Catholicism and Democracy

[Applause] okay thank you very much it's a pleasure to be here and to have this wonderful discussion of an important book so we have our three panelists today our Remmy Brock who is professor emeritus of Arabic and religious philosophy at the Sorbonne and Romano coordinate Shara philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 2012 he was awarded the rotzinger Prize for theology which is impressive for a philosopher so very good and he is the author of numerous books many many books on classical and medieval culture religion literature and law including etc culture a theory of Western civilization and the law of God the philosophical history of an idea so we're very grateful to have professor Bragg with us today we also have two other eminent younger scholars but I mean at none nonetheless so we have Daniel Mahoney who is professor and augustine inna Bollinger chair of political science at Assumption College in Massachusetts he holds a PhD in political science from the Catholic University of America and currently serves as editor of perspectives on political science and book review editor for society a renowned expert on French political philosophy his books also include the critically acclaimed Alexander Solzhenitsyn the ascent from ideology he's also the editor of the social need sin reader coat which is a wonderful resource that I use in my classes and most recently he's author of the idol of our age how religious how the religion of humanity subverts christianity which was just published last year and then we also have professor gladden papen assistant professor of politics at the University of Dallas in 2017 he co-founded American affairs of which he is the deputy editor he is a senior advisor and permanent research fellow of my University of the University of Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for ethics and culture and is also a director of chavita today his writings on contemporary politics as well as in the history of ecclesiastical politics appear in a variety of publications he received both his a b and history and his PhD in government from harvard university so we're grateful to have our three panelists with us each of them will speak for about fifteen or twenty minutes if they go much over that i will pass them a note and then we'll have time for discussion among the panelists and question-and-answer and discussion with the audience so when will aim to finish around 5:30 so that's our plan for today the order of our presenters will be first professor Mahoney who will give us an overview of this wonderful book Catholicism and democracy very provocative book and then we'll move on to professor Papen and then professor brog in their commentary and then open for discussion and questions it's not line thank you I should say I did not know a meal piroso seen all that well but I knew his work very well he was one of the first students and best students of our mutual friend and teacher Pierre Menaul and the last conversation I had with a meal prep all pro so seen was just shortly before his unfortunate death and he had asked me to collaborate on a fair IFFT in honor of pierre menard which eventually appeared but unfortunately without the involvement of a meal he was extremely promising catholic political thinker somebody who operated at the intersections of politics theology philosophy and history and I think that's that that formation and that engagement inform both his intellectual biography of rather critical intellectual biography of alasdair macintyre but also Catholicism and democracy this essay in the history of political thought let me say that this book succeeds brilliantly in showing the centrality of France and French theological philosophical and political thought for the self understanding of the Catholic Church under conditions of modernity and especially how the church ought to relate to this democratic revolution that alexis de tocqueville a figure who's discussed in the book so famously mentions in the author's introduction to democracy in America in 1835 I think one of the striking features of the book is Amir Prosis scene is a Catholic political thinker who primarily approaches the subject from the point of view of political philosophy and not political theology let me explain for a moment in a very lucid and penetrating discussion of Joseph de Maistre the author of considerations and France and on the Gallican church and de Pape is the first of the ultra montanus processing points out that master always resorted to theological explanations for politics especially for the great and devastating French Revolution which was about the fundamental transformation of France and Europe and overturning of the ancien régime and a terrible threat with the new constitution on the civil clergy to the independence and liberty and integrity of the Catholic Church and as piroso seen points out Mester came up with four explanations for the french revolution atheism Protestantism which he called the great solvent Satan and divine chastisement you will notice and by the way we don't want to mock maestra there's something to all those explanations but none of them are political explanations we can contrast let's say considerations on France with Alexis de Tocqueville regime and a la revolucion which gives a very different account of the unfolding of the crisis culminating in the Revolution of 1789 in the eventual rise of Bonaparte and Bonaparte ISM and on the whole Emile piroso scene recommends and practices something like Catholic political philosophy where political philosophy has something of an autonomy of its own on page 55 of the book he points out the first and still most complete and satisfying account of political things is that given by Aristotle and his politics Aristotle does not resort to theological exponet of political things his work I think is best understood as a kind of phenomenology of politics and yet the church largely endorsed and adopted an Aristotelian approach to moral and political things during the high middle ages especially but Thomas Aquinas and Barroso seen points out that when pope leo xiii endorsed the recovery of the perennial philosophy of saint thomas aquinas in a famous encyclical in 1879 he was acknowledging the central place of philosophy and religion in catholic self-understanding now that's different than Aristotle's phenomenology of political life of the politics but both have this common ground that reason is central to any approach any understanding of political and ethical things and so I think that's I think that's very very important to start off with I think the brilliance of this book relates in large part to its reintroduction of categories that are almost completely unknown or forgotten outside of very specialized circles in the anglo-saxon world as the French say ladies angle sexes hold and that is Gallican ism and I think it's very easy to think of Gallican ism as a neo Machiavelli an effort by state authorities to control and manipulate the church but it was no such thing the kings of France were the most Christian kings of France and while French Catholics for many centuries felt an obligation to obey temporal authority on its own terms they would not have hesitated not even busway would have hesitated to denounce a French king who was flirting with heresy or challenged the fundamental categories of Christian faith and Christian self understanding so Gallican ISM was a way of keeping religion and politics together while acknowledging and recognizing a kind of autonomy to the temporal order and of course Gallican ism became much more complicated with the French Revolution the civil constitution of the clergy was not Gallican ism because the people of France were deciding who the bishops were and in principle the people the revolutionary people the sovereign people of France would decide what Catholic teaching was you know it's like the Vatican's recent agreement with China you know the Archbishop of a Jing is a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party well that's not Gallic anism Gallican ism was a system where the temple authorities fully shared the Catholic faith as as approach the scene mentions even Risha loo who we sometimes think of as a neo Machiavellian was quite serious in his own way about the integrity of the Catholic faith but with the revolution Gallican ISM in its purest form became an impossibility and over time the collapse of Gallican ISM the revolutionary challenge unleashed by 89 and subsequent events made ultra montón ISM and it had an attractive alternative for Catholics I've already mentioned Mestral but there were a whole series of French and English there was one English ultra Montaigne named Ward who said I would like to have a papal bull each morning with The Times of London you know knowing what's going on in England and getting my instructions from Rome and and that kind of ultra montón is that illiberal anti-modern ultra montón ism was very influential in France in the first part of the 1850s the 8th of the 19th century but piroso scene argues I think quite cogently that the ultra montón ism going over the hill the mountains to rome giving unprecedented authority to rome as the final arbiter of sacred and temporal matters the ultimate anism that triumphs for the first Vatican Council was a rather liberal ultra montón ISM it was an ultra montón ism that was interested in saving the liberties of the church and not not so much in dictating the temporal arrangements of the various sovereign states of Europe so in a way the ultra montón ism of Mester had an bone old and others had much less influence on the subsequent unfolding of catholic political thought and of people thought in action than we sometimes recognize another part of puros Essenes book is an argument that without the first Vatican Council the kind of vindication of the independence and prudence of the laity and the second of Vatican Council wouldn't have been possible that the church in a way had to get itself in order and it had to proclaim its primacy in things of the Spirit and I think one of the richest aspects of Catholicism and democracy is the way this really original thesis I think that Vatican 2 and Vatican Vatican one of Vatican 2 are much greater continuity certainly the progressive is reading of Vatican 2 as a new beginning a break and outpouring of the spirit a break with that which comes before the much-vaunted spirit of vatican ii is not a plausible account of the church's self understanding now a couple more remarks I would say perhaps the most interesting treatments in this book are of those figures that piroso seen calls neo gallagher people I'll name four alexis de tocqueville i'm Americanizing pronunciations shall Peggy I didn't so Americanize that and the contemporary French political philosopher appear man all and in piroso scenes understanding all three figures wanted to respect the temporal order you might say that Peggy always warned Catholics against despising make real attempt around despising the temple ground that there's a sacredness inherent in civic life and in human life that the believer has to respect Tocqueville was a powerful advocate for the indirect role that the Christian religion could play in elevating in informing modern democracy but had to be indirect it's a new kind of Gallican ISM the church will not no longer have this esteemed an exalted place that it had in the unseen and subordinated paradoxically place that it had in the Austrian regime but it's it plays an absolute role in giving content to democratic life and belief as fear but not likes to say the church has a certain dialectical advantage over democracy because it has something to say about what we should do with our freedom a democracy it's always tempted by a kind of niall ism you know ever greater expansion of rights but the content of those rights the kind of the moral contents of life are weakened and so we end up with a Tocqueville already saw this in the 1830s the dependence of democratic self-affirmation on the content of spiritual and moral contents of faith that the Christian patrimony of Europe could provide Peggy Peggy famously said in 1881 that in nutritionist our youth 1910 that the D politicization and de-christianization of Europe are part of the same process Peggy in a very idiosyncratic way said the modern world began in 1881 and he meant the Third Republic and its new education which was Compton and continent scientistic humanitarian and anti-christian but the Third Republic initially did not openly attack the church that would all change with the coming to power of a meal calm after the Dreyfus Affair the famous and much vaunted separation of church and state it's not what we mean by the separation church and state the closing of 2000 Catholic schools Charles DeGaulle for example went to school for 12 years in Belgium when his father's Jesuit school went from Paris to Brussels religious orders were closed etc etc it was the only World War one the loonie Oh sacré Peggy famously died at the Battle of the Marne that brought the two France's together temporarily but Peggy is another representative of the neo galaxy-eyes 'm that fur also seen speaks about with such respect I want to just read a passage from two passages from late in the book one of them has to do with three French figures who in the 20th century rejected both reactionary Catholicism or pseudo Catholicism like Lexy offal says of Shambhala where I was a Compton he didn't believe in God he didn't believe in the truth of the Catholic religion but he thought Catholicism was useful for civic order against the anarchy the anarchists Delirium introduced by modernism the three figures that Barroso seemed refers to are three great French thinkers Catholic thinkers only do luboc particularly his drama of atheistic humanism pair guest alphas are the great friend of Ramona Hall who warned against France losing its soul by collaboration with fishy and Nazism but spent the rest of his life from 45 on warning against Christian Marxism and the theology of liberation he was also a great student of Hegel Alexander kosha of the Hegelian Marxist said dust on facade would have been the greatest Marxist in Europe if he didn't think Marxism was bunk and if he didn't believe in God but he was a very very great man hey Jacques Maritain who was a little more to the left and progressive in his Pollock's politics but it was also an honor a land of honorable and abiding critic of Nazism and communism and an advocate and inspiration for what became the Christian Democratic movements in Europe and South America ferocious scene shows that these were really positive developments that even more important portent in the church's partial accommodation of democracy was its anti totalitarianism that the church discovered the necessity the call of political moderation as Perot so seen says neither more nor Marx good advice by the way for a French Catholic so and he quotes the Christmas address of Pius the 12th from 1944 where Pius the 12th speaks about the bitter experience of modern times where Catholics have learned the limits of autocracy and dictatorial government one of the founding speeches of Christian democracy yes Pius the 12th but piroso scene also speaks about how while the church made an accommodation with liberalism and democracy it has become the leading force in the contemporary world for criticizing that aspect of liberalism that risks becoming dictatorial or totalitarian in the name of an unlimited ethic of individual autonomy so as he puts it the church particularly under the pontificates of jump all the second and Pope Benedict saw that the crude totalitarianism of the Communists was being replaced by a different creature-- Talat arianism decked out in the false colors of political liberalism a volunteerism anni allistic sexual ethic support for as my friend Mary Ann Glendon once said this is really coming true in America abortion through the 18th month you know Sofala so the church I think especially under those last two pontificates did not see itself as an enemy of liberalism or democracy properly understood but as a critic of a certain kind of totalitarian logic and not only subvert it Christianity but also corrupted liberalism and democracy itself just a final word about Barroso Singh's treatment of his teacher pierre menard he calls manaan to kind of Gallican because of his desire to bring together the pride of the citizen with the humility of the Christian and I think Tocqueville and Peggy in their own ways also represented that effort to say a Christian must and can be a proud citizen a defender of Liberty a critic of tyranny and at the same time humble before the graciousness of our friend and father the Creator of God let me just read a remark or two from Anant and we'll end this overview but non suggests that the entire European adventure has been an effort to govern oneself in a certain relation to the Christian proposition and he says that Europe at its best was place where free men and women learned to come to combine and conjugate free will in conscience in self-governing political communities so the great desideratum was to find a place for the collaboration of human prudence and divine providence and as manaat' comments in this collaboration the theology of st. Thomas Aquinas was able to provide the principles but not to show the way to concretely put them in practice so instead of without in any way denying the institutional separation of church and state but not suggests that European states whether they like it or not they combined secular political arrangements with he calls them nations of a Christian mark and faced by the challenges of radical secularism and by in a political Islam Christianity is the only spiritual force that is probably able to give moral content and spiritual inspiration to liberal societies so again I think that is a kind of neo galaxy-eyes 'm it's a way of conjugating the temporal and the sacred that acknowledges the temporal order that liberalism and liberal democracy are part of our temporal order but that the temporal order to be itself to protect itself against a creeping totality needs a vision of human dignity an account of ordered freedom and an account of the dignity of the human soul that liberalism can provide for itself thank you what's that working I think it's very much to the lumen christi institute and everyone who participated in organizing this excellent event and to marion and dan for their comments thus far that forgotten ecclesiastical Furies exert profound influence on modern politics is the most impressive thesis of the book which brings us together to honor the legacy of this scholar I didn't know him at all personally only through his works to honor the legacy of this scholar whose life was cut short nine years ago now that thesis is of course not unique to Emile Peloso scene although the importance of ecclesiastical thought I think is so frequently forgotten that we can never tire and reasserting it even it's in even in its seemingly most obscure points which I'll definitely have a couple of in the following remarks in Catholicism and democracy perroso scene research the importance of Gallican ism as as Professor Mahoney has suggested in understanding 19th and 20th century Catholic thought Gallican ism is a name applied to a constellation of doctrines sometimes with more political sometimes with specifically ecclesiastical overtones and it's in its original 16th century or when one of the or not its original 16th century form late formation but in an important formation in the 16th century by P R P - it was summarized as the thesis that Pope's cannot command or order concerning temporal things in the kingdom of France and that even the Pope's spiritual authority is in France not absolute but restrained by the ancient canons of France the counterintuitive payoffs from analyzing Catholicism and democracy from this standpoint are immediately evident in Paris oh scenes conclusions that the French Revolutions quasi Gallic ins stripping of papal temporal ambitions strengthened the papacy 's moral voice that the ultra montón ism of the first Vatican Council was the symbiotic with liberalism secularization of the state that the Second Vatican Council is positive view of lay activity in the world in effect to recover to Gallic and tradition and thus that the First and Second Vatican Council together exhibit two elements instructional and participatory in the church's response to liberalism all these together I think mark a bold reinterpretation of ultra montón ISM as well as and especially of the enduring significance of Gallican ISM including liberal Gallican ISM and its relevance which I think Dan summarized as a kind of defense of the or could be summarized as a kind of defense of liberalism's proper political pride but the assertion that liberal gallic isn't Kent liberal Gallican ISM is of essential political relevance today however rests on at least two additional points first that democracy is a providential fact and second that political Gallican ISM uniquely and correctly distinguishes between the temporal and spiritual spheres it is these points which I wish to push back on a little bit and which I think together lead the viewpoint of liberal Gallican ISM to be somewhat insensitive to the current relationship of the two cities the earthly city and the heavenly City or the church now that democracy is a providential fact Perot Scecina search through Tocqueville whose phrase that of course was Tocqueville piroso seen rights explained to his Catholic friends that the march of democracy was unstoppable indeed he was so struck with society's steady progress toward equality that if he spoke of it in religious terms as a providential movement almost as if there were some new kind of divine right a Divine Right of peoples rather than of Kings piroso seen adopts this view suggesting that thanks to Tocqueville Catholics realized this I'm quoting now again Catholics realized that a liberal democracy could still stay within the orbit of Christendom and be informed by the principles of the gospel by contrast reactionary ultra montanus so such as Joseph de Messe go into a category of eschatological rather than political reasoning for having formed the expectation that the Pope could quote become the arbiter of European political life I hope not in quote I hope not grounded as Barroso scene says in any inherent tendency in the modern state toward higher ah cracy their sheer lack of political realism says piroso seen quoting rested ultimately not on a political but on a prophetic foundation Mexico was awaiting an imminent divine intervention that would see the unification of the human race and put an end to the division between nations in quote now to be sure the democratic fact that Tocqueville located especially in the American social State has exerted itself in almost every field but I think we could say that strictly as a matter of comparison Tocqueville in mess but both assert some sort of providential point of view Tocqueville appears to and does have a political realism that mess relax because Tocqueville takes democracy as a fact with providential force to which he mounts a providential response sorry excuse me a political response as well as a more political account of its origins Joseph de Mestre's Providence I think by contrast is more paul line focused on the eventual triumph of the church and ready to take advantage of the twists of human events this perspective leads messua to view the events of the revolution through prophet enchi lens in order to see the that might come from them and the eventual benefit to the church now let us consider the second presupposition of liberal political Gallican ISM that it uniquely and correctly distinguishes between the temporal and spiritual powers in a way useful for thereunder for there for understanding their relation today the gallic an ideal piroso seen rights was of a close association of church and state in which the temporal and spiritual powers accorded each other due recognition in their respective spheres far from having mixed up religion and politics as he says as some moderns think when looking at the ancien régime quote Gallic ins reserved temporal matters for the laity the Catholic lady to the exclusion of the clergy whose sphere was strictly confined to the spiritual in this account the Royal coronations at Reims which might spring to mind when we think of the kings of France we're primarily about finding a justification for royal independence on grounds that would be competitive with those of the church divine right was merely the means by which independence from the church was sought Gallican ISM is thus on this account a flexible political ideal chiefly oriented toward a clear conception of lay prerogatives and civil government by contrast the Gallic and viewpoint interprets even the modified claims of a papal indirect power as tending quote in the end toward direct power Gallican ISM is evidently all sweetness and light while reactionary ultra montón ISM is utopian and unrealistic tempting as it is to accept such an apologia for the ancien régime and in particular for the political relevance of Gallican ism i do believe that puros essenes account for all of its profound insight does omit from its description of Gallican ism the crucial and thing I think really increasingly crucial question of the jurisdictional bound of civil government and the church presenting the quarrel of Gallican ISM and ultra montón ISM as a dispute over the usefulness of temporal independence from ecclesiastical power rather stacks the decks deck against the ultra Montagnes by glossing over the flash points at which civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction tended to conflict and of course begging the question whether reactionary ultra montagnes or their papal forebears had in fact failed to distinguish temporal and spiritual power or disregarded the purposes of civil government yet as I believe should be obvious it is precisely these flash points that have once again taken center stage in the inconclusive all dispute of spiritual and temporal power the flash points now before us concerning how the church should be governed internally and by whom as well as concerning the church's prerogatives in governing its own clergy and the disputed diplomatic immunity of scene of senior clergy and indeed the church's status generally as a juridical body or a perfect society here I think favorably in fact of this this wonder that's clearly in Paros essenes mind as he's writing the book he says the Catholic Church is favorable to liberal democracy because it sees religious liberty as fundamental to that form of government it will be markedly less favorable if in the name of liberalism strict limits are placed on its own liberty and society comes to ignore of what it regards as the most fundamental laws end quote now that this prophecy so to speak has already begun to come to pass suggests that the modest corrective liberalism that piroso seen hoped to see from the church will not be the whole story it may be insufficient in the end for grappling with the pending and indeed in some cases current civil invasions of the spiritual power in a manner that I think should be troubling for neo gala in efforts however it was in fact Gallican ISM which made the most striking attempts to have the civil courts take cognizance of ecclesiastical causes the jurisdictional flashpoint between civil and ecclesiastical power in the ASEAN regime was the uphill calm debut or the appeal as from an abuse which allowed clergy tried before ecclesiastical courts to appeal from ecclesiastical to secular courts Royal Courts in cases whose conclusions had been apparently abusive a common Gallican conception this was a common Gallican conception of civil power held you know all the way from the time of the pragmatic sanctions to pierre petit petit whose outline of the liberties of the Gallic and Church at the end of this of the sixteenth century all the way through to the Gallic ins of the 17th and 18th centuries they all held generally at least that Royal Courts could take cognizance of ecclesiastical causes by reason of the disruption of peace in a kind of inversion of the papal cognizance of civil causes by reason of sin the Royal Courts of France frequently accepted appeals from clergy dissatisfied with judgments made in ecclesiastical courts not only in criminal matters but including in many famous cases even in the determination of liturgical questions such as the applicability of the reforms of the Council of Trent in this respect I believe that Gallican ISM 2 counts as a political theology it was at this usurpation of ecclesiastical ecclesiastical prerogative by the kings of France that the papal bull in China domine II was annually proclaimed objecting to the appeals as from abuse as well as the subjection of clergy to the leh courts generally this was a bull that was clearly in force as late as 1855 on the eve of the Vatican Council the Gallican approach I think by no means holds a monopoly on the clear to stinking of civil jurisdiction from civil matters from spiritual matters for the boundary between those powers has always been contested each Power has always sought grounds for superiority in the disputed matters the dis question is only what are the boundaries of that jurisdiction whether the boundaries are in dispute and what sort of determinations are able to be made by the powers on each side piroso scene is at pains to assert although I think not entirely correctly in my view that the first Vatican Council abandoned the claims of the church's jurisdictional supremacy or even jurisdictional integrity by emphasizing the instructional and moral capacity of the papacy for example he says by confining the victory of ultra montón ism to the spiritual sphere the council upheld a separation of temporal from the spiritual which they would otherwise have been accused of obliterating the breach with the classical Gallican ism was thus evident because of the first Vatican councils papal ISM but I'm still quoting but there was no such breach with the political Gallican ISM of the osteon regime in quote now considering the Vatican 1 was adjourned because of the occupation of Rome by the Kingdom of Italy it's hard to imagine on what practical basis the council fathers would have trumpeted the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal power but as a matter of simple description the council's own defenders considered papal infallibility and ecclesiastical jurisdiction apples and oranges albeit matters that were often confused by critics of the infallibility declaration for example critics of the infallibility declarations said that this bull in china domine which had been you know was no longer being renewed renewed by the Holy See was because the Vatican had changed its policy on on you know toward civil courts that thus it couldn't claim infallibility because they the critics of the proposed infallibility declaration said if any bull constituted an infallible one it was in cheyna Domini whereas from the standpoint of the council that was a matter of jurisdiction not infallible teaching while the council was not able to finish its declaration on the church subsequent legislation maintained the integrity in principle of ecclesiastical jurisdiction of over the clergy in both the 1917 and 1983 codes as well as the church's right to coerce the faithful in both the 1917 and 1983 codes and these canons I believe directly contradict the political Gallican ISM that the church supposedly adopted they were not abandoned by the infallibility declaration the great contribution of amel piroso singh's Catholicism and democracy I believe in conclusion is to highlight the circumstances of political deprivation out of which the modern church was able to call a new and clear voice in fact indeed as he says and even because of this condition at the very moment from 1870 to 1929 at least that the church appeared to have completely lost one of its two swords everything hinges though I think on whether we view these new modes of relating to the civil power as acquisition of new tools or the abandonment of old ones in a context of democratic but secular politics in cultures still marked by Christianity the Church's shift toward a directive power and it's encouragement of lay political decision-making makes a great deal of sense indeed it still does but if we view this shift as an embrace of political Gallican ISM we will not be prepared for the eternal return of boundary disputes between the civil and the ecclesiastical power in matters of jurisdiction those disputes are now here a democracy willing to accept lay christian cooperation seems no longer to be a providential fact the civil power has its own sense of how to take cognizance of ecclesiastical causes by reason of sin or by reason of the disturbance of the peace or its view that the church is poorly governing itself which is no doubt been true in many respects and the civil power is ever less shy to show the religious intensity of its fundamental commitments those who sensed this conflict would return and who preserved the church's jurisdictional claims even when they were in abeyance are those that we call the ultra Montagnes and it is their expectations which I believe of course not in the not in the fanatical elements which Carosa seen rightly criticizes on occasion but they have some expectations which have proved realistic [Applause] okay well first I would like to conjure up with emotion and thankfulness the memory of a meal be also seen whom I met right here in Chicago many years ago to be precise in November 1998 on the occasion of my giving a lecture at the Olin foundation if the framework of a series on democracy and the soul of Nations he was then living in a small room in Calvert house if my memory serves me right that I may be wrong and he was writing his PhD on MacIntyre another great neighbor who thank goodness is still among us we have a common point the late Emil P also seen in my humble self well I hate people to boast but I am French to slightly adapt Gilbert and Sullivan in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations I am a Frenchman which drug drove me to the necessity of probing let's say in a vicarious way to be sure the collective conscience of France the title of my presentation in 98 was French unconsciousness it is a fact that for the average Frenchman being French is something absolutely natural that we take for granted everybody is a Frenchman with the exception of foreign peoples and now I am sort of compelled by Emile pay also since work the TU delft deeper in my conscience and in our collective conscience in order to ask the question but why France for it is the case that this book focuses heavily on French phenomena and explains why France was the laboratory of sorts of new political solution new policies and new intellectual political solutions to well let's say the predicament of late modernity France is a weird country and was given the opportunity some days ago in Detroit to well reflect on the dual aspect of France France is the country which had to bear the brunt of the most radical kind of Enlightenment thought and practice transposed in revolutionary policy in the policy of the French Revolution which in its most extreme form was simply planned to do away with Christianity daniel has just alluded to peih-gee's mentioning the Christianization is not a mere catch word it was a program launched by the most extreme form the most extreme team sort of French revolutionists and a part besides along side with this extreme anti-christian in Christianity there was the fantastic missionary adventure of 19th century an inner mission we should not forget why there are so many crosses along our countryside roads they were more often than not the result of a mission launched during the period of the restoration right after MV in Napoleonic Wars but this mission was also an outside mission and well I was reminded of this reality while speaking of father Gabriela Shah who played a very important part in Detroit and whose church was by the way the second oldest one second oldest Catholic Church to be sure in this country I remember reading some music matter two three years ago Willa Cather's novel death comes from the archbishop in which the central character is sort of molded after jean-baptiste me who was a French priest who evangelized New Mexico and founded the Cathedral of Santa Fe hence this weird duality swaziland one enough in minor post this is bad French and bad english too but this can capture the situation you are a country with two two souls two souls in her chest the phenomenon of Gallic anism well as the name has it can't be something else than a French phenomenon at first blush because Gallic anism was partly at least a consequence of the Protestant Reformation that will happened in the whole of Europe it was a well the so-to-speak Gallican ism and began with a German ISM I mean the IE the independence of the German church or churches and they're getting and the power of the German princes rulers and this was Luther's explicit will in his treatise on the ventilation oh boy oh bridge guide this all European phenomenon had four tasters forerunners in the Middle Ages and in particular in France with a Phillipe labelled in his conflict with a purpose see but it came to a head with the protest and Reformation with the German ISM whether that's not a word of art they have just coined it in this exception at least there was another very important phenomenon which ran parallel and to the French developments our Anglicanism the Church of England the church which defines itself as being the Church of a precise nation and which performed a break with the Holy See and by the way the temptation was present in other parts of Europe Venice is a good example of that Venice I mean while the Venetian commercial aristocracy toyed with the idea of well following the steps of of England and this is by the way why Giordano Bruno you know this hero of free thought went to return in order to sort of take lessons from what happened with the Church of England but this failed because the Christian fold in Venice resisted but is buoyed well have happened and as far as Catholic countries which remain Catholic like France for that matter well the the the game the kings played was to explain consistent in explaining to the pot what perhaps we could do the same thing as as the Brits this was a means to get pressure on the papacy in order to obtain some sort of blackmail you know against the Pope in order to get more freedom for the Church of France well one of the extremely interesting for me who is not a historian at all was the lesson in history that was taught that is taught by a mill be also seen in this work and this is a lesson in the dialectics of history the way in which the boot comes to the other foot against the will of the people who triggered or who pretended to be triggering the events and we need not believe where the jaws of the mast that old Harry was behind the sea and performing all kind of unpleasant tricks while he certainly is always behind the scene whenever bad things happen but there is a great deal of intermediaries between him in the last resort and what happens and we'll be that as it may let me give two examples that are to be found in a mill Picasso scenes book that's a dialectical movements in history when Napoleon decided to make his peace or to make France to have France make his peace with the he fostered a turn in the very way in which the papacy understood itself he sort of compelled the papacy to claim a power that it had never even dreamed off either - the Pope was supposed to remove the French bishops from their seats and as a matter of fact the whole French bishopric had to go and the Pope had to replace them with people with new bishops named from scratch like pawns on a chessboard no Pope had ever done that not even thought of doing that and for this reason the attempt of Napoleon to bring the church and his farm proved to prove - to produce the contrary and the upshot of all that was the greater power spiritual and not only spiritual but Jura diction 'el power of the Pope second example the separation that so-called separation of church and state in 1905 the spiritus rector of this separation was a politician whom daniel has named emil coleman a milcom was a very competent opponent of the Catholic Church because of his own Catholic background he had written his doctoral thesis the larger one on Aquinas and the shorter one on Bernard of Clairvaux st. Bernard great mystic of the 12th century he knew what he was what he was doing know thy enemy well he was sort of outsmarted by the events for people who really hated the guts of the Catholic Church wanted the state to keep control on it and well if you want to control something and somebody you have to pay him or it by removing the state support that was bestowed up to now on the church he unwittingly that was his his most extreme well supporters who did that against his own will he deprived the state of any pull on the church and for this reason the separation had well we can say that now if we look at things in the real mirror and particularly positive effects on the Catholic Church a counter example might be the German Church you know the German Church is wealthy but well not exactly at the beck and call of the state but his well and this is what many church men tell me you know I spent a part of my career teaching in Germany and well many German Catholics look at the French church with some sort of envy to be sure the French church is poor poor not a being but the level of freedom vis a vie the political power is greater than in Germany there is a speciality of France which would like to earn the line and which comes to the fore most interestingly in Ameerpet also since work since among other reasons this French speciality sheds a light on a general problem of our modern societies the problem was seen clearly by a man who was not at all a devout Catholic he probably hadn't even been baptized the philosopher the mathematician and philosopher Auguste account 1798 1857 the father of the so called positivism that's though a word that he minted himself you know in order to describe what he wanted well today positivism is understood exclusively as a way for as something that society should do I giving power to the scientists but this was not Kant's intention what he really was driving at was the possibility of a new spiritual power that could be an efficient balanced weight against the increasing power precisely of science technology and things and this is for us well a living life issue his solution was the new religion new religion this fellow had a bee in the bonnet must have be quite frank about that and like each every paranoid he was utterly consequent he founded a new religion for which he wrote a catechism and he even drafted a new calendar with new Saints Newton for instance with it great Saint in his calendar it's interesting by the way that mourn the Saints st. Paul is there st. Paul as the founder of the Catholic Church as a principle of order Jesus is not Jesus Christ is absent from his calendar I leave this aside and draw your attention to a phenomenon for which I might have coined myself a word and which is mentioned explicitly in a mill pay also since book the existence of people in whom I could call whom I called Christian nests Christian lists a Christian is somebody who believed in Jesus Christ a Christian list does not necessarily believe in Christ but he or she believes in Christianity in the well the positive influence of Christianity on Western civilization or civilization at large and we this is a movement that began in France with people like Auguste record whom I've just been mentioning and with his direct or indirect disciples let us as an example and I will end with that think of Maurice Maurice Maurice Paris who was a novelist and he is reported to have said I am an atheist but a Catholic Catholic a theist sort of Sharla Maha's whom you've just mentioned Daniel belonged to the same club ie Catholicism was good as a principle of national identity and it was a jingoist of sort of French jingoist if this a word that I can venture here and what for him Catholicism was an important element of French consciousness and of French identity they are analogous temptations in our present-day world in France and not only in France I in instrumentalizing Christianity as a principle of social cultural civilizational national what not identity and if a milpa also since book can be among other qualities a warning against this temptation well he wouldn't have lost his time just one comment and a question and then I'll open the floor for questions but this panel really and Emil Pedrosa Singh's book really struck me as a wonderful example of French and American connections and dialogue as well and coming from Notre Dame obviously we're the result of that missionary thrust from the 19th century France so whatever is good there as part of the legacy I I'm wondering so two things one thing that struck me is the the way in which Emile Paris essence argument in a sense reverses the direction of Tocqueville Tocqueville who looks to the United States as the laboratory of democracy and the laboratory of their relations in many ways between the sort of natural relations between democracy and Christianity and paralysis Ian wants to say well but looking at contemporary developments in terms of church and state relationships and some of the difficulties of navigating those we would do well to look to France as a laboratory and to learn from the French the French experience so I wondered if the panelists had any just any thoughts on that that they haven't already articulated and or on the question of puros Essenes thought on Christian citizenship in terms of our contemporary worlds what we might learn either from him or from critical engagement with this book this those in case anyone would like to respond to those that will be fine and then we'll open the floor I was just gonna say one thing real quick I think Italy there's at least I would love to have heard more of what he would have written about America and I don't know if perhaps he made some some comments somewhere but he does express if memory serves he does express dismay with leo xiii criticism of the american church you know in the so there was a there's a tendency among American Catholics that leave the 13th responded to which you know favored the freedom of the American Church as an ideal and Leah the thirteenth wrote this encyclical Longjing quoi to the American bishops saying yes yes very good congratulations very glad things are going well there I just don't forget that Church state union is number one goal and and Perot so seen does I think at least indirectly praise the American political settlement by sort of he brings up that response from leo xiii and i in a critical manner so i think it i think in a way i mean i wonder if he would have said that in that in some senses you know the American Catholic lay life at its best would probably be an example of the political Gallican ISM that he praised perhaps I think there's a danger in reading this book as too much an endorsement of a simple political and intellectual accommodation between Catholicism and democracy the book begins on the opening page in the introduction with a discussion of what he calls the theory a theory of democracy without mentioning Tocqueville it's right out of the beginning of volume two of democracy the drift of the Democratic mind toward pantheism to the idea that God is all and all is God and he brings out like Tocqueville the political consequences of pantheism that the citizen is absorbed by the people the people by humanity and humanity itself by an undifferentiated nature and there's a remarkable remark by Tocqueville in the early chapters of I am to a democracy and he says all those who care for the survival of human dignity and greatness should unite to fight pantheism you know what my students reading this that's it what the hell is Pat the is of them what are we supposed to get night against and why is this such a big deal but that suggests a real awareness that at the deepest level there is a spiritual deficit that there is however just political democracy might be in including the whole of a people in a political community eliminating the also regime the regime of estates that democracy itself risks a new and terrible homogeneous ation of politics of culture and the human soul and this book ends by talking about the the concerns that the pontificates of jumble the second and Benedict the sixteenth had on that sport I would say the present pontificate doesn't really have that concern it's much more open to accommodating the church to the spirit of the age we see the German Bishops wanting to give blessings to same-sex unions and we see a general belief that a tendency I would say to quote a great line from Jacques Vallee TAV for the pay's alone to look at all a book he wrote in the midst of the Second Vatican Council that all around him he saw kneeling before the world so I just want to say this about a meal per whole scenes book he I don't sense in any way he wants the church to capitulate to late modernity and I think his accommodation with liberal democracy is at the service of saving the best of the liberal tradition by elevating it and making it compatible with the survival of what Tocqueville would call human dignity and political greatness about France and the the centrality might say of the French experience of the theological political problem I think this operates in a couple of levels I've often argued the the argument is not exactly original to me that studying French political thought in the period after the Revolution is much more constructive than let's studying English political theory compared Tocqueville and Miller mill is a progressive estación tist ik his humanitarian he takes for granted the inevitable victory of modern progress he and partly because English political institutions evolved from 18th century oligarchy to 20th century parliamentary monarchy in a pretty successful and piecemeal way no coup d'etat or civil wars since the 17th century the English lost the capacity to think seriously about political philosophy so much so by the 1950s the analytic philosophers told us political philosophy was dead until it was supposedly resurrected by John rolls in 1971 but the French if you looked at royal colored and constant and Tocqueville and many of the other figures the 19th century figures mentioned in our Emile proptosis Singh's book these were thinking thinkers who had a wrestle with the pathologies of the Revolution and of modern democracy they also had a wrestle with the counter temptation of counter-revolution a kind of reactionary response to the problems of late modernity and so there's something very rich in the French experience of the the minor project and the modern the political virgins of the minor project that makes it a particular laboratory as Remy brog said for coming to terms with both the strengths and weaknesses of the Democratic soil and the Democrat political project and I would also say just a counter my friend gladden a little bit the old Gallican ISM both the ecclesiastical Gallican ISM of the political Gallican ISM of the pre-revolutionary period it's not something that's available to us for all sorts of reasons corrosive seeing talks for example about Gallican ISM was perfectly fine with the revocation of the Edict of not we all know what that meant for the French you've been a population that said neo galaxy-eyes 'm people with long it took filling in line have made their peace with the autonomy of the Civic order which is probably democracy at its best and yet see these profound spiritual deficits at the heart of a modern project drifting toward me ilysm seems to me that neo galaxy-eyes's the humility of the christian together in a democracy we might say that risks losing its soul or to reiterate succumbing to nihilism is I think a very important way in which the church can speak to the modern world without kneeling before the world all Americans friends by the way there's another inconvenience with contemporary ultra-modern ISM the 19th century Alton multi montanus could look to Rome as the source of ultimate spiritual and political authority but Rome today is tempted to accommodate itself to the religion of humanity or accommodate itself to modern progress in the realm of sexual morality but also when the realm of politics and so if that's the case ultra montón ism mainly becomes a vehicle for using the clerical or reclusive ecclesiastical authority of the church to undermine some of the inherited and ancient teaching intrusive the church so I think that's a great time prediction it's a new contradiction and ultra montón ISM that ultram if ultra if if the Pope becomes the final word on all matters sacred and temporal but the Pope is let's say half humanitarian and committed to a project that involves a very powerful and substantive accommodation with modernity we are completely in uncharted territory so yes there are limits of Gallican ISM but there's also I think significant limits to the new ultra ultra mountain ISM okay well I think we can open the floor then questions comments from any of you you well let me first make a point on the very word separation of church and state the word is misleading is a misnomer up to a point if we can and this is by the way why I put it you may have heard them in quotation marks I said something like the so called separation and so on and the reason being the following a separation may mean two things it may mean on the one hand a tearing asunder of a unity that pre-existed but it may mean also I'm sorry the end of the cooperation between two entities that were right at the beginning from the outset independent and this is by the way what distinguishes Christianity from earlier religions that what we call paganism the word is has rogatory shade of meaning that should be here avoided carefully in ancient pre-christian religions you could hardly tell the religious from the other dimensions of human life and for that matter from the political dimension and well what happened in the separation even if the separation took rather violent aspects was only a way for people to sort of cut on the dotted line you know dotted line was there already there was a church there were the state and you can't find let's say in ancient Athens or in G in ancient Rome or for that matter in Islam you can't find the state and the church and for this reason the separation was the final stage of a cooperation church and state seized to to pull in the same direction now as far as France is concerned well the case of France is very different from what happened in the US and for that matter in Britain for instance well in Britain there were several churches the Church of England and in this church and outside of the dissent in the in the u.s. this was sort of still worse there was a bevy of different Christian denominations and again Jews everybody everywhere sorry in the Christian West in France there there was a religion which was according to the wording of the French of the conquer death with Napoleon the religion of the majority of the French and when the people who brought about the so-called separation in 1905 what they really wanted was to do away with the political influence political and cultural and social and so on influence of the Catholic Church the law held good for the Jews and for the protest but they were so puny minorities that were not a problem for this is a real problem with the Catholic Church hence the well anti-catholic aspect which the law of so-called separation took and had to take the main contradiction to use the Marxist parlance that was familiar to us in the 60s the main contradiction was between the secular state and the Catholic Church Germany well is another case because it had been divided between Catholic countries protesting countries of both the many nations since the 16th century well what happened there was some sort of separation to some sort of distinction perhaps the the world would be better there was from the outset a distinction between the political and religious realm a distinction which still exists and which nobody has anything to say against it is accepted by the German population in the same way by the way as the separation in France for in France finally was accepted by the church the church which at present I mean church authorities never made a halt in the Catholic population but as far as the French as the French church authorities are concerned they even are at present perhaps the best supporters of the law of 1905 you you well Tocqueville doesn't apply she follows it by saying the inexorable unfolding of the democratic revolution fills him with religious terror and the beginning of volume 2 of democracy in America he says this book is accompanied by the severus criticisms of democracy I think you know the final paragraph of democracy in America Tocqueville says I despise all theorists who think we are we have to succumb to inexorable fatality but he says we're in it we're in a faded circle so for a thousand years the old of the old aristocratic ways have been dissipating the Christianity for all sorts of reasons played a major role in introducing something like a more egalitarian understanding of human beings in human society and yet this new society poses grave threats to human dignity and greatness so Tocqueville emphasizes is a great deal of freedom left for human beings within that faded circle I don't think Tocqueville is a head galleon or Neal kigali and he read his letters he hated Haig Hagel for his historicism I think he's saying to the partisans of religion of human greatness of high culture of political decency the only way we're going to preserve those goods in the new dispensation is not by trying to preserve a superannuated old regime but saving them within democracy while at the same time recognizing democracy may well culminate in new and terrible forms of either Caesar ISM or totalitarian despotism so many ways democracy in America is a bleak book that especially volume two that the human future could culminate in something like what CS Lewis called the appellees man but Tocqueville believes in human freedom and he believes in politics and hence this is not preordained it's possible to save self-government human freedom as he puts it at the beginning a third part of the also resume of the revolution Liberty under God and the law that is still a living possibility within that fatal circle of democracy so providential fact I think is a largely rhetorical formulation to say democracy is for all intents and purposes our future and we've got to somehow make this compatible with our humanity I fully agree with Dan's explanation there what I would say is that perhaps it's useful to go through the exercise of attempting to see the providential course of history according to Tocqueville and also to see it according to de Mestral as well and to try to draw lessons from both because I'm not certain that they're as as incompatible is it at least my comments were intended to to suggest that they were they were incompatible you know if you view democracy as a providential fact or even if it's I think even Dan's formulation that there's something rhetorical there is even better because if there is a rhetorical purpose to presenting democracy as a providential fact that means it's instructional to go through the thought process of considering it as you know a providential destiny or or or or a kind of you know genie that's been let out of the bottle and attempt to respond accordingly and it's clear that that framework leads to certain conclusions about possible dangers and possible solutions so I think I think to bring in to bring in to bring in piroso scene again you know he says something like you know yes there was an extreme form of Gallican ism absolutist Gallican ISM which has no particular purchase on the contemporary political situation but there's a nub of something that it saw the dignity of the temporal sphere and that can be and that can be separated from its excesses and used productively in order to make certain contemporary political determinations he so he's a little bit harsh on ultra mountainous in the sense that he doesn't give them the same chance I don't think one has to I don't think one has to adopt you know at least not simply you know a a counter providential expectation that you know the church will certainly triumph and you know people will really have you know excellent Orthodox Bulls from Rome with breakfast every morning but but but you know put but putting on the other hat is still useful because it Tunes you to a different set of political phenomena it attunes you to the question of whether there is something not just called Christianity but also a body of Christian believers called the church and if so what its characteristics are and and where its boundaries are so certainly you know for appreciating the way that no democracy has can have tendencies toward tyranny you know adopting the view that democracy is a providential fact it Tunes you to that and in tow and in following Tocqueville suggests way ways to respond to it but perhaps you know briefly at least donning the hat of ultra montón ISM without becoming you know foaming at the mouth reactionary can attune you also to that other question of of ecclesiastical jurisdiction just because those flashpoints will arise too and may end up and there may even be an intersection between these two views in in so far as you know a totalitarian democracy you know doesn't want to see any forms of power that exist outside of itself and so it will perhaps eventually be led to invade this space not only a space of not only to invade the beliefs of Christians but also their forms of organization okay well thank you very much to thomas lever good and lumen christi and university of chicago and to our panelists for a very good discussion and to all of you thank you [Applause]

Channel: Lumen Christi Institute

Views: 1,134

Rating: 4.75 out of 5

Keywords: Catholicism and Democracy, Catholic Church, Integralism, Lumen Christi, Mary Keys, Remi Brague, Gladden Pappin, Daniel Mahoney, University of Chicago, Democracy

Id: 0NTLKvrnVFc

Length: 90min 27sec (5427 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019