of the spiritual power over the temporal power. The spiritual power has no direct authority over the secular. Rather, it has an indirect authority insofar as spiritual and secular matters overlap. In other words, neither the temporal nor the spiritual power is collapsed into the other: they are coordinated and ordered to one another without either losing its distinctive role. This is a prime example of Aquinas’s unitas ordinis (unity of order), as we can see more clearly in contrasting it with other theories. Indeed, the Gelasian tradition has been far from the only way of understanding Church–state relations, and in modern historiography has come to be seen as opposed to two other flourishing schools of thought: the Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions. It is easy to exaggerate the dichotomy between these two camps.16 Augustine and Aristotle were enormously influential on most medieval thinkers, and their “influence,” itself an ambiguous concept, was hardly univocal. For instance, most medieval Christian thinkers agreed with Aristotle on the political nature of the human person, and most accepted some version of Augustine’s notion of the “two cities.” The differences between two “Aristotelian” thinkers might be as considerable as those between an “Aristotelian” and an “Augustinian,” and two adherents might appropriate the same thinker in radically different ways. Rather than viewing the historical record of medieval thought as a pitched 13 14 15 16 McCoy, Structure of Political Thought, 12. From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, ed. John O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 79. Francis Oakley, Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 99–102; Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 10–11. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:38–39. 1024 William McCormick, S.J. battle between these two traditions, it is more productive to examine how the profound differences between these two thinkers were received in the medieval period, and how that reception conditioned the diverse responses medieval thinkers offered when faced with fundamental questions about political life, questions that no medieval political thinker could ignore.17 Further, for our purposes they are primarily useful as terms of contrast with Aquinas. The later Augustinian tradition tends to devalue the importance of politics, asserting that citizenship in the City of God is the only lasting thing. However, it abandons the subtlety of the North African bishop’s original “two cities” thesis in advocating for theocracy or hierocracy, despite the difficulty of finding an argument for any such notion in the work of Augustine himself.18 This tradition typically radically subordinates the temporal to the spiritual. Perhaps the greatest Augustinian, Giles of Rome, argues that all temporal authority derives directly from the pope.19 In so doing, Giles only partially appropriates the Gelasian tradition. In embracing the primacy or superiority of the spiritual power over the temporal, he comes close to denying any meaningful differentiation of the two powers. He sees the temporal as the public utilities branch of the Church. The tradition which claimed the inspiration of the Greek philosopher Aristotle defends the autonomy of political life vis-à-vis spiritual authority. Aquinas is often associated with Aristotle, although he is too sui generis to be simply representative of a school.20 Better contenders for that role are thinkers coming not long after Aquinas, including Aquinas’s own student John of Paris, who argued in defense of the claims of Philip IV of France against Pope Boniface IV,21 and the theologian Marsilius of Padua, who wrote a treatise against papal power in defense of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV.22 In their efforts to emphasize the differentiation of the temporal from the spiritual, they sound quite Gelasian. They are less committed to the 17 18 19 20 21 22 Cary Nederman has been at the forefront of this conversation, e.g., “Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society: The Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 3–26. Michael Bruno, Political Augustinianism: Modern Interpretations of Augustine’s Political Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2014), 21–22. Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, 193–98; McCoy, Structure of Political Thought, 122–23. Nederman, “Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society,” 5. Arthur P. Monahan, “Introduction,” in John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, trans. Arthur P. Monahan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), xi–xlix. Cary Nederman, “Afterward,” in Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacis, trans. Alan Gewirth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 443–54. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1025 primacy of the spiritual, however, with John downgrading it to a “dignity” rather than a power, and Marsilius coming close to denying it altogether.23 A key distinction between these two traditions emerges from this description: their divergent interpretations of Gelasianism. The Gelasian tradition at its best can synthesize the disparate tendencies of these two schools, and we see this with Aquinas. In S, Aquinas takes seriously the “Aristotelian” affirmation of the integrity of political life without denying the primacy of the spiritual defended by soi-disant Augustinians. He thus takes the best of both traditions in articulating a unity of order between the temporal and spiritual. As Jean-Pierre Torrell writes, Aquinas combines “roots in Augustine” with “Aristotelian fervor.”24 This interpretation of S has been uncontroversial in recent decades, and accords well with parallel texts of Aquinas that, while too short to lay out in a full argument of S, at least confirm it in part, as I. Th. Eschmann agrees. But S fits less obviously with the argument of Aquinas’s other extended discussion of Church and state, R, and Eschmann in fact argues that the two presentations are polar opposites, calling R “Gregorian” and “hierocratic,” words often used to describe the above-mentioned Augustinian tradition.25 What is at stake is whether R represents an Augustinian moment in which Aquinas directly subordinates temporal to spiritual. Such an argument would amount to a betrayal of the Gelasian tradition so beautifully captured in S. Further, such a reading of R would play into modern fears about medieval thought as bent upon the radical subservience of politics to religion. The Ambiguous Case of R The passage of De regno that mostly directly concerns us comes toward the end of that text: Thus, in order that spiritual things might be distinguished from earthly things, the ministry of this kingdom has been entrusted not to earthly kings but to priests, and most of all to the chief priest, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff. To him all the kings of the Christian People are to be subject as to our Lord 23 24 25 McCoy, Structure of Political Thought, 123–31; Marc F. Griesbach, “John of Paris as a Representative of Thomistic Political Philosophy,” in An Etienne Gilson Tribute: Presented by His North American Students, with a Response by Étienne Gilson, ed. Charles J. O’Neil (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1959), 33–50. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:41. Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers.” 1026 William McCormick, S.J. Jesus Christ Himself. For those to whom pertains the care of intermediate ends should be subject to him to whom pertains the care of the ultimate end, and be directed by his rule. (De regno II, ch. 3, no. 110). There are several ways to interpret this dense passage. On one of most influential accounts, Eschmann’s, reads R as contradicting the argument of S. Eschmann argues that R implies the direct power of the spiritual over the temporal, a position which reverses that of S. Moreover, according to Eschmann, in the special case of the pope, R argues that “the pope here has one power only, viz., the spiritual power,” and, “by its nature, spiritual power includes secular power.”26 Further, according to Eschmann there is a great difference in methodology between S and R. Eschmann argues that Aquinas adopts in S an a posteriori mode of argument, one that probes questions of law and jurisdiction, while in R, and De regno in general, Aquinas turns to an “aprioristic method based on the teleological analysis and coordination of the function of the two powers.”27 This argument about methodology matters because Eschmann thinks it shows a contradiction between R and S. This putative difference would also bear upon the place of politics in the thought of Aquinas. To treat politics in a posteriori terms, as Eschmann claims of S, is to see politics as a matter of practical knowledge and empirical investigation. In other words, it is to see politics from the point of view of political actors: as a domain of practical judgment and action. To treat politics in a priori terms, as Eschmann claims of R, is to see politics as a matter of theoretical knowledge and speculative investigation. In other words, it is to see politics from the point of view of a theologian: a view circumscribed not by the exigencies of political life, but by the externally imposed dictates of religion. Eschmann’s argument is hasty in analysis and tendentious in tone, which is a disappointment, given his pioneering early work on De regno. This has led a few scholars to reject his argument and affirm that the passage can be interpreted to square with S.28 But while these scholars raise important points, a full reckoning with De regno requires acknowledging that, on its face, R does present itself as an example of the Augustinian tradition. Indeed, a few scholars have dismissed R as unrepresentative of Aquinas, including John Finnis.29 For instance, the language “all the kings of the Christian People 26 27 28 29 Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers,” 179. Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers,” 182. This is the approach of Boyle, “The De Regno and the Two Powers,” and Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers.” John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 228. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1027 are to be subject [to the pope] as to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself ” is quite strong, suggesting that the pope has direct temporal authority over kings. That suggestion is only deepened by the subsequent description of temporal rule as “intermediate” to the “ultimate” end of spiritual rule. Yet this prima facie judgment sits in uneasy tension with the opening words of the text: “In order that spiritual things might be distinguished from earthly things.” Indeed, Torrell takes such a distinction to be at the very heart of S, which we have already identified as Gelasian or dualist.30 In other words, the relationship between R and S is not immediately obvious. That ambiguity is not improved by the relative neglect of R. This is why, I argue, one ought to explore the fuller meaning of this passage by contextualizing it within De regno. Such contextualization is valuable because De regno is an unfamiliar text, and so interpreting parts of it with reference to other parts helps illuminate the work more generally. The context of De regno also helps to establish the connection between the “two swords” and the origins of political and spiritual authority in R, which is precisely the focus of Aquinas in S. De regno is not a treatise, however, and so does not systematically present Aquinas’s teaching. Juxtaposing the relevant sections of De regno, however, uncovers in R a claim consonant with S: Aquinas lays out the political order both in its integrity and in its limitations under the indirect power of the spiritual. This is the heart of the Gelasian doctrine, as we saw above. The Teaching of R In what follows I lay out four sections of De regno, and argue for an interpretation of R in light of those sections: chapter 1 of book I and chapter 1 of book II, both on the origins of political authority; two locations in chapter 3 of book II, one on the end of political authority (no. 106) and the other on the distinction between political and spiritual authority (no. 111). In chapter 1 of De regno I, Aquinas argues for the natural origins of political community and authority: “Yet it is natural for man, more than for any other animal, to be a social and political animal, to live in a group. This is clearly a necessity of man’s nature” (nos. 4–5). Aquinas argues that basic features of humans make clear that humans are naturally political: our possession of reason, our relative defenseless, our use of speech. Aquinas thinks that humans need other humans to survive, and that humans are possessed of attributes to thrive in communal life. These are facts about human nature that can be known through reason without any need for revealed truth. 30 Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:13. 1028 William McCormick, S.J. Aquinas cites ancient thinkers who argued on the basis of reason, particularly Aristotle and Cicero. He only invokes the Bible to confirm their point. Aquinas then continues this line of thought in chapter 8: “If, then, it is natural for man to live in the society of many, it is necessary that there exist among men some means by which the group may be governed.” Thus human authority exists by nature. Human beings are political by nature, meaning that their forms of authority and community are natural. The upshot of this argument for our inquiry is simple: political authority is not derived from spiritual authority, but is derived independently of it. Indeed, we do not need revealed truth to know that: reason is our guide in political matters for Aquinas. R is thus far in agreement with S. Aquinas could have made other arguments. He might have argued, for instance, that politics is a result of sin, not of nature. This would place political authority firmly under the thumb of the Church. He might also have argued that the origin of political activity and authority is nature, but that the effects of sin have vitiated our will and reason such that the natural propensities of human beings to be social have been severely damaged. Aquinas, however, chooses neither such course. He chooses, rather, to emphasize the natural origins of politics, origins which make that activity and authority explicable to reason. Note, too, that Aquinas’s method is empirical in this part of De regno, which puts it in line with S, pace Eschmann.31 Aquinas observes inductively certain facts about humans that he believes tend to show them to be political. Thus far, in other words, Aquinas treats of politics in R as he does in S: as a matter of practical knowledge and empirical investigation rather than theological speculation. In our second passage is chapter 1 of De regno II, Aquinas shifts toward a practical question: how the king ought to govern. This question takes up the rest of De regno, including our final two passages (from ch. 3 of bk. II). What we should underline here is Aquinas’s argument that “we learn about the kingly office from the pattern of the regime of nature” (no. 93). Particularly, Aquinas writes, we should understand that the royal office is a particular example of a universal case: divine government. The king “is to be in the kingdom what the soul is in the body, and what God is in the world” (no. 95). Where our first passage (from bk. I) argues through reason for the natural origins of politics, this first chapter in book II confirms that human government conforms to the divinely revealed government of God. This parallel 31 Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers,” 182. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1029 is important because of what it says about reason for Aquinas: what we can know through reason can be confirmed by revelation. They are not mutually opposed sources of knowledge. Indeed, Aquinas argues in this passage that “reason is to man what God is to the world” (no. 94). The king is to govern through reason. This argument is further important because of what it does not say. In many Christian visions of politics, such parallels between earthly and divine rule lead to a primary focus on the order between divine government of creation and ecclesiastical government of the world. In other words, the chief parallel to God’s rule is not political authority, but the Church. The aforementioned Giles of Rome, for instance, argues that the pope rules all people and all lands in the name of God, and he delegates political power to kings. In such a scheme, political rule derives from Church governance. This is not what Aquinas claims here in chapter 1 of De regno II. Rather, he relates temporal government directly to divine government.32 If Aquinas was going to adopt a “hierocratic” approach to politics in De regno, this would have been a prime opportunity to do so. Instead, he reaffirms the importance of politics. But this passage (bk. II, ch. 1) is also important because of how it bears upon S. In S, Aquinas argues that the relationship between two powers created by one power is governed by that creating power. Here we see that God constituted temporal power so as to be an earthly analogue to God’s own rule. We know, then, that whatever the relationship between the temporal and the spiritual power, it will have to account for the lofty character of the temporal power that Aquinas has thus far adumbrated: necessary by nature, and after the pattern of God’s rule of creation. Indeed, we should bear in mind that our third and fourth passages, as well as R itself, arise in a chapter 3 of book II, which explicitly continues this conversation about the human as following the divine pattern of government. In our third passage, which comes just before R in chapter 3 , Aquinas argues that political authority must secure virtue: “For men together form a group for the purpose of living well together, a thing which the individual man living alone could not attain, and good life is virtuous life” (no.106). The end of political community and authority, Aquinas writes, is virtuous living. Virtue for Aquinas means what it means for Aristotle: the excellence of a thing. Political activity, then, has at its end the excellence of human beings (see bk. II of Nicomachean Ethics). For what other ends might Aquinas have argued? Survival, pleasure, 32 Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers,” 556. 1030 William McCormick, S.J. honor, and power are obvious choices, as noted in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aquinas, like Aristotle, will dismiss those possibilities as inadequate in chapters 7–11 of De regno I. For Aquinas as well as Aristotle, the end of politics is ultimately human happiness. Aristotle of course does not subscribe to Aquinas’s Christian notion of happiness, but in both cases they are seeking a human end beyond the merely material.33 Indeed, this passage in book II (ch. 3, no. 106) and the one in chapter 1 of book I combine to echo Aristotle’s important line from the Politics: the city, which is to say the exemplary human community, is founded out of the necessities of humans, but exists also to pursue the excellence of those same persons (1.1252b30–53a1). In other words, politics is about both survival and higher goods. Aquinas reproduces this argument in framing the origins of politics in human necessity (De regno I, ch. 1) and its ends in terms of human flourishing (bk. II, ch. 3). The argument in chapter 1 of De regno I could be interpreted to give a low interpretation of the importance of politics: that political life exists for mere material survival. After all, Aquinas thinks that it is in part what humans lack to survive on their own that draws them into community. Further, one might be also inclined to interpret the passage as a low vision of politics out of a supposition that Aquinas takes human happiness to depend upon revelation. Such a low vision of politics here would accord well with an understanding of Aquinas as some sort of “theocrat” who thinks political authority exists to do mundane work subservient to the Church. Further, we noted that Aquinas might have argued here in book I that sin has vitiated the political nature of the human person. The passage just before R in book II, with its argument for virtue as the end of politics, is another place where Aquinas could have made such an argument. But at this point before R (ch. 3, no.106), Aquinas thinks that virtues can be had by and through reason. In other words, this passage extends the argument of chapter 1 of book I to bring it into conformity with Aristotle. Human beings employ their reason in politics, and their exercise of reason conduces to virtuous living. This reading of our passages in book I and in book II leading up to R complements the analogy between human and divine government in chapter 1 of book II, the passage that confirms through revelation what book I argues through reason about the natural origins of politics. Book II here (ch. 1) also 33 Mary Nichols, response to Robert Bartlett, in Nichols and Bartlett, “Aristotle’s Science of the Best Regime,” American Political Science Review 89 (1995): 152–60, at 152–55; James V. Schall, S.J. “Transcendence and Political Philosophy," The Review of Politics 55 (1993): 247–65. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1031 elevates and ennobles politics by seeing it as a microcosm of divine activity in creation. The argument leading up to R (ch. 3, no. 106) confirms that nobility: human beings use their reason to govern earth in imitation of God, and they do so for a lofty purpose: virtue. In the first three passages from De regno, Aquinas makes interlocking arguments about the independent origins and lofty aims of politics. It thus far is theocratic neither in argument nor in spirit. This leads us to conclude that, at least thus far, De regno is in conformity with S. Our fourth and final passage is also in chapter 3 of book II (no. 111), just after R (no. 110). It continues the argument of chapter 1: defining the office of kingship. To do so, Aquinas offers a historical account that (1) criticizes civil religion and (2) distinguishes between earthly and spiritual: Because the priesthood of the gentiles and the whole worship of their gods existed merely for the acquisition of temporal goods (which were all ordained to the common good of the multitude, whose care devolved upon the king), the priests of the gentiles were very properly subject to the kings. Similarly, since in the old law earthly goods were promised to the religious people, . . . the priests of the old law, we read, were also subject to the kings. But in the new law there is a higher priesthood by which men are guided to heavenly good. Consequently, in the law of Christ, kings must be subject to priests. (De regno II, ch. 3, no. 111) This passage presents the historical articulation of temporal and spiritual goods, which correlate with temporal and spiritual authorities. Aquinas’s history lesson begins with ancient pagans (“the gentiles”), proceeds to Israel (“the old law”), and then to Christianity “the new law”). He tells the story of how the priesthood became superior to princes: subservient to them when they served the temporal good, which is unquestionably under the aegis of kings, and superior to them when they came to serve spiritual goods, which are higher than temporal ones. Aquinas’s mode of presentation in this passage, which highlights the differentiation of spiritual goods from temporal ones, perhaps obscures what unites these three stages: the goodness and naturalness of earthly goods. Unlike an “Augustinian” who would see these goods as merely useful, Aquinas emphasizes the goodness of these earthly ends. He does so in two ways. First, at all three stages he affirms the authority of the king to provide for the common good. Political authority is never questioned, but in fact confirmed at each stage. Second, Aquinas argues that political authority has 1032 William McCormick, S.J. existed before spiritual authority. In other words, political authority did not originate with or derive from spiritual authority. This comports with his argument in chapter 1 of book I that political authority is natural: if it is natural, then one would expect to find it long before Christianity. The argument in the passage following R (no. 111 in ch. 3) further comports with chapter 1 of book II: human governance is modeled after the pattern of divine governance, which we took to mean that political activity is important, not a mere afterthought or drudgery. This fourth De regno passage (aside from R) confirms that, even with the rise of the Church and ecclesiastical governance, temporal power continues to be important. In terms of S, then, both spiritual and temporal authority are derived from God, and God has set up their relationship. There is a subtler way in which Aquinas affirms the importance of politics across all three stages. Note the fundamentally historical method Aquinas deploys here. This is not the “aprioristic” method which Eschmann claims to find in De regno. Or, better yet, De regno comprises a mix of methods. In book I, Aquinas take an empirical approach, and here (our last passage in book II) Aquinas again turns to the empirical record of history. While there are no doubt theological principles that inform Aquinas’s argument in R, it is a far cry from the strictly “teleological analysis” Eschmann claims to find in it. Again, were Aquinas to treat politics in a priori terms in De regno, he would be treating politics from the point of view of a theologian: a view defined not by the exigencies of political life, but by the principles of theology. His empirical turn here, however, shows that Aquinas is sensitive to the nature of politics. Political activity cannot be fully described by a set of theoretical principles. It involves an irreducibly practical domain of action and judgment. The effect of these sections upon the interpretation of R is manifold. We noted earlier that, at first glance, R betrays a possible theocratic strain. We particularly observed that the language “all the kings of the Christian People are to be subject [to the pope] as to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself ” suggests that the pope has direct temporal authority over kings, and that the characterization of temporal rule as “intermediate” to the “ultimate” end of spiritual rule reinforces that suspicion. If this were true, then R would indeed contradict S. In light of these four other sections, however, it is difficult to read all of chapter 3 of book II in that same light, and further quite reasonable to read it in conformity with S. To begin with, Aquinas has argued for politics as a robust sphere created not out of the Church’s will, but out of God’s will for human needs and excellence. Aquinas affirms in R that politics has an origin “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1033 independent of spiritual things. Aquinas has stressed that independence in the historical origins of politics, in its basis in rational nature, in its end in virtue, and in its conformity to the divine government of the universe. Thus far the argument of De regno thus far fits the second case of S: temporal and spiritual government are both created by God. R, in other words, complements the Gelasianism of S, whereby a unity of order coordinates the spiritual and the temporal without reducing one to the other. More generally, the spirit of De regno gives us a prima facie reason to reject a theocratic reading of the disputed passage. Aquinas has presented earthly things as important and noble, being conducted by reason, confirmed by revelation, and directed to virtue. Thus politics has never appeared as merely ancillary for Aquinas in De regno, but rather as an important activity in its own right. Indeed, in book II Aquinas explicitly rejects civil religion. When we turn to the passage of R, its opening line takes on new meaning: “Thus, in order that spiritual things might be distinguished from earthly things, the ministry of this kingdom has been entrusted not to earthly kings but to priests.” This sentence preserves the distinction between spiritual and earthly things that we have seen Aquinas make throughout De regno. We can read it as in line with the dominant emphasis of De regno: the spiritual and temporal are distinct, each with their proper competences. While in chapter 3 of book II Aquinas wants to emphasize the importance of the spiritual, he does so without recanting his argument throughout R on the integrity of the political. Further, consider how Aquinas ends the passage: “For those to whom pertains the care of intermediate ends should be subject to him to whom pertains the care of the ultimate end, and be directed by his rule” (no. 111). This line reinforces the message of his historical argument earlier in chapter 3, in R: with the rise of Christianity, the spiritual has been articulated from the temporal and given a place of priority. But Aquinas does not thereby collapse the distinction between the temporal and spiritual or the unity of order between them. Moreover, Aquinas has nowhere made a case for the direct subjection of temporal authority to spiritual authority. And so, by the logic of S, political authority as presented in R would be only indirectly subordinated to the Church. We have seen another way in which Aquinas affirms the integrity of the political: the method of De regno. Aquinas uses both a priori and a posteriori methods of reasoning in R, contrary to Eschmann. As a theologian, Aquinas perhaps does not take politics to be central to his investigation, but in De regno he recognizes it as the practical domain that it is.34 34 Jordan, “De Regno and the Place of Political Thinking,” 151–68. 1034 William McCormick, S.J. Establishing the coherence of an author’s texts is a fraught business, and such an enterprise does not admit of the certainty of a geometric proof. As Fitzgerald writes, we are primarily interested to see that such texts do not conflict.35 But we have gone further and seen positive proof of their coherence. It is to the foundation of that coherence that we now turn. The Unity of Order In our analysis of S and R, we have had recourse to the idea of unity of order: the Gelasian complementary ordering of spiritual and temporal power. It is at the foundation of both S and R and calls for further elaboration. I will argue that attention to this key concept shows the place of politics in Aquinas’s politics. As Russell Hittinger explains, Aquinas conceives of many social orders as having a unitas ordinis or “unity of order.” Aquinas describes the unity of order in his commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: It must be known that the whole which the political group or the family constitutes has only a unity of order, for it is not something absolutely one. A part of this whole, therefore, can have an operation that is not the operation of the whole, as a soldier in an army has activity that does not belong to the whole army. However, this whole does have an operation that is not proper to its parts but to the whole.36 As Aquinas takes pains to show here, a unity of order means that the parts of a social body are related to each other and compose a whole without being reducible to that whole.37 Each part of this whole can perform a task or “operation” distinct from the whole, but that task nevertheless contributes to the overall task. In an army, for instance, each soldier or group of soldiers might have specific tasks around munitions, supplies, medical services, and so on, but their tasks when properly coordinated would contribute to the general goal of victory. In other words, the parts are brought together to serve a common purpose without losing sight of their individual purposes. 35 36 37 Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers,” 551. Aquinas commenting on Ethics 1.5; cited in Russell Hittinger, “The Coherence of the Four Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: An Interpretation,” in Proceedings of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, XVIII Plenary Session (Vatican City: Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 2008), 81. Hittinger, “Coherence of the Four Basic Principles,” 81. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1035 One can also think of it in terms of “goods”: the common good of the whole is meant to serve and contribute to the individual good of its members.38 This unity of order is so-named because it is not a simple unity, with which it can be helpfully contrasted: “For it is not something absolutely one,” as Aquinas writes above. A simple unity obtains among parts which exist merely to serve the whole, as the organs of a body serve a living thing, or as the parts of a car engine serve the car. It is the image not of a group of people, but of one person. This sort of unity has played a leading role in politics across history, and should be painfully familiar to the twenty-first-century reader. With the twentieth-century rise of ideology and technology, such images of political order were more likely to be called “totalitarian.” A one-party state in which political authority controls every aspect of life would be a similar “simple unity,” as everything in Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy was understood as serving the singular (supposed) good of the State, the People or the Homeland, or some other abstraction that was taken for the good of the whole.39 Indeed, an understanding of political society as a simple unity depends upon such abstractions because healthy political life never genuinely reflects that unidimensional homogeneity. By its nature, political life is always richer: a constellation of individuals pursuing their own goods even as they interact with others in the pursuit of common goods. Aquinas’s unity of order can also be distinguished from the opposite of a simple unity: a mere aggregation or collection. Such societies fall short of anything like a unity, as Hittinger describes with reference to some idealized depictions of the order of the market: “A purely accidental unity ensuing upon the choices and actions of individuals who follow their own preferences.”40 Aquinas envisions something more substantive. Here it would be helpful to consider a claim that Aquinas was somehow a progenitor of secularism. Obviously imputing secularism to Aquinas is anachronistic. Something like secularism would be beyond the imagination of most people in most times and places, as Aquinas’s history of civil religion in chapter 3 of De regno II attests. After all, secularism entails a great deal 38 39 40 McCoy, Structure of Political Thought, 51–53; and Gregory Froelich, “The Equivocal Status of Bonum Commune,” The New Scholasticism 63 (1989): 38–57. Eric Voegelin, “Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions, the New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism,” in Collected Works Of Eric Voegelin, ed. Manfred Henningsen, vol. 5. (Columbia, MO: University Of Missouri Press, 1999). Hittinger, “Coherence of the Four Basic Principles,” 81. 1036 William McCormick, S.J. more conceptually and practically than just the falling away of religion, a misunderstanding which Charles Taylor rejects as “subtraction stories.”41 Nevertheless, Aquinas’s account of social orders offers an analysis of them, even if we durst not speak for him. Much hinges on how one defines secularism. On some simple accounts, secularism would be an aggregation: political and spiritual authority indifferently coexisting in society. On others, especially those more suspicious of secularism, it would be closer to a simple unity, with political authority exercising extensive control of religion in the name of (putatively) temporal goods. In either case, secularism would not seem to be a unity of order. For, in its more obvious meanings, secularism entails the radical separation of religious and political authority. But, of course, that is precisely what a unity of order encompassing religious and political authority would presuppose. Church and State With this account of unity of order in hand, we are prepared to see how Aquinas’s arguments in R and S reflect that model. He understands this unity of order to describe society at two levels: at the level of Christendom, or Church and state, and at the political level. In what follows, I will consider how Aquinas relates Church and state as a unity of order. I will then consider political life as a unity of order and describe that unity of order as an intrinsic common good. S and R are both examples of the “indirect power.” As we noted above, they conform to “Gelasianism” or the “two swords” doctrine, which entails two aspects: a dualism of Church and state, and the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal. This “primacy” is not total, but only with respect to those matters where the spiritual and temporal overlap. Thus the power of the spiritual over the temporal is not direct, in that the spiritual power has authority over the temporal power insofar as it pertains to temporal matters, but rather indirect, only insofar as those temporal matters bear upon the spiritual. The indirect power, which can initially seem clunky, becomes more intuitive in meaning when one grasps how this power is indirect. A key application of this indirect power, we saw above, is to distinguish it from Aristotelian and Augustinian alternatives. So-called Augustinian visions of Church and state relations describe their relationship as a substantial unity to show how political authority exists instrumentally to serve the ends of the Church, as with Giles of Rome’s claim 41 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007), 26–29. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1037 that all political power derives from and depends upon the papacy. This vision is sometimes called “organic,” because it suggests an image of society as a “super-individual” behaving like one organism, with all parts playing an instrumental service toward the one ultimate good. It is worth noting that this sort of social order is precisely what many criticize when they reject Aquinas and others as “medieval.” It is also precisely what Aquinas rejects. If the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, however, one ends up with a church and state like that predicated of a certain reading of Marsilius of Padua, for whom temporal and spiritual authority have little to do with each other. It would seem that political and spiritual authority would not be ordered together in any way, but rather accidentally juxtaposed in society. Gelasianism makes legible the “unity of order” arising out of Aquinas’s Church and state teaching: religious and political authority are not conflated, nor are they unrelated. They form a unity of distinct but coordinated parts. When Aquinas speaks of “Christendom,” then, a controversial term that perhaps conceals more than it reveals, he has in mind the unity of the Christian people of the Latin West united under the distinct spiritual and temporal powers.42 Temporal and spiritual authority are united by an ordering to a common end, to secure the flourishing of the human person. Yet each has a distinct role that is not reducible to that of the other, and in turn they each serve an end that is not reducible to that of the other. Aquinas thinks this is the nature of the sort of social ordering that can secure human happiness. In many ways, however, the more interesting question is how political community is itself a unity of order in De regno. The Emergence of the Political the Created Order We have seen that in other works Aquinas refers to political communities as a “unity of order.” Aquinas makes several claims in De regno that support that argument. More importantly, Aquinas defends the integrity of political life. Aquinas assumes throughout De regno that political community is a unity of order. Most notably, he describes the task of political authority as securing the “unity of peace” (bk. I, ch. 2). For Aquinas, peace means legal order contributing to the common good, including the virtue of its citizens. Indeed, the virtue of the citizens is an implicit theme in De regno, which Aquinas links directly with the “unity of peace” (bk. II, ch. 4). 42 See the appendix on 105–6 in Eschmann’s trans. of De regno. 1038 William McCormick, S.J. This appeal to virtue further underlines the nature of political community as a unity of order. Virtue means the goodness or excellence of something: the end of politics is just to make human beings good. And Aquinas specifies that the virtue of humans is not to be developed in them as though they were children or animals: obedient slaves. Since humans are free, Aquinas argues, they cannot be governed so as to serve merely the private end of the ruler. They must be governed as free persons: toward a common good which is truly common to all of them (bk. I, ch. 2) Anything else would be tyranny. Precisely because humans are free, in other words, they cannot be treated as mere parts that serve the good of the whole, nor can they be treated as instruments of the head. To be ordered in a unity for Aquinas means that each part contributes to the whole and the whole contributes to each part. To understand the political community as a unity of order is to see it as an important activity that fulfills what it means for each member to be a human being. Indeed, the “common good” of which Aquinas speaks in De regno is not simply the common goods obtained by the community: it is the intrinsic good of the community itself in its ordered unity.43 This is the good of a social complex that is fully itself and fully oriented toward its characteristic activities. The common good of the order of human community, by the way, mirrors the ordered structure of creation and even God. Aquinas presents the order of politics as being nested in other complementary orders. Particularly, it fits within the broader cosmos, which of course is governed by God. That cosmos itself, in turn, images God. In other works, Aquinas argues that “the order of the universe . . . mirror[s] the divine nature [i.e., God] as far as a creature can.”44 For Aquinas, created things and God are of course fundamentally different. But to the extent that created things can form a unified and harmonious order, they come as close as they can to the simplicity and order of God (De regno II, chs. 1–2). In other words, to the extent that political order is achieved, it has a quasi-divine goodness to it. Aquinas can offer no higher praise. These considerations about the goodness of political order underline and extend what we have already seen with Aquinas’s Gelasianism: the nobility and integrity of politics. Aquinas’s account of the subordination of the temporal authority to the spiritual authority depends upon the temporal authority having an integrity of scope and end. That integrity is supported by how Aquinas describes politics: an area of free persons actualizing their 43 44 Froelich, “Equivocal Status,” 51. Froelich, “Equivocal Status,” 50. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1039 good in concert with other free persons. In these different ways, we have seen something like the “emergence of the political” in De regno. To be sure, this “political” does not mean here a “secular” space distinct from the “religious,” even a term of contrast to it, which is a modern and contingent conceptualization. Moreover, Aquinas does not have in mind anything like the modern state, an equally modern and contingent development.45 But Aquinas does recognize in De regno an art of government. In De regno we see Aquinas underline the importance and difficulty of political life as viewed from within that very set of practices. Aquinas joins Aristotle in seeing politics as a noble end that develops important aspects of human nature. If he parts from Aristotle in not seeing politics as the final end of humans, then Aquinas at the very least is closer to Aristotle than he is to modern thinkers who see in politics primarily the avoidance of violent conflict and the satisfaction of material needs. To be sure, there is no point in domesticating Aquinas, in making him “safe for democracy.” Nevertheless, this Thomistic political naturalism as we have seen it here responds to Quentin Skinner’s suggestion that Augustine’s City of God encourages the Christian “not to concern himself with the problems of ‘this temporal life.’”46 Implicit in this suggestion are two claims: Christianity denies the importance of politics, and that, to the extent that Christianity does value politics, it is precisely as subservient to the Church. Aquinas rejects both of these suggestions, however much he benefits from the intellectual legacy of Augustine. We have already seen that Aquinas does not take politics to have a low end. For him, politics is directed by reason, not a lust for power or a struggle for a minimalist notion of peace, as seems to be the case for Augustine. Aquinas rather thinks reason can lead humans to virtue through political activity. Indeed, this is a role of reason sanctioned by God, as we saw in chapter 1 of De regno II. Further, Aquinas does not make politics subservient to the Church. The point Aquinas makes in S finds similar expression in R: political authority does not derive from spiritual authority, but rather originates in the most mundane needs and the highest potential of the human person. To be sure, political authority as Aquinas understands it is entangled in a dense network, including empire and papacy above and what we loosely call “feudal” relations below.47 And yet Aquinas clearly delimits a sphere of the exercise of politics for his royal reader, one with a coherent end and a robust method. 45 46 47 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 349–58. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 349. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 351. 1040 William McCormick, S.J. On that note, a neglected point for the integrity of the political in De regno comes from its genre. This text is a letter to a prince, not a theological treatise. It is thus an example of the “mirror of princes” genre, of which the most famous example is The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.48 As befits its genre, De regno exhibits a pedagogical dimension. Specifically, Aquinas’s mode of teaching emphasizes the naturalness of politics and the responsibility of the king to attend to his political duties. Those duties concern the first chapters of the letter, with little to no reference to the Church, which arises only later in the text. For scholars, this is not an ideal treatment: it leaves them wondering how political and spiritual authority are related. For the prince, however, this is the optimal presentation: it shows that politics deserves to be treated on its own terms. Thus Francis Oakley is able to argue that De regno “clearly exhibits the same Aristotelian understanding of the nature and purpose of political society, and is, in fact, replete with quotations from the Politics.”49 The unity of order reflects Aquinas’s intellectual temperament. Aquinas always seeks a golden mean. On countless topics, Aquinas seeks to take the closest approximations of the truth wherever they are to be found and reconcile and synthesize those positions according to deeper, underlying terms. Against extremists who reject the integrity of political life or the importance of moral and spiritual ends for politics, Aquinas seeks in R and S to reconcile both. This, we saw earlier, was to balance the best of the Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions. Aquinas refuses to give one monolithic influence over the other, but saves the proposition on both sides.50 But this is just why Aquinas is such a great thinker: not because he is always “innovative” or “novel,” but because he is a masterful synthesizer of those who come before him. Conclusion: The Myth of the Medieval Fitzgerald notes that De regno actualizes one of Aquinas’s great principles: grace does not destroy nature, but rather elevates and perfects it.51 This is a principle that non-Thomists may have heard, but perhaps wondered what it means and what difference it makes for Aquinas’s thought. For that matter, 48 49 50 51 Allen Gilbert, Machiavelli’s Prince and its Forerunners: The Prince as a Typical Book De Regimine Principum (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1938). Francis Oakley, The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 113. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:41. Fitzgerald, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers,” 547–48. “A Unity of Order”: Aquinas on the End of Politics 1041 it is a principle that many Thomists know well, yet may not appreciate in its implications for his political thought. De regno supplies such an answer. This principle bears upon Aquinas’s political thought in a particular way, as Aquinas has a strong sense of the human person as a political animal. Humans are made for political community, and their religious nature only reinforces their need for the political. This principle introduces a tension in modern readings of Aquinas: some would rather Aquinas’s teaching on politics were “secular” in our sense, but it is profoundly theological. Indeed, it is precisely when the arguments of Aquinas are most theological that they are most open to reason, and most celebratory of politics. If nothing else, a careful reading of De regno might encourage us to be more open to the riches of the medieval age, riches as fruitful for our own age as for theirs.52 52 The author wishes to thank for their help with this article Peter Berger, S.J., John Berkman, and Russell Hittinger. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 1043–1058 1043 Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science Matthew K. Minerd Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius Pittsburgh, PA Among the various types of law discussed in St. Thomas’s theological “treatise on law”—questions 90–108 of Summa theologia [ST] I-II—the classification known as the “law of nations” (ius gentium) holds an ambiguous epistemological position. Marking a kind of halfway point between the natural law and civil law, it seems to straddle both domains. In fact, in a particularly important text dedicated to this topic in the ST (I-II, q. 95, a. 4), Aquinas classes the ius gentium as being closely connected to the natural law, though in a way that is somewhat derivative, not as immediately flowing from human nature (especially in its animality) as does the natural law, but also not as marked by human contingency as is human civil law. As was recently discussed in a well-documented and insightful article by Barrett H. Turner in The Thomist, there have historically been two main lines of Thomist interpretation concerning the exact character of the “law of nations.” Very broadly stated, what he refers to as the “Salamancan” line, indebted to Francisco de Vitoria, “interprets Thomas’s doctrine of the ius gentium as a body of universal positive institutions (that is, specifications, determinationes) added to the natural law by agreement of the human race.”1 1 Barrett H. Turner, “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law,” The Thomist 84, no. 3 (2020): 339–94, at 353–54. In this article, I cannot give Turner’s excellent article its due. Even though we differ on the exact nature of the law of nations and its mutability, there are many points on which we agree, given that he “splits the difference” between the two main positions that he sets forth. For further writing by him on this topic, see Turner, “Pope Francis and the Death Penalty: A Conditional Advance of Justice in the Law of Nations,” Nova et Vetera (English edition) 16, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 1041–1050. I am not sure that I agree with his conclusions regarding how to think about the 1044 Matthew K. Minerd This position, which would be common for several centuries among members of the Thomist school, would locate the law of nations essentially in the domain of nearly universally adopted customs and institutions, not strictly deduced from the natural law, but rather grounded on “the quasi-political authority of the entire human race, which promulgates the ius gentium by customs whose utility for attaining the ends of the natural law under a certain set of social conditions is easily recognized by rational creatures.”2 Turner calls the other line of thought “Maritain’s Neo-Thomist Line,”3 an outlook that would be shared with various nuances by thinkers like Jean-Marie Aubert, Yves Simon, Marie-Michel Labourdette, John Finnis, and others. Setting aside my qualms about his appellation “neo-Thomist,” which does more to obscure than to illumine (for it covers a host of Thomistic figures who have significantly different views on what constitutes “Thomism”), Turner does fairly lay out the major lines of Jacques Maritain’s position, which is most directly articulated in Man and the State and La loi naturelle ou loi non-écrite.4 Basing himself on his particular view of knowledge of the natural law through connaturality,5 Maritain contrasted this sort of moral cognition with that which develops in the line of conceptual articulation, thus having a different “gnoseological” character from our knowledge of the natural law, while nonetheless still sharing the same “ontological” foundation. Such conceptually articulated law would be the ius gentium. Rather than add my voice to the dialectic of the various thinkers arrayed by Turner into the two aforementioned camps, I would like to propose a slightly different approach to the “moral epistemology of the law of nations,” though one that I believe lies in line with the best aspects of Maritain’s approach. Continuing a series of reflections that I have undertaken 2 3 4 5 morality of the death penalty, but the sort of analysis he is undertaking seems to be in the right space of moral-epistemological concerns. Turner, “Law of Nations,” 355. See Turner, “Law of Nations,” 372–86. See Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 84–101 (esp. 98–99), and La loi naturelle ou loi non-écrite, ed. Georges Brazzola (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1986), 13–35, 51–56, 83–91; sections of the latter can be found in Maritain, “The Ontological and Epistemological Elements of the Natural Law,” in Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice, ed. and trans. William Sweet (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 25–38. Below, I will critique Maritain’s position, noting, however, what I believe is the solid basis for his insight, if it is situated more carefully in the general Thomistic theory of moral knowledge. Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1045 concerning moral epistemology during the past few years,6 I propose that it is most helpful to consider the “law of nations” as being a form of reasoning pertaining to what Scholastic vocabulary would refer to as “moral science,”7 namely discursive philosophical reasoning concerning the essences, properties, effects, and various other essential relationships that belong to a human acts, morally considered (the principal subject of moral philosophy), along with other subjects that are studied in relation to this principal subject (e.g., the principles of human acts, most particularly, the structure of human acts and the moral virtues). Moral science is the activity of reasoning that can be undertaken by knowing agents living together in community, seeking to discursively articulate and explain the moral truth that forms the essential basis for the contingent determinations that will then be codified in particular civil laws, the latter of which are not concerned with questions like “what are the ultimate foundations for property rights?” or “what are the natural rights of those accused of high crimes?,” but rather with declarations like: “These are the particular ordinances that govern the rights that one has to this or that kind of property, in this or that political community or communities, and so on,” or “In a trial concerning treason (or human rights violations, etc.), defendants’ rights will be respected in the following ways: X; Y; Z.” The first two questions seek out the intelligibility that universally follows as a conclusion from the principles of moral reasoning, while the latter two declarations set the very conditions for the civil incarnation of the requirements of the natural law. I personally take it for granted that St. Thomas does not have a developed and settled theory of the ius gentium. Therefore, I am not formally concerned 6 7 See Matthew K. Minerd: “A Synthetic Overview of Conscience and Prudence in Moral Reasoning,” in Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2022), 1–78; “A Note on Synderesis, Moral Science, and Knowledge of the Natural Law,” Lex naturalis 5 (2020): 43–55; “Wisdom be Attentive: The Noetic Structure of Sapiential Knowledge,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 4 (2020): 1103–46; “Beyond Non-Being: Thomistic Metaphysics on Second Intentions, Ens morale, and Ens artificiale,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91, no. 3 (2017): 353–79; “Appendix 2: On the Speculative, the Speculatively-Practical, and the Practically-Practical,” in Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Remarks Concerning the Metaphysical Character of St. Thomas’s Moral Theology, in Particular as It Is Related to Prudence and Conscience,” Nova et Vetera (English) 17, no. 1 (2019): 245–70, at 266–70. I believe it is a mistake to call this “science” in the technical Scholastic sense. However, this argument would involve a very technical discussion, the outlines of which can be found in Minerd, “Wisdom Be Attentive.” For the sake of terminological continuity with the tradition out of which I am writing, I will retain the expression “moral science” to designate discursive and speculatively oriented reflection on human acts and their principles, properties, effects, etc. 1046 Matthew K. Minerd here with exegesis ad mentem Thomae. However, I do believe that the classic texts of ST I-II, q. 95, aa. 2 and 4, present a cogent division of human law into civil law and the ius gentium, and thereby provide a clear essential definition of both.8 Allow, therefore, an exegesis of this text, which I believe will provide a definition that illuminates quite clearly the epistemological nature of the ius gentium. In article 4, Thomas opens by noting that, when a given genus is divided in an essential manner, it is divided with regard to the formal notion of that genus. He uses the example of the division of the genus “ensouled animal” into “rational” and “irrational” soul, both of which are contained in the aforementioned genus. They are contained there only in potency, meaning that the objective notion of “ensouled animal” does not explicitly express either rational or irrational. However, when defining something according to an essential definition, although it is necessary that, while the specific difference used for such defining be “outside” the genus (for the former qualifies the genus, and thereby adds something to the latter’s meaning, actualizing what is only potential therein), this difference nonetheless must qualify the genus in such a way that the former immediately articulates a distinction within the very formal character of what that genus is. In other words, when we provide an essential division of ensouled animal, we must do so not with regard to some accidental characteristic, but, rather, with a difference that articulates a particular way of being ensouled: either as subordinated to a higher level of spiritual life and agency (classically designated by “rational”) or as not so subordinated (“irrational”).9 Now, the genus in question in this particular article is “human law,” which he states has as its first essential and generic characteristic the fact that it is “a kind of law derived from the natural law.” Moreover, human law essentially involves a given order in relation to the common good of the political community. Thirdly, as a form of governance, human law also has the essential characteristic of involving certain people who govern. Finally, the human law in its various particularities deals with various classes of actions. The definition derived from the first characteristic will provide a division through formal cause (what formally constitutes human law as a particular act of practical reason). That derived from the second will derive a division 8 9 See Turner’s text for discussion of other relevant places in St. Thomas’s works, as well as in a number of Thomists. On the nature of an essential division of a generic notion, see Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “On the Search for Definitions According to Aristotle and St. Thomas,” in Philosophizing in Faith: Essays on the Beginning and End of Wisdom, ed. and trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 21–33, at 27–28. Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1047 through final cause and the various essential ends pursued by those who are engaged in the political good (e.g., priests who pray, princes who govern, and soldiers who defend). The third definition is derived from the efficient causality exercised by particular classes of rulers (thus giving rise to the well-known six regimes presented by Aristotle). The final division is derived from the line of the “material” covered by the given laws, thus giving rise to various bodies of law organized around particular topics (in his examples, the corpus of laws against adultery, concerning assassins, and so forth). Of most interest to us is the first division, concerned with the formal aspect of human law as a kind of moral ordering of reason, derived from the natural law. Therefore, to understand the definition derived from the formal character of human law as such, we must ask: What might we say about the ways that human reasoning can morally derive something? In ST I-II, q. 95, a. 2, he had noted that there are two ways that human reasoning can derive further knowledge from pregiven apprehensions of the truth: the drawing of conclusions from premises and the declaring of determinations for given generalities. The first sort of derivation is akin to the reasoning that takes place in scientia, which for him has a very specific meaning: knowledge of conclusions drawn in light of given first principles within a given order of abstraction.10 It is a discursive manner of knowing which ultimately remains at a level of universality, articulating the intelligibility of reality.11 The second sort of derivation is akin to what takes place in art-craft. St. Thomas uses the example of a builder determining the particular form of a house. We might also think of how someone may decide, based on his own aesthetic preferences, experience level, financial and temporal contingencies, and so on, to build a shed having a given configuration. The exercise of the art of framing carpentry requires learning and understanding, but it ultimately is practical in character. Art is a knowledge that aims at making. The ultimate goal of the exercise of the virtue12 10 11 12 On the nature of scientia, as well as concerning the unity and division of the sciences, see John of St. Thomas, The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises, trans. Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville, and G. Donald Hollenhorst (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 504–87 (qq. 26–27). More will be said on this topic of scientia in what follows. Throughout, my presentation presupposes what I have laid out at much greater length in Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive.” Or, arguably, the various virtues of art, differentiated by particular formal objects. However, that topic lies outside of our concerns here. Recognizing the potentially problematic character of Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, at least later in life, nonetheless, his work on a Thomistic “philosophy of making” remains an important touchstone for rigorous systematic reflection on this branch of philosophy. See Marie-Dominique 1048 Matthew K. Minerd of art is not knowledge, but a particular constructed reality, in all of its contingencies.13 The first form of knowledge retains all the force of the natural law, even though it involves discursively reasoning toward new moral conclusions. The second sort of knowledge, more immediately practical in character, has its force on the basis of the human exercise of political prudence, which is a unique species of prudence,14 having an intrinsic connection to the common good, not merely in the general and formal way that all citizens must consider it, but directly and materially, as legislating and ruling.15 It must declare, here and now, for this particular community, what is the nature of the common good as regards this particular sort of situation. Civil laws, precisely as such, do not elaborate the fundamental reasons for the moral requirement undergirding them. Instead, they spell out the particular, contingent, changing, and very often changeable ways that this or that moral duty is observed in a particular society. 13 14 15 Philippe, L’activité artistique: Philosophie du faire, 2 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1969– 1970), republished as vols. 1–2 of Philosophie de l’Art (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1991–1994); see also his “Situation de la philosophie de l’art dans la philosophie Aristotélico-Thomiste,” Studia philosophica 13 (1953): 99–112. The standard canon of twentieth century Thomistic works on this topic comprises: Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers of Poetry, trans. Joseph W. Evans (New York: Scribner, 1962); Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018); Jacques Maritain and Raïssa Maritain, The Situation of Poetry, trans. Marshall Suther (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955); Étienne Gilson, Painting and Reality (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2020); Gilson, The Arts of the Beautiful (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 2000); Gilson, Forms and Substances in the Arts (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 2000); Gilson, Choir of Muses, trans. Maisie Ward (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018); Gilson, La société de masse et sa culture: arts plastiques, musique, littérature, liturgies (Paris: Vrin, 1986). For a speculative study of Maritain’s aesthetics, see John G. Trapani, Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation: The Complete Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011). For a similar, though briefer, study of Gilson, see Joseph Houser, “Étienne Gilson’s Philosophy of Art: A Systematic Presentation of Painting and Reality, The Arts of the Beautiful, and Forms and Substances in the Arts” (Ph.L. thesis, Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, 2014). Related, though with a more political focus, is Francesca Aran Murphy, Art and Intellect in the Philosophy of Étienne Gilson (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 2004). Note, however, in line with the observations of Philippe, the expression “philosophy of making” is to be preferred to the idealist-derived term “aesthetics.” The reader should, however, recall the important distinctions that exist between art and prudence. For a survey of this topic, as well as relevant texts in the Thomistic tradition, see chs. 2–4 and 9 of Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, chs. 2–4 and 9; also see Philippe, chs. 1–2 in vol. 1 of L’activité artistique. See Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 50, a. 1. I here presuppose the analyses offered in Yves Simon, A General Theory of Authority (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973). Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1049 In article 4, these latter sorts of determinations are said to belong to the civil law. That is, civil law is defined as human law, derived intelligently by way of contingent determination through the exercise of political prudence. By contrast, the law of nations is defined as human law, derived intelligently in the form of universal conclusions in a way akin to the knowledge had through scientia. And, in the response to the first objection, he adds a further qualification: the law of nations is concerned with those sorts of conclusions that are not very remote from the premises of the natural law. Here, we should observe, at least in passing, that the account of the “Salamancan line” presented by Turner bears witness to an alteration in the understanding of the nature of the law of nations. To the degree that those who followed Vitoria considered the law of nations as being a kind of general, broadly customary positive law, they ultimately eliminated the unique noetic category of “derivation” explained by Thomas Aquinas for the ius gentium and combined it with the civil law. Ultimately, this so-called “Salamancan” understanding of the law of nations, on the model of a kind of broadly held adumbration of positive law, has much in common with the more modern treatments of the ius gentium as a kind of codified (whether implicitly or explicitly) international law.16 16 It is probably best to say that such a “civil law” understanding is predominant but not exclusive, given the way that moral science (and even the natural law itself ) is often intermingled in such discussions of the law of nations. In addition to Turner’s article cited above, see Samuel Gregg, “Natural Law and the Law of Nations,” Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism, nlnrac.org/printpdf/90. For a good example of a study inclined in the direction of international law, see the republished edition of John Eppstein’s work (originally 1936) The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (Clark, NJ : Lawbook Exchange, 2008); a more recent such example can be found in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, On the Law of Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); also see the work of J. L. Brierly, who was not unaware of the need for the natural law to serve in legal argumentation, The Law of Nations: An Introduction to the International Law of Peace, ed. Humphrey Waldock, 6th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). It is not without interest to consider Maritain’s remarks concerning the way that the civil law and the natural law were often intermingled in classical conceptions of natural law. See Jacques Maritain, Moral Philosophy: An Historical and Critical Survey of the Great Systems, ed. Joseph W. Evans, trans. Marshall Suther et al. (New York: Scribner, 1964), 60: “This is why natural law and the ius gentium, in Cicero’s time, definitely began to cross together the threshold of commonly accepted ideas. Let us say that it was under the protective covering of the juridical idea of the ius gentium that the philosophical idea of natural law succeeded in imposing itself explicitly on the common consciousness: a phenomenon which was made easier by the pantheist confusion between human reason and divine reason, and which involved fairly damaging confusions between the two ideas themselves of natural law and ius gentium. . . . But for [such Stoic thinkers as Cicero, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius], natural law (where God instructs the conscience concerning first norms by 1050 Matthew K. Minerd Granted, this outlook is not without its classical foundations, as is evident in the very words of St. Isidore of Seville, cited in part by St. Thomas in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4: “Thus, it is called the law of nations because nearly all peoples [gentium] make use of it.”17 In this, Isidore is merely summarizing what one can find formulated centuries earlier, for example, in the Institutiones of the roman jurist Gaius (ca. 130–180): Every people that is governed by statutes and customs observes partly its own peculiar law and partly the law common to all mankind. That law which a people establishes for itself is peculiar to it, and is called ius civile as being the special law of that state, while the law that natural reason establishes among all mankind is followed by all peoples alike, and is called ius gentium as being the law observed by all mankind.18 However, one has reason to ask why (nearly) “all peoples” make use of the law of nations. Is it because the ius gentium is customary (and hence, a kind of first step in the very order of the civil law)? Or is it rather because the law of nations expresses a domain of rationally articulated moral truth that can be relatively instantiated within a given moral-intellectual culture? The latter seems to be what is proposed in St. Thomas’s definition and, in its essential lines at least, lies at the basis of Maritain’s own articulation of the ius gentium. On this presentation, it represents a form of discourse at the level of the “speculatively practical.”19 This type of knowledge, which includes that of moral science, can be said to direct moral action “from 17 18 19 means of the essential inclinations of human nature) was also the law of the civitas maxima (in other words the juridical order proper to a city of the world founded on the ius gentium). . . . It took many centuries to make the necessary distinctions which the Stoics and Cicero had neglected, and to decant the basic truths which they had recognized but at the same time compromised by the simplistic and absolutist nature of their formulations.” Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 5.6, thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/5.shtml (trans. mine). Gai Institutiones or Institutes of Roman Law by Gaius, trans. and ed. Edward Poste, 4th ed., revised and enlarged by E. A. Whittuck and A. H. J. Greenidge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1904), 1 (cited in Gregg, “Natural Law and the Law of Nations”). This expression is sometimes associated with Maritain because of his particular positions voiced regarding “practically practical sciences.” It is, in fact, a division of knowledge that is rooted in the older Scholastic tradition. For a very brief introduction to this, see the various essays on moral reasoning cited in note 6 above. Moreover, as regards the particular details of the speculative and the practical deployed here, see in particular my “A Note on Synderesis, Moral Science, and Knowledge of the Natural Law,” as well as the introduction to Conscience. Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1051 afar”20 because its object (free moral human acts and all that is related to them precisely as free and moral21) is something that must shape and measure human freedom. A purely “speculative” object of knowledge does not directly inform the moral character of a free act, considered precisely as moral. In a purely speculative mode, one can consider becoming, act and potency, beauty, unity, the “agent intellect,” practical intellection precisely as a psychological process, and so on.22 Such knowledge—whether belonging to “natural philosophy,” metaphysics, or to the philosophy of the soul and the “ontology” of knowledge—can be said, in a somewhat improper sense, to “direct” human action from afar, insofar as practical knowledge is founded on speculative knowledge. However, a consideration of justice or temperance, or even of something like moral reasoning considered insofar as it indicates the right way one should understand the stages of moral intellection and volition, indicates something about how the human intellect and will should be deployed in the exercise of freedom. In other words, in the domain of moral philosophy, one is always dealing with an object, no matter how abstract, that is destined to measure a human act (either directly, as is clearly the case with discussions of the various virtues, whose very formal structure is destined to be the formal structure of the virtuous will and virtuous sense appetites,23 or indirectly, as is the case with the various “presuppositions” that must be discussed in order to understand the nature of a free human act, for example passions, virtue in general, law, the “psychology of moral acts,” and so forth). All of this “practical” aspect of “moral science” comes to it insofar as its object is moral in character, thereby also marking its ultimate end as being to lay out the intelligible structure of human action precisely as related to 20 21 22 23 The “closest” that it gets is the casuistic consideration of a kind of individuum vagum. On this notion, see Minerd, Conscience, 44, 45n115, 51, 57n136, 75; William A. Wallace, The Role of Demonstration in Moral Theology (Washington, DC: The Thomist Press, 1962), 199–202. For a decent, if somewhat brief, treatment of this, see Jacques-Casimir Guérinois, Clypeus philosophiae thomisticae (Venice: Balleoniana, 1729), 23–28 (q. 1, articulus unicus, no. 2). As later Scholastics would say: according to its “moral being” in relation to how freedom should be measured (in contrast to the psychological processes involved in such moral reasoning). This opens up a subject too difficult for a single article. For more information, see Minerd, “Beyond Non-Being,” 365–71, and “Synthetic Overview,” 22n54. That is, the activity of prudence aims, ultimately, at functioning as the extrinsic formal cause of the will, giving the will its very specification. However, as I discuss throughout “Synthetic Overview,” one must heed the way the will uniquely is involved in determining the practical intellect, though in a different order of causality, namely in the line of efficient causality. 1052 Matthew K. Minerd moral goodness. Moral philosophy can never be purely speculative after the manner of the physical and biological sciences, logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, or metaphysics. It will always be marked by practicality, so much so that one is on good grounds saying that, in the end, moralis est tota practica: through and through, moral philosophy is wholly in the domain of practical cognition.24 However, this is where the adverb “speculatively” is of great importance in relation to the adjective “practical.” Utter practicality pertains only to prudential reasoning (and, most particularly, the prudential imperium), whether personal or on behalf of a group (i.e., “political prudence”). Prudence alone guides my (or our) action directly. And in matters of human law, political prudence alone directs the particular acts of citizens directly. With all of its contingency, such prudence declares by way of command what must be done. Such political prudence will most essentially be exercised when the common good of the community is materially considered by a given polity’s authority.25 However, to the degree that civil law, by its very essence, seeks to articulate the particularized determinations that are to direct the common life of a given political community, it too represents a kind of codification of particular determinations of political prudence. As was well said by Fr. James Schall: “Civil law or human positive law meant that in addition to reason, which was man’s proper natural law, there needed to be specific acts of reason, commands, that reasonably decided on what men living in groups should do to achieve their purposes, both of living well and of living rightly.”26 Now, what is the noetic character of the law of nations understood as a universal “derivation” from the natural law, at the level of moral science? As I have argued elsewhere,27 our knowledge of the natural law begins with our apprehension of moral truths by way of the habitus of synderesis, our ability 24 25 26 27 See Antoine Goudin, Philosophia iuxta inconcussa tutissimaque Divi Thomae dogmata, vol. 4 (Paris: Nouvelle Bibliothèque, 1854), 3–6 (pt. 3 [Ethica], quaestio praeambula [“Dico secundo” and “Dico tertio”]). Slightly different versions of Goudin’s text can be found, though on this point they are substantially the same. This is broadly speaking the position that one finds in the various texts cited from Maritain, Simon, and others in my “Synthetic Overview.” On this point, I differ from certain contemporary Thomists, whose thought I respect, though I must register disagreement when they seem to present moral philosophical thought as though it were ultimately speculative. See Simon, General Theory of Authority. James V. Schall, “Natural Law and Law of Nations: Some Theoretical Considerations,” Fordham International Law Journal 15, no. 4 (1991): 997–1030, at 1002. See Minerd, “Synthetic Overview” and “Note on Synderesis.” Likewise, see these important works: Ryan Brady, Conforming to Right Reason: On the Ends of the Moral Virtues and the Roles of Prudence and Synderesis (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1053 to grasp first moral truths. Such truths play the same role as first principles in the order of speculative reason.28 Although these truths are more profoundly understood through discursive reflection (above all philosophical reflection29), they are per se nota, understood on the force of their own terms, not in light of the “objectively illative” mediacy of a syllogistic middle term.30 In their regard, discursive reflection remains directly in the service of immediate insight. Technical elaboration may be necessary in order to understand aright the terms of first moral truths grasped by synderesis; however, in themselves, such terms and statements retain a kind of independence from various particular systems of moral philosophy. They are, as it were, the very sources of moral philosophy itself.31 Now, the truths grasped by synderesis can be drawn in one of two directions of practico-moral reasoning: toward prudential determination or toward conceptual explication.32 Very often in human life, our grasping of 28 29 30 31 32 Academic, 2022); Dominic Farrell, The Ends of the Moral Virtues and the First Principles of Practical Reason in Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Analecta Gregoriana, 2012). And also, according to Thomist theological thought, the truths grasped through supernatural faith play the role of principles in acquired theological wisdom (traditionally called “theological science”). And, in the supernatural order, by “acquired” theological reflection, traditionally referred to as “theological science.” On the distinction between such objectively illative knowledge and subjectively illative discursive knowledge, see Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive,” 1126n65, and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Theology and The Life of Faith,” in Philosophizing in Faith, 421–43, at 430–31 and 439–43. Concerning its distinction from argumentation using an extrinsic middle term, see Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive,” 1142n97. Also, for brief but very clear exposition of the classical Thomist notion of scientia presupposed by this article, see the section “The General Notion of Science” in Michel Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” in The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Theology: An Anthology, ed. and trans. Jon Kirwan and Matthew K. Minerd (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2023), 89–126. What holds for the truths of faith and “technically elaborated common sense” holds, mutatis mutandis, for such first truths of the merely natural-moral order (as well as for those of the speculative order too). See Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense: The Philosophy of Being and the Development of Doctrine, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 83–134, and esp. 217–300. In this regard, particular consideration, no doubt accompanied by some improvements, should be given to the important points made by Maritain regarding moral truths which are akin to first principles known “by the wise.” See Maritain, Loi naturelle, 133–41. This is somewhat analogous to the way that knowledge through supernatural faith can either remain within its fully supernatural form of personal assent to the truths of the revealing God taught by the Church or descend into discursive theological assent, which is supernatural in its object but human in its mode of discursive reflection. 1054 Matthew K. Minerd a moral truth is understood in terms of what this truth means for me, either as judging my past behavior, as a source of reflection on possible future behavior, or as engaged in the choices facing me right here and now. In this regard, it is more or less remotely tied up in the “order of intention” or the “order of deliberation” involved in our own personal human activity. Insofar as this truth is thus considered not in its complete generality, but rather as befitting for me, it is marked by the affective character of personalized moral agency, which spans all the various stages of moral cognition.33 Such affectivity will involve some aspect of the subject who does or does not “harmonize” with the moral truth in question, in line with the adage “Qualis unusquisque est, talis finis videtur ei”: the end appears to a given man in a way that accords with his particular character. As was sagely observed by Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, in line with Thomas Aquinas’s own thought: “To the man who is truly humble, all that calls for humility appears good; to the man who is vainglorious, that which is inspired by the spirit of vain-glory appears fitting or conformed to his interior dispositions.”34 This regular phenomenon of knowing moral truths insofar as they more or less descend into the particularities of one’s own life is doubtlessly one of the reasons that led Jacques Maritain to emphasize the role of “connaturality” in our knowledge of the natural law.35 However, although they are practical in object, moral truths can be appreciated in their own truthfulness, “unpacked,” as it were, in reasoned discourse. And whereas the judgments involved in simple volition, intention, and the activity of prudence always aim at an act which is meant to be my or your particular act, thus appreciating what we might call the “personal radiation” of universal moral truth, moral science appreciates what we might call the latter’s “intelligibly communicable radiation” in discourse, which can be shared among peoples, not perhaps with all the erudition of moral 33 34 35 On this role of affectivity throughout the various stages of moral reasoning, see Minerd, “Synthetic Overview,” 18–78. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Prudence’s Place in the Organism of the Virtues,” in Philosophizing in Faith, 153–171, at 168. He was not wrong to do so, but he might charitably be faulted for not pushing more clearly to the level of synderesis. Maritain’s focus on inclinations is not surprising, however, given the way that St. Thomas talks about “inclinations” in the famous text of ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2. Nonetheless, note, for example, St. Thomas’s own remarks in ad 2 there about how synderesis is the “habitus containing [continens] the principles of the natural law.” I discuss this topic at greater length my article “Note on Synderesis, Moral Science, and Knowledge of the Natural Law.” Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1055 philosophy, but nonetheless in a way that is a kind of sketch of this sort of articulation of the truth content and implications of various moral truths.36 Given the space limitations of this brief article, let us merely expand on an example given by St. Thomas in ST I-II, q. 95, a. 4: notions of property and the justice of buying and selling are necessarily connected with the natural law’s requirement that men live together sociably. The latter truth is something that is grasped by synderesis, perhaps something very general like “man must strive to live in society with other men and women, rendering to each what is owed to him or her.”37 However, such knowledge of commutative justice is incredibly general, requiring the further articulation of the nature of property, the social relationships involved in purchases, and so forth. St. Thomas is not concerned here with particular and specific laws of purchasing and selling,38 but instead is referring to given moral topics that 36 37 38 Prudence is, of course, communicable to various degrees throughout its discourse, for if it were not, one could never take counsel with others, nor explain one’s action to others. However, the tendency as prudential reasoning moves toward the ultimate command is toward the incommunicable, an imperium that holds for me in my particular circumstances (obviously, based on the objectivity of the moral virtues). See Yves R. Simon, Practical Knowledge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1991), 71: “The most striking, if not the most profound, contrast between prudence and moral philosophy involves the communicability of knowledge. Once more, what is really decisive, the final factor of certainty in prudence, is incommunicable. What we communicate when we succeed, as it frequently happens, in convincing our neighbor that our prudential decision was right is a host of inconclusive considerations. These are plausible enough to cause persuasion, as long as there is no particularly strong ground of opposition, but these plausible considerations did not cause the certainty of the conclusion. The certainty was caused by agreement with right inclination, and this is a cause of certainty that no discourse can communicate” (emphasis added). I would consider this the primordial source of the virtue of commutative justice. Closer to St. Thomas’s language in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, one might say that this moral insight lays at the basis of our basic inclination to live in society with others. Where he notes, in the same article, other such socially oriented truths belonging to the natural law, St. Thomas seems to imply the virtues of truthfulness (cf. II-II, q. 109) and studiousness (cf. II-II, q. 166), as well as friendliness (cf. II-II, q. 114). In this regard, one can see a root exegetical difference between myself and Turner, who in remarking on ST I-II, q. 95, a. 4, states in “Law of Nations,” 348: “Thomas does not specify whether he means that there is a general need for laws about buying and selling, or whether he is referring to specific laws about types of contracts or more minute regulations of just exchange.” Based on the immediate context of the article in question, it seems clear that St. Thomas cannot have specific laws in mind, for he sets what he says about just exchanges in explicit contrast to particular determinations, which is what “specific laws about types of contracts or more minute regulations of just exchange” would be. It should be noted, however, that Turner does contrasts such regulations with “the specifications unique to this or that civil code.” Further discussion is needed 1056 Matthew K. Minerd can be articulated only through discursive (though universal) reasoning. In the Scholastic language of the notion of “scientific conclusions,” we could say: precisely as scientific, such conclusions are neither formally-explicitly nor formally-implicitly expressed in the self-evident principles in which truths of the natural law are articulated, but instead are “virtually” present within the principles leading to these conclusions, potentially within the scope of the principle in question (e.g., the basic social nature of commutative justice), but requiring objectively illative discursive reasoning to be known.39 That is, they are, new truths reached only through the discourse of intrinsic, objectively illative middle terms.40 It is here that we can see a point on which Maritain’s thought likely requires some development and correction.41 As noted above, he perhaps held that the natural law is known only through connaturality because he was desirous to note the way that we very often know truths of the natural law within the context of some kind of personal-moral reflection, not moral-scientific analysis. Therefore, the role of affectivity is almost always 39 40 41 in order to consider where he and I would agree and differ about the admittedly nebulous domain of moral truths pertaining to “legal science,” where one considers various indeterminate civil laws in abstraction from their full specification in a given law code. Concerning the technical notion of “objectively illative” reasoning, see note 30 above. One might, in a broad sense, say that such conclusions are “virtually-implicitly” contained in their premises. However, in the vocabulary that I am following here, I am reserving the qualifier “implicitly” for truths that can be the subject of further explicitation by subjectively illative discourse, not objectively illative inference. Nonetheless, the latter sorts of conclusions remain conclusions (indeed, properly scientific conclusions), not prudentially commanded determinations. This choice of vocabulary is made in line with the noetics presupposed by Garrigou-Lagrange and Reginald Schultes in their critique of Francisco Marín-Sola’s position concerning the De fide definability of theological conclusions. On this, see Reginald Schultes, Introductio in historiam dogmatum (Paris: Lethielleux, 1922); Schultes, Fides implicita: Geschichte der Lehre der fides implicita und explicita in der katholischen Theologie (Regensburg: Pustet, 1920); Schultes, “Éclaircissements sur l’évolution du dogme,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 14, no. 3 (1925): 286–302; Schultes, “Circa dogmatum homogeneam evolutionem,” Divus Thomas (Piacenza) 2 (1925): 83–89, 554–64; Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, trans. Matthew K. Minerd, vol. 1 (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022), 96–100, 320–26; 81–97; Garrigou-Lagrange, De virtutibus Theologicis (Turin: Berruti, 1949), 131–62. The details and ultimate resolution of that particular debate are outside the scope of this paper. However, I will note that it has been only through nearly a decade of reflection on this topic in light of Maritain that I have come to my own position. Therefore, out of intellectual filial piety, I feel the need to clearly state that I am not whole-cloth critiquing the man who has been my teacher in these difficult matters. Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science 1057 engaged when we grasp such truths through the habitus of synderesis.42 However, technically, according to St. Thomas (and, more importantly, in a way that is likely more conformable with the truth of the matter), we know the truths of the natural law intellectually through synderesis. The subsequent affective personalization of that truth is in line with the nature of moral truth, which is destined to “measure” our acts. However, that latter process does not represent the primordial means by which we grasp insights into moral truth in its most general sense. It must have intellectual and conceptual content, and that is grasped through synderesis, the habitus of first principles in the practical order. Thus, when Maritain remarks that the ius gentium is epistemologically unique because it involves the “conceptual exercise of reason,”43 some nuance is needed. It is not so much the conceptual character of such knowledge that makes the ius gentium unique as it is the fact that knowledge of the ius gentium involves the exercise of discursive reason and rational inference. This latter sort of knowing, which in the general language of Scholastic jargon would be “moral science” (at least in its broadest outlines, insofar as this can penetrate the general domain of moral-intellectual culture), is what characterizes the knowledge that belongs to the ius gentium. In short, we can say: the law of nations is discursive moral science insofar as it can guide public debates regarding the general goodness and wickedness of human agency, whether individual or in common. It is not the whole of moral science, but rather something like moral science insofar as it exists in the state of general public discourse.44 Here, too, we see what is most powerful in such an account of the ius gentium, for it ultimately bears witness to the fact that the legal structures of positive civil law are intelligible only insofar as they represent a particular, politically prudent, circumstanced, civil codification of moral claims which 42 43 44 As is also clear on various occasions in his writings on the natural law, Maritain wanted to avoid a kind of rationalism that would lead to a kind of subordination of moral insight to philosophical reasoning, a false subordination that ultimately reverses the reality of things. See, for example, Maritain, Man and the State, 98. More could be said here, as I am deploying Maritain’s use of a later Scholastic distinction between nature and state, which can also be applied to the state of theological science in via and in patria, as well as to questions regarding the moral virtues in separation from charity. See Jacques Maritain, An Essay on Christian Philosophy, trans. Edward H. Flannery (New York: Philosophical Library, 1995); Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “The Instability of the Acquired Moral Virtues in the State of Mortal Sin,” in Philosophizing in Faith: Essays on the Beginning and End of Wisdom, ed. and trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 171–82. 1058 Matthew K. Minerd are, in the end, based upon foundations that are “binding beyond our civil boundaries,” with a force that at once limits the pretentions of political authority and yet also provides the utterly necessary connection from civil law to the natural law.45 Thus, I believe it is useful to conclude our reflections with the words of Fr. Schall, who once stated with his wonted clarity: Civil law then determines how particular things will be done. But in essentials—whether there be a juridical system, whether there be enforcement agencies, whether there be private property and family— civil law remains subject to jus gentium. That is, reason sees that such institutions are required for the kind of beings we are if we are to reach our immediate and highest ends. The highest ends of activity are not to be achieved well without these intermediate considerations and institutions. There is a discourse of reason that exists, and must exist, “among the nations.” The various cultures and polities are not simply “diverse” and incommensurable. They have common grounds of discourse about the what is of human reality. The import of this position in terms of political philosophy and its relation to law is that civil rule as such is limited, but necessary and good. Civil or positive human law is not the giver of human nature. It does not establish what it is to be a human being, nor is it the provider of the elements of that human being’s proper good and activity. All civil law has to defend itself before the bar of reason at every level. The so-called “sovereignty” of law ought not to mean that civil or constitutional law is subject to nothing but itself or the wills of those who constituted them. Those who constituted them are in turn subject to what they are. This is their freedom and their glory.46 45 46 Schall, “Natural Law and Law of Nations,” 1021. Schall, “Natural Law and Law of Nations,” 1025–26. Thanks are owed to Dr. Thomas Howes, Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., and Fr. Christiaan Kappes for their discussion and input regarding this article. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 1059–1088 1059 Integralism and Justice for All James Dominic Rooney, O.P. Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong, China Catholic integralism has received a lot of attention recently, promoted by pundits and scholars alike.1 Much ink has been spilled in scholarly venues discussing historical evidence marshaled by defenders of integralism who argue that the Catholic Church has rights to the coercive power of the state in service of its religious mission, notably Thomas Pink.2 My interest in this piece is different. I aim simply to show that integralism is unjust. To prove this, I propose two problems that illustrate the integralist position entails violations of distributive justice concerning the rights of non-Catholics. It is important to highlight that my argument that integralism is unjust will not require denying Pink’s controversial views about the power of the Church to direct state policy. In other words, I presume the truth of Catholicism and Pink’s controversial readings of Church documents, but show that these readings do not allow us to arrive at the view that integralism is true. What my argument attacks is not that the Church has such powers, but that there is any identifiable “ideal” political arrangement in which these powers are exercised. Pink has attempted to show that—contrary to popular perception—the 1 2 For example, Adrian Vermeule, “Ralliement: Two Distinctions,” The Josias, March 16, 2018, thejosias.com/2018/03/16/ralliement-two-distinctions/; Edmund Waldstein, “All We Need is Everything,” First Things, June 2022, firstthings.com/article/2022/06/ all-we-need-is-everything; Scott Hahn with Brandon McGinley, It is Right and Just: Why the Future of Civilization Depends on True Religion (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2020). See Thomas Pink, “The Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11, no. 1 (2013): 86–87. 1060 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis humanae (DH), is compatible with integralist positions. Appealing to arguments given by Francisco Suarez, Pink argues that the Church has rights to the coercive power or authority of the state. On this reading, “the authority to direct and coerce in matters religious . . .belongs to the Church. It no more belongs to the state than it belongs to private individuals.”3 Instead, the Church is a coercive authority which can impose “temporal penalties” on its members.4 Further, the baptized acquire obligations to lend the Church their temporal authority in service of its mission; thus, “rulers and officials of Christian states—[fulfill] their baptismal obligations to the Church in lending her their power and resources to hold other baptized Christians to their baptismal obligations.”5 Consequently, the Church has a right, given its coercive authority to impose temporal penalties on its members, to the temporal power which baptized rulers hold, in service of its mission.6 Pink’s interpretation of what was called the Church’s “indirect power” over government therefore involves a strong thesis that the Church has God-given rights to utilize civic coercion for its own supernatural ends. I will refer to this controversial thesis about “indirect power” as the “Suarezian thesis” (but will not be concerned with whether his view accurately represents Suarez). Pink and other integralists claim that this strong thesis about a native or intrinsic right of the Church to the coercive power of the state is doctrinally binding on Catholics.7 But Pink’s view of that indirect power is controversial among Catholic theologians. Theologians as noteworthy as Avery Dulles, Joseph Ratzinger, and John Henry Newman explicitly reject this interpretation that the Church has native or intrinsic rights to civil coercive authority.8 For my purposes, I will concede the Suarezian thesis and 3 4 5 6 7 8 Thomas Pink, “Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Church and State,” The Thomist 79, no. 1 (2015): 23. Thomas Pink, “What is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” expanded version, June 15, 2012, p. 9, academia.edu/639061/What_is_the_Catholic_doctrine_of_ religious_liberty. Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” 41; Pink, “Interpretation,” 87. E.g., Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” 14. Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” esp. 8–12, 16–18. See also Thomas Pink, “Suarez and Bellarmine on the Church as Coercive Lawgiver,” in Legge e Natura I dibattiti teologici e giuridici fra XV e XVII secolo, ed. Riccardo Saccenti and Cinzia Sulas (Ariccia, Italy: Aracne editrice 2016), 287–332; Thomas Love, “Roman Catholic Theories of ‘Indirect Power,’” Journal of Church and State 9, no. 1 (1967): 71–86. E.g., Avery Dulles, “The Indirect Mission of the Church to Politics,” Villanova Law Review 52, no. 2 (2007): 241–52; Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Theology and the Integralism and Justice for All 1061 illustrate that it is theoretically independent of integralism. Indeed, I will argue that integralism is false even if the Church did have a claim to temporal coercive power of the state. Integralism is more than the Suarezian thesis, does not follow from it, and does not strictly require it. The essay will be structured as follows. I will begin by providing clarifications on the meaning and nature of the integralist thesis. Then I will propose two arguments to show that, even if the Suarezian thesis were true, it would not entail that integralist states are the ideal political arrangement. What I will show is that there is no good sense in which integralist states are politically ideal. This is not to say integralist states are always impermissible. There are constraints that integralists themselves accept on when integralist states are permissible, and only when these constraints are met is an integralist state supposed to be politically ideal. I will construe the constraints charitably. Then I will show both that integralism lacks any good justification for the claim that its preferred political arrangements are ideal or normative, and that integralism is unjust in ignoring moral demands made upon Catholics by non-Catholic citizens. Unpacking Integralism The integralist ideal admits of different formulations and has been described in a number of ways. Not all are helpful for arriving at what is unique about the view. Some propose there is no separate “state” that exists over and against the Church as a distinct complete society. Instead, the Church is the only complete society, which has a temporal and a spiritual power.9 A danger of this formulation, however, is that it appears to delegitimize all non-integralist states. That looks overly strong. For instance, if an integralist includes the distinction that non-integralist states are “legitimate enough” in some respect to be able to exercise true political authority, even though they 9 Church’s Political Stance,” in Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (NY: Crossroad, 1988), 161–63; St. John Henry Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, vol. 2 (London: Longmans and Green, 1900), esp. 290–98. E.g., Andrew Willard Jones, Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017); Jones, The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2021). Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy (Havertown, PA: Editiones Scholasticae, 2020), 16–21. See also Xavier Foccroulle Ménard and Anna Su, “Liberalism, Catholic Integralism, and the Question of Religious Freedom,” Brigham Young University Law Review 47, no. 4 (2022): 1171–219, esp. 1180–81. 1062 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. fail to meet the political ideal, then the claim about the Church being the only complete and perfect society seems a distinction without a difference.10 It would not be a plausible integralism on which political authority cannot be legitimately exercised outside of an integralist state or independent of ecclesial hierarchy.11 The key to the integralist thesis lies in its vision regarding the primacy of the spiritual authority of the Church over merely temporal authority of the state. Integralism involves a holistic approach to the nature and scope of power, to that of the Church and that of the state, and to the way in which these (normatively) interrelate: “There are two powers that rule [man]: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.”12 Church and state have distinct ends or aims.13 Church authority (exercised by the college of bishops with its head, the bishop of Rome) aims to promote the supernatural good of its members in parallel with the authority of the state promoting the (natural) temporal good of its members. The state’s authority extends only to temporal good (although the state has duties to religious truth14), and so any authority that the state exercises over the supernatural good of its citizens derives from the Church.15 On this picture of the relation between the powers of Church and state, when these two come into conflict, the Church takes priority. Nevertheless, integralism does not concern merely a possible case of overlap. The state should recognize the authority of the Church (“indirect power”) to direct the state in promoting supernatural goods. The Church thus authorizes an expansion of the jurisdictional scope of the state in order to advance supernatural goods directly, such as policies which punish offenses against the faith or promote Catholic worship. There is no requirement that those policies advance the spiritual good in virtue of advancing some other element of the temporal good. Finally, political arrangements that facilitate exercise of the Church’s indirect power are politically ideal. Integralists believe that the doctrine of the Catholic Church, as they understand it, generates a “need for 10 11 12 13 14 15 See Crean and Fimister, Integralism, 99–107. Biblical data militates against it, since the New Testament encourages obedience to pagan civil authorities, e.g.: Rom 13:1; 1 Tim 2:1–3; Titus 3:1; 1 Pet 2:13–14; Mark 12:17. Edmund Waldstein, “Integralism in Three Sentences,” The Josias, October 17, 2016, thejosias.com/2016/10/17/integralism-in-three-sentences/. See Pink, “Suarez and Bellarmine,” 195–208. See Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei (1885), §6. Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” 8–9. Integralism and Justice for All 1063 a confessional Catholic State.”16 Integralism is therefore supposed to follow from Catholic doctrine, not (for example) from empirical data as to which arrangements produce the best outcomes. In short, then, I will characterize integralism as the thesis that those political arrangements under which the Church can mandate the state to directly advance supernatural goods are ideal. Countries which implement arrangements in which state power is legally or constitutionally made available for supernatural aims of the Church are “integralist states.” Integralist states follow Church mandates which aim to use civil power to directly advance the supernatural good of baptized citizens. Integralists then claim that Catholic teaching mandates belief that such integralists states are the ideal form of political arrangement for a Catholic country.17 Integralists nevertheless affirm there are constraints. First, achieving the supernatural good cannot involve violating the religious freedom of the unbaptized. Pink is clear that this is a requirement of Dignitatis humanae. (Although this does not prevent “indirect” coercion of the unbaptized in view of protecting the baptized from deleterious spiritual influences.)18 It is worthwhile noting that prohibition of coercion in accepting baptism is rooted deeply in the Christian tradition and is not a Vatican II innovation (as DH itself indicates).19 While all integralists adhere to the view that the state can directly promote supernatural goods under the direction of the Church, all do not adhere to the same vision of religious coercion. For many integralists, religious coercion potentially if not ideally includes coercive measures against things such as proselytism by non-Catholics.20 Yet John Milbank, endorsing a “left integralism,” is cautious about expanding scope for coercion, although he endorses the central claim that the state should advance supernatural goods.21 Often, such questions as to whether and to what extent religious minorities will have freedom within integralist states 16 17 18 19 20 21 Thomas Pink, “In Defence of Catholic Integralism,” Public Discourse, August 12, 2018, thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/08/39362/. For a concise and helpful summary, see Thomas Storck, “What is Integralism?,” New Oxford Review, September 2022, 22–27. E.g., Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” 11–12. See DH §10, particularly the list of witnesses in notes 7–8. Storck, “What is Integralism?” 25; Ménard and Su, “Liberalism,” 1216–18. John Milbank, “On ‘Left Integralism,’” lecture in the JP2 Lectures series, Saint John Paul II Institute of Culture at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, March 17, 2022, angelicum.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/John-Milbank_JP2-Lecture_LeftIntegralism.pdf. 1064 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. are deferred as “merely prudential” because “there is a wide range of potential applications” of integralist principles.22 A second constraint is that integralism does not require thinking that advancing the supernatural good is of such immense importance that integralist states might ignore their duties to promote the temporal common good and dedicate all civic power to advancing supernatural goods alone. While it is true that the supernatural good of union with God is of infinite value and the natural good of filial piety to your parents is of much lesser value, Catholic moral theology does not countenance sacrificing the latter to the former. For example, if your parents are sick and need you to stay home to take care of them, then you are excused from attending Sunday Mass. Integralism has such a stipulation “built in” to its concept of Church–state relations, since the state’s proper task is the promotion of the temporal common good. The state requires a form of “deputization” by the Church in order to exercise civic coercive authority in advancing supernatural goods.23 And the reason for this is that the state’s proper task is not advancing supernatural goods. Promotion of supernatural goods by the state might undermine other aspects of the temporal or supernatural common good, and the Church would not be entitled to undermine the proper good of the state excessively by its mandates.24 Finally, by “ideal” in this context, I do not think we should be overly specific. Integralists might differ on exactly the way in which such an ideal guides policy decisions or activism. There is a sense in which, as we will see, integralists like Pink take integralist states to be normative insofar as there are moral duties incurred by baptism that regard use of political power; for instance, Christian rulers have duties to obey the Church and use political power in her defense. The accidental circumstances that excuse Christians in political power today (as opposed to their medieval forebears) from acting on such duties are not merely variant, but abnormal; integralists have said these circumstances are “often criminal and always regrettable.”25 But we can leave these qualifications to the side. I am not going to discuss the way in which the ideal is action-guiding. My concern lies with the ideal. I will argue that integralist states do not constitute the political ideal. If integralist states 22 23 24 25 See also Ménard and Su, “Liberalism,” 1209–12; Waldstein, “All We Need.” E.g., Pink, “Interpretation,” 86; Immortale Dei §§3–14, 33–35. We can grant that there might be borderline cases as to whether that Church direction “excessively” undermines the state’s ability to achieve the temporal common good. The constraint is only that there are some limits. Cited by Maruice Bevenot, “Thesis and Hypothesis,” Theological Studies 15, no. 3 (1954): 443. Integralism and Justice for All 1065 constituted the political ideal, that ideal would entail that certain duties to non-Catholics do not exist or can be legitimately violated on the basis of the reasons integralists propose. But I will argue, in two different contexts, that these duties exist and cannot be legitimately violated for those proposed reasons. Consequently, the integralist ideal is unjust. Problem 1: Unjustified Burdens A significant motivation for integralism is the theology of baptism. Baptism generates moral burdens on the baptized themselves as well as others, such as godparents and parents of the baptized, and the rest of the Church. Baptism is what makes it appropriate for the Church to use its pastoral authority to encourage faithfulness to those baptismal vows.26 Pink points out that, at the Council of Trent, the following canon was approved: Canon 14. If anyone shall say that those who have been baptized . . . as infants, when they have grown up, are to be questioned whether they wish to ratify what the sponsors promised in their name, when they were baptized, and if they should answer that they are not willing, that they must be left to their own will, and that they are not to be forced to a Christian life in the meantime by any other penalty, except that they be excluded from the reception of the Eucharist and of the other sacraments until they repent: let him be anathema.27 Pink argues that this canon exemplifies the Catholic Church’s claim, as taught de fide, that such temporal penalties are appropriate to ensure fidelity to baptismal obligations. Pink then cites documents, such as the Fourth Lateran Council’s requirement that Christian rulers aid in suppressing heresy under pain of excommunication, as verifying the Suarezian thesis of the Church’s claim to civil penalties.28 Nevertheless, it bears repeating that the Tridentine canon has nothing to do with the Church’s power to employ civil penalties. Strictly speaking, the canon requires only affirming that penalties that go beyond the purely spiritual (exclusion from the sacraments) might sometimes be appropriate 26 27 28 Pink, “Interpretation,” 95; see also Thomas Pink, “Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism: Part II,” The Josias, November 5, 2018, thejosias.com/2018/11/05/ vatican-ii-and-crisis-in-the-theology-of-baptism-part-ii/. Heinrich Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma, 30th ed., trans. Roy Deferrari (repr. Freiburg: Herder, 1954), no. 870. Pink, “Interpretation,” 97–100. 1066 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. for violating one’s baptismal vows. Nor does canon 14 unequivocally state that temporal penalties are requisite, given that it embeds the assertion about appropriateness of penalty within a conditional statement about a position where adults are to be questioned whether they accept vows made on their behalf. Even if it were granted that this were a canon applying to Church coercive power, the canon does not require us to hold that specifically civic penalties are appropriate means to ensure faithfulness to baptismal vows. The canon can be read regarding the Church’s ability to impose temporal penalties from its own means without governmental assistance. For example, the Church might be able to inflict on its members only such temporal penalties as any other private family, corporation, or association within the state might. Or, conversely, the infliction of a temporal penalty by the Church upon its members in order to advance their supernatural good might be to withdraw various temporal goods within the Church’s power, such as benefices or eligibility for employment.29 The Tridentine canon does state unequivocally that obligations incurred by baptism are incurred on account of baptismal vows made by others on behalf of the baptized, not only by baptismal vows made by the baptized themselves as competent adults. The canon does not specifically state that valid baptism alone, received (for example) irregularly without anyone making baptismal vows or by force or outside of the Catholic Church, makes it appropriate to use temporal coercive power to ensure that the baptized live as good Catholics. Baptism by itself gives the baptized moral reasons to live a Christian life and constitutes them a member of the Church, but the mere fact one is baptized need not always generate public obligations which make civic or temporal coercion appropriate.30 In order to avoid such complications, we can assume charitably that integralists need not assume such a strong claim. Integralist can hold that Catholic baptismal vows in ordinary circumstances (including infant baptism) make it appropriate for the Church to use her coercive power to ensure that people making such vows are faithful to them. The Church can 29 30 The first appears to be the position of John Henry Newman, cited above, and the second in Martin Rhonheimer, “Dignitatis Humanae—Not a Mere Question of Church Policy: A Response to Thomas Pink,” Nova et Vetera (English) 12, no. 2 (2014): 445–70. Classical manuals would distinguish such persons as objectively bound by ecclesial law but nevertheless subjectively excused; see Charles Callan and John McHugh, Moral Theology, revised and enlarged by Walter Farrell (London: Herder and Herder, 1958), no. 429. The 1983 Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici [CIC]) thus treats baptized Protestants as exempt from its merely ecclesial laws. Integralism and Justice for All 1067 then direct the state to advance the spiritual good of the baptized (assuming the Church has this power), including by coercive penalties, whether that individual would consent to these penalties, given that such persons have made baptismal vows in regular manner and can be held accountable for them. We also assume that those who made vows as adults are more appropriate targets of sanction than those who were baptized as infants. This being said, integralism is not merely a view that adult converts merit being punished for violating their baptismal vows or that it is permissible to advance their supernatural good by encouraging faithfulness through state policies. Integralists hold that a political arrangement in which the state advances spiritual goods is ideal. An integralist state is one where all the baptized are potentially objects of direct state action that aims at their spiritual welfare. Yet one of the constraints discussed earlier requires that the unbaptized who live in integralist states are not objects of direct state action aiming at their spiritual welfare. The integralist state can, at most, act to promote or discourage those natural goods that indirectly advance the spiritual good of the unbaptized; “The unbaptized may not be forcibly converted; but their religious activities may be restricted so as to limit their impact on the lives of Christians. . . . Similarly, the metaphysical freedom of a Hindu or Shinto polytheist does not protect them from coercion, by the state, into some form of monotheistic belief as well as practice.”31 These penalties are licensed only by the way in which monotheism is naturally knowable to be true, and thus jurisdiction over natural religious goods are supposed to be (classically) within the remit of state without mandate of the Church. There is thus an asymmetry between the way in which the integralist state can act toward its baptized and unbaptized citizens. Further, the mere fact that the integralist state takes baptism as a possible basis for state action imposes disproportionate burdens and demands on these two groups. Baptized persons are subject to possible penalties that the unbaptized are not; unbaptized persons will not be afforded any possible benefits that encourage the baptized to pursue supernatural ends. Clearly, there is a reason for these disproportionate burdens: the public, ecclesial obligations of baptism. But there are two problematic effects of the fact that the state is being given license to enforce these obligations. First, integralist states raise the social costs of baptism beyond what might seem reasonable or justified. (And this point is made even more severe when we include consideration of the way in which infant baptism is 31 Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?,” 11, 13. 1068 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. a normative Catholic practice.) The benefits and obligations of baptism are essentially spiritual. But, within an integralist state, the prospect of baptism involves assuming potential civil benefits and liabilities. Why think these civil burdens are reasonable? Even observant Catholics lack individual strong moral reasons to accept such burdens. You can affirm that marriage vows are binding or morally serious and not thereby have strong reasons to create additional incentives for your future good behavior by, for example, signing a contract that adultery would be punishable by forfeiture of all your goods. Nor does the Suarezian thesis alone provide a suitably strong moral reason for an individual to assume these burdens, as it does not claim that Church use of such power is mandatory. The integralist thesis that does the normative work is the claim about an ideal political structure, and that is a logically separate thesis from the account of indirect power. One could acknowledge the indirect power of the Church, as integralists conceive it, and think it should remain a dead letter.32 The same is true conversely for the unbaptized within integralist states. The unbaptized are objects of state action possibly either in having their civil liberties curtailed (to protect the spiritual good of the baptized) or in being denied benefits that baptized citizens can enjoy. For any individual unbaptized person, no individual needs to have committed anything deserving of these restrictions in order for them to apply. Any given unbaptized person might be “invincibly” nonculpably ignorant of the need for baptism and have done nothing deserving of spiritual censure. Similarly, the unbaptized can meet all the same criteria for being part of the nation as any baptized person and have done nothing deserving of limitations of their liberties. There is no strong moral reason to impose these benefits/demands on any individual unbaptized person merely because they are unbaptized. The argument that integralists should make for these burdens must be a structural argument that these social costs are justified in terms of the common good. There are nevertheless strong moral reasons to treat people equally unless we have strong reasons not to do so—an integral element of the common good lies in duties of distributive justice. Aquinas therefore notes a law is unjust “when burdens are imposed unequally on the community, although with a view to the common good.”33 (And Aquinas’s views are not idiosyn- 32 33 See Edward Feser, “A Clarification on Integralism,” personal blog, June 7, 2019, edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-clarification-on-integralism.html. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 96, a. 4, resp. (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd revised ed. [New York: Benziger Bros., 1920]). Integralism and Justice for All 1069 cratic.)34 Unequal burdens require strong justification in terms of moral desert or duty. John Rawls’s well-known “difference principle” proposes that we have strong reasons to treat people differently only if resulting inequalities are to “the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.”35 The difference principle thus understands distributive justice to involve a requirement that structural inequalities benefit those who are most disadvantaged. Whereas Rawls’s principle is controversial, what sort of benefit might be acceptably strong as to constitute a moral reason parallel to that represented by the difference principle? First, there is no plausible parallel justification that integralists can offer that the disadvantages of the unequal distribution of burdens and demands on non-Catholic members of integralist states is being outweighed by the corresponding benefits to non-Catholics of living in integralist states. If the only justification for the integralist’s ideality thesis is that it advances the spiritual common good of the baptized, then integralism violates a plausible principle of distributive justice by imposing unequal burdens/benefits which are not justified in terms of the good accruing to the unbaptized. One can imagine a scheme which gave greater benefits to some citizens in view of greater burdens under the law. But this is not the issue here; the greater burdens in view of which greater benefits might be given to the baptized would not be burdens incurred in light of the temporal common good (e.g., as serving in the army might merit preferential treatment), but in terms of their supernatural good. Second, the temporal common good unique to democratic states looks violated by these differential burdens. Recall the constraint that the Church can permissibly mandate the state directly to advance the spiritual good, if by doing so the temporal common good (or other aspects of the spiritual good) is not excessively undermined. While it is hard to specify “excessively undermine,” there are good reasons to believe that this constraint cannot be met by integralist states that aim to be compatible with democratic governance. In contemporary democratic states, an essential component of the temporal common good is that of a public order in which the citizens collectively rule themselves and in which the organs of state power are publicly accountable.36 34 35 36 Well-known modern examples of such claims in Catholic theology can be found in Pope John XXIII’s 1961 Mater et Magistra (esp. §§12, 55–60) and 1963 Pacem in Terris (esp. §§147, 151), as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] §§1897–1927. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 5–6. E.g., John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, ed. C. B. MacPherson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980), sec. 96. 1070 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. If it were legitimate on merely religious grounds to exclude some citizens from political participation, or deny them civil rights, the common good which consists in the legal equality of all citizens looks violated. Integralists treat these citizens unequally without a justification in terms of that common good which includes democratic governance.37 Third, integralists might claim that living in integralist societies is better for all, including non-Catholics, and that we can know this from facts about the way that the supernatural good will impact the state’s activities. However, the integralist needs to show not only that advancing the supernatural good will benefit all, but that the political arrangement involved to do so will benefit all without undermining the temporal common good and supernatural good in other respects. That is, integralist states need to be better at advancing the good of all citizens than might be done by advancing the supernatural good without those arrangements. If integralist states were not better, then the possible disadvantages to the temporal good look unnecessary and unjustified—certainly, then, integralism would not be political ideal. And even if the Church had a right to civil coercive authority, it would then be unjustified for the Church to exercise that authority if it could achieve just the same or better results without appeal to civil power. And I see no good justification that the integralist state is better at promoting the supernatural good, while meeting the aforementioned constraints, than any other possible alternative (or even “realistic” possible alternative). Proving integralist states are ideal in this way would require proving that the coercive power of the state promotes the supernatural good more effectively than the Church’s own means, spiritual and temporal38 (or any non-integralist political arrangement in addition to those ecclesial means). Is it plausible, on Catholic doctrine, that state power is more effective in advancing the supernatural good than the supernatural means given by Christ to the Church? I think not. Such a thesis appears to me not only unprovable, but—indeed—somewhat sacrilegious. 37 38 John Stuart Mill thought legal equality did not rule out a “plural voting” scheme that gave more political power to the more educated. Yet Mill argues that denying participation would be unjust: “Independently of all these considerations, it is a personal injustice to withhold from any one . . . the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people” (“Considerations on Representative Government” (1861), in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol 19 [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977], 469). The Church has temporal authority within its own domain, e.g., its own property and offices, being able to punish offenders with temporal penalties connected with these goods, such as deprivation of income or prohibition on residing in a certain place; see CIC can. 1312, §2. Integralism and Justice for All 1071 Interlude—Transition to Problem 2 Note that the first argument made no assumption as to whether the Church does have the controversial rights of “indirect power” to civil coercive penalty. Rather, the argument is that it looks impossible to substantiate the integralist thesis that an arrangement on which that power is utilized constitutes the political ideal. The political arrangement which allowed the Church to mandate state policy would require justification in terms of the common good of all citizens—and this cannot consist merely in the fact that advancing the supernatural good promotes that common good of all, but that advancing the supernatural good by means of the state does so, thereby justifying the differential burdens/benefits introduced by the constitutional arrangements. The integralist would thus need to show not only that supernatural goods are of benefit to all in society, but that coercive civil authority advances the supernatural good better than any possible purely spiritual (and other mixed non-integralist) alternative. And this looks impossible, given Catholic doctrine that the Church lacks any political power. Notice too that I have not argued that it would always be wrong for the Church and state to advance the supernatural good together. Rather, I argued that there is no way to conclude that the integralist political arrangement is an ideal means for advancing that good, either because the supernatural good can be advanced without an integralist state or because advancing that good by means of an integralist state adds nothing to the value of the supernatural good. Instead, there is a strong presumption against any legal mechanisms that introduce differential civil burdens/benefits on account of religion. The reason there is such a presumption is that we have duties to non-Catholics. This first problem thus argues that we have duties (in distributive justice) toward non-Catholics which cannot be violated in light of the general considerations advanced by integralists. Nothing about the common good appears to imply we lack such duties or to ground legitimate violation of them. There simply seems to be no reason that we can arrive at from facts about the common good that licenses the violation of distributive justice required in differentially distributing burdens and benefits among baptized and unbaptized citizens. Integralists therefore can go one of two ways in response to my first argument. They can argue either that such duties (in distributive justice) toward non-Catholics do not exist, or that such duties are legitimately overridden by other duties. What follows in the second problem is an attempt to cut off both of these strategies. The integralist thesis is that integralist states (in which the Church can mandate state policies advancing the supernatural common good) are the 1072 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. political ideal. The situation under which integralist states are supposed to be “ideal” is highly abstract, however. But it is typically conceded, for example, that the integralist state would be feasible only where baptized Christians constitute over 50 percent of the population, or in “a country in which the people and traditions were overwhelmingly Catholic.”39 Unsophisticated integralists might attempt to argue that there is nothing wrong with violating distributive justice when it concerns non-Catholics; Catholics have no moral obligations in justice toward non-Catholics in regard to their objections to an integralist constitution (the unsophisticated integralist might argue). But it would be highly implausible to hold that this requirement of having a majority Catholic population before establishing an integralist state is not a moral constraint, but only a matter of practical feasibility in implementing integralism effectively. Holding such a hypothetical “unsophisticated’” integralism would require denying simpliciter that non-Catholic objections count against the legitimacy of integralist state arrangements. The consequences of biting that bullet are quite significant, however. This would entail that non-Catholics could never hold political power legitimately or that non-Catholic constitutions are not legitimate, in the same way that a Nazi, warlord, or pirate government is not legitimate, being intrinsically unable to direct their citizens to the common good except accidentally. While my intent here is to highlight a purely hypothetical option only to dismiss it, some integralists do explicitly qualify the legitimacy of non-Catholic states, implying that political legitimacy derives, “strictly speaking” or in some exemplar case, from the Church.40 Nevertheless, a significant cost of this approach to authority is that much reflection within the Catholic theological tradition has been dedicated to affirming the legitimacy of non-Catholic governments and duties toward those governments, especially in the context of the discovery and conquest of the Americas.41 If integralists did presume an account of political legiti39 40 41 Storck, “What is Integralism?,” 26. See Crean and Fimister, Integralism, 99: “Temporal power which is possessed or exercised without subjection to the rightful spiritual power therefore cannot be called simply speaking ‘legitimate.’ . . . Insofar as its bearer may have . . . a right and duty to wield it, and others the duty to obey, it may be called legitimate in a certain respect: in this sense, Alexander did not differ from the pirate chief only by the number of his men. Yet insofar as temporal power unsubject to the rightful spiritual power cannot direct man either to his supernatural or to his natural end, societies so ruled are depicted by the word of God as destructive wild beasts.” The classical text being Franciso de Vitoria, “On the American Indians,” in Vitoria: Political Writings, ed. A. Pagden and J. Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 231–92. Integralism and Justice for All 1073 macy which calls the tradition into question on these points, it would give us significant grounds to reject their views. There is something wrong with imposing an integralist state on a non-Catholic population, even when practically feasible. In line with the presumption that we construe integralism charitably, the better and more reasonable view is thus that integralist governments require a strongly Catholic population for their legitimacy. Integralists are demure as to what makes such facts relevant to legitimacy and in what ways, but it should be obvious that statistics alone are not the criteria of legitimate government.42 Clearly, integralists are not the sort who can accept typical liberal accounts of political legitimacy as requiring justification, for example, before all reasonable citizens. Nevertheless, eccentric theories about the “divine right of kings” or natural patriarchal authority or views of sovereignty deriving from extreme authoritarians, such as Carl Schmidt or Joseph de Maistre, are not strictly required by the integralist thesis.43 We should not ignore questions about the way in which integralism might imply an unreasonable view of political legitimacy.44 But I leave such worries aside for my purposes here and assume integralists can accept some criteria according to which governmental power is constituted and exercised legitimately, such that non-Catholics affect those conditions, given that integralist states would not be legitimate if there were too many non-Catholics (or the like). Problem 2: Legitimacy and Duties to Non-Catholic Citizens A sophisticated integralism can hold instead that supernatural duties override or qualify our natural duties of distributive justice to non-Catholics. The basic justification will be that the supernatural common good of the Church makes demands upon Catholics. These demands include a duty to protect the Church from harm. If Catholics live under non-Catholic government, then the state might command Catholics to act against their supernatural duties. To prevent such conflicts, Catholics should prefer that the Church can 42 43 44 See further John Courtney Murray, “The Problem of the ‘Religion of the State,’” American Ecclesiastical Review 124 ( January–June 1951): 349–50. Ménard and Su, “Liberalism,” 1177, 1204–18. For general concerns about integralism and legitimacy, see my “Illiberal Integralist Elites,” in Law & Liberty, January 3, 2022, lawliberty.org/illiberal-integralist-elites/. Murray also raised whether integralists required rejecting consent of all the people as a necessary condition for just exercise of power; see “For the Freedom and Transcendence of the Church,” The American Ecclesiastical Review 126 ( January–June 1952): 35–38. 1074 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. constitutionally exercise its indirect power over government, thereby defusing constitutionally any potential conflict of religious and civil duties. Such constitutional mechanisms would necessarily require limiting non-Catholic influence over government, directly or indirectly, but the integralist infers that the cost of such exclusion is justified and reasonable considering the serious nature of religious obligations. We can express integralism’s thesis as the view that reasonable, informed Catholics necessarily have a rational preference for integralist states.45 This phrase then captures the normative core of what integralists need to defend. I propose that this is the way in which to understand Pink’s approach.46 On Pink’s view, the ideality of integralist government is supposed to follow from Catholic doctrine of baptism, insofar as baptism generates moral obligations for baptized Catholics to follow the Church’s directives, including in their capacity as public officials.47 He argues that Church teaching has taught that baptism generates an obligation “of Christian rulers to cooperate in the enforcement of baptismal obligations, and the kinds of penalties open to the Church to authorize.”48 There is thus supposed to be a standing obligation on Christians in political office to submit their political power to the Church. While Pink refers frequently to the Tridentine canon above, we already saw that that canon teaches only appropriateness of temporal punishment, not that it must be civil punishment by the state. Trent does not state who enforces such penalties, let alone under what circumstances political officials would need to do so. Pink therefore adduces evidence from historical cases 45 46 47 48 See especially sec. 4 of Samuel Freeman, “Original Position,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, summer 2019 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2019/entries/original-position/. To be clear, Pink does not (to my knowledge) explicitly address the ways in which we should limit non-Catholic involvement in government or the way in which non-Catholics pose a problem for political legitimacy of integralist governments. Pink never states the matter this way in terms of overriding or qualifying duties toward non-Catholics. But it seems to me that the description of the dangers of non-Catholic governments, as posing a standing danger or harm to the Church, are what justify (for Pink) any necessary limitations on non-Catholic political participation. Pink is not unaware that some such limitations are necessary, and he is also aware of the difficulty of transitioning to integralist government from contemporary pluralist societies, given the legitimacy questions I have raised for unsophisticated integralism. I am merely attempting to offer a reading on which Pink holds that there are political duties toward non-Catholics, but that these are justifiably qualified considering the duties Catholics have to prefer integralist states. Pink, “Vatican II and Crisis.” See also Crean and Fimister, Integralism, 98, citing Robert Bellarmine, Controversiaes 5.7. Pink, “Interpretation,” 99. Integralism and Justice for All 1075 where the Church excommunicated rulers who failed to punish heresy in their territories, or otherwise failed in a duty “to aid her in her exercise of her coercive authority,” as evidence that the Church has such power over political officials, in keeping with the Suarezian thesis.49 Nevertheless, textual cases of the Church apparently calling upon the “secular arm” with the force of moral obligation, such as Lateran IV, can be interpreted variously—we need to know why or in what way public officials are obligated by baptism to lend support to the Church. Without a clear account of those moral obligations, it would be easy to undermine the integralist’s thesis that such political arrangements are ideal. Pink is diffident but admits that these obligations on Christian rulers appear to be excused outside of a constitutionally Christian state.50 Even if we assume that the Church has indirect power in order to mandate Christian rulers to advance the supernatural common good, under appropriate conditions, the mere fact of that power tells us nothing about the conditions under which it is exercised legitimately, including whether it must (or ideally would) be exercised by means of a constitutional mechanism. Specifically, the existence of that power does not tell us that these “appropriate conditions” are politically ideal. One could thus simply deny that the arrangements under which Christian rulers cooperate with the Church to exercise her coercive authority (integralist states) are ideal. Then, a right of the Church to mandate civil coercive penalties (the Suarezian thesis) would be irrelevant to whether an integralist state is ideal.51 Obligations to Aid the Church Pink justifies that ideality in terms of an individual obligation of baptized Christian rulers to put their power at the disposal of the Church. His arguments for such an obligation derive from Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine, 49 50 51 Pink, “Interpretation,” 100. Pink, “Interpretation,” 119: “It might well be that only in the context of such [Christian, integralist] states could baptism ordinarily obligate officials to exercise coercive state power on the direction of an authority distinct from the state and based on that baptism.” An anonymous referee has pointed out that other traditionalists, including Bernard Lucien and Marcel de Corte, take §3 of Pope Pius’s 1864 Quanta Cura to address these conditions, at least partially. Charles Journet, for example, was sympathetic to a point with the Suarezian thesis that the Church could call upon state power in specific instances in regard to its own members, but Journet himself denied that establishment is the ideal or that the state would have positive duties in regard to support of the Church’s mission. See Roger Nutt and Michael De Salvo, “The Debate over Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II,” The Thomist 85, no. 2 (2021): 175–226. 1076 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. who argue that the Church requires this support from rulers in order to protect the Church from harm.52 These arguments ultimately derive from those offered by Thomas Aquinas in Summa theologiae II-II, q. 10, a. 10. Aquinas argues that unbelievers do not lose their legitimate political authority over believers—believers are still required to obey pagan rulers after their conversion, as biblical sanction dictates (1 Pet 2:13). Nevertheless, Aquinas points out that biblical evidence also dictates that believers should not put themselves under the authority of unbelievers voluntarily (1 Cor 6:1). The reason for this is that unbelievers having authority poses a potential danger to the faith, as when a master orders his slave to act contrary to his faith. It would provoke scandal and endanger the faith, for subjects are easily influenced by their superiors to comply with their commands, unless the subjects are of great virtue: moreover unbelievers hold the faith in contempt, if they see the faithful fall away.53 Aquinas also claims that the Church has the power to overrule the legitimacy of such dominium being exercised over believers by unbelievers, even outside of Christian countries: [Unbelievers’] right of dominion or authority can be justly done away with by the sentence or ordination of the Church who has the authority of God: since unbelievers in virtue of their unbelief deserve to forfeit their power over the faithful who are converted into children of God.54 Aquinas’s position assumes, as Suarez later argues, that the Catholics are in control of whether to put themselves under non-Catholic rulers and does not therefore sanction revolt against non-Catholic rulers merely on grounds that they are non-Catholic.55 Non-Catholic political arrangements are and remain legitimate.56 The claim is that, if it were entirely up to Catholics, then 52 53 54 55 56 See Pink, “Suarez and Bellarmine,” 203–8; Pink, “Jacques Maritain,” 33–37; Pink, “Vatican II and Crisis.” ST II-II, q. 10, a. 10, resp. ST II-II, q. 10, a. 10, resp. Francisco Suarez, Defensio Fideo Catholicae et Apostolicae contra Errores Anglicanae Sectae 2.5.5–6 (1872 reprint, Naples), trans. Peter L. P. Simpson (CreateSpace, 2012). What Aquinas says elsewhere about legitimacy in government indicates that lawmaking among “free peoples” (in democracies or republics) requires consent of the whole people (ST I-II, q. 97, a. 3, ad 3). In this vein, Aquinas rejects the legitimacy of dominium that is imposed by force without the consent of the subject or with coerced Integralism and Justice for All 1077 Catholics would have obligations to establish an integralist state; these conditions exist only “when a new subjection of the faithful to an infidel prince depends on consent and desire of the faithful.”57 Catholics legitimately wish to be able to fulfill their moral obligations to their faith. If a non-Catholic government’s existence poses a standing danger to the practice of the Catholic faith, this generates the rational preference for integralist regimes. Similarly, given the Church’s supernatural mission, if the Church decided that this subjection posed a danger to the faith of the Catholics, the Church could exempt believers from their otherwise normative obedience to non-Catholic government (assuming the exemption did not otherwise undermine the supernatural and natural good; e.g., causing scandal). The possibility of civil obligations coming into conflict with or endanger the fulfilling of “higher” supernatural obligations is what grounds the purported duty of Christian rulers to submit their power to the Church. The Modern Situation However, there are serious lacunae in Aquinas’s position which affect the rationale for sophisticated integralism. The Church today does the opposite of prohibiting its members to submit to non-Catholic governments. This is not an incidental policy change, but a reflection of a change in the modern situation which Aquinas did not foresee. Aquinas simply did not envision a third option of governments in which religious freedom and other human rights are protected constitutionally. It is therefore open to non-integralists to admit even the Suarezian thesis and nevertheless argue that, under governments that would protect the right to religious freedom as laid out in contemporary Church teaching, there is no unique principled danger to the free exercise of the faith by individual believers or to the Church’s freedom or its mission, for which danger the integralist state could be the only appropriate remedy. There are consequently no good grounds, within the modern situation, for Catholics to prefer integralist states to constitutional orders that protect religious freedom. 57 consent (In II sent., d. 44, q. 2, ad 5). It is not plausible that, on Aquinas’s account, Catholics even when holding a majority could legitimately impose an integralist constitution on their non-Catholic fellows. Thus, Suarez understands the Church to be able to dispense Christian faithful from the power of pagan kings only when there is grave danger to the faith. Even on Suarez’s expansive notion of the Church’s indirect power it is implausible that the Church can dispense Christians from considering their fellow non-Catholic citizens’ wishes in choice of constitution merely because of the fact that those citizens are not Catholic. See Suarez, Defensio Fideo Catholicae 2.4.7; 2.4.12–13; 3.23.14. See Suarez, Defensio Fideo Catholicae 2.4.5. 1078 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. Pink argues that non-Catholic governments which do not facilitate exercise of the indirect power pose a standing danger to the practice of the faith. For example, he argues that public reasoning will degrade into persecution of the Church without the integralist political arrangement. Since, on his reading of Dignitatis humanae, the right to religious freedom consists in the fact that the state has no competence in matters of religion, the right to religious freedom implies a duty to recognize the Church’s competence. “Religion will only be publicly acknowledged as a good transcending state authority by those states that also publicly acknowledge the supernatural end, that is, the truth of religion in supernatural form.”58 If the Church is the only body which has jurisdiction over the supernatural good, the “secular” state inevitably will fail to be responsive to the Church’s rights as long as it fails to confess Catholicism and put itself at the Church’s service. Pink’s argument is fallacious. On the one hand, Pink draws a false parallel between constitutional regimes involving freedom of religion and “secularization.” He argues that, apart from integralist states, service of a genuinely common good . . . is only possible if the state recognizes both natural law and the transformation of law and public reason brought about by the raising of religion to a supernatural good. No genuinely non-Christian state can be relied upon to recognize either of these things. States that do not recognize them will become confessors of false belief opposed to Christianity, and their great power will turn from supporting Christianity to opposing or even repressing it, especially in relation to its moral teaching. As the rapid movement of many western states from genuine support to increasing enmity toward Christianity illustrates, there is no stable middle way.59 It is not obvious that every possible non-confessional state will inevitably believe itself capable of directing religious affairs and tend towards suppressing religion. As long as such a state adopts clear protections of religious liberty, it is hard to see why this is inevitable, even given the forces of sin in the world. But Pink’s claims specifically target Jacques Maritain’s proposals on Church–state relations. Maritain had argued that the age of Christendom was a “sacral age” in which functions of Church and state were not adequately distinguished, under which the state was commonly understood 58 59 Pink, “Jacques Maritain,” 33. Thomas Pink, “Integralism, Political Philosophy, and the State,” Public Discourse, May 9, 2020, thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/05/63226/. Integralism and Justice for All 1079 to have an official religion, whereas the contemporary situation is a “secular age” in which “the unity of religion is not a prerequisite for political unity.”60 As long as the Church can fulfill her mission without harm under these conditions, the obligations on Christian rulers to exercise political power in service of the Church’s defense now take on a different form: public officials are bound in conscience to exercise their power in keeping with Church teaching about the common good.61 Pink proposes that the point of decision between Maritain’s project and integralism lies in whether “political secularization—the detachment of the state from any particular religion and so from the Church—now [provides] the best means to ensuring that religion is respected as a transcendent good, as Maritain supposed?”62 But this is misleading. Maritain was not arguing that detaching the state from religion is the best way to bring about respect of religion. Maritain was explicitly calling for a Christian political society which would then influence society through Christian democratic politics. Maritain holds that the state should be Christianized by a transformation of what today we would refer to as its civil society, non-governmental organizations, rather than by constitutional establishment.63 In modern circumstances, Maritain thinks, a “lay” state would still be one that publicly acknowledged the existence of God, but need not be specifically Catholic in its confession (as long as it allowed the full freedom to the Church in advancing the supernatural good).64 But then it is misleading to believe we can evaluate Maritain’s program for Christian democracy without differentiating whether, on the one hand, a purported hostile secular drift in non-confessional states exerted pressure that naturally tends to eliminate or suppress attempts to Christianize civil society (making Maritain’s project hopeless) or, on the other, the failure of a Christian civil society in the last century decreased Christian influence over government and that brought about problems for Christians. The latter possibility would not show Maritain’s project of “Christian democracy” to be an inevitable failure, any more than the fact that Christendom dissolved would show integralist states to be an inevitable failure. Pink is selective in his consideration of the facts. Nevertheless, no defense of Maritain’s project is needed to see that the 60 61 62 63 64 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 160. Maritain, Man and the State, 163–64. Pink, “Jacques Maritain,” 12. Maritain, Man and the State, 175–79. Maritain, Man and the State, 172–73. 1080 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. alternatives are not mutually exhaustive of the logical space. We can consider a possible Catholic confessional state which protects religious freedom as understood by DH and nevertheless does not have constitutional mechanisms for exercise of indirect power. Such a confessional state would not be straightforwardly “secular,” but is also not an integralist state.65 Pink’s defense of integralism requires treating anything short of constitutional exercise of the Church’s ability to exercise Suarezian indirect power over civil coercion as a “secularism” that poses a danger to the Church. If confessionally Catholic non-integralist states do not pose a danger to the Church’s mission, however, integralism is false. Is it plausible that even confessional Catholic states of this sort are an inevitable danger to the Church? I see no reason to think so. Then integralist states are not required to protect the Church from harm in modernity, and so Christians have no rational preference for integralist states, just as Christian rulers have no standing obligations to put their power at the disposal of the Church. On the other hand, Pink argues that Pope Leo XIII’s Immortale Dei seems to teach that the union of Church and state, as “soul to body,” constitutes an ideal of Christian government.66 This further argument aims to show that mere non-recognition of the Church’s indirect power constitutes a harm to the Church, that is, a harm to the promotion of the supernatural good.67 This sort of justification, however, would be circular. What is in question is whether that soul–body unity is harmed by the mere fact that political rulers do not put their coercive authority at the disposal of the Church. Under a regime of constitutional protection of the rights of the Church, the only reason that this would constitute a harm is if rulers had a de facto duty positively to advance the cause of religion merely in virtue of their recognition of the truth of Catholicism. The integralist cannot merely assume that the supernatural good of Catholics necessarily includes the integralist state. It is also not Aquinas’s (or Suarez’s) argument that failure to recognize the indirect power of the Church over temporal government power constitutes a standing harm to the Church. Aquinas’s own position does not involve any claim that the indirect power of the Church must be exercised by constitutional mechanisms to advance the supernatural good in any positive way—which is what would be necessary to ground such a standing harm to the Church. The justifications for exempting believers from dominum of 65 66 67 Some have proposed various forms of confessionality; e.g., Basile Valuet, Le droit à la liberté religieuse dans la tradition de l´Eglise, 3 vols. (Le Barroux, France: Sainte-Madeleine, 2005). Pink, “Jacques Maritain,” 32–42. See Pink, “In Defence of Catholic Integralism.” Integralism and Justice for All 1081 unbelievers are negative: to prevent harm that could ensue from political authority exercised by unbelievers, such as commanding Christians to act contrary to their faith.68 Aquinas does not justify the dominion of believers, for example, by appeal to the fact that state power is necessary for advancing the supernatural good. Further, I do not see that any of these claims in Immortale Dei or similar magisterial claims about such union require us to hold that integralist states are the only way to fulfill the duties indicated.69 Indeed, it is striking that none of the documents Pink cites from the recent papal magisterium of the nineteenth century mentions the need for the state to facilitate the Church’s employment of its coercive power, but only the state’s need to follow the truth. While it is strictly beyond the scope of my paper, as it requires much more intensive textual work, it is by no means obvious that a close reading pre–Vatican II teaching on the duties that the state has toward the “true religion,” and so toward supernatural goods, would support integralist readings of these texts, especially taking those texts in the scope of the whole Catholic tradition. To the same effect, the Suarezian thesis is not plausibly doctrinally requisite, and it has indeed been rejected by prominent orthodox theologians.70 Imagine that the state is bound in justice to promote what is really or in truth good for human beings, as far as it lies in its power.71 The state would thus have obligations to obey the truth taught by the Church not as a consequence of a positive right to state power, but insofar as the Church in fact teaches the truth about supernatural goods,72 such as “what conduces to true beatitude and what hinders it are learned from the law of God, the 68 69 70 71 72 See Thomas Joseph White, “A Right to Religious Freedom,” Nova et Vetera (English) 13 no. 4 (2015): 1171. James Dominic Rooney, “An Alleged Contradiction in Dignitatis Humanae” in Angelicum 98, no. 2 (2021): 99–118. Murray is well-known for his historical studies rejecting Bellarmine’s theory in favor of John of Paris: “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Indirect Power,” Theological Studies 9 (December 1948): 491–535; “Contemporary Orientations of Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History,” Theological Studies 10 ( June 1949): 177–234. See also John Lamont, “Catholic Teaching on Religion and the State,” New Blackfriars 96, no. 1066 (2015): esp. 697. See Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925), §§17–18: “a public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ” and an error to hold that “Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs.” These duties are toward “not such religion as [individuals] may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion," (Immortale Dei §6). See Jacques Maritain, The Things that Are Not Caesar’s, trans. J. F. Scanlon (London: Sheed & Ward, 1932), 7–17. 1082 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. teaching of which belongs to the office of the priest.”73 Church teaching on Church–state relations in subsequent eras followed this basic pattern, that the Church would inform state policy by its teaching as regards the truth of the moral law and the law of Christ, whereas states have obligations to obey such laws insofar as it is in their power. However, the obligation of the state to follow the moral law or the law of Christ “as it is within their power” does not license any need for denying non-Catholics political participation in affairs of state (violating distributive justice),74 nor does it give the state any positive obligation to include constitutional mechanisms for exercise of Church authority over its policies. The state duty to the truth therefore implies nothing about the ideality of integralist states, because the recognition of truth (such as the truth about the Church as divinely appointed teaching authority) does not generate an obligation to employ coercive authority in its favor.75 Ironically, we can employ Pink’s own reasoning in favor of such a reading: Just because some person or group or institution has a duty to recognize a given truth, it does not follow that on the same basis it need have any authority of its own to enforce that truth and coerce on its behalf. This does not follow for private individuals, nor for institutions—not even when, unlike a private individual, that institution has a coercive authority of its own in other matters.76 At most, then, state obligations towards the truth generate rational preference for constitutional recognition of the truth of Catholicism, within a framework of religious-freedom protections that prevent civil discrimination against non-Catholics. (Note that this obligation would be distinct from an obligation to protect religious liberty.) Such a position appears to fulfill duties of the state to “true religion” without any integralist state. Consequently, there is at least one possible situation in which “soul–body” harmony between Church and state can be achieved without an integralist 73 74 75 76 Aquinas, De regno II, ch. 4 (trans. Aquinas Institute, aquinas.cc/la/en/~DeRegno. BookII.C4). Leo notes that Catholics have a duty to participate in society because, “if they hold aloof, men whose principles offer but small guarantee for the welfare of the State will the more readily seize the reins of government” (Immortale Dei §44), but he does not claim that Catholics have a duty to exclude non-Christians from government. Arguments that the state has obligations to “practice” Catholicism by sponsoring public worship according to Catholicism (e.g., Crean and Fimister, Integralism, 98–99) rely upon overly rigid analogies between the obligations of individuals and countries. Pink, “Jacques Maritain,” 22n51. Integralism and Justice for All 1083 state. There may be other feasible ways to achieve these duties—all that is necessary to show that integralism is false, however, is that there is at least one such possibility. Integralism is then not necessary to fulfill these duties of the state.77 Duties to Non-Catholics in Confessional States My first argument undermined integralist assumptions that curtailing rights would be justified in terms of the common good. That first argument was that there are strong moral reasons from distributive justice for not distributing societal burdens/benefits unfairly. Integralist states are unfair because these differential distributions are not appropriately in favor of the common good.78 My second argument is that religious belief does not constitute just grounds to exclude anyone from political participation within modern situations where religious freedom can be constitutionally protected. The only plausible grounds on which Catholics can have a rational preference for integralist government lie exclusively in circumstances when governmental power exercised by non-Catholics would pose a serious threat to moral obligations of Catholics. In the modern world, however, there are no such situations, given the possibility of government involving constitutional protection of religious freedom. Ergo, integralist states are no longer justified. This second argument is structurally similar to those arguments that the death penalty is not justified in countries where other reasonable means can be taken to protect the common good which do not involve killing the offender.79 And, as with the strong presumption that civil government should not kill anyone when alternative means for preventing harm are reasonably available, I conclude that we have strong presumptive moral reasons not to exclude anyone from political participation on religious grounds for two reasons. A first reason it is unjust to exclude non-Catholics from political 77 78 79 Clearly, many more complications exist, such as the fact that there may be mere “parchment barriers” to religious discrimination which are ignored in practice (as pointed out by DH §15). I leave aside such complications to focus on the way in which the modern constitutional regime provides ways of avoiding conflicts between Church and state, without requiring an integralist state, but I may also note that these same constitutional means (and international law) also provide further means for redressing those conflicts, if abuses or other problems occur. See Kevin Vallier, “The Fairness Argument Against Catholic Integralism,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 29, 2021, 1–19. Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), §56; CCC §2267. See further Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), 161–89. 1084 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. participation is grounded on considerations of popular sovereignty. Catholics such as Francisco de Vitoria, Bellarmine, and Suarez defended a natural right of peoples to determine their own mode of government. These were intended to undercut “absolute” monarchism in the form of the purported divine right of kings to rule and to legitimate resistance to tyrants (as an act by which the people exercised those rights).80 They argued, broadly, that people are created naturally equal in their capacity to exercise political authority. People therefore delegate that authority to representatives, in keeping with conditions for just exercise of that authority, whether to a single king or to many individuals. The legitimacy of a government’s constitution and its continued exercise of power derive from the just delegation of that authority by the governed. This view of popular sovereignty found its way into the contemporary Catholic Church’s social doctrine.81 There is consequently a strong presumption (as a corrective to overly monarchical tendencies) that the whole people, not merely Catholics, are the subject of political authority which delegates that legitimate authority to its leaders. This fact is then what generates moral obligations to exercise political power in ways that respect the interests of all citizens, the common good, and that undergird moral obligations not to establish constitutions which would infringe upon the natural rights of a subset of the population to determine their own mode of government. Integralism’s proposal that excluding non-Catholics from government is a political ideal requires implicit denial that such persons have any role in constituting the state as legitimate. And that is false. A second reason it is unjust to exclude non-Catholics from political participation is grounded in the teaching of Dignitatis humanae. DH makes three salient claims: (1) “all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits,” (2) “the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person,” and (3) “the right of the human person 80 81 John C. Rager, “The Blessed Cardinal Bellarmine’s Defense of Popular Government in the Sixteenth Century,” The Catholic Historical Review 10, no. 4 (1925): 504–14; Cesare Cuttica, “Filmer’s Patriarchalism versus Jesuit Political Ideas,” in Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653) and the Patriotic Monarch: Patriarchalism in Seventeenth-Century political Thought (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 91–103. Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), §395: “The subject of political authority is the people considered in its entirety as those who have sovereignty.” Integralism and Justice for All 1085 to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right” (§2). Thomas Pink’s interpretation of claim (1) is that this concerns only the scope of state action without the direction of the Church’s indirect power. On this reading, individuals should be immune from coercion in favor of religious ends except coercion as exercised directly by the Church or indirectly by the state under the former’s direction. However, DH §6 also explicitly qualifies claims (2) and (3) as applying to confessional (that is, potentially integralist) states as follows: If, in view of peculiar circumstances obtaining among peoples, special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional order of society, it is at the same time imperative that the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom should be recognized and made effective in practice. . . . Government is to see to it that equality of citizens before the law, which is itself an element of the common good, is never violated, whether openly or covertly, for religious reasons. Nor is there to be discrimination among citizens. What this implies is that—even if we accept the view that civil government can legitimately coerce the baptized under direction of the Church—religious beliefs alone are not suitable grounds for excluding someone from purely civil rights, as this would constitute a violation of the common good of society. Without any grounds for a strong moral obligation to establish an integralist state, integralism violates justice even in this more sophisticated form. Integralism requires a rational preference, as we have seen, for setting up a constitution in such a way as to exclude non-Catholics from political participation. It is the possibility of unbelievers exercising meaningful political power over integralist arrangements which must be constitutionally excluded. This can be done in different ways. Many integralists, for example, openly embrace the ideal that baptism and citizenship should be united, holding that integralism requires the denial of full citizenship rights to non-Catholics under integralist regimes.82 Integralists do not typically find such restrictions on political participation unjust, as integralism has traditionally been associated with monarchism. Integralists thus often reject that equal political participation of all citizens is a necessary or even a possible component of the common good, 82 E.g., Crean and Fimister, Integralism, 147. 1086 James Dominic Rooney, O.P. as monarchies do not involve such participation.83 The more monarchist integralist reasons that, as nobody has a natural right to political participation, rights to political participation in integralist states may be denied to non-Catholics without injustice. The less monarchist integralist might conversely reason that, even if there were such rights, natural rights have limits in terms of the common good: non-Catholics might thus be denied political participation on account of the common good of integralist states. Vatican II’s teaching undermines the one possible basis sophisticated integralists could give for a rational preference for integralist constitutions along those aforementioned lines: that excluding non-Catholics from political power is necessary to avoid conflicts of conscience among respective duties to Church and state. As long as there is a possibility of a constitutional order of religious freedom, there are no principled grounds for conflict with uniquely religious duties. Dignitatis humanae thus rules out as unjust the exclusion of non-Catholics from government, as this is unnecessary within the modern world for securing the common good. If it would be unjust to exclude non-Catholics from government in general on the basis of their religious beliefs alone, then even monarchical integralism cannot retreat to claims that nobody has rights to political participation or to citizenship. Thus, Dignitatis humanae rules out the possible basis for sophisticated integralism. Regimes restricting non-Catholic political participation on religious grounds alone could be ideal across-the-board only if we ignore duties toward non-Catholic citizens. Integralism therefore requires us to violate duties toward non-Catholics, which is unjust. Conclusion I have proposed two arguments that integralism is unjust. Integralist states are not necessary for achieving the supernatural common good, nor for advancing the common good of both baptized and unbaptized citizens more than other possible regimes, nor for avoiding conflicts between allegiance to the state and Catholic religious duties. Instead, integralism’s thesis that such arrangements are ideal violates strong presumptive moral reasons for treating non-Catholics equally in political contexts. Integralism involves endorsing societal burdens/benefits that skew primarily in favor of the good of the baptized alone, contrary to moral presumptions that such 83 For instance, Crean and Fimister accept a theory of legitimacy which seems essentially identical with Filmer’s position on the divine right of kings (see Integralism, 40, 103–7). Naturally, this is odd, given that Filmer’s views were created to oppose Catholic political views such as those of Bellarmine (see Pink, “Jacques Maritain,” 22n51). Integralism and Justice for All 1087 differences must be justified in terms of the common good of all. Integralism also involves endorsing the claim that religious belief alone is a legitimate ground for excluding non-Catholics from political participation, contrary to the natural rights of all citizens to determine their own mode of government and contrary to Catholic teaching that such exclusion is unnecessarily discriminatory within a world where constitutional protections for religious freedom are possible. In both ways, integralism requires violation of plausible principles of justice. There is no good reason to accept integralism as providing the only basis to oppose “liberalism” or political indifferentism in today’s world. Non-integralists can accept that we need to “shape our national discourse so that religious and metaphysical questions come front and center,” and agree that “not only is this required by our adherence to the truth, but it is the only hope for a successful missionary apostolate in today’s world.”84 There are controversial moral and political movements which would unfairly exclude believers from the public square or, even worse, violate their religious freedom under the cover of “social justice” by requiring believers to fund or participate in morally objectionable activities. But it is a false dichotomy that Catholics therefore ought to embrace injustice of one kind to combat that of another. 84 Storck, “What is Integralism?,” 24. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 1089–1096 1089 Deification through the Cross: Reflections from an Implied Ideal Worshiper Andrew J. Summerson Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies Toronto, Ontario Khaled Anatolios’s most recent book, Deification through the Cross,1 develops a definition of salvation out of his experience of the Byzantine liturgy. This experience of worship offers an immersion in what he calls “doxological contrition.” By this, Anatolios means that Christ saves us by offering us the ability to participate in the mutual glorification of the persons of the Holy Trinity by vicariously repenting for our sins. For Anatolios, this objective content is subjectively appropriated in Byzantine Christian worship. To explore this theme, Anatolios develops a working account of “doxological contrition” through a synthetic discussion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, books of liturgical hymnography that govern the Byzantine worship from Lent to Pentecost. Anatolios derives his approach from the adaption of reader response theory, which aims to expose the effect a text should have on the “implied ideal reader.” As such, his account speaks from the perspective of the “implied ideal worshiper”—presumably a theologically educated congregant who can seize these themes that evaporate into the ether as quickly as incense swung throughout the church during the services. Let me say from the outset, I heartily recommend Anatolios’s book. It is both an ambitious work and a rewarding read. Ambitious because Anatolios’s approach makes otherwise fragmented theological disciplines—liturgical 1 Khaled Anatolios, Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020). 1090 Andrew J. Summerson studies, Scripture, historical theology, and systematics—fruitful dialogue partners in his exposition of a working account of the Christian experience of salvation. Rewarding because the reader can explore in depth the touchstones of the Christian tradition through Anatolios’s deep retrieval of a more coherent soteriology. Deification of the Cross demonstrates the perennial value of historical theology to correctly account for the “half-forgotten, half misunderstood” details of the Christian tradition in the face of caricatures that at best misrepresent and at worst present an idolatrous, counterfeit Christianity. Eastern Christian Liturgy and Revelation Perhaps I am not Anatolios’s ideal audience; I may be too close to the source material and lack objectivity. That aside, the bulk of my reflections on this book comes from the perspective of an “implied ideal worshiper.” I do share some of Anatolios starting points. Like Anatolios, I am a convert, scholar, and Eastern Catholic priest. Furthermore, I also share the discontent with which Anatolios begins his book, though perhaps for different reasons. He bemoans a loss of the experience of salvation. My own vocation as priest and scholar comes out of a frustrated wonder. As a college student, I set out to learn about this Church and its Tradition. I learned about the Sunday experience I was supposed be having. It was in university when I read for the first time John Paul II’s 1995 apostolic letter Orientale Lumen, written to acquaint the wider Catholic Church with the riches of the Christian East. John Paul II dedicated much reflection to the “genius of Eastern liturgy,” emphasizing its power to envelop all our human senses into the fullness of the mystery of God. It is worth quoting in full: Within this framework, liturgical prayer in the East shows a great aptitude for involving the human person in his or her totality: the mystery is sung in the loftiness of its content, but also in the warmth of the sentiments it awakens in the heart of redeemed humanity. In the sacred act, even bodiliness is summoned to praise, and beauty, which in the East is one of the best loved names expressing the divine harmony and the model of humanity transfigured, appears everywhere: in the shape of the church, in the sounds, in the colors, in the lights, in the scents. The lengthy duration of the celebrations, the repeated invocations, everything expresses gradual identification with the mystery celebrated with one’s whole person. Thus the prayer of the Church already becomes participation in the heavenly liturgy, an anticipation of the final beatitude. (§11) Deification through the Cross: Reflections from an Implied Ideal Worshiper 1091 The experience of this liturgy has been quite potent throughout history. It led to the baptism of the entire kingdom of Rus' in 988 AD. As the story goes, its ruler, Vladimir the Great, sent emissaries to find a religion fit for his kingdom. On their return to Rus' from Constantinople, Vladimir’s envoys convinced him to accept baptism on behalf of the nation precisely because of their experience of the liturgy: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men . . . for we cannot forget that beauty.”2 As a college student reading these texts, I noticed the dissonance between these commentaries and the experience of my own parish. My experience demonstrated little of John Paul’s maximalist vision or Vladimir’s emissaries’ glowing reports. I was baptized into that experience. However, the fracture between the Church I read about and the Church I lived did not deter me but urged me on to exploration. I also recognized that, however imperfectly, the Byzantine Catholic Church lulled me into Christianity, not with its aesthetic trappings but with the loving hands of its members. Hence, “the dearth of soteriological experience” through the liturgy is something I know firsthand, which is why books like Anatolios’s are welcome contributions. Normative statements derived from the liturgy are clarion reminders that liturgy must be cultivated and shared for very precise reasons: Eastern Catholics are heirs to a particular share of divine revelation, uniquely their own and meant to be offered to the whole Church.3 As the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, Orientalium Ecclesiarum, states: The Catholic Church holds in high esteem . . . the Christian life of the Eastern Churches, for in them . . . there remains visible the tradition that has been handed down from the Apostles through the Fathers and that forms part of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church. (§11) Here, the decree speaks of a “divinely revealed heritage” that belongs to the Eastern Churches, in language that anticipates and compliments the 2 3 The Russian Primary Chronicle, trans. S. H. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953), 111. For further comment, see Andrew Summerson, “Orientalium Ecclesiarum as Proof and Itinerary of the Hermeneutic of Reform: Theoria and a Little Praxis,” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 57 (2016): 135–44; Khaled Anatolios, “The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, Orientalium Ecclesiarum,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew Levering and Matthew Lamb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 343–49. 1092 Andrew J. Summerson Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, which describes revelation as God’s self-communication with humanity. Revelation is God’s language used to befriend us and offers us an everlasting communion with him (see Dei Verbum §§2, 6). Now, if revelation is divine communication, consider it as a sentence. Based on what is discussed above, the Eastern Churches have essential information to make this sentence intelligible. The traditions of the Christian East are no mere ornamental adjectives and adverbs. If that were the case, they would be left on the cutting room floor of the editor’s office at the Vatican and the message would still get through. Rather, Eastern Catholics possess subjects and verbs indispensable for the proclamation of revelation. Without them, the sentence of divine revelation is at best incomplete, and at worst incoherent. The Eastern Catholic churches are tasked with communicating divine language effectively. If this is not done, it is a frightening prospect, since the Eastern Catholic share of divine revelation has an evangelical aim. The Eastern Catholic churches are under the obligation to preach the Gospel to the whole world (Orientalium Ecclesiarum §3). Worship is one of the divinely inspired tools to facilitate this work. Several of the most recent Vatican documents highlight how liturgy is central to the Eastern Christian experience.4 Put another way, liturgy is not one thing Eastern Christians do among many; it is their primary activity, and the rest of life is built around it. Nicholas Cabasilas and Healthy Liturgical Theology Given what I have discussed above, the stakes are quite high for Eastern Christian worship. As a conduit of revelation, liturgy demands its execution in its implied idealized form in order to cultivate more “implied ideal worshipers.” Such Christians are not meant to be exceptions, but the rule. Yet, Anatolios is careful to not let his approach devolve into what Matthew Levering has called “liturgicism,” an exaggerated view that asserts that Christian revelation is available solely through liturgical experience.5 Anatolios recognizes the need for normative statements to be made independent of but consonant with the expression of liturgy he describes at the outset of his book. His examination of the worship described in Arius’s hymns and Nestorius’s sermons in chapter 3 offer cautionary tales of what can happen 4 5 See esp. Orientale Lumen §11. See also Congregation for the Eastern Churches, Instruction for Applying the Liturgical Prescriptions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1996). Matthew Levering, “Liturgy and Trinity,” Antiphon 23, no. 3 (2019): 225–60. Deification through the Cross: Reflections from an Implied Ideal Worshiper 1093 when a sheer “bottom up” liturgical theology goes off the rails.6 And yet, an anemic liturgical experience, even in its orthodox expression, is ill-equipped to nurture an experience of doxological contrition. When liturgy is misfired, undercut for the sake of economy, or made the fodder of political battles, it frustrates the expression divine glory that it intends. Further, even the most objectively beautiful liturgical experience can fall flat, for it requires of the worshiper a response of contrition, a posture uncomfortable for many. Not least for these reasons—and I suspect we can name others—we risk having the experience but missing its meaning. In an effort to correctly narrate this experience, Anatolios turns to fourteenth-century Byzantine theologian Nicholas Cabasilas, a centerpiece of his book. In Cabasilas’s writings hang together a compelling vision of salvation born of the Byzantine liturgy and in dialogue with the normative scriptural and conciliar tradition. Further, Cabasilas is deeply indebted to Anselm of Canterbury. While some have been dismissive of Anselm’s influence on Cabasilas, one can learn much from Anatolios’s sympathetic and insightful exploration of these two seemingly disparate medieval authors. Anatolios brings into focus Cabasilas’s capacity to daringly name the ineffable experience of the Byzantine sacramental economy, which offers us nothing more and nothing less than life in Christ, a phrase which serves at the title of Cabasilas’s masterpiece. At the outset of the work, Cabasilas insists: “The life in Christ originates in this life and arises from it. It is perfected, however, in the life to come, when we shall have reached that last day.”7 There is a continuity between this life and the life to come. Liturgy puts skin on the bones of the petition of the Our Father: “May thy kingdom come . . . on earth as it is in heaven.” But it is not any old life that is perfected in the life to come. He is explaining specifically the sacramental life, begun in baptism, activated by chrismation, and nourished by the Eucharist. The sacramental life prepares the palate to properly taste heaven. Without learning to appreciate heaven’s taste now, who shall be able to stomach it for eternity? Cabasilas goes on to say that, without this proper preparation to receive heaven in this life, eternal life would be but a misery. “The light would appear and the sunshine with its pure rays with no eye having been formed to see it. The Spirit’s fragrance would be abundantly diffused and pervading all, but one would not know it without already having the sense of smell.”8 Such an experience is not natural. Indeed, it is supernatural. This is precisely why 6 7 8 See Anatolios, Deification through the Cross, 169–77, 190–207. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, trans. Carmino J. DeCatanzaro (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: 1974), 43. Cabasilas, Life in Christ, 43. 1094 Andrew J. Summerson Christ comes to earth, to habituate the human eye to receive him, whom the Letter to the Hebrews insists “is the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of his substance” (1:3) The Lord’s earthly face allows us to shake the sleep from our eyes, ease our squinting pupils to take him in for who he is: “the dawn from on high” (Luke 1:78; cf. the troparion hymn for the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord). It is here that the psalmist’s prophecy is fulfilled, repeated daily at matins in the Byzantine tradition: “In your light, we shall see light” (Ps 35:9 LXX; cf. the Great Doxology of Matins). But Cabasilas makes clear that Christ as the light is not simply present to us, teaching us from without. More fundamentally, he unites himself to us from within.9 Cabasilas explains that, in liturgy, union with Christ exceeds the unity in friendship, even the unity between soul and body.10 The unity offered to us when we become adopted sons and daughters of God requires a revision of language. For us, the term “adoption” entails an artificial and derivative form of kinship. Yet Cabasilas tells us that divine sonship offered in baptism is more intimate than natural sonship. In natural birth, we are endowed with the flesh and blood of our birth parents. After that, what was once in our parents’ genes becomes our private property. Yet in Christ’s donation of his body and blood, we become “flesh from his flesh and bones from his bones,” echoing Adam’s first words, a love poem for his bride.11 Cabasilas will tell us that union with Christ exceeds that of marriage. He will even go so far as to say that the life in Christ offered through the sacraments exceeds even the disciples’ experience with Christ during his time on earth. They stood shoulder to shoulder with him, yet through the sacramental life of worship, we Christians stand inseparable from him. It is only with the descent of the Paraclete at Pentecost, which Cabasilas describes as a baptism of the Holy Spirit, that the disciples know the unity that is accomplished through the sacraments.12 Eastern Christian worship is a celebration of this life in Christ and presents this life to us in continued doxology, a constant lifting up of glory. We are merely offering up what we have received. The best and the only gift we can give back to God is the acknowledgement of what he has done for us. This is not simply a pious platitude, but a logical fact. What can we give that we have not already received? As the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is at pains to emphasize, God “brought us out of non-existence into being.” We are radically dependent creatures and do nothing apart from him. At the 9 10 11 12 Cabasilas, Life in Christ, 45 Cabasilas, Life in Christ, 46. Cabasilas, Life in Christ, 127–28. Cabasilas, Life in Christ, 91. Deification through the Cross: Reflections from an Implied Ideal Worshiper 1095 communion hymn for the feasts of the Mother of God, the following verse from the Psalms is sung: “What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I shall take the chalice of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord” (115:15–16 LXX). Worship of God is shot through with anamnesis, the calling to mind of his salvific deeds. This is at the heart of the anaphora of St. John Chrysostom. The deacon sums up this offering through ritual action by lifting the gifts, while the priest prays the following: “Remembering therefore this saving command and all that has come to pass in our behalf: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the second coming in glory, offering to you, yours, of your own always and everywhere.”13 Notice the words as the chalice is uplifted: we offer “to you” that is, to God; we offer “yours,” that is, the works performed on our behalf; we offer “of your own,” that is, every created reality which belongs to him as creator and redeemer, symbolized by the bread and wine. Melkite theologian Jean Corbon calls the Eucharistic chalice at this moment in the liturgy “the cup of synthesis,” where everything comes together and is offered back to the Lord.14 A thanksgiving offering to whom we owe our entire being requires something of infinite value to adequately respond. Christ’s self-donation in his life and death offers the only content adequate to the task.15 In Deification through the Cross, the most difficult work Anatolios executes is not his erudition, though he offers much in his more than four hundred pages. Rather, Anatolios translates the first-person experience of the ineffable into a third-person voice. Anatolios’s performance of this task is potent enough to dissolve the inaccuracies and obscurities brought about by “models” of salvation and false dichotomies between East and West. These concepts hang around like asbestos: too cancerous to keep using, yet too costly to remove. Such clichés serve only to insulate us from the burden of thinking. In their place, Anatolios lays forth yet another burden, the weight of the glory of the Lord, one that costs us nothing less than everything if we are to bear “all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). 13 14 15 The Divine Liturgy of Our Holy Father St. John Chrysostom (Pittsburgh, PA: Byzantine Seminary Press, 2006), 74. Jean Corbon, The Wellspring of Worship, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), esp. 150–54. See Cabasilas, Life in Christ, 117–20, and Anatolios, Deification through the Cross, 340–74. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2023): 1097–1113 1097 Book Reviews An Evangelical Adrift: The Making of John Henry Newman’s Theology by Geertjan Zuijdwegt (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), xii + 365pp. What do we know of St. John Henry Newman’s life, thought, and theological development before 1833, the year in which the Oxford Movement or Tractarian Movement was launched by Newman, John Keble, and Richard Hurrell Froude? Newman, in his rightly famous and indispensable Apologia Pro Vita Sua, covers this period in one brief chapter offering at best a rough outline and some central signposts. A more nuanced and somewhat more expansive picture is emerging in Newman’s Autobiographical Writings, published posthumously in 1956. Wilfrid Ward, in the two immense volumes of his 1912 Newman biography, dedicates one single chapter entitled “Life in the Church of England (1801–1845)” to the first forty-four years of Newman’s life, and of those fifty-four pages, only thirty cover the time from Newman’s birth in 1801 to the signal year 1833. Ian Ker, in his 1988 biography, arguably still the normative and unsurpassed scholarly Newman biography, acknowledged as such by admirers and critics alike, dedicates one chapter of fifty-three pages to the same time period. Finally, Geertjan Zuijdwegt, in his very well written and equally well-researched and well-argued monograph of 344 pages, offers a detailed and nuanced account of Newman’s theological development from his teenage conversion to Calvinist Evangelicalism up to and including the beginnings of the Tractarian Movement from 1833 to 1835. One must go back to Maisie Ward’s lovely portrait, Young Mr. Newman, from 1948, to find a book that covers roughly the same territory. Ward’s captivating biographical portrait and Zuijdwegt’s meticulously researched theological biography may be read with great benefit as mutually enlightening and complementary accounts—at least in the eyes of this reader. The latter’s new work is, however, a commendable and indeed indispensable achievement of its own. For one, what lies between Ward’s portrait of the young Newman and Zuijdwegt’s reconstruction of Newman’s 1098 Book Reviews early intellectual and theological development is Frank M. Turner’s 2002 John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion, a 750-page ad hominem attack on Newman’s person and character, not only making Evangelicalism (and not theological and political liberalism) the alleged primary if not sole object of the post-Evangelical Newman’s Tractarian and post-Tractarian, Catholic polemic, but also insinuating alongside in so many ways that Newman was dishonest about his work and thought, that he cared deeply for money or the security of a “living,” that he was a closeted and repressed homosexual, and that he was lying about his conversion experiences—charges advanced by Charles Kingsley and other contemporaries of Newman’s day and age and debunked—now warmed up und recycled under the guise of what pretended to be a massive scholarly study of intellectual history published by an Ivy League university press. Much ink has been spilled by Newman scholars in the years since Turner’s book appeared to set the record straight, while others thought the time was ripe to form a “Turner school” of critical, iconoclastic Newman scholarship. Unsurprisingly, since 2002, there has been no dull moment in the small world of Newman scholarship, now divided between two well-defined camps, with “iconographers” (so called by the iconoclasts) on one side, and on the other those who aim at advancing a hard-nosed form of critical, detached historical Newman scholarship that at points has a hard time identifying the fine line between historical criticism and barely camouflaged detraction. Zuijdwegt’s book is a considerable achievement first and foremost simply because he escapes to a commendably high degree, albeit not completely, the trench warfare between the warring camps of Newman scholarship. His unavoidable engagement with Turner’s work is judicious, balanced, and overall, in a measured way, critical. He is far more frequently disagreeing with Turner’s interpretation than agreeing with a limited number of interpretive points about Newman’s early Evangelicalism that can be corroborated textually in relatively easy ways. This is the first reason why those whom their detractors would call Newman iconographers should read this book with an open mind. The second reason is Zuijdwegt’s careful interpretation of Newman’s autobiographical notes in conjunction with his early letters and sermons that creates a quite nuanced and detailed picture, in instructive ways different from Newman’s brief account in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Besides an introduction and a conclusion, Zuijdwegt’s book comprises ten chapters reaching from his initial Evangelicalism via the liberal tendencies that he displayed while influenced by the liberal theology of the Oriel Noetics and a turning to high-church tenets to his critique of the religion of liberalism and the beginning of Tractarianism. Zuijdwegt’s aim is, from an observer’s Book Reviews 1099 standpoint, to establish what exactly Newman’s theological development was and “understand the way it was shaped by his search for appropriate ways of relating to God. The resulting portrait shows that, for Newman, even seemingly arid and arcane theological questions were never detached from questions of individual destiny. His theological questions were religious questions, questions whose answer made a difference” (13). At least this reader found the narrative of the making of Newman’s early theology not only quite fascinating but also, in light of Zuijdwegt’s close reading and acute interpretation of the first versions of sermons, unpublished papers, and letters, quite convincing. I would, however, quibble with the title: the early Newman emerging from Zuijdwegt’s reading is not an Evangelical adrift, but rather an Evangelical in search of an ever more comprehensive and nuanced theology, one that is able to address the existential, intellectual, and theological challenges of the day in a more satisfying way, hence rather an Evangelical on a quest that arguably comes to an end only with Newman’s conversion to Catholicism on November 9, 1845, a development and an event beyond the scope of Zuijdwegt’s book. One of the most fascinating aspects of Zuijdwegt’s account is his careful tracking of the prominent role that Newman’s extensive engagement with his two brothers plays. In the chapter “A Brother’s Apostasy,” he offers an instructive account of Charles Newman’s crisis of faith of the mid-1820s, his turn toward anti-Trinitarian deism and utopian socialist Owenism, as well as the extensive correspondence between John Henry and his brother. Zuijdwegt analyzes John Henry’s early apologetic approach in the dialogue with Charles, an argumentative strategy drawn from John Locke, whom he studied intensely during this period. Newman’s engagement with his Evangelical brother Francis, who was also present at the University of Oxford, is more protracted and forms a subterranean thread throughout the book. Yet, in some ways, the critical back and forth between Francis and John is of even greater consequence for Newman’s theological development than John’s attempt of defending the faith against Charles’s deist critique of revelation in general and his derision of the Old Testament and denial of the Trinity, and with it, of course, Christ’s divinity, in particular. The upshot is that the theological exchanges with both brothers propelled Newman’s theological development forward in significant ways. From his Evangelical period on, the “principle of dogma,” that is, “believing definite things about God because God has revealed them” (22), gleaned in its rudiments from the Evangelical clergyman Thomas Scott (1747–1821), plays an important role initially, recedes somewhat into the background while, under the influence of Richard Whately, he ever so gently 1100 Book Reviews leans toward liberal theology, and with his decisive turning from Whately to high-church tenets, the visible church, and tradition, returns with full force to remain forever after. The other side of the “principle of dogma” is the “principle of mystery,” fully articulated and at play on the threshold of the Tractarian period. As Zuijdwegt astutely observes: “‘Religious light is intellectual darkness.’ This phrase is the key to his understanding of religious mystery. . . . Mystery was constitutive of revelation itself. Since God is ineffable, he can never be fully revealed to cognitively limited creatures” (283–84). Newman holds together these two central principles of his theology, dogma and mystery, by way of the real but partial analogy between substances or attributes, an account of analogy he adopted by way of another important influence during his early years, Anglican Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752). As Zuijdwegt rightly observes, for Newman, “divine ineffability . . . does not mean that we can predicate nothing of the immanent Godhead but that such predication yields only limited knowledge. . . . Everything that is predicated of God . . . is mysterious, in the sense that we know something, but not all, and that our partial knowledge yields incomprehension” (286–87). Under the influence of Bishop Butler, Newman landed with an account of analogy that shows a striking similarity to that of Thomas Aquinas. By way of a conclusion to his meticulous and close reading of the relevant sources, Zuijdwegt states the following: “By the summer of 1835, Newman had come to believe that the two formative theologies of his youth, that of the evangelicals and that of the Noetics, converged toward Socinianism. His earlier critique of liberalism had broadened into a critique of most forms of Protestantism, which also instanced reliance on the intellect, doctrinal relativism, and rejection of tradition and mystery” (336–37). What I appreciate greatly about this work is that Zuijdwegt shows in detail how Newman understood not only the implicit entailments of the positions his interlocutors held but also, if spelled out consistently along their respective principles, how they would end in one or the other heresy: “Ultimately, what liberalism, rationalism, or Socinianism (depending on the angle) jeopardize is the relationship of responsible selves to a personal God. . . . They failed to take God seriously, as a being with his own integrity and freedom to speak and act, transcending nonetheless, all he says or does. If God is the supremely real person, as Newman believed, to deny him this is to virtually deny his existence, and thus to undermine any genuine relationship between God and self. This explains the Apologia’s charge that religion without dogma is ‘a dream and a mockery’” (342). If Zuijdwegt is right—and I think he is—his claim invites what one might call a “Newmanian” reading of his book. The Arians of the Fourth Century may be read as a commentary Book Reviews 1101 on what Newman astutely regarded as the heresies of the “spirit of the age,” a spirit well and alive in the Oxford of his day and articulating itself in what he unmasked as “The Religion of the Day” (arguably one of Newman’s most famous sermons, preached on August 26, 1832). Analogously, Zuijdwegt’s book may be read as a theologically most pertinent commentary on the travails of contemporary theology intra et extra muros Catholicae ecclesiae held captive by the most recent instantiation of the “spirit of the age,” the religion of the day in which it articulates itself, and the heresies it breeds. Newman might identify this most recent “religion of the day” still as “that shallowness of religion, which is the result of a blinded conscience.” In response to any protestations from representatives of our “religion of the day,” Newman would observe that “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; till you see Him to be a consuming fire, and approach Him with reverence and godly fear, as being sinners, you are not even in sight of the strait gate. I do not wish you to be able to point to any particular time when you renounced the world (as it is called), and were converted; this is a deceit. Fear and love must go together; always fear, always love, to your dying day” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, The Religion of the Day [London: Longmans and Green, 1907], 322). Reinhard Hütter The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), ix + 259 pp. The status of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum as the origin point of what has come to be called Catholic Social Teaching (CST), or Catholic social doctrine, has been reinforced on the magisterial level by the commemorations of the encyclical by Pius XI, Paul VI, and John Paul II. It should be noted, then, that the tradition of CST is comparatively recent. Indeed, it is nearly coextensive with the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, this short tradition already calls for a ressourcement. As Russell Hittinger has pointed out, reflections on CST often move swiftly to the particulars of social issues without an adequate grasp even of its basic concepts: subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, and the dignity of the person. Further, historical 1102 Book Reviews developments have had dramatic impact upon the ways in which these principles have been received and developed in the course of this young tradition. In his book Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, Thomas C. Behr provides a major contribution to just such a ressourcement. He does this by presenting an introduction to the thought of the Jesuit scholar whose revival of Thomistic thought in a modern register formed the basis for Leonine social teaching. As Behr explains, Taparelli has remained a somewhat hidden figure in accounts of the genesis and development of CST. He goes unmentioned in the major social encyclicals of Leo and Pius, despite the fact that Leo himself was Taparelli’s student. Because of his rhetorically and philosophically potent critique of Enlightenment thought and its effect on mid-nineteenth-century Europe, available to a popular audience through his frequent contributions to the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, Taparelli’s name carried baggage for a Church that sought to move beyond the posture of reaction to liberal political orders. However, as Behr shows in the introduction, Taparelli hardly rejected the methods and insights of modern political thought tout court. Behr describes Taparelli’s system as a “realist social science.” This terminology speaks to the promise which Taparelli found in the sociological analysis of Montesquieu in particular. Though Taparelli judged that Montesquieu held a questionable preference for a republican political form, he greatly admired Montesquieu’s ability to, as Behr puts it, “bring political theory into relationship with social theory and historical contingency” (8). Though Taparelli was not familiar with the work of Alexis De Tocqueville, Behr also notes the resonances between Taparelli’s work and Tocqueville’s political sociology and defense of “intermediary institutions.” Yet Taparelli makes up for what the sociological approaches of Montesquieu and Tocqueville lack in the way of natural, teleological principles of politics. Behr alerts the reader from the very beginning of his work that, in approaching Taparelli, he will not find a simple recapitulation of Thomas, but rather a creative approach to political thought which aims to set what is worthy in the modern empirical methodologies on firmer foundations through the recovery of Thomistic-Aristotelian principles. In chapter 1, “Taparelli and the Age of Ideology,” Behr situates Taparelli within the political conflicts of the early nineteenth century. Behr sets the scene for Taparelli’s renovated Scholasticism by explaining the opposition between Catholic traditionalism (represented especially by Joseph De Maistre and Donoso Cortés) and Catholic liberalism (represented especially by Henri Dominique Lacordaire and his more radical associate Felicité de Lammenais). While the Catholic liberals aimed to convince both Book Reviews 1103 the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the anticlerical, postrevolutionary governments of Europe that Christianity upheld liberal and republican ideals, the traditionalists argued that Europe’s moral and political derangement was the result of a rejection of the norms of tradition—especially of papal and monarchical authority. Remarkably, Taparelli entered neither of these camps. In the opening chapter, Behr stimulates the contemporary reader’s interest by showing how Taparelli responded to a crisis of ideologies—progressive and reactionary—by rediscovering the Scholastic commitment to philosophical realism and the priority of metaphysics. In chapter 2, “Taparelli and the Revival of Scholastic Natural Law Reasoning,” Behr outlines Taparelli’s appropriation of the Thomistic scheme of the order of the sciences. One of Taparelli’s great insights, which found its way into the magisterial pronouncements of Leo, was that the conflict of social, economic, and political ideologies and movements could be resolved only on the basis of trustworthy speculative truths. As the advocates of socialism, capitalism, monarchism, and liberalism continued to debate which way of ordering social life secured the greatest advantage, Taparelli argued that answers to questions in the practical order depend on fundamental metaphysical and anthropological principles. He objected to the paradox proper to post-Cartesian philosophical inquiry: that all reasoning must begin with doubt and obtain certainty on either empiricist or idealist grounds. For Taparelli, this modern prejudice led to bifurcations of reality into matter and spirit, soul and body, or experience and idea that ultimately led only to greater confusion in the order of political and social life. Yet Taparelli’s most interesting innovation in his appropriation of the Thomistic order of the sciences was what Behr describes as the “dialectic of theory and fact” (61). Taparelli’s largest work was a compilation of his lecture notes in seven volumes, entitled Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (Theoretical treatise of natural right based on fact). Taparelli did not simply replace post-Cartesian epistemological doubt and its resultant dualisms with so-called “foundationalist” principles to be taken on faith. Rather, he argued that, while Thomistic first principles could be regarded as “immediate” and “co-natural” (60), they could also be confirmed in the dynamic order of contingency and particularity. In other words, Scholastic first principles held up in the court of experience and proved their trustworthiness by their ability to account for empirical truth in its complexity. He thus does not forward a purely deductive theoretical apparatus, but rather one in which first principles are reinforced by evidence and application to concrete particulars, or in Taparelli’s terms, where “thesis” is confirmed by “hypothesis.” Chapters 3 and 4, “Social Justice and Subsidiarity” and “Social Justice 1104 Book Reviews and Subsidiarity as Complementary Principles,” provide extensive accounts of signature ideas in Taparelli’s Saggio which found their way into CST at its origins. Particular difficulties are encountered in framing the question of the nature of “social justice.” While the term is of Taparellian coinage, Behr notes that its precise sense is not maintained even in Pius’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno, penned by one of Taparelli’s great admirers. The deployment of the term has only expanded in the years following the Second World War (and the Second Vatican Council), but has also come under harsh criticism by conservative and libertarian thinkers. As Behr notes elsewhere, the economist Friedrich Hayek’s description of “social justice” as a “hollow incantation” calls for a retrieval of its original meaning in Taparelli’s work. The overwhelming tendency is to understand “social justice” as distributive justice. By this understanding, everything which a central political authority distributes to members of a political community is owed by “social justice.” Yet, for Taparelli, “social justice” is in fact more architectonic than this. It does not point toward a gigantic field of distribution to a mass of individuals, but rather to the very virtue by which any member of a society relates to others “simply on account of their participation in that society” (86). For Taparelli, then, “social justice” is not akin to “distributive” justice, but rather to “legal” or “general” justice. Taparelli shows us that it is equally hollow to reduce social justice to a virtue exercised toward the gigantic other ordinarily denoted by the term “society.” Rather, Taparelli views social life as composed of numerous “societies,” each with distinct ends, authorities, and relationships to one another. As Behr notes at numerous points in his work, Taparelli’s social science resonates with Tocqueville’s call for the preservation of intermediary societies or Edmund Burke’s “little platoons.” But Taparelli improves upon these thinkers by articulating both the natural necessity of the existence of distinct societies and the distinct kinds of societies which are found within the larger political community. Taparelli’s Scholastic influence helps him to distinguish between voluntary societies, natural societies, and dutiful societies. Burke and Tocqueville’s empiricism, on the other hand, runs the risk of equivocating between these forms of society or of defining all societies that are smaller than the national political communities as “intermediate”—thus relegating them to the role of power-checking devices vis-à-vis the state. Behr provides us with an archaeology of the term “subsidiarity,” which is a Latinization of Taparelli’s dritto ipotattico. While the Latin subsidium refers to auxiliary troops, the Greek hypotaxis refers to the grammatical relationship between words in a sentence. Taparelli does indeed use the term sussidio sociale to indicate the role distinct societies play in providing the necessary Book Reviews 1105 “help” in obtaining human goods. Dritto ipotattico, or hypotactical right, according to Behr, “conveys the idea of the cooperative ordering of parts in society, and the duties and rights pertaining to the interdependent, necessarily coordinated integrity of social relations” (103). Hypotactical right is thus also an architectonic principle of social relations; it is that principle which orders the complex arenas of sussidio sociale or “social help” which the variety of associations provide. Taparelli is also clear that with each “society” or “association” comes a distinct common good, and therefore a distinct authority to order the association’s members toward that common good. He devises a distinction between deutarchies, protarchies, and ethnarchies. Deutarchies are those many associations within a political community which “can unite themselves to obtain an end of common good,” while protarchies guide the deutarchies with their distinct ends toward a common end. Though Behr does not offer expansive remarks on the concept of “ethnarchy,” it is clear that Taparelli envisioned the possibility of what he called a “wise cosmopolitanism” (6). The final chapter of the book, “Taparelli’s Realist Social Science,” recapitulates the arguments of the book in order. Though the concluding chapter offers little new information, Behr reminds the reader how Taparelli charted a course which took debate on social thought in Catholicism beyond the intractable conflicts of liberals and reactionaries. Appended to the book are several translated passages of Taparelli’s Saggio, serving as a beginning for the reader’s engagement with Taparelli’s own texts. Finally, Behr is careful to note once again that Taparelli’s thought cannot be reduced to a straightforward exposition of Thomas’s own political thought. For example, Taparelli offers a distinct view of the right to private property which influenced Leo’s views in Rerum Novarum. As Behr affirms, the book is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of Taparelli’s work and its impact on CST, but rather an introduction to a critical but overlooked figure. Behr develops a strong case that the recovery and reinvigoration of the social philosophy of Taparelli may bear fruit for twenty-first-century scholars. Not only does the reading of Taparelli provide key insights into the meaning of the principles enunciated by Leo and Pius, but his philosophical moderation in the face of competing ideologies may prove its value once again in our age. Taparelli found a coherent way of uniting the sociological and philosophical, avoiding the “fact–value” distinction endemic to sociological research, as well as philosophy’s tendency to abstract from political reality. In addition, he offers us the means for a more careful consideration of the distinction between different societies and clarifies their mutual relations. These core elements of Taparelli’s thought can lend assistance to an 1106 Book Reviews age in which such distinctions are overshadowed by the claims of the “global community,” the global market, and an overly generalized use of the term “civil society.” A recovery of Taparelli’s work could provide an occasion for Thomistic philosophers and theologians to engage a figure who anticipated Leo’s Thomistic revival, albeit with a somewhat idiosyncratic appropriation of the ideas of St. Thomas. Further, Taparelli’s innovative concepts of dritto ipotattico and giustizia sociale offer starting points for a robust consideration of the complex character of the political common good and the variety of relationships which it embraces. Behr’s book offers promising avenues for contemporary reflections upon and applications of the central concepts in CST and opens the way to a more detailed study of Taparelli’s thought and its significance. Patrick Auer Jones Catholic University of America Washington, DC Vessel of Honor: The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of Vatican II. By Brian A. Graebe (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 351 pp. Though Mary’s undiminished virginity in giving birth (virginitas in partu) was long understood to be an event as miraculous and a teaching as authoritative as her virginity in conceiving (virginitas ante partum), virginitas in partu underwent a kind of existential reinterpretation in the middle of the twentieth century. Authors such as Albert Mitterer and Karl Rahner suggested that, physically speaking, Jesus’s birth might have happened like any other, rupturing the hymen, distending the birth canal, and causing Mary pain, albeit not in the spiritually disintegrating way common to postlapsarian humanity. These arguments effectively “unsettled” the traditional understanding of virginitas in partu, leading theologians of the highest stature to distinguish between the doctrine itself and the anatomical aspects attached to it over time. Fr. Brian Graebe has written a fine book arguing that the bodily dimensions of the virgin birth, including the physical “seal” of virginity, belong to the substance of the doctrine. This more inclusive understanding not only does better justice to the data of tradition, he argues, but illuminates the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. The book impresses by its theologically reflective method, its clarity of exposition, Book Reviews 1107 and its depth of research—especially into the archival and antepreparatory sources of Vatican II. Vessel of Honor responds in effect to Rahner’s argument that physical intactness is peripheral to the dogmatic core of Mary’s virginity in partu. To show otherwise, Rahner contended, one would need to show that such a doctrine can be found directly in the apostolic teaching, or that it, “being implicitly contained therein, has grown out of the apostolic doctrine, by a legitimate historical, logical, and theological process, as its authentic development” (68–69). If the bodily aspects of this doctrine really belonged to the deposit of faith, in other words, one would need to show how they are implied in the traditio divino-apostolica, as well as how they cohere organically with the rest of the deposit. The two major parts of Vessel of Honor respond in turn to each aspect of Rahner’s challenge. The first three chapters argue that Mary’s bodily integrity in parturition belongs at least implicitly to the traditio divino-apostolica. Turning first to the postapostolic tradition, Fr. Graebe shows that—apart from the early exceptions of Origen and Tertullian—patristic sources either affirm or strongly imply a miraculous delivery. This constant witness culminates in the Lateran Council (649 AD), which, while not itself an ecumenical council, was received into the magisterium of Pope Martin and affirmed by the Third Council of Constantinople (680 AD). Its teaching that Mary “gave birth without corruption” (incorruptibiliter. . . genuisse) would be defended by Paschasius, Ratramnus, Thomas Aquinas, and others. This consensus remained undisturbed until the eve of Vatican II. Even at Vatican II, Fr. Graebe argues in the next chapter, the Council Fathers intended to reaffirm the more inclusive idea of virginitas in partu against those who would marginalize its bodily dimensions. Here he really breaks new ground, delving deep into the antepreparatory, preparatory, and conciliar drafting history. He shows convincingly that many of the chief drafters of the final formula—“Our Lord, who did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it . . .” (Lumen Gentium §57)—saw it as excluding Rahner’s and Mitterer’s minimalizing interpretations. Drawing on material from the Vatican Apostolic Archives, Fr. Graebe shows that some of the very theologians who voted to omit the pointed phrase “in the birth itself ” (in ipsomet partu) did so for tonal rather than substantive reasons. The third chapter argues that Mary’s physical integrity in birth is to be believed with divine and Catholic faith, despite the ongoing confusion introduced by Rahner and others. Admittedly, Vatican II did not define but merely reaffirmed the traditional understanding of virginitas in partu. But there are other reasons for including it in the traditio divino-apostolica. 1108 Book Reviews Drawing heavily on Belgian Jesuit exegete Ignace de la Potterie, Fr. Graebe suggests that Scripture contains traces of the belief that Mary was spared the “bloods of childbirth” (127; see John 1:35). The doctrine meets all the criteria, moreover, for infallibility according to the universal ordinary magisterium. Enjoying at least some biblical foundation, and being seldom doubted by the faithful, Mary’s miraculous and painless parturition belongs to the revealed deposit. The last three chapters show the significance of virginitas in partu for Catholic ecclesiology, thus meeting the second aspect of Rahner’s challenge: coherence within the analogy of faith. Each chapter has a different focal Marian image or series of images. And each argues that the Mary’s bodily and spiritual virginity makes her a fitting image of the Church’s faith, especially as developed by Vatican II. Foregrounding Mary as the Ark of the Covenant, chapter 4 suggests that Mary’s twofold virginity typifies two aspects of faith that Dei Verbum brings into better balance: fides quae and fides qua. The Church preserves an objective “body” of teaching while developing it contemplatively. Privileging the scene of Mary with disciples at Pentecost, chapter 5 argues that Mary’s virginitas cordis et carnis serves as an icon of the Catholic understanding of Tradition. The Fathers have often seen in Mary’s virginity a bodily image of the Church’s doctrinal purity. Appreciating the bodily dimensions of Mary’s virginity helps us both to appreciate the visible and institutional transmission of doctrine through apostolic succession and to revalorize teaching among the bishops three munera. Focusing on the “woman” of Revelations 12, chapter 6 notes how Mary’s virginity, properly understood, mirrors the infallibility and indefectibility of the Church. The coinherence of Mary’s bodily and spiritual virginity is analogous to the conspiratio of bishops and faithful in a single sensus fidei. The traditional connection between Mary’s preservation from parturitional corruption and her preservation from the decay of death recalls the indefectibility of this faith and points to its eschatological reward. If Mary is the archetype of the Church, in sum, then it is the “embodied” understanding of virginitas in partu that seems to correspond best to the ecclesiological emphases of Vatican II. Vessel of Honor does many things well that are too seldom done in contemporary theology. Not content simply to exposit a certain thinker on a given topic, the book engages in genuine dogmatic theology. It makes a strong argument that a miraculous and painless parturition belongs to the doctrinal core of Mary’s virginitas in partu, and that the whole doctrine, inclusive of its anatomical aspects, ranks among those of the first paragraph of Ad tuendam fidem (126–27). In the second half of the book, Fr. Graebe shows Book Reviews 1109 an impressive scholarly control of a number of questions at the intersection of ecclesiology and revelation: the sensus fidei, the act of faith, apostolic succession. His treatment of exegetical literature on Mary is careful to avoid claims exceeding the strength of the evidence. All this is finely done. The book does, however, leave me with a few questions in the fraught field of doctrinal hermeneutics. Its careful analysis of the drafting history of Lumen Gentium §57 shows that Gérard Philips, Sebastian Tromp, Carolo Balić and others on the drafting commission intended by their formula to exclude any existential reduction of virginitas in partu. The accompanying footnote even cites Ambrose’s De institutione virginis 52, the clearest patristic witness to Mary’s bodily integrity in giving birth. But other members of the commission, such as Rahner’s Jesuit confrère Otto Semmelroth, saw the same formula as inclusive of Rahner’s position. As Fr. Graebe’s historical research shows, moreover, the final formula took into account the animadversions of the German bishops, who considered any express affirmation of the anatomical aspects of Mary’s virginitas in partu to be theologically premature, ecumenically insensitive, and demeaning to women. With drafters and bishops divided among themselves, can one really consider the traditional doctrine to have been reaffirmed in “meaning and intention, if not in the actual wording” (100)? With so many intentions bearing upon the same words, does one not simply have to judge by the “way the words run”? The success of the book’s argument depends on the answers to such thorny questions. Likewise raising interpretive questions is the book’s conclusion that Mary’s physical integrity in parturition belongs to the truths of the first paragraph of Ad tuendam fidem. Even if we grant that Vatican II reaffirmed this teaching as already proposed by the ordinary and universal magisterium, does this qualify it as doctrine de fide credenda? Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s own commentary on Ad tuendam fidem suggests that the teachings of the ordinary and universal magisterium may continue to belong to the second paragraph, even after they have been reaffirmed by an explicit magisterial act. He gives the example of the reservation of priestly ordination to men, which John Paul II declared to be already infallibly taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. Could not virginitas in partu, affirmed but not defined by Vatican II, have analogous standing? It would be comforting to me, at least, not to have to consider theologians such as Jean Galot, Walter Kasper, and Gerhard Müller material heretics. The fact that Vessel of Honor brings the reader back to such foundational questions about the nature and interpretation of dogma means that it is a very fine book. It is reverent of the mysteries that it treats. It unfolds in the 1110 Book Reviews play of Scripture, Tradition, magisterium, and reason, adhering to a genuinely theological method. It has convinced me that bodily integrity belongs inseparably to the doctrine of virginitas in partu, whatever its doctrinal “note.” I know of no better contemporary study on the significance of Mary’s virginity. Fr. Graebe is to be congratulated. Aaron Pidel, S.J. Pontifical Gregorian University Rome, Italy Configured to Christ: On Spiritual Direction and Clergy Formation by James Keating (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2021), xxix + 312 pp. Deacon James Keating has served the Church by forming her clergy for thirty years. While he has been a seminary professor and a director of deacon formation at the diocesan level, his prolific scholarship as well as his time as director of theological formation for the Institute for Priestly Formation in Creighton, NE, made him a national figure. Configured to Christ is a collection of Keating’s most important essays. While this book is a retrospective, it couldn’t be more timely. In 2016 (on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8), the Congregation for Catholic Education issued The Gift of the Priestly Vocation—Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, a text which provides guidelines for the whole Church concerning priestly formation. In the fall of 2021, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops completed their revision of the sixth edition of the Program of Priestly Formation (PPF), which translates the principles of the Ratio for the American context. With these two documents in place, it now falls upon seminaries to examine their programs in light of the vision provided by the magisterium. The next five to ten years promise to be a time of reform and renewal in seminary formation. Institutions will be looking for fresh and orienting ideas. Keating’s book can be recommended as among the best resources for the venture that awaits. One reason Keating’s book is so valuable is its focus on the “perichoresis” of the various aspects of formation (107). This emphasis is consonant with the terminological change found in the new PPF from the language of formational “pillars” to the language of formational “dimensions” (see the USCCB’s 5th edition of the PPF, §28). The thinking behind this change seems to have been that it was too easy to imagine “pillars” as separate from Book Reviews 1111 one another. The human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral dimensions of formation are in fact interwoven, interdependent, and interpenetrating. While they can be distinguished, they cannot be divided. Growth in one fosters growth in the other. Keating has long understood this, as his various essays show. The book is divided into three parts and eighteen chapters. Part 1 is entitled “The Interior Life of the Cleric.” Here, readers are introduced to the integral relationship between the spiritual and intellectual formational dimensions. For example, Keating provides, in chapter 1, a sustained theoretical reflection on the relationship between academic theology and spirituality, and, in chapter 2, he examines John Henry Newman’s writings as a concretized test case for the right relationship of prayer, study, and thought. Authors such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Jean Leclercq have investigated this relationship in classic works, but Keating’s presentation is notable for its accessibility, coherence, and concision. The remaining chapters of part 1 address the topics of silence and spiritual direction. Emerging from these analyses are the insights that interiority expands through discovery of Christ within. We participate in Christ as we behold, wonder, think, theologize, and pray. Keating’s plea that we introduce ministerial candidates to the romance of silence is most welcome. The second part of the book is entitled “The Formation of the Cleric.” It brings together nine essays which explicitly explore the art of formation. The key to this section, and maybe to the whole book, is chapter 7, “Christ is the Sure Foundation: Priestly Human Formation Completed in and by Spiritual Formation.” This chapter makes the case not only for the perichoresis of formational dimensions but also for a much stronger emphasis on spiritual formation than is often the case. Of special note is Keating’s observation that spiritual formation can truly support human formation. This is an important insight. In his 1992 apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (on the formation of priests), John Paul II had articulated that human formation was “the basis of all priestly formation” (§43).Unfortunately, this line could be (and has been) interpreted problematically to mean human formation must be achieved before real progress in the other dimensions could take place. Or, it could falsely imply that, while human formation supports the other dimensions, they do not necessarily contribute to human formation. As noted, Keating counters those false steps by presenting the formational dimensions as interweaving so tightly in a perichoresis that genuine progress in one area ought to help the others advance as well. With his eye on the relationship between the spiritual and human dimensions specifically, Keating contends that progress in prayer, the theological virtues, and discernment, provides 1112 Book Reviews critical support to progress in affective maturity. For certain, Keating recognizes that some developmental challenges and psychological wounds require more than just prayer to overcome. On the other hand, he does not minimize the liberation and healing that can come from greater intimacy with Christ: “Intimacy [with Christ] sustains and orders a man’s personality and virtue directing him toward healing where necessary” (107). Along similar lines, Keating contributes, in adjacent chapters, the concept of cultural wounds. These are challenges that come from one’s cultural formation as a twenty-first-century American, a culture plagued by addictions, fantasy, and cynicism among other ills. Keating contends that the formator’s work is “to draw the priest out of the American who is before him” (139). Spiritual formation liberates the candidate from cultural wounds by drawing the man closer to Christ in contemplation, a process which Keating calls a “suffering,” for it plays out like detoxification, but its end is the regeneration of imagination and the re- and right-ordering of one’s desires (102). Part 2 also includes some bold thinking about the concrete renewal of seminary formation. Taking his cue from the USCCB statement that spiritual formation is the “core” of priestly formation (PPF 5th ed., §115), and Benedict XVI’s contention that the priest must be, above all, a spiritual leader (Meeting with the Clergy, Warsaw Cathedral, May 25, 2006), Keating provides creative proposals for how seminaries might be oriented and structured to create spiritual leaders. Keating argues for introducing men to classic practices such as exterior silence, lectio divina, and contemplation while cultivating their sense of beauty. More radically, he advocates a recentering of formation away from such a heavy onus on academics and onto activities which integrate the human, spiritual, and pastoral dimensions of formation. He argues for a slower pace to seminary life with less academic work and more time for other pursuits, especially prayerful ones. In order to make this slower pace possible, he boldly entertains the ideas of extending the seminary formation year from nine to twelve months and eliminating the M.Div. degree in favor of an M.A., which would have fewer academic hour requirements. To justify such a radical reimagining, Keating rightly reminds his readers that the goal of seminary formation is not the graduation of a scholar, but the ordination of a spiritual leader. Having shown the relationship of spiritual formation to intellectual and human formation in parts 1 and 2, Keating devotes part 3, entitled “The Pastoral Mission of the Cleric,” to essays which connect spiritual and pastoral praxis. He again emphasizes that priests (and deacons) must be spiritual leaders. He discusses the homily as a prime occasion for exercising such leadership. In an original contribution, he advocates for a “contemplative Book Reviews 1113 homiletics” (237) that is “ordered to encounter” (247). Keating observes that too many homilies focus on getting to the moral of the story and giving people something to do, but only for after they leave Mass. What is too often lost is a leading of people into a deeper encounter with the Lord in the moment. Effectively, the Eucharist (as presence, prayer, and thanksgiving) gets bypassed in favor of moralism. Keating’s remedy is a preaching style that flows from the preacher’s own prayer life. The preacher has encountered the Lord and he uses the homiletic moment to bring people into that encounter. His homily is almost like a praying out loud. Keating follows his essays on homiletics with ones that encourage ministers to better understand the lay vocation so as to better foster holiness within it, to embrace the ministerial role as teacher of prayer for the lay faithful, and to lead liturgy in ways that foster spiritual healing. In the background of this section remains the importance Keating attaches to the clergy’s being true spiritual leaders. Keating’s book is excellent. It is wise, coming as it does from a man who has been involved in formation work for decades. It is also refreshingly original. While some of his bold proposals may never materialize on a grand scale, their mere suggestion helps readers appreciate the importance and urgency of spiritual formation to clergy formation. The book’s title makes it likely to attract spiritual directors, but it would be highly useful for both internal and external seminary formators. The book would have tremendous value as well for lay faculty of seminaries who seek to better understand how their role in intellectual formation connects to the whole. Finally, It would also be a compelling read for seminarians and deacon candidates who would like to better understand what formation’s goal is, all that goes into it, and how they can cooperate with the process. Christian Raab, O.S.B. Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology St. Meinrad, IN