Dear friends of Istituto Acton,
April was quite a month in the world of religion and politics and especially the Catholic Church’s relationship to the left wing of the ideological spectrum.
I began it with the great honor of being in Krakow for the 11th anniversary of Pope St. John Paul II’s death, when I managed to visit his childhood home in Wadowice as well as the shrine of Divine Mercy. Even though Poland is secularizing very quickly (remarkably, it has one of the lowest birthrates, 1.3 per woman, in the world), the spirit of Karol Wojtyła is still evident; Church leaders are hoping it will bear some fruit during the World Youth Day taking place at the end of July.
Back in Rome, I was fortunate to receive an invitation to attend the Shakespeare’s Globe production of Hamlet in a splendidly frescoed room at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, just down the street from the Acton office. The portrayal of Hamlet as a tragic hero torn between his pagan spiritedness/ambition and his Christian beliefs was very well done, if I may offer my amateur opinion, and inspired me to watch Paul Cantor’s lectures on the politics of Hamlet with the play fresh in mind.
On the wall behind the stage was the inscription “Opus Iustitiae Pax,” which got me thinking not only of the central tension of the play but also the larger relationship between Christianity and politics that was on display at a couple of Vatican conferences shortly thereafter. The first was held at my former place of employment, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, on the supposed need to reject the Church’s just war theory. The second featured the spectacle of Bernie Sanders addressing the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on John Paul II’s encyclical Centesiums Annus, arguably one of the most pro-market documents the Church has ever produced. (I also wrote about it here.)
It may take another Shakespeare to draw out all the ironies, but I will highlight just a few. Pope John Paul II was an intellectual who helped bring down communism by revealing the “anthropological error” behind atheistic materialism; his message is now ignored in his native land and co-opted by socialists at Vatican conferences. Catholic just-war teaching, which was first formulated to allow Christians to defend their earthly cities against barbaric hordes and moralize warfare, is considered outdated just as Islamic terrorists attack once-Christian Europe, which has largely given up on defending its nations in favor of vague humanitarian sentiments.
Call it the revenge play of the Catholic left, which has for decades been on the wrong side of Church teaching when it comes to the “non-negotiable” issues and on the wrong side of many prudential ones as well. With Pope Francis making statements such as “Who am I to judge?”, “values are values”, and “this economy kills”, the left has seized the opportunity to enlist him as an ally, conveniently downplaying the pope’s defense of traditional Catholic belief and morals as if he were Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton insincerely opposing gay “marriage” before it became just popular enough to support. Nothing else can explain this new-found left-wing respect for the papacy, although no one is really fooled by it. This is simply how progressives achieve their goals.
Perhaps the revenge is justified by the adage “what comes around goes around”? It is commonplace to say the Church is above politics or apolitical, or sometimes conservative, sometimes liberal. Christianity has always had a peculiar relationship with politics, from the moment Christ told Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world”, and any ideology is going to be considered only partially true in the Church’s more comprehensive understanding of human nature. Mixing religion and politics is probably as inevitable as it is dangerous to both in the long-run, unless some kind of truce can be arranged.
Truces there have been, however. While preparing an Acton University lecture on Edmund Burke’s defense of party government, I’ve been thinking about what partisanship is good for, rather than just bemoaning our malignant times. If I understand Burke correctly, his defense of parties is primarily against the “double Cabinet” or administrative state that would place government in the hands of “impartial” experts, i.e. ministers appointed by the Court. It would be better in Burke’s view to have partisan differences aired openly and let the people decide among them; honest partisanship is politically superior to dishonest consensus or “objectivity” (e.g. the politics of climate change).
I am not sure this is Burke’s final word on the matter, especially regarding religiously sectarian parties, but he still may have something to teach the Church about modern politics and economics. Philosopher kings like Jeffrey Sachs complain about self-interest and the lack of concern for the common good as he conceives it. Modern democracy, on the other hand, is based on the notion that self-interest is more reliable than altruism, as necessary as the latter is for a decent society. Too much insistence on the common good makes people hide their legitimate self-interest and leads to more unstable if not tyrannical politics.
Such reliance on self-interest is also at the core of economics, which is why commerce plays such a big role in liberal democracy; limiting government to the protection of rights rather than the promotion of virtue reduces the opportunities for abuse of power and channels self-interest in socially beneficial directions. The question of self-interest and the common good is clearly one that the Church needs to address without simply equating the former to greed. The self-interest of academics like Sachs and politicians like Sanders (whom Sachs just happens to advise) who seek the authority to impose their vision of the common good should not be ignored either.
To end where I began, Pope St. John Paul II understood the complicated interplay between religion and politics in modern society. He looked at economics as one very important but not the only aspect of a healthy polity and allowed culture and ethics to assume their proper roles (cf. Centesimus Annus, n. 39). Above all, he tried to understand democratic capitalism as a manifestation of the human spirit, rather than an abstract system to be defended or opposed for partisan reasons. It appears some of those he once appointed to their Vatican positions have either very short or very long memories.
Kishore Jayabalan
Director
