“God blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.  Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.’ ”

–Gen. 1:28†

“For just as in affairs of state we see a man’s mettle and the secret sense of his soul and affections better when he is under pressure than at other times, so nature’s secrets betray themselves more through the vexations of art than they do in their usual course . . .  I also think that it does not matter much for mankind’s well being [sic] what abstract opinions you hold about nature and the principles of things . . .  On the contrary, my object is to see whether I can really lay firmer foundations for human power and prestige, and to extend their bounds yet wider.”

–Francis Bacon‡

In the last few years, a debate about the desirability and sustainability of classical liberalism—the West’s regnant governing ideology—has migrated from obscure corners of the internet into the edges, at least, of the general public’s consciousness.[1]  Since, much ink has been spilled assessing whether various sorts of “post-liberal” systems[2] are compatible with what many take to be classical liberalism’s core—and highly desirable—features: “constitutionalism, the rule of law, rights and privileges of citizens, separation of powers, the free exchange of goods and services in markets, and federalism.”[3]  But because those things “are to be found in medieval thought,”[4] we are free to retain and refine them while simultaneously identifying and rejecting classical liberalism’s errors and excesses.[5]  At its core, “[classical] liberalism is constituted by a pair of . . . anthropological assumptions that give liberal institutions a particular orientation and cast: 1) anthropological individualism and the voluntarist conception of choice, and 2) human separation from and opposition to nature.”[6]  These assumptions are properly understood as “revolutions in the understanding of human nature and society.”[7]  And yet, relatively little effort has been expended to trace and understand the effects of classical liberalism’s second core feature—i.e., Man’s alienation from the natural world, driven by a technological mindset—on the human soul.

I propose that to truly understand this dimension of classical liberalism, and how we might begin to reverse its impact, we must “begin at the beginning.”[8]  That is, we must first understand: (1) how God’s command to mankind in the Garden of Eden to have dominion and to exercise stewardship over Creation transmogrified into a libido dominandi, an overweening desire to dominate nature for our own material advantage; and, relatedly, (2) how our innate thirst for knowledge of the Good—God Himself—was perverted into something baser, narrower, and more instrumental and fleeting—merely securing “the relief of man’s estate.”[9]

So, we begin with Francis Bacon, the 17th century English philosopher and statesman, and the avatar of classical liberalism’s technological mindset—one that aims to overcome our material deficiencies and limitations through ruthless, rational control of nature, and one in which “nature” is conceptualized, for the most part not consciously nowadays, as meaningless matter.[10]  However, we cannot understand Bacon’s impact until we understand that of liberal modernity’s godfather: Niccolò Machiavelli.[11]

For Machiavelli, the driving force behind our actions ought to be necessity: seeing the verita effettuale,[12] the effectual truth of things, i.e., the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be, and then acting accordingly to secure congenial outcomes—even if that means transgressing Christian morality.[13]  Machiavellianism is thus both a rejection of Platonic idealism—an effort to drag us back down into the Cave, a lowering of our moral gaze—and an assault on the Catholic Church’s anthropology, ethics, and metaphysics. Machiavelli wrote at a time when the Church’s perceived spiritual authority had waned and was about to be further undermined by Martin Luther’s devastating revolt in 1517.[14]  This gave the “teacher of evil”[15] an opening to found “new modes and orders”[16]—an alternate understanding of reality.

Bacon seized upon Machiavelli’s project and applied it to technology.[17]  The fruits of this paradigm shift—“the passing away of one world and the coming-to-be of another”[18]—are all around us.  Man’s control over nature has never been more obvious, complete, or marvelous.  We with ease fly around the world, consume without a second thought exotic foods about which our ancestors could only dream, enjoy millions of hours of robust digital entertainment, communicate with anyone instantaneously, live comfortably in once-lethal climes, and cure deadly diseases.

We also, however, pillage the environment, produce obscene amounts of addictive pornography, are on the cusp of putting millions out of work through various forms of automation, and can, in an afternoon, annihilate our species with nuclear weapons.  Thus, our technological prowess is a double-edged sword that has far outstripped our moral faculties.  In this way, to use a trite metaphor, we are like a toddler who has stumbled upon his father’s loaded handgun.

But technology per se is not malum in se; rather, the danger lies in our relationship to man-made tools and processes—i.e., how our mindset affects what we build, yes, but also what we do with what we build.  This must be so; otherwise, we would need to be prepared to question Christ the carpenter, Who used hammers to build tables.[19]  In fact, I submit that it is right and good for Man’s intellectual powers to ease his traversal of this “vale of tears” because doing so properly actualizes God’s command to our first parents to “subdue” and “[h]ave dominion” over the earth and all that is in it.  The real task, then, is to discern precisely which technological developments are of God—because they are in accord with human flourishing and the common good—and which are, at bottom, expressions of our pride and should therefore be rejected—because it was only in becoming “liberal men” that we discovered them.  And we know that this is the relevant inquiry because, ceteris paribus, we agree that a world where we are adequately fed and have the benefits of modern medicine is better than a famine-wracked and disease-ridden one.[20]

However, our inability to recognize the line that separates good from bad technology, to make technology serve and ennoble rather than enslave and debase us, threatens our very existence in ways subtler—but no less dangerous for that subtlety—than a fiery, nuclear holocaust.  We can see this quite clearly in assessing our societies’ crazed response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which, stunningly, is ongoing more than a year after the first lockdown was instituted in the United States.[21]  To eradicate this threat to our physical well-being, we shuttered the country and suspended activities necessary to human flourishing and the common good: birthday parties, weddings, visiting relatives, dinner parties—in a word, play.[22]  And for what?  It would seem the mere appearance of safety—because not even full, airtight lockdowns could have stopped the spread of the virus.[23]  That should have been blindingly obvious to everyone, including the public-health “experts,” but it wasn’t, and so we acted out our blind faith in our absolute control over the natural world, consistent with Bacon’s worldview.  Thus far, thankfully, reality has reasserted itself; even President Biden has conceded, though only after he had taken up residence in the White House, that “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”[24]

But I fear that we will not be able to count on such welcome, back-to-sanity pendulum swings for much longer.  Up to this point, science has largely been focused on achieving increased “health” for human beings as they have long existed,[25] not on transforming human beings themselves.  But no longer.[26]  Our mastery over nature via our technology has birthed twin “trans” movements—transgenderism and transhumanism—that attack a foundational reality: embodied humanness.  Thus, many have understandably likened these movements, focused as they are on the body, to one of the earliest heresies faced by the Church—Gnosticism—and have attacked them on those grounds.[27]  However, Gnosticism is not the right hermeneutic by which to understand, criticize, and resist these modern phenomena.

Rather, they are better understood as offspring of classical liberalism’s technological gaze, which has alienated Man from the natural world; that is, we should understand them as by-products of the classically liberal desire to exercise rational, domineering control over the natural world.  In other words, they are the result of a worldview that is closed off to the supernatural. Because we have lost our reverence for nature-as-gift, we instead see material reality as something to be subordinated to our materialistic prerogatives.[28]  And because we no longer conceive of ourselves as anything more than material creatures inhabiting a material world—one which is often deadly to our (physical) well-being—we have decided that the only logical thing to do is to overcome it—and ruthlessly so.  Our intense fear of the world around us causes us desperately to cling to the comfort of screens rather than to God and His sacraments because the former are amenable to our learned overreliance on sensory data while the latter require faith in things unseen.[29]  And for modern Man, tragically, “seeing is believing.”[30]

So, because pain, infertility, an internal sense of “gender identity” (irrespective of biological sex), unborn children, hired laborers, or desire to engage in non-marital sexual encounters seem to stand in the way of “health,” they must be destroyed, disposed of, embraced, transcended, or otherwise made to serve us.  The noble desire to relieve Man’s estate by progressively more powerful technological means carries within it seeds of a tyranny so powerful that it threatens to eliminate Man as he has long understood himself, namely, as a sexed, embodied creature, born in community and radically dependent on others.[31] These radical “trans”-techno movements—marked by their cross-hormone therapies, surgical interventions, wild fantasies of uploading people’s consciousnesses into computers after their bodily deaths, and fervent desire to meld with the Singularity—are not zombie Gnosticism but, rather, the apotheosis of the Enlightenment-era lust for technological domination of nature—homo sapiens very much included.[32]  Ultimately, the goal is to transcend humanity altogether, our fleshly, intransigent givenness—and the “intolerable” limitations it implies.[33]

But that goal has not been realized.  At least not yet.  The wave of technologizing “liberation” that we have unleashed—liberation from material wants and from many earthly dangers—has turned ‘round to enslave us. If we are not careful, we will be effaced from the earth completely.[34]  We have created an idol, and the reason that God forbids idolatry[35]—beyond just the fact that He alone is worthy of our worship—is because idols invariably ensnare, debase, and, ultimately, destroy us.  And while our attraction to this particular idol—technology—is understandable given that it has done us enormous collective good,[36] it is nonetheless foolish to think that the only way to have achieved 21st-century levels of material progress is to have prostrated ourselves before this strange, modern-day golden calf.[37]

Made in the imago Dei and with a divine command to steward Creation, but grievously wounded by the Fall, we have aspired to stride about the world and control it as gods, to put into practice Marx’s somewhat obscure adage: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”[38]  In our immense pride, ratified and given form and effect by classical liberalism, in jealously trying to imitate God’s sovereign power over all things visible and invisible[39]—most precisely, in trying to be “like gods”[40]—we have, predictably, distorted ourselves.  Soon, we will no longer recognize ourselves.  Tragically, we have lost the virtue of hope, grounded in faith in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, and have instead yoked ourselves to a false vision of “moral progress,” actualized by ever-expanding, and dangerous, techne over nature[41]—an idol of the heart’s gaze which now, just as in Eden, tempts us with self-deification[42] but, necessarily, death.[43]

* Deion A. Kathawa is an attorney who hails from America’s heartland.  He holds a J.D. from the University of Notre Dame and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.  For their helpful feedback on earlier drafts, I thank Andrew Beddow, Suzanne Beecher, Timothy Bradley, Alex Ehler, Judah Maxwell, Justin North, Hailey Vrdolyak, and Garrett Ziegler.

† All biblical citations are to the New American Bible.

‡ Bacon, Novum Organum, Bk. 1, Aphorisms 98, 116, trans. Graham Rees and Maria Wakely (Oxford 2004).  Cf. Carolyn Merchant, The Violence of Impediments: Francis Bacon and the Origins of Experimentation, 99 Isis 731, 732 n. 2 (2008).

[1] IASC News, Barack Obama Recommends Why Liberalism Failed, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (December 2018, 2018), https://iasculture.org/news/obama-recommends-why-liberalism-failed.

[2] For a primer on a particular post-liberal—though the author would probably call it “pre-liberal”—political arrangement, see Pater Waldstein, O.Cist, What is Integralism Today?, Church Life Journal (October 31, 2018), https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/what-is-integralism-today/.  As to whether, as an orthodox Roman Catholic, I am bound to confess that an “integralist State” is desirable and/or theologically necessary, I must confess that I have not made up my mind, in large part because I harbor some reservations about the project’s orientation and commitments—namely integralists’ seeming lack of concern for representative government, specifically republicanism; for a corrective, see, e.g., Waller, Quirks in the Neo-Integralist Vision, Church Life Journal (February 4, 2021), https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/quirks-in-the-neo-integralist-vision/.  At present, my own view is probably something like the following, see Klavan, A Shot in the Arm for Liberalism, American Mindset (February 26, 2021), https://americanmind.substack.com/p/a-shot-in-the-arm-for-liberalism (arguing that “liberalism of the original sort was what you might call a secondary philosophy.  That is, it was a philosophy for how to live once the old truths were taken for granted.  After all the religious wars had been fought, after Aristotelian virtue ethics and Christian charity had guided the formation of that “moral and religious people” which John Adams celebrated, then the West could proceed within the parameters of that consensus to ask, ‘how then shall we live?’  This was never intended to serve as an answer to the deeper questions—‘what is man?’ ‘how shall he be saved?’—because the answers to those questions were considered, very broadly speaking, to have been agreed upon.”).  All of that being said, however, what I can say without hesitation is that I recognize the force of the integralists’ position, rendered all the more compelling given the ready evidence of the present order’s decay.  Even so, I remain, at present, quite fond of the system of republican self-government bequeathed to us by our Founders, refined and saved by Lincoln, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and actualized by the Constitution; moreover, I do not think America is “classically liberal” in the sense her detractors assert she is—at the very least based upon the degree to which classical political philosophy influenced the Founding.  See Richard, The Classical Roots of the American Founding (Ch. 3) in The American Founding: Its Intellectual and Moral Framework, Robinson and Williams, eds. (2014); see also Stewart, Virtue at the Origin: The Classical Foundations of the American Republic, Public Discourse (March 6, 2021), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2021/03/74347/.  Nonetheless, our relationship to nature is clearly broken, and I believe that rupture can be traced back to “classical liberalism”—and regardless of whether there is a “necessary transition from classical liberalism (understood to be good) to progressive liberalism (understood to be bad).”  See Vermeule, Some Confusions about “Classical Liberalism,” Progressivism, and Necessity, Mirror of Justice (June 15, 2018), https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2018/06/some-confusions-about-classical-liberalism-progressivism-and-necessity.html (expounding on that point).

[3] Deneen, Unsustainable Liberalism, First Things (August 2012), https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/unsustainable-liberalism (Deneen, Unsustainable Liberalism).

[4] Id.

[5] And besides, there is no reason to think we must accept either all of classical liberalism or none of it—because politics is the art of public prudence, not some elaborate mathematical theorem that hangs all together or not at all.  In other words, we need not throw out the baby with the bathwater; like normal people, we can choose to keep the baby, even without some airtight, perfectly-internally-coherent theory as to why—and, importantly, despite various purists’ shrieks to the contrary.

[6] Deneen, Unsustainable Liberalism, supra note 3.

[7] Id.

[8] Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865).

[9] Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Bk. I (1605), available online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5500/5500-h/5500-h.htm.

[10] Or, “an inert mechanistic mass without inner teleology, a mere object for arbitrary manipulation by human power.” See Pater Waldstein, Religious Liberty and Tradition III, The Josias (January 2, 2015), https://thejosias.net/2015/01/02/religious-liberty-and-tradition-iii/. 

[11] Conversations with Bill Kristol, Harvey Mansfield on Niccolò Machiavelli and the Origins of Modernity, YOUTUBE (Dec. 6, 2015), https://youtu.be/hVnh4woNXFg?t=1881 (from 31:21–31:46) (noting that Bacon was alone among his peers in even daring to cite Machiavelli, which he did—approvingly so).

[12] Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter VX (1532).

[13] See, e.g., Machiavelli, Mandragola (1526) (detailing the story of a young man, Callimaco, who wants to have sexual relations with a young, beautiful, and chaste woman, Lucrezia, who is married to an older man, Nicia; she and Nicia cannot have children, however, and the lesson Machiavelli wants to impart is as straightforward as it is subversive: The upright path is one of failure, but if one is daring enough to choose the immoral path—adultery—then everyone wins, for Callimaco gets to possess his love, and the married couple gets a child).

[14] Of course, Lutherans specifically and Protestants more generally are of the view that Luther’s cry of, “Here I stand, I can do no other . . .” was both necessary and salutary—not a “revolt.”  It is a view to which they are entitled.  But as a Catholic, I do not share it.

[15] Dubbed thusly by political philosopher and classicist Leo Strauss.

[16] Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy 5 (1531), available online at https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-on-livy.pdf. 

[17] This essay explains how classical liberalism came to express a technological mindset. However, the problem probably runs deeper than Bacon and Machiavelli, with its source in the heart of Man which has been wounded by Original Sin. See, e.g., Kass, Farmers, Founders, and Fratricide: The Story of Cain and Abel, First Things (April 1996), https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/farmers-founders-and-fratricide-the-story-of-cain-and-abel (noting that, post-Fall, there at least two primordial orientations that Man has toward his lot, namely, to be like Cain the farmer, who seeks to possess and have mastery over the earth, or to be like Abel the shepherd, who is humbled before forces beyond his comprehension or control and grateful for their beneficence).

[18] Hanby, A False Paradigm, First Things (November 2018), https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/11/a-false-paradigm. 

[19] But see Barnes, Christians Shouldn’t Use Smartphones, Medium (January 31, 2019), https://medium.com/@marcjohnpaul/christians-shouldnt-use-smartphones-64cddc2b3527 (“The followers of Jesus Christ are supposed to be free from the machinations of earthly principalities and powers.  The use of the smartphone [and other, similar technology] seems to be the symbol and sacrament of increased, unnecessary dependence on earthly power. For this reason, I do not think that Christians should use smartphones.”).

[20] Leibovitz, Against Convenience, Tablet (August 10, 2018), https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/268262/against-convenience (“It’s one thing to wish away the dozens of automated interactions that have replaced face-to-face conversations and that have robbed us of so much of our sense of community; it’s another to decide which of these actually liberate us from needless labor and give us the time to pursue loftier goals. The village well was likely a swell place of gathering, but no one laments the advent of running water.”).

[21] But see Whitcomb, Texas governor lifts state’s mask mandate, business restrictions, Reuters (March 2, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heath-coronavirus-usa/texas-governor-lifts-states-mask-mandate-business-restrictions-idUSKCN2AU2JB.

[22] Various, Mini-Feature: The Importance of Play, American Mindset (January 25, 2021), https://bit.ly/39r1pKO [shortened URL].

[23] On the FAQ page of the “Great Barrington Declaration”—a statement by leading infectious-disease epidemiologists and public-health scientists arguing for “focused protection” of the vulnerable against COVID-19 rather than crushing lockdowns, see Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, Great Barrington Declaration (2020), https://gbdeclaration.org/—the following question appears: “Do lockdowns have a successful history against infectious diseases?”  The answer provided is: “Basic epidemiological theory indicates that lockdowns do not reduce the total number of cases in the long run and have never in history led to the eradication of a disease.  At best, lockdowns delay the increase of cases for a finite period and at great cost.”  The underlying view that causes those in our public-health “expert” class to doubt that obvious truth is, basically, that human beings are essentially chess pieces to be manipulated by the diktats of well-meaning government technocrats rather than free persons who act in accord with their moral education and retain the ultimate authority, free of experts’ meddling, to decide questions of their common life.  See, e.g., Klavan, You Can’t Tell Me What to Do, American Mindset (March 17, 2021), https://americanmind.substack.com/p/you-cant-tell-me-what-to-do (as to a plumber who told you that you should wallow in your own filth because of a blocked toilet, you “would fire that plumber, and rightly so.  No matter how much knowledge he has which [you do] not, [you] ha[ve] authority to say whether his knowledge is producing the results it should.  [You are] the last word in [your] house on good and bad results—not the expert. . . .  Expertise has no authority to tell flourishing it is misery, or misery that it is flourishing. To do so is a gross perversion of the sciences and an affront to human dignity.”).

[24] President Biden, Remarks by President Biden on the American Rescue Plan and Signing of Executive Orders, White House (January 22, 2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/22/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-american-rescue-plan-and-signing-of-executive-orders/.

[25] Yuval Levin, The Moral Challenge of Modern Science, The New Atlantis (Fall 2006), https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-moral-challenge-of-modern-science.

[26] See, e.g., Fr. Pacholczyk, The Foxes and the Henhouse, Catholic Sentinel (January 10, 2020), https://www.catholicsentinel.org/PrintArticle.aspx?aid=39106&uid=f1cc63d3-cf92-4363-8b08-ccc50db8888d (“a Chinese scientist . . . employed a new technology called CRISPR/Cas9 to produce the world’s first gene-edited babies.  [He] made genetic changes to two little girls, Lulu and Nana, when they were early-stage embryos, attempting to modify a receptor for HIV to confer resistance to a possible future infection from the virus.”).

[27] See, e.g., George, Gnostic Liberalism, First Things (December 2016), https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/12/gnostic-liberalism (Gnosticism, as “[a]pplied to the human person, . . . means that the material or bodily is inferior—if not a prison to escape, certainly a mere instrument to be manipulated to serve the goals of the ‘person,’ understood as the spirit or mind. . . .”).

[28] Properly understood, Man’s dominion extends to “all operations which he exercises by his intellect and will, by his external senses, and by his power of locomotion, for these are subject to his free will.”  But it does not include dominion over his body, whose internal senses, sensitive appetite, organs, and vegetative faculties are not within his control.  Only God has independent, absolute, and universal sovereignty over all created things because He creates and sustains them in being.  See Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy (vol 3, Moral Philosophy) 186-187 (1949), available online at https://archive.org/details/HenriGrenierVol3Morals/page/n195/mode/2up.

[29] Heb. 11:1 (“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”).

[30] An older, better way of knowing posits the converse: “believing is seeing.”  That is, what we believe about the world causes what we see to take on this significance or meaning rather than another.  See, e.g., Fish, Why We Can’t All Just Get Along, First Things (February 1996), https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/02/001-why-we-cant-all-just-get-along.

[31] See generally MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (2011).

[32] Lest anyone fall into the trap of thinking that the Enlightenment—marked by its cold, calculating rationalism—bears all the blame for this development, I submit that even Romanticism, which followed on its heels, is not innocent.  For what began as a no-doubt welcome aesthetic-emotional reaction ultimately fed into and re-enforced the Enlightenment-era lust for domination.  See, e.g., Tausz, Revolution of the Self: A Conversation with Carl Trueman, First Things (November 25, 2020), https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/11/revolution-of-the-self.

[Q:] You end your fourth chapter, on the nineteenth-century Romantic poets, with a provocative line: “While he would no doubt have retched at the thought, William Wordsworth stands near the head of a path that leads to Hugh Hefner and Kim Kardashian.”  What role do Blake, Shelley, and Wordsworth play in the evolution of the modern self?

[A:] In their individual ways they each hold to the notion that man is born free and yet corrupted by society and its mores and must therefore recover that inner voice of nature in order to be authentic.  And art in all of its forms—poetry, painting, music—is a means by which the poet can help his audience reconnect with that inner voice.  Here they touch on something very important: Aesthetic experience does shape our moral sense, how we imagine the moral order.  Today it is pop culture that shapes that moral sense.

[33] Brague, Necessity of the Good, First Things (February 2015), https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/02/necessity-of-the-good (“Today, the dreams—or nightmares—of a posthuman endpoint of history are deeply rooted in the desire modern man feels to escape the passivity of his birth, . . . that [which] can’t be turned into a project or enterprise, that can’t be made good.”).

[34] Salisbury, New Optimism Ignores our Potential for Catastrophe, Palladium (November 13, 2020), https://palladiummag.com/2020/11/13/new-optimism-ignores-our-potential-for-catastrophe/ (arguing that “while our material well-being has generally improved, it has come at the cost of us bearing an unprecedented degree of risk that, in the extreme, threatens to unravel the entire human endeavor.”  That is, Man’s position is like that of Damocles: “our material abundance is undermined by a sword hanging precipitously over us: a sword that is becoming increasingly detached as the day progresses.”).

[35] See Exod. 20:1-6.

[36] See generally https://www.humanprogress.org/.

[37] See Exod. 32:7-8 (“With that, the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved.  They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” ’ ”).

[38] Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (1845), Thesis XI, available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm.

[39] Matt. 8:23-27 (“The Calming of the Storm at Sea”).

[40] Gen. 3:5.

[41] See Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007) § 17.

[42] “The Lord God gave man this order: ‘You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad.  From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.’ ” (Gen. 2:16-17).

[43] “For the wages of sin is death.” (Rom. 6:23a).

What would art look like in a society that had successfully revived true Christian culture? To answer this question is, in a sense, to begin a long process of confirming the speculation. Answering this question orients us toward creating the very art that we wish to see. Music seems to be the best medium to approach. Unlike, say, painting it has become more, not less prevalent in the modern world than it had been in the past. It is at once the most instinctual and the most complex of the artforms, and for this reason it is both popular and infinitely diverse.

One key problem facing us when we ask this question is: whose music? In Christianized culture music has typically fallen into three categories: highbrow, liturgical, and popular. Often these have overlapped. J. S. Bach is both highbrow and liturgical; John Dowland is both liturgical and popular. But the distinctions are sufficient to draw something of worth out of the material. They will guide us in what follows.

Liturgy, Avant Garde, and the Merely Christian

To ask what a revival of liturgical music might look like requires little imagination because it is already taking place. In October 2016, Pope Francis sat for an Aramaic interpretation of the Our Father sung by a priest and a small girl to reflect the pain of the Syrians and the Iraqis. This was one of the most profound musical events in recent memory. The video on YouTube has over 5 million views. The Pope fell into a deep meditation. The whole event was enveloped by a sort of spirit of the ancient. This is striking to the viewer, who feels that they are being sucked back in time to a small, newly formed Christian sect in the fifth century. Yet if you listen to the singing there is something strangely modern about it. Perhaps it is the effective use of drone that makes it at once old and modern—a technique that found favor with some of the better avant garde artists in the 20^th century. 

This seems the most promising path for new developments in liturgical music: to embrace forgotten musical techniques and, rather than simply aspiring to European medievalism, seeking to fuse various developments, various taproots in the Christian canon into a harmonious whole. That goes for Protestant developments too; if the Catholic Church has always been willing to take what is good in pagan culture and develop it, then the likes of Bach should not be off limits.

Likewise, Christianized highbrow music is already with us. The modernist movement in highbrow music has totally collapsed. ‘Sophisticated people,’ it would seem, could only pretend that the onanism of Schoenberg and his followers was impressive for so long. A video from a decade ago of an aged Yoko Ono screaming into a microphone in front of an audience of gullible people also has over 5 million views on YouTube. It also has 50,000 dislikes against 26,000 likes, and the comments are mostly people making fun of the video. As the baby boomers age, their cultural products rapidly become self-parodies. Their most devoted children, the under-40s who are trying to maintain their crumbling establishment, still pay lip service to this muck but when they get home from their climate summit, they typically turn on the latest hits. Or, if they have a semblance of taste, possibly some classical standards.

Unfortunate young people who study music under those that promote modernism typically turn to contorted fusionist attempts to incorporate ‘underground’ popular ‘music’ like Dubstep into the highbrow repertoire. No one pays attention, although the grants keep flowing. At best, these crossovers into subcultural garbage produce YouTube sensations. But these show up clearly the severe limits of the musical forms that we are dealing with. Consider a dubstep rendition of Beethoven’s Für Elise by the ‘artist’ Klutch. It is almost comical to listen to—although the YouTube video has attracted over 49 million people who either have fantastic senses of humor or awful musical taste. Mr. Klutch has chosen Für Elise for the simple reason that it has a catchy hook. Since dubstep is basically the repetition and modulation of an underlying hook, the crossover just about “works” in a technical sense. But the piece loses everything else that makes it interesting. It is not allowed to develop or to go anywhere. The hook is simply repeated over and over again. 

Since these crossovers are obviously unproductive a priori, and creative people have realized the dead-end of Schoenbergian modernism, true artists seem to have shunted back onto the Christian track. From the haunting hymns of Arvo Pärt to the exotic rhythms of Jordi Savall, the motifs are familiar to anyone accustomed to classical and renaissance canons. Pärt’s rendition of Salve Regina has nearly 3 million views on YouTube, although from the comments it seems that many listeners are not aware that they are listening to a prayer rather than film music. His Fratres is unspeakably brilliant and is recognizably of our time. This is not a simple throwback or a nostalgic recreation; a Renaissance-era listener would have found Fratres baffling. It’s oscillation between violent, jolting assaults of violin and ephemeral, spiritually uplifting landscapes is utterly strange and perfectly modern and suited to the modern world. If anything in highbrow music has a chance of developing, it is this.

No Masses Breed Suffering Masses

The most difficult genre to imagine in a Christianized society is undoubtedly popular music. Yet it is, in a sense, the most important. Popular music forms popular consciousness. It promotes the virtues of the population or, in sadly decadent societies like our own, the vices. Music hits the mood directly and uplifts or degrades us accordingly. 

Contemporary rap and hip-hop music, for example, are designed to degrade. Whereas earlier iterations mixed upbeat rhythms with degrading lyrical content, contemporary iterations drop the upbeat rhythms in favor of dreary and repetitive beats. One of the most popular songs in this new genre is Gucci Gang by Lil Pump (1 billion views on youtube!). The song is hilarious—a real bellyacher—and the video puts it well over the top. There is no point in highlighting here the infantile simplicity of its lyrics or its borderline self-parody of crude consumerism. What is fascinating is that it performs a sort of reductio ad absurdum on pop music itself. Pop music, of course, relies on crude hooks to catch the attention of listeners. Trap music pushes this to the next step where it inserts strange vocal utterances that sound like they are from a child’s cartoon—I would almost advise the listener to try it out for themselves, no description can capture it—and uses these as additional catches. But this ‘gagagoogoo’ is presented against a dark and bleak backdrop, where the music sounds like it is pulling the listener into a depressive spiral. This is not the melancholy of Schubert’s Der Doppelganger—and, take caution, even such Romantic excesses are (at least in the opinion of this writer) dangerous for the soul— no, this is degradation pure and simple. This is not the melancholy of the frustrated lover; this is the suicidal nihilism of the opium-eater, mixed with the morality of the mugger.

This aspect of the music is perhaps best considered with reference to one of the better—although I use the word with trepidation—iterations in this new popular music subgenres: Mask Off by Future (440 million views!). This is a piece of culture worth taking more seriously than the dross of Gucci Gang, but it is not much the better for it. Whereas Gucci Gang is almost humorous in its unselfconscious self-parody of itself, Mask Off is quite honest about what it is. Mask Off discusses a life that comprises using opiates, hitting the gym, and sleeping with women. The limited, almost hellishly repetitive lifestyle described (completely uncritically) in the song is perfectly accompanied by the musical content. The song uses a repeating flute hook to pull the listener in. But behind it is an extremely downbeat sublayer that, as with Gucci Gang, leaves the listener feeling lost and despondent—as if he or she has fallen into a blackhole. The effect is impressive. If you allow yourself, you will certainly be moved by the song. But you will not be tapped into a deeper emotional substratum. If you listen closely, you will just feel dirty and hopeless.

It is remarkable that this music is truly popular. It sounds more like a subgenre for depressed teens or avant garde oddballs rather than the ‘Top Ten’ content it apparently is. But its popularity shows the almost infinite malleability of popular consciousness; something that has become increasingly apparent with the spread of bizarre ideologies in television shows and on streaming services. People, it would seem, really will swallow anything—even if it makes them feel ill. The rampant use of disgusting pornography and the increasingly popular consumption of certain drugs that, until recently, would have been the preserve of only hardened junkies is almost certainly behind this willingness to consume poison and slop.

Pray for the Conversion From Russia

It makes sense that liturgical music is seeing a revival. True Christianity is seeing a revival, as evidenced by the very medium that I am publishing in. So, it is not hard to see why the same people revising true Christianity are also interested in liturgical revival. The revival of highbrow music is less immediately obvious. But the impulse that is giving rise to the return to true Christianity is likely driving the changes in highbrow music. The alternative is simply clapped out. No intelligent person could possibly go to Yoko Ono’s art exhibit and not feel a pang of self-doubt.

Likewise, it is obvious why popular music is not seeing a revival. Good popular music cannot thrive in a degraded culture. Highbrow and liturgical music can separate them from the cultural surroundings. In that sense, both are elite. But popular music cannot. It is an organic outgrowth, a sort of mirror, of the state of the society at any given moment in time. This means that to catch a glimpse of what a revived popular music might look like we must turn to a culture that is trying, no matter how pathetically or slowly, to revive its Christian heritage. The most obvious example in this regard is perhaps Russia, which has been seeing such a revival for at least a decade. 

It seems likely that Russia is seeing this revival before the West because, in the 20^th century, they experienced the result of the liberal project in fast forward. In the West, liberal modernity hid its true intentions for the whole 20^th century. It pretended that it wanted compromise with its Christian past. Now it is obvious to all but the most devout National Review reader that this is not the case. In 1917, Russia got a shot of liberal modernity straight to the heart. Catalyzed, the liberal modernist project collapsed much faster. And so, the revival inevitably began sooner. In theory, this should mean that there are some younger people who will start to recreate decent popular music.

We are seeing some rumblings. Although you must look hard. But what we can see developing in Russia may have a lot to teach us in the West. The best representative of revived popular music in Russia is the Russian pop folk group Белое Злато or White Gold. The group is composed of a rotating group of young women and appears to have been around for at least 6 years. They are distinctly a ‘girl group’ in the modern sense, and this seems thought out and coordinated. The girls are pretty, good singers and would not be out of place in a standard pop group in the West. Their image is self-consciously opposed to the sexualized image of Western pop music. Sometimes this entails dressing up in traditional Russian outfits, but most of the focus seems to be on dressing modestly and doing street performances as can be seen from their YouTube channel. They seem to be relatively popular within Russia. Their English-language channel has almost 62,000 subscribers and there is evidence of them playing concerts in Germany and France. But Russian commentators have complained about their inability to get broad exposure and the crudity of their marketing attempts. Their recorded album, released in 2019, is available on Spotify, however. It is well-varied and does not disappoint.

Their music is a sort of folk revivalism. But it has a distinctly modern flavor. It is very distinct from the hippyish attempts at folk revival we saw in the West in the 1960s and 1970s. That movement was always going to be countercultural and the use of the music was twisted from its original context; by contrast, White Gold clearly aspires to being a true pop group. 

Their music does not suffer for it. In fact, it is excellent. Some of it is comprised of upbeat Russian folk songs like Young Cossack Girl, one of their most popular songs. The version of the song on YouTube suffers from some slightly wanting production values, but it is rich and complex. The lyrical content is standard folk fare, about a young man courting a young woman. Other songs are slower and more reflective. One of their best is Beyond a Calm River. This song does have explicitly Christian content and imagery, but one gets the sense that this derives from the fact that the song is Russian, and Russia is Christian. That is, the Christianity is secondary, not primary.

This probably speaks to what popular music in a Christian society must necessarily be like. As Catholics know, culture precedes Christianity and is receptive of it. Culture is a sort of base metal or prime matter which is then formed by Christianity. While highbrow and liturgical music can be focused and Christian, it seems more likely that popular music will always be more of a baseline cultural product, generated out of the specific soil that it grew up in.

Der Musikgeist and the Beginning of History

Music speaks to the deepest recesses of our soul. No doubt. And the repulsive world we live in is creating truly repulsive music. We should not doubt the impact that the sounds and songs that people listen to have on their character. They are profound. Much more profound than painting or literature or architecture. We march to the beat of a drum, as the metaphor states, not to the wave of a brush or the placement of a brick. Music is not in truth a simple reflection of culture, but its essence. Hegel spoke of a Weltgeist and tried to glean it through newspaper clippings and Napoleonic marches. Perhaps we would be better off trying to grasp at the essence of the Musikgeist.

The question of popular music in a Christian society is then likely to be tied up with the question of the relationship between Christianity and local cultures more generally. This in turn raises questions about the relationship between an integralist political program and specific national cultures more generally. It seems likely that an integralist state will find itself at war with degenerate corporate music. Perhaps it could have accommodated the American popular music of the 1940s and the 1950s, but today’s corporate music is actively geared toward corruption and degradation, not just of the morals, but also of the mood and the senses. This will likely require some sort of national cultural revival to restore solid prime matter for Christian culture to work with. Christ may have turned filthy water into wine; in the city of man we must be more practical.

by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

The following article is the first in a series of translations from the works of Jacques de Monléon (1901-1981). Along with his friend Charles De Koninck (1906-1965), de Monléon was a key figure in Laval School Thomism. So much so, in fact, that the school was sometimes called the “de Monléon-De Koninck School.”[1]

De Monléon was born in 1901 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera. He was sent to the Catholic boarding school Collège St. Jean in Fribourg, Switzerland (where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a fellow pupil). He then studied at the university of University of Aix-Marseille, earning degrees in law (1922/1923) and philosophy (1924). He then moved to Paris to continue his philosophical studies. In Paris he became close to Jacques Maritain.[2] But after a few years he began to diverge from Maritain. One point on which he disagreed with Maritain was the question of “moral philosophy adequately considered” (that is, on whether moral philosophy can be properly scientific without being subalternated to theology).[3] De Monléon was moving towards what he saw as more consistently Thomistic position. He was therefore happy to be invited to the Universty of Laval in Quebec in 1934.

Thomism of the strict observance was established in Quebec by Msgr. Louis-Adolphe Pâquet (1859-1942), who had studied under Cardinal Satolli in Rome. Paquet wrote a commentary on the Summa in Latin,[4] and an intransigently ultramontane-integralist treatise on ecclesiastical public law, written in French.[5] As dean of the faculty of theology at the University of Laval, Pâquet steadily expanded the teaching of philosophy, until it was possible to establish a full pontifical faculty of philosophy.[6]

It was during the expansion of the teaching of philosophy that Laval hired De Koninck and de Monléon. Through a miscommunication they both arrived to fill the same position. In the end, both were retained—De Koninck as professor of natural philosophy, and de Monléon to lecture in political philosophy and ethics. De Monléon was, however, to split his time between Quebec and the Institut Catholique in Paris. Pâquet was originally skeptical of the two laymen, since he thought scholastic philosophy should be taught by clerics, but he was soon won over by their love of St. Thomas.[7]

De Koninck and de Monléon became dear friends. They wrote many letters to each other during the months of each year that de Monléon spent in France. Florian Michel has analyzed their correspondence, showing how they developed the typical theses of Laval School Thomism in the philosophy of science and in political philosophy together.[8]

When De Koninck was appointed dean of the philosophy faculty in 1939, he and de Monléon also began to develop the pedagogical approach that was to become typical of the Laval School. It was an approach that emphasized the importance of learning step by step and in the proper order. The role of the teacher was to lead the students by the hand from the common conceptions of the truth naturally known to all to the first principles of reality. Thus de Monléon wrote to De Koninck:

We [have hitherto] certainly not [been] Thomistic in the way we teach. […] It is indisputable that we proceed in the manner of mathematicians and idealists. […] We immediately plunge poor little immature minds into the dark depths of being and non-being. […] One must lead such minds by the hand if one is allowed to forge such a twisted image. Manuducere. Sicut Zoé (my dear little Zoé[9]) manuducit pueros suos.[10]

This emphasis on the order of learning seems also to have led indirectly to less emphasis on publication in the Laval School, since “leading by the hand” was felt to be something that required personal contact. And, as it turned out, they were to feel that their few publications were often misunderstood. They did, however, begin the Journal Laval théologique et philosophique.

It was in Laval théologique et philosophique that the following “Short Short Notes on the Family and the City” were first published. Later they were included in the volume: Personne et Société, Overtture Philosophique (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 2007). Many thanks to Alessandra Fra of L’Harmattan for permission to publish this translation. The translation was originally made by a group of tutors at Thomas Aquinas College for a seminar on Catholic Social Teaching. Many thanks to Anthony Andres for permission to publish the translation on The Josias.

The nature and scope of political authority, and its relation to the incomplete community of the family, is a key issue in recent debates among integralists.[11] I am convinced that de Monléon’s profound reflections can contribute key insights to this debate. A printable version of the essay can be found here.

Short Notes on the Family and the City

Jacques de Monléon

1. – We know that many very eminent authors do not recognize the essential difference between domestic society and political society. Plato, for example, writes: “Well, then, surely there won’t be any difference, so far as ruling is concerned, between the character of a large household, on the one hand, and the bulk of a small city on the other? – Not at all. – So, in answer to the question we were asking ourselves just now, it’s clear that there is one sort of knowledge concerned with all of these things, and whether we call it the science of kingship or political science or household management makes no difference.”[12] The nineteenth century political philosopher, Louis de Bonald, writes in a similar vein: “Such is the likeness, or rather the complete identity that everyone recognizes between domestic and public society, that from the most ancient times kings have been called the fathers of their peoples.”[13] And the same idea is found in Fustel de Coulanges’s The Ancient City, and this opinion is the one of its directive principles: “Family, brotherhood, tribe, city, are societies in exactly the same way, and are born one from another by a succession of federations.”[14]

2. – Plato studies this issue using the same method that he uses everywhere in his study of reality. This dialectical method, that is, the method of logic, consists in comprehending objects, not by seeing their place in the order of reality, but by seeing their place in the logical order, that is, their place in the universality of our concepts, such as in the composition of subject and predicate in a proposition. The dialectical method is not necessarily illegitimate; not only can it be useful, but it is often the only good way to study some real thing. But we can abuse it, and its abuse begins when we suppose that things exist in reality in exactly the same way in which they exist in the mind. Its abuse begins, for example, when we suppose that the universality of the concept in our thought corresponds to some universal nature in realm of real being. And here is an example of what follows from such a supposition: since the logical genus is the principle, the foundation, and even the substance of our knowledge of things (after all, specific differences are imposed upon the genus to which they are added), it would then follow that the genus is also the substance or essence of the object in the order of reality, in such a way that the specific differences which are joined to the genus end up being accidental determinations of it. But this is false; the genus and the specific difference together express an essence which in reality is essentially one and indivisible. We can also be led to think of the genus as if it were the whole essence when we consider its relation to the subjects of which it is predicated. We can come to see the genus as a superior attribute, since it is more universal and extends to more subjects than the species. Then we might think that the genus is superior because it represents that which is more perfect in reality. Here we have the genus monopolizing the essential and reducing the specific difference to a mere accessory. We have imposed the properties of the logical order, in which the predicate is superior, upon the real order. Even though the genus is superior to the difference in universality, it does not really tell us that what it names is more perfect: on the contrary, it expresses what is indeterminate and potential in the notion of a thing.

Of course, we need to see that the city and the family are two species which fit under a more common notion.  But how can we avoid abusing this dialectical method? How can we resist the temptation to think that the genus expresses the whole substance? How can we avoid thinking of the specific difference as if it were merely accidental? Moreover, how can we know that there is a difference between the two kinds of societies, the city and the family, and what that difference is? To achieve these goals, it is necessary to follow a natural method, that is, it is necessary to try to grasp these things insofar as they are real beings.  That is, we cannot just consider the genus, the starting point of logic, and the logical modalities which exist only in the soul; we must also grasp the parts which compose the whole of the thing in its real existence. And so, to know the nature of this whole which is called the household, we must examine its distinctive parts, the elementary associations that form it in reality: the partnerships of husband and wife, of parents and children, of masters and servants. We must do the same for the city, since the distinctive parts of these two societies are truly and essentially different.  We must raise our minds up to their real foundations, proper, complex and living, the irreducible differences which distinguish them.

3. – Because it starts with facts, history might seem immune to the abuse of the dialectical method. But what do we actually find in Fustel de Coulanges’s History of the Ancient City? Of course, the author does insist on the growing strife between the city and the family, and on the final victory of the city against the family and the tribe; but by itself this does not prevent him from asserting that there is an exact likeness between these diverse societies. And that makes sense: it is not unlikely that beings of the same species fight among themselves and that the greater and stronger wins. – Again, one of the fundamental themes of his book is that religion, according to the ancients, has been the chief inspiration and the principal organizer of society. Fustel emphasizes the opposition between one kind of religion, a kind which worships domestic divinities, and another kind, which worships political divinities.[15] He neatly indicates the subjective allure of the first, the objective character of the second, and we can appreciate this contrast. But in fact Fustel is not as surprised as he should be. He does not appreciate enough the importance and the reason for this difference. His starting point, the likeness of societies in a common genus, is insufficient for understanding the progression between these things.

In truth, the facts of history cannot be deduced from logical relationships. It is neither the essence, nor the nature, nor the specific difference which form the object of history, but the singular, the contingent and the accidental insofar as they appear in time.  But these latter make up a fabric that unfortunately is torn by irrationality. How can we repair this fabric? The following might seem to work: let the historian, in place of simply telling everything that happens in the course of a particular time, also order it as unified and illuminated by a logical conception. Let him consider the accidental relations of events to each other as if they were an accidental relation of differences added to a logical conception. For example, the historian might look at the city not just as something which happens to come after the household temporally; rather, he might consider the city as an accidental variation, the same in kind as the family and the tribe. The advantage in basing historical accident upon a logical accident is that we infuse the events of history with a seductive rationality; we gather everything that happens in history under the same logical conception, just as the method of limits leads us from the square to the circle under the logical conception of the polygon. Moreover, since historical realities slowly emerge in time, and things that change little by little do not differ except in terms of “more and the less,” the use of a dialectical method in history does not appear to abandon its foundation in historical fact – but only if we gloss over the abrupt changes (for example, the joining of villages) that tear into the slow and continuous evolution of life. The dialectical method uses history in its attempt to discover a “more and the less” compatible with our thinking that the genus is in itself permanent, and that ultimately this “more and less” should clarify everything. Taken all the way to its logical conclusion (we cannot actually accuse Fustel of going all the way here), the historical-logical method which we have spoken of explains history as the development of just one substance. It should remind us of the Hegelian method, here used so brusquely by Karl Marx:

If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea “Fruit”, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea “Fruit”, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then in the language of speculative philosophy — I am declaring that “Fruit” is the “Substance” of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea — “Fruit”. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of “Fruit.” My finite understanding, supported by my senses, does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees the same thing in the apple as in the pear, and the same thing in the pear as in the almond, namely “Fruit”. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is “the substance” — “Fruit”.[16]

This way of thinking, moreover, has the effect of annulling all genuine evolution in history: since it eliminates essential specific differences, the uniformity of the genus allows only apparent or accidental changes.

But now let us suppose that the healthy desire to escape from this last consequence makes us decide to reintroduce the specific difference into the substance, instead of leaving it out. But let us also suppose that, fearing to lose the benefit of dialectical rationality, we refuse to let go of the ancient postulate, that what is substantial in the order of logical predication, the genus, is purely and simply substantial in reality. We can immediately see that trying to satisfy these two conditions simultaneously forces us to incorporate contradiction into the very substance of things. For if, on the one hand, the genus society constitutes the whole substance of both domestic and political society, and yet on the other hand these two societies are substantially different, it follows that they are, at the same time, essentially the same and essentially different.

And then we could take this substantial contradiction and make it the primary motivation in the soul which causes the movement of history. – We could also think, and this would be even better, that a contradictory essence is really not an essence; and thus that neither essence nor substance really exist; and in particular, that man has no nature, but only a history. And if we then dismissed the next world as an “illusion,” we could transfer all of our being into the accidentality of our actions. – But what this line of reasoning finally amounts to is a critique of the postulate which treats the genus and the logical substance as if it were the substance of things in reality.

4. – In contrast, Bonald refuses to accept the fundamental difference between the domestic and political societies because he deliberately contradicts those who base civil society upon a human and free convention. Society is necessary; it is natural. It is natural because it is necessary for the production and conservation of man. And since the society that is most clearly necessary for the production and conservation of man is the family, he reduces civil society to the family. But his error comes, not in saying that the family is necessary to the production and conservation of man, nor in holding that political society is natural and necessary to man. His error is not to see that the words ‘natural’ and ‘necessary’ have different meanings, and that we cannot apply these terms to the family and to the city in the same way. The family is necessary for the formation and preservation of the very being of man, while the city is natural and necessary for him to achieve his end: For the end of the generation of man is the human form; still, the end of man is not his form, but through his form it is fitting for him to work to an end.[17]

Such a serious mistake leads to unsettling consequences. For example, Bonald generalizes from the fact that in the family the subject proceeds from the sovereign (the child from the father) to infer that it will be the same in every society. He says that “subjects, insofar as they are subjects, proceed from sovereign and his ministers, just as the child proceeds from his father and mother.”[18] If we too argued this way, we might think that we have enlarged the family. We might also think that in (clumsily) establishing civil society upon this basis we further assure the solidity of the family. What we have actually done, however, is to justify beforehand and in principle the dissolution of the family into the State.  In fact, it is one of the pretensions, or if we wish, one of the ideals of the totalitarian State, that its subjects proceed from its power.

But these are not just the consequences of the kind of philosophy which we encounter in our day. In fact, these are its principles. It frequently happens that the most implacably opposed philosophical systems actually stem from a common principle, a common major premiss. By adding to that major premiss two different minor premisses, each in itself quite true, they ultimately arrive, by rigorous deductions, at two contrary conclusions that are equally and dangerously false. Isn’t this the case here? Let us take as our major premiss that the society which is concerned with the substance of man is the most perfect, and all others are reduced to it. If we add to this principle a minor premiss which is incontestable: the family is the society that is concerned with the substance of man, the traditionalist conclusion inevitably follows: the family is the most perfect society, and all others are reduced to it. But if, on the contrary, confronted by a conclusion so doubtful, I assume (always under the same major premiss) this other premiss: the most perfect society is the political society, the totalitarian conclusion is now imposed upon us: The State is essentially concerned with the substance, form, preservation, and betterment of man.

Of course, in an argument in which the minor premisses are true and the inferences are irrefutable, but the conclusions are false, our only recourse is to doubt the major premiss. But it is often difficult to track that major premiss down, above all when it is common to opposed systems, and all the more when it represents a very profound metaphysical principle. In the present case the major premiss implies nothing less than this: substance, being primary in the order of being, is also primary in the order of finality and action. That is, this premiss entirely confuses and even identifies the ontological primacy of substance with its teleological perfection. But neither in man nor in any creature are these two things the same: it is obvious that we are not perfectly good merely from the fact of our existing. Rather we are good only because our actions are properly ordered to our end. Being and action are identical only in God, and only God is absolutely good through his very being. Thus, the confusion of the city and the family implies, at its root, whether we like or not, consciously or unconsciously, that man has claimed for himself the Divine prerogative. And vice versa, every philosophy which makes action (thinking or any action, it does not matter) the substance or being of man posits a first principle which causes us to confuse the family with the city.

5. – Generation is the primary object of the association between a man and a woman. But generation is not something belonging to man according to his proper nature, that is, according to reason. Rather, it is common to him and to the other living things, and even to merely physical beings. The desire to leave behind another being that resembles himself is not, in man, an effect of a deliberate determination: nature itself inspires this desire in both animals and plants. As a tendency, it is as natural as it is universal. Nothing is more certain than that generation, as we have taken it, is rooted in the world of nature, is spontaneous, and stirs up the most vehement, the most impatient, and the most profound of desires. Nothing better shows us how we are natural. We must not forget this when we discuss the family. Now, while the first intention of nature is the preservation of the species, nature also universally intends to conserve and to guarantee the individual being which it brings into being. Still, this is a less primary intention which nature leaves to the care of the individual engendered. For, although the individual cannot be the principle of his own generation, in the end he is always reckoned to be the principle of his own conservation. He nourishes himself, nutrition being the most fundamental of the functions through which he assures his own preservation. What follows is that nature is responsible all by itself for generation; we see that generation does not make use of any art except the extrinsic and accidental. In contrast, the conservation of the individual requires more directly the help and the completion provided by art and reason. Thus, man preserves his own existence by building houses and making clothes and preparing food in the kitchen. Often among the animals, an art participates in instinct, each contributing to the preservation of the individual. These arts even demand specialized workers who are placed, as it were, on the edge of nature, since they do not reproduce themselves. All of this shows that the conservation of the individual, even if it is understood as encompassed in the intention of nature, even if it has its principle in nature, and in the vegetative nature which man has in common with other living things, is not so profoundly and exclusively natural as generation. We can see this last thing to have been well-understood by Maeterlinck  in his book, The Life of Bees:

Here again nature has taken extraordinary measures to favor the union of males with females. If she had devoted half the genius she lavishes on crossed fertilization and other arbitrary desires to making life more certain, to alleviating pain, to softening death and warding off horrible accidents, the universe would probably have presented an enigma less incomprehensible, less pitiable, than the one we are striving to solve.[19]

Nature’s “. . . constant cry on all sides is, ‘Unite and multiply; there is no other law, or aim, than love,’ while she mutters under her breath: ‘and exist afterward if you can; that is no concern of mine.’”[20]  The full meaning of the passage is this: the art which provides for the conservation of the offspring is marvelously displayed and used in the hive; but the union of the male and the queen happens far from the hive, in the depths of space, as if nature wished to show that she is self-sufficient for generation. And we are the bees.

Of course nature calls upon art and reason for the preservation of the individual most urgently and clearly in man. In the case of man, nature both intends the preservation of the species and is entirely charged with the execution of that intention. But, although nature intends the preservation of the individual man, she requires the prolonged and multiplied aid of reason for the execution of the intention. The first foundation of marriage is here. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman who are deliberately and determinately tied to one another. But mere generation does not require such a union because generation occurs in every species by the simple momentary joining of the sexes. The problem is that, left to herself, the female would not be able to fittingly provide for the nourishment, protection and education of the child.  The man must remain with the woman after generation, and this occurs only by a deliberate determination.[21]  Thus, nature first has recourse to reason in order to nourish the engendered individual.

It would be interesting to compare Hobbes and Rousseau with Bonald, on the subject of the preservation of the individual. All three would agree with an idea meriting careful consideration, that the conservation of the individual is taken up in political society, if not only there. But this is how they disagree: Bonald always links generation and conservation together; both are for him absolutely natural, natural in the same way. Hobbes and Rousseau, on the contrary, think that the conservation of the individual is the concern of reason and liberty. Isn’t the foundation for this divergence in what we have come to see? We have seen that conservation is natural in the sense that nature inclines to it, but it still requires the assistance of reason. We are here touching upon the principle of the distinction and relation between economics and politics.

6. – A thing is natural because nature produces it. But nature can produce a thing in many ways.

1. First, because this thing fits the nature of man in this, insofar as his nature has something in common with animals, with plants, or more generally yet, with all physical beings. This is the sense in which nature is inclined both to the generation and preservation of the individual. It is according to this meaning of the term that generation and preservation are called natural and are called more and less natural. Now, the inclination that is common to more different kinds of beings will be to that degree ‘more natural’ in each of them. But in some cases, in order to be fully satisfied, the inclination derived from what man has in common with other beings must have recourse to that which is proper to the nature of man, reason. This latter is the sense in which the conservation of the individual in the human species is natural, and in this way it differs from generation which, we have seen, requires nothing, so to speak, from reason.

2. In the second place, a thing is natural because it fits man in what is proper to his nature, reason. But even here we must make distinctions.

a) In some cases rational nature can be inclined towards acts which nature guides from beginning to end. It is in this way that nature produces in us from their very beginnings the most universal judgments, such as that the whole is greater than the part, or that we must do good and avoid evil. etc.

b) In other cases rational nature is inclined to something which can only be accomplished by the application of reason and will. If something is called natural in this sense, it is because it conforms to a thing’s nature, because it corresponds to its ultimate desire, which is its perfection. This is something that is not provided by nature alone. Knowledge, virtue and political society are ‘natural’ in this sense and in this sense only. In such things the natural inclination varies in degree in different individuals; nature only provides a beginning, a spontaneous tendency, more or less vague and confused, toward something that can only come about by an extended and laborious application of art, reason and the will.

These are the principal senses of the word ‘natural,’ although there are others. We see how the word ‘nature’ hides equivocations and that it can be the source of fallacious reasoning. We see also the vigilance and dexterity which is needed when we use it. Otherwise, we speak in vain about the ‘natural’ character of the family and society. To understand anything we must distinguish.

These necessary distinctions help us discern between the contrary positions, of Hobbes and Rousseau on the one hand, and of Bonald on the other. It is true, as the first two posit, that political society is not natural; it is not natural because it cannot be formed unless reason and freedom are applied to establish it, although of course it is natural in that it corresponds to the inclination and perfection of man. And it is true to say with Bonald that political society is natural, in the sense that it corresponds to the inclination, the desire and the perfection of human nature, although it is not natural as if reason and free will do not need to intervene in order to institute it.

7. The third object of the family is the education of children, their apprenticeship in human life. But what do the words ‘human life’ signify in the sense in which it is now necessary to take them? “Life” does not designate being but acting. Human life is made up of specifically human acts, i.e., acts which proceed from a deliberate will. Thus education is something so different from generation and conservation that it seems at first difficult to assign it to the family along with them. Insofar as it generates and conserves children, the family as a cause ought to provide for the being of children. Insofar as it educates children, it regards them, on the contrary, as principles of action. But since the milieu par excellence of properly human acts is political society, ought not education pertain to it? Education is inevitably contested terrain, a sort of perpetual Gran Chaco[22] where the two communities, the family and political society, face each other.

At this point we must lay down a general principle: As soon as man is seen as a principle of his own actions, it follows that there must be a concurrence between the family and public society. Already on the economic level, with respect to man’s conservation and maintenance, the two communities interfere with each other. However trivial the claim may seem, let us not forget that the living being is itself the active principle of the assimilation of its food, even if not always a principle of the production.

Can we call the family a ‘natural’ association with respect to education? The very question implies another: is it natural that a principle of action, above all when it acts by reason and will, when it is causa sui [cause of itself], depends in its action on some prior principle? On the contrary, doesn’t its nature demand that it act by itself? We know that certain educators rely on the principle of letting the child move himself. That it conforms to the nature of a principle made for self-movement that it move itself is obvious, but nothing can move itself unless it has first been put into act. A car doesn’t start on its own; the driver has to start it. And this is the nature of every agent outside of God, whose being is action. This is a universal law, transcendental within creation: in order to act a creature must first of all have been acted upon by another; and the creature is subject to this law even when it is of itself a cause by reason and by will. Now the role of education is exactly this: to put man on track, to put him in act in the order of human action, and to elevate him to the status of a principle which is a movens seipsum [self-mover].

Nature demands more: it demands that that the generated be set going and put into act by its generator. To the degree that we follow the thread of generation and heredity, our access to the soul of the child is more intimate, easy, and natural. In fact, we see very clearly that the same is true here. Being is the root of doing, and doing is the end of being. The father is, then, the natural educator of the child.

Still, nature seems perplexed and hesitant on this point. It inspires certain kinds of generators to restrict themselves pretty strictly to generation.  In these cases, they have hardly put their offspring into the world before they lose interest in them. They say to them something like: “We have begotten you; our job as far as you go is done. You are living; it’s up to you to move yourself; it’s up to you to keep out of trouble.” Fish, for the most part, and often men too, end their association there. For others the reverse is true: they seem to more or less forget that the limit of their activity in regard to their offspring should almost be a refutation of their activity; that the goal to be attained is to enable their descendants spontaneously to move themselves well. There are parents who tend to bind their children to themselves indefinitely; to exaggerate and prolong their causality. “I want my daughters. I made them. They’re mine,” says Pere Goriot.[23] The root of this tendency is found in generation, the first basis of paternal behavior. My daughters, I made them; thus, the daughters do not belong to themselves. Poor Goriot reasons very formally once the principle is posited. What has been engendered, as such, is entirely an effect. It is not the cause nor the master of its own life: it owes that to its parents. So it is that, rather than sustain and animate from within, the voice of the generator can, in the father, overmaster the voice of the educator. It is difficult, indeed, for the cause of something to see it otherwise than as an effect; to know, when the time comes, to treat its effect as a principle; more: to exercise its causality so as to make its effect itself be a cause.

8. From the principle posited, “I have made them,” Goriot logically infers that his daughters are his. But must we not question the principle itself and ask whether a father pronounces it from within the plentitude of fatherhood? In fact, neither Goriot nor Grandet[24] represent the father in his absolute and complete idea, in his Platonic essence. What Balzac depicts in these characters is rather, in the twilight of a fading day, the disparagement of human paternity. Speaking as he does, Goriot sinks far below the perfect Father of whom one cannot admit that He uses the word make with regard to his Son: genitum non factum. And even with regard to human generation we sense something trivial, inelegant about using the word make. In truth, the physical generation of living things, adequately grasped, encloses a conflict which the story of Oedipus symbolizes in a striking way. The destiny of Oedipus is, among other things, a paternity which sinks from its royal, almost divine heights:

Children, young offspring of ancient Cadmos…,[25]

into the ambiguous and pitiful obscurity of the lower regions:

But today the gods have abandoned me. I am the son of impure beings, and I, miserably, have seeded the womb whence I came.[26]

Should we erase this immanent antithesis between grandeur and misery, all the tension of the drama is released. Whence comes the conflict? What importance does it have? We will do well if we get just a glimpse of the answers to these difficult questions.

We are not subsistent life, but corporeal living things. Our life is a participated life, existing in a matter which is its subject. Consequently, the propagation of life for us is tied to the generator’s transmutation of the matter from which the generated being is made. From this point of view, the father can in a certain sense be compared to an artist or a worker, and he can say that he ‘makes’ a child as they make their works. The base, vulgar, ambiguous, and sordid connotations, everything miserable or repugnant which can be met with in physical generation is attached to the material cookery which is its precondition. Without conceding anything at all to the morose repulsion of the Manicheans on this issue, their attitude is explained by this condition. However much the shadowy regions of generation contrast with its sublime heights, the shadowy regions still have their mystery.

If the physical generation of the living is imperfect insofar as it is physical, it owes its grandeur to the fact that, all the same, it is the generation of something living, i.e., a communication of life, the production of something living from a conjoined living thing according to a similitude of nature. Considered in itself, what could be more wonderful than to propagate life, to communicate to another the perfection which consists in self-movement? In itself, this includes no imperfection and we find it in God. The shadows and contrast appear when the communication of life is complicated by the subjection of a matter, a subjection more profound to the degree that the perfection to be communicated is higher and more interior. For there is an opposition between the perfection communicated, which is to be moved by oneself, and the mode of communication, which implies that a matter, a subject, is moved ab alio [by another].

At bottom, isn’t this the antithesis between life and subject? If we agree to call ‘subject’ that which receives or possesses in itself a determination, a movement, and act, every life is a victory over subjectivity. For the living is not such because it receives an act in itself, or because it possesses it in itself, but rather because it moves itself, applies itself, and determines itself to action. This feature of the living thing led Bergson by extrapolation to deny that any coming to be demands a subject. “There are changes, but there are not, under the change, things that change: change has no need for a support.”[27] Bergson goes too far, first of all because change demands a subject, and then also because life has consented to being participated in by a subject. We find the right manner of thinking about and saying these things in these lines from John of St. Thomas: “The vitality of an act does not belong to it precisely due to its inherence in a living subject (for this only implies passivity, and what is passive as such has nothing vital about it); the vitality of an act belongs to it insofar as it proceeds actively from a living thing, for the most formal notion of the living thing is that it moves itself, not that it undergoes something.”[28]

Because it is a transmutation,  an alteration of a subject, biological generation is a signpost of becoming. It is in itself a riotous movement, a paroxysm of life. It is transitory and repeats itself indefinitely. Entirely concerned with bringing things into existence, but not with conserving them in existence, it pursues multiplication in an unlimited becoming. But all of this is not sufficient for achieving the full perfection of paternity. No one can really lay claim to the title of father except by the care which he gives to the preservation and the development of those whom he begets. There are peoples for whom the legal father is the one who takes charge of the children, and not simply the procreator.[29] This is because to preserve something in being is more perfect and demands a higher and more universal causality than it does to bring things into existence. To nourish is, in a sense, more noble than to beget. To nourish is to procure food. Food presupposes a being which is already able to move itself, since the one being fed must vitally assimilate its food, and in fact food is the very object for this vital power of assimilation. Now every movere seipsum [self-mover] confronts an object, while the moveri ab alio [things moved by another] is completed by an efficient cause. For living things, food is the first object which they have the ability to make use of themselves. Finally, as we have already noted, food presupposes the cooperation of reason. Let us add to this the protection and education of the offspring and we will begin to see that it is in going beyond mere generation that paternity develops its true greatness. It is by this sort of extension and enlargement that paternity is elevated unto a royal dignity, even unto divinity, as we find in Egypt, where the Pharaohs were fundamentally the food suppliers of the people.

9. Of the three essential functions of the family, generation, nourishment, and education, the first two concern the substance of man, the third, his action. Moralists and sociologists as a rule do not think much about substance, and this is quite understandable, for they are concerned with human acts, which, as we have noted, are accidents. Let us look into this further. If men who are concerned with human action easily turn away from the substance, the essence, or the nature of man and if they even come to deny it, the first reason for this attitude is the dislocation in the creature of the order of being and the order of good. A man has being, in the absolute sense of the word being, not because he is good, but because he is a man. On the contrary, a man is good, in the absolute sense of good, not because he is a man, but because he acts well. We have being absolutely in virtue of our substance, which is not good except in a relative way, radically, that is, as the first ‘root’ of our acts. And we are good absolutely by our actions, which are not being except in a relative and , as it were, secondary way, since they are no more than accidents of our substance. This great divergence between being and good certainly does not make us feel completely comfortable, nor perfectly secure, and we always try to mask or reduce the divergence. Recall in passing two contrary philosophies on this point: that of Leibniz, who turns substance into an at least virtual action, and Existentialism, which suppresses substance to reduce all our being to the accidentality of our acts.

Even if it is normal that the moralist and the sociologist do not take any time to think about the human substance, it would nevertheless be good if they took a little more interest than they are wont to do. The simple recollection of what a substance is already brings in some serious clarifications on the question of the family and the city. We call a ‘substance’ a thing to whose nature it belongs to exist by itself. This is not to say that a substance cannot have a cause of its existence. With the exception of God, all substances exist because of one or more causes which produce them. The words ‘by itself’ do not exclude a cause, but rather a subject in which the substance would exist and which would sustain it: a substance cannot be received into something else. Existing by itself, maintaining and retaining its existence in itself, substance cannot be specified by anything exterior to itself, in the way sensing, thinking, willing are specified by their objects. Not existing in another thing, it is not open to another thing: it is interior to itself, shut in on itself, enclosed on itself. It is ‘in itself.’

Now, it is remarkable that the family, whose primordial occupations concern the engendered and conserved substance, also tends to shut in on itself. Where the family is strong, it has trouble opening up. Where men open themselves up too easily or too quickly to their circle of friends or to the world, the family loses its cohesion. The old Sabine families opposed Romulus when he wanted to make Rome an asylum for all comers. We can multiply observations of this kind with regard to peasant families, provincial ones, etc. However hackneyed the subject, we know that reality does not lag behind imagination. Experience shows us how varied, comic, refined, or violent are the lives of families. Further, many men find their vital support there: domestic bears who love their cage, who decorate it to their taste, who see irresistible pleasures there and refuse to leave; owls who indeed have their wisdom, but whom the light of day dazzles and who prefer their hole; and also delicate plants: in the open field they can only vegetate and die: they need a greenhouse and a planter.

But for other temperaments the family is soon too narrow; they need the open air. Close them in and they get jumpy. You can put a geranium in a vase, but not an acorn, which will break it when it becomes an oak. This is how the family, when it yields to its demon of isolation, works for its own destruction: it makes those who do not find their fulfillment in it displaced persons, vagabonds. We send young men into the world because the permanence of the domus [home] is unable to assure their livelihood; their attachments are broken, and when they return the family no longer knows them or hardly recognizes them for its own. Here colonization can be a safety-valve, except that colonial life is not generally very favorable to the solidity and stability of families. Relations with the metropolis are developed and multiply, resulting in an ebbing of mores, while new customs corrode traditions. The Roman patres were well guarded against the influence of those returning home. Rome did not swarm off like the Greek cities: it constituted provinces; it organized the universe around itself. If time permitted, it would be worthwhile to consider all this more thoroughly, taking the notion of empire as our frame of reference.

Do not forget, moreover, that it is not only because it is self-enclosed, but also because it is stable that substance reverberates with the behavior of the family and that it provides here a healthy antidote to the city, whose bent, on the contrary, leans somewhat dangerously in the direction of the indeterminate mobility of action.

10. To the degree that substance is self-sufficient in the line of being, of esse, since it exists in and by itself, to that same degree it is insufficient in the line of action and of bene esse, of well-being. For action is specified by an object, that is, it is turned toward an end extrinsic to substance. This profound antinomy of the ‘in itself’ and the ‘of the other’ is not simply a matter of metaphysical speculation. It finds expression in human behavior. It provokes differences of attitude, disagreements, misunderstandings, antipathies secret or declared, and sometimes implacable combat. Is this not one of the sources of the permanent antagonism between Athens and Sparta? In The History of the Peloponnesian War, the people of Corinth declare:

Lacedaemonians…you do not show much comprehension of foreign affairs…. Alone among the Greeks do you remain inactive…You have no idea, moreover, of the adversaries you have in hand with the Athenians. How completely different from you! They love innovations, are prompt to conceive and to realize what they have resolved; even if you intend to safeguard the way things are, you lack invention, and you do not even do what is necessary. They show themselves audacious even beyond their strength, bold beyond any expectation, full of hope even amidst dangers. Your line of conduct consists in doing less than you might…. They act and you temporize; they travel abroad while you are the most domestic of men…. Rest without occupation burdens them more than laborious activity. In brief, in saying of their nature that they are as incapable of remaining quiet as they are of leaving others in peace, we would be speaking the absolute truth.[30]

But precisely because it inclines first of all to the being of substance, the family is incapable of being completely self-sufficient in the order of human acts. It does not belong to the family to assure the full per se sufficientia vitae [self-sufficiency of life], the full development of life in action. This is not to deny that it is good for certain men (and in certain cases which are in fact frequent) to be enclosed in a strongly familial society. It is so among primitive peoples, and in civilizations in decay, i.e., every time men are not ripe enough or end up being too ripe to live a perfect human life. To the degree that man is too imperfect to be up to the standard of the city, it is necessary that the family maintain or firmly reestablish its controls. Whence the benefit of the middle ages: coming after a used up and defeated civilization, it recovered and rejuvenated its seeds in a natural and life-giving family climate and so prepared new developments.

We cannot exaggerate the concrete, the practical importance of these reserves. Nevertheless, this should not hide the deep-seated incompleteness of substance and thus the insufficiency of the family. This insufficiency can again be seen from the following perspective: to act, a created substance must be surrounded, armed, equipped with powers or faculties like intelligence, will, etc. The development of these faculties of man relative to action for the sake of the perfect human good finds its perfection in political life. Thus, philosophies which propose to relieve substance of these encumbering faculties and which make of substance itself an immediate principle of action – all philosophies of this sort posit a principle of confusion between domestic and public society. Those who give everything to the family, like Bonald (a great admirer of Leibniz), and those who pretend to remove everything from it, like the totalitarian state, can together lay claim to this principle and these philosophies. Doesn’t the Marxist solution to the human problem also express the same viewpoint? Isn’t it finally a question of inverting these two, the faculties and actions of man as superstructure of a nature, and the substance which the faculties presuppose? Of integrating our action into our essence, so that the former no longer depends on the latter, but the latter on the former? Isn’t this, in fact, the true end of the quarrel between man and his nature? The true end of the quarrel between essence and existence? The second coming of freedom?

11. But have we now made such a sharp distinction between substance on the one hand and faculties and action on the other, that we are inclined to make a definitive argument that education does not belong to the family? How can we escape this conclusion if the city is the place par excellence of human action and if human actions are the object of education? Or maybe this distinction really supports the opposite: civil society must not intervene in education if it will not aid the family and subordinate itself to the family?

But since being is the root of action and acting well is the end of being, society naturally has a responsibility even for being. Thus we cannot purely and simply deny that it has a responsibility for action and acting well. Man does not receive only his being from his causes. They must set a man in motion, give him his start, otherwise he would not be in a position to move himself. The role of familial education is precisely to begin us in life, in human acts, by putting us in act in such a way that we can in the end act and act well on our own. This beginning is a long and laborious affair. For the angel it needs only an instant; for the animal it sometimes demands a certain length of time; but in the case of man it needs a very long time, for he can only slowly acquire the formation and the necessary experience to face the indefinite and shifting sea of life.[31]

But the family does not secure a man’s entire education. Familial education always implies that the child is moved to some degree by his causes, increasingly less so as the child grows up. Thus, the aptitude to move oneself cannot be perfected without being exercised in the city. On the other hand, familial education is accomplished in a certain way by impressed motions, by undergoing impulsions. In the family there is always a kind of “inculcation.” We may recall here the observations of Plato on the role and mode of familial education in the acquisition of good order, on the δοκοὖντα νόμιμα [apparent laws], the πάτριοι νόμοι [paternal laws]. In the family there are all kinds of prescriptions that resemble law: Remain quiet, stand up in the presence of your elders, etc. It would be ridiculous to make ‘laws’, in the proper sense of the term, for all the little matters and uncertainties. It is necessary however to immerse children in them, to provide them the sense of what is right, what is legitimate, and thus prepare them to obey the legal. But this immersion proceeds by way of νουθέτησις, “putting yourself in the mind, in the head . . .”[32]

Now the properly and fully human act requires that man, instead of acting under a impulse received from outside, brings himself to one end or another by particular means that he has deliberately chosen. These are the modes of objectivity and finality that establish the character and specific excellence of the education received in the city. It is easy to make a mistake on this point because we often have a debased idea about the political completion of education, and because that education is confused with education or teaching by the State. For good or ill, the State can make itself a teacher and take over the part of education that normally is left to the family. The terms public or national education may deceive us: we do not thereby know what the goal of education must be in the city as such.

In the funeral speech that Thucydides puts in the mouth of Pericles, one of the reasons for loving Athens is its shows and festivals.[33] To offer to the eyes of men the objects that affect, open and form them is in fact a very important part of public education. We cannot explore this here since the details are endless. Let us say simply that in every matter and every order, from monuments to displays, and from landscaping to hats, the city must thoroughly maintain an atmosphere such that the things surrounding the citizens are not crude but are presented with the quality, harmony and excellence commensurate with the good life of man. Bread, for example, consists not only of carbohydrates, proteins and vitamin B; its nutritive power must be flush with true flavor and harmonious with the first degree of wisdom, namely, the first discernment of order that is the sensation of taste. Wine, too, should have its bouquet. Men should not allow themselves to be buried in a materiality that is scientific and brutish, the funeral of comfort, but convenience should raise itself up to a little of true and free beauty. The city watches over language, which is not simply a kind of exchange but an incomparable means of formation through its phonetics, through the expressive power and intelligence of which it is objectively full. The city must attend to public performances, music, theater, cinema, contests, matches, races, Olympiads, ball games, fireworks, festivals, fairs, broadcasting and bullfights. It must not only sustain artists but also protect and promote a certain quality in the works themselves, even if it must act contrary to the artists themselves. It should abandon neither the artists nor the public to the mercy of snobbery, clique, ambition, or moneyed interests. Clear the air, as much as possible, above the marshes of literature. All this is not easy. It requires neither edicts nor bureaucrats nor the nationalization of the arts and letters, but a kind of superior and free judgment and a sense of life. But how can this be accomplished?

We must look for those craftsmen who have the gift of following the trail of true beauty and grace, so that like the inhabitants of a healthy country, the young may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings health from wholesome places, and so from earliest childhood that influence must insensibly guide them to friendship, to imitate the beautiful and to establish between it and them a perfect harmony.[34]

Moreover, all this formation which comes from the city must begin at childhood and surround and bathe familial education.

Finally, it is through the law that the education of man is truly achieved. There are no laws in the family, except in an imperfect manner. Law is objective and universal, an order emanating from reason in view of the end which is the common good. But reason, objectivity, universality, and finality make it that the law speaks to men only to the degree that they can move themselves deliberately, and therefore it speaks not to children but to citizens.

12. Just as art presupposes matter and the gifts of nature, so the city presupposes men. Receiving them from nature by way of the family, the city has for its object not to make men, but to perfect them, to give them a sufficiency of those means necessary for attaining by reason and will the end of human life: Homines non facit politica, sed sumens a natura, utitur ipsis.” “Political [science] does not make men, but taking them from nature it uses them.”[35]

Moreover, when a society, a political regime meddles with generation (for example, with the intention of maintaining purity of race and blood), it admits its impotence and resigns as a regime, as a political society: for the object, purpose and greatness proper to politics is to bring to the highest possible degree of perfection the human matter that nature furnishes. It is more difficult to lead a man than to beget him. As Joseph de Maistre said: “The great difficulty is not to make children, but to make men.” Even the greatest artist does not produce the matter that his art works upon; rather, he receives it “as is” from nature, and knows how to pull off a great work, notwithstanding how inconsistent or rebellious the matter may be. The greatest marvel of the divine art is not creation, but the elevation of the creature to the supernatural order. This is not to say that the city must be purely and simply uninterested in generation. On the contrary, the city must take it into account, but only in order to assure that the family can do it well: as city, its object lies elsewhere.

13. The distinction between domestic and public societies becomes even clearer when we consider it from the viewpoint of causality. In the family the efficient cause manifests quite clearly, whereas the final cause plays a more implicit role and within the context of nature. The parent is the efficient cause of the offspring and of the nourishment he provides for it, and the education proper to the family is conducted to a great degree by a kind of “pushing.” But the end is always present in the life of the city, which has as its express goal the happiness of man, the ultimate end to which it tends through its deliberate action. Moreover, there is a great difference between the way an end works and the way an efficient cause works. The end does not trigger the will; it causes action only if it is presented in the guise of object: ignoti nulla cupido (there is no desire for what is not known). There is no parallel in the case of efficient cause, which acts by a thrust that the patient undergoes obscurely. In the family there is often a compulsion that is felt and often very compellingly, but often it is more instinctive than objective. Traditions are received without examination, accepted and handed down simply because they descended from previous generations. Justice in patriarchal societies assumes the appearance of Themis: an oracle given by the father, by the king, under some inspiration come down from on high. Law is not what one reads, but what binds us as a holy, traditional matter, for which one does not have to advance reasons. Contrary to this, the more the city rises and the more men know and want to know the reasons behind their actions, the more the final end affirms its role in their life: justice becomes Judgment [Gr.: Dike]. Law will then proceed from deliberation and be established upon principles and written down for all to see.

14. Whatever corrections they might require, the considerations found in Fustel’s The Ancient City concerning religion and the family provide much to ponder. Without a doubt the first issue concerns the basis of the family’s sacred character, once so widely recognized. If nature aims at generation with such a strong impulse, it is because by generation corruptible beings imitate, as much as they are able to, the eternity of God. The individual passes, but the species abides. What pushes these beings to reproduce themselves is the divine desire in nature to resemble its own indefectible principle. To participate in God’s immutability and eternity through succession, through the decay of time and individuals, is the end that nature pursues by means of generation.

For in all things, as we affirm, Nature always strives after ‘the better’. Now ‘being’ . . . is better than ‘non-being’: but not all things can possess being, since they are too far removed from the principle. God has therefore adopted the remaining alternative, and fulfilled the perfection of the universe by making ‘coming-to-be’ uninterrupted, . . . because, ‘that coming-to-be’ should itself be perpetual, is the closest approximation to eternal being.[36]

Let us note here a few points:

a) In accomplishing a task divine in the way we have just spoken of, it is normal that the family in all its vigor (that is, especially before the appearance or clear development of the city) feels instinctively its existence and its permanence as something divine. It puts itself above the individual, who is reduced in a way to being only its support, its transitory and unceasingly replaced instrument. It tends, in the manner of monism, to absorb all human life, leaving the individuals, its proper members, to be hardly more than modes or accidents of its own being. Fustel felt all that deeply and perhaps even exaggerated it a little.

b) But Fustel constantly opposed religion and nature with respect to the family. Let us distinguish: if we think of nature insofar as it is made real and concretized in this or that individual, then it is true that the family can, in the name of its own existence, neglect nature, or even oppose it, for example, in breaking certain bonds of natural affection. But if one thinks of nature as the divine wish of always maintaining itself across the passing individuals, then there is nothing more strongly natural than domestic religion.

c) Imitation of divine permanence is the end of nature and generation. But this end is not an object that nature must know in order to reach it. This is why the atmosphere of domestic religion is so dark, peopled with ghosts and shadows, with shades and household gods in indistinct outline, with occult influence. These divinities do not give rise to a true mythology, which is something more luminous and objective. Rather, the household gods are honored by superstitious practices or magic. And the rites and formulas are repeated long after anyone understands them.

There remains much more to examine in the relation between the family and religion. Thus, let us consider religion according to its precise definition. Religion is an incomplete form of justice and has for its object the worship rendered to God insofar as he is the first principle of being and of the government of the world. In other words, religion looks to God principally as the Creator and Sovereign Mover. If it reaches out for him under the title of Last End of the Universe, it does so less openly, so to speak, and in a secondary, implicit and indirect way; in fact, in such a way that we find in religion the predominance of the efficient cause that we find in the family. Isn’t this one of the foundations of the close affinity between the family and religion?

Now it is true that domestic religion is at first very closed in, and that each household is jealous for its particular divinities. Then one day, when the idea of a Single God, the Principle of All Things, was affirmed, domestic religion opened up, enlarged itself and became related to the universality of the first cause. God is adored and entreated as the Father par excellence and the source of all fatherhood. Parents and ancestors are now venerated as ministers of God in his communication of being. But this enlargement of religion does not require it to rise above the reference point of efficient causality. Narrower or wider, the divinity is always manifested as the source of being. In sum, religion does not lose its profound affinity with the family just because it understands and has recourse to a higher and more universal deity.

Also, the religion of the city is not a simple expansion on domestic religion, in such a way that there is an historical continuity which leads from the second to the first. Rather, when we pass from one to the other, we enter a different order of things. Fustel himself insinuates this using excellent terms which we wish to emphasize: “On the other hand, man applied his idea of ​​the divine to the exterior objects that he beheld, that he loved or feared, to the physical agents who were the masters of his happiness and his life.”[37] The political religion is turned towards its own objects and its own ends.

15. Thus, the family is spontaneously religious, first because of the divine end which nature pursues by means of generation, but also because of the primacy of efficient cause and the mode of this kind of causality. In contrast, the family is less fully in harmony with the supernatural. If the evolution of the life and religion of the city had not displaced the ancient religion of the household, would the Gospel and Revelation have been able to capture the ancient world as they did? The paradox is clear. Religion and the supernatural are very much connected, but they are different and it would be erroneous to confuse them. There are societies and governments which are very hostile to the supernatural and yet which invoke God religiously. Moreover, if a religion has for its object the worship which is owed to God as First Principle of reality, that religion can be purely natural.

Of course, the supernatural supposes that the creature depends upon God as the cause of its being. But to discern what religion consists in essentially, we cannot stop there. The lowliest student of theology clearly sees that if he limits himself to considering God as an efficient cause, as the cause of being as being and the proper and universal cause of existence, he can discover nothing about the intimate life of God in the Trinity of Persons. Considered from the point of view of efficient causality, the actions of God proceed ad extra [towards what is outside] from the divine omnipotence in its essential unity. No effect of God, as effect, would manifest the mystery of the Trinity. An effect as such, that is, in its reference to the efficient cause, does not have any connection to the divine Persons insofar as these are distinct relations, but only insofar as these are one self-same God. The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of divine life, interior and transcendent, and nothing of its secrets is made known through the conduit of efficient causality alone.

But the supernatural is precisely a participation in the nature and the intimate life of God. It confers on us a likeness to God so particular and appropriate that the creature is seen to be associated with the knowledge and the joy which God has in Himself. The supernatural order is not at all defined by God in his function as creator, nor by creatures insofar as they descend from their principle. We must leave behind the consideration of Him as efficient cause. The supernatural order is formally defined by the return of the creature to God.  He makes his intimate life, considered as object and end, as happiness, the eternal life of angels and men.[38] If I  consider grace only as an effect which God brings into existence – which in truth it is – I manifest it only under an aspect common to all created things and I am incapable of seeing it as a participation in the divine nature. How could we hold onto a univocal participation in deity while staying within the limits of efficient causality? An effect of God as such can only have an equivocal and extended likeness to Him.

We often criticize Aristotle because in the Metaphysics he only sees God as the end, not as the author of the universe. But perhaps he has very serious reasons to do what he does in this oft-criticized book. May I stammer out some brief remarks on a subject so large and which none should be allowed to discuss lightly? The intention of Aristotle is to rise up to the perfection of God as pure act, absolutely immobile. “As pure act”: what does this mean? We can understand by this that God possesses in Himself all the perfection of being, and consequently that He is the source of being for all other things. Such a meaning is certainly not excluded from the text of which we speak. But the intention of Aristotle goes further, is more profound and more daring. “As pure act” can signify not only all of the perfection which pure act possesses, but also the manner in which pure act possesses all perfection. But the manner in which pure act possesses all perfection is as an act which cannot be made determinate by any other, by any act which is before any other, outside of any other, and more ultimate than any other. But, between the two orders of causality, efficient and final, it is only the latter that by its very formality entirely excludes being made determinate by something other than itself. An efficient cause must be made determinate by the end, but the end in itself is an immobile mover. Thus with wonderful certainty Aristotle adheres to final causality in his effort to rise up to the supereminent mode of divine perfection. And thus he approaches, insofar as man’s unaided reason is able, not only to God as a being or substance containing all perfection, but also to God as a nature, that is, as an interior principle of operation, a nature which is the actuality of life, a life which is thought, and a thought which is thinking itself. All this is a more and more rigorous and ascending expression of pure act considered under the mode most determining its own perfection: non determinatur ab alio [it is not determined by another].[39] At least we cannot honestly take away from Aristotle the conspicuous merit of having brought to bear, with respect to God, the notions of nature and of end. Without these notions, taken up and elevated by Revelation, it is impossible to discern what the supernatural is. It is really arrogance on our part to hastily blame the insufficiency of Aristotle’s doctrine, because we ourselves have forgotten the insufficiency, in this matter, of considering only efficient causality. But let me close this Aristotelian digression and return to our main subject.

There is an affinity between religion and the family, but there is also an analogy between the supernatural order and the political order, in both of which the object and end are primary. To corroborate our reflection on this point, it is fitting to make a further examination of the theme of substance. Man can only participate univocally in the divine nature by taking his actions for his object and his end. This is because it is impossible to conceive of a creature which would be supernatural in its substance. For, insofar as it is a creature, it would be other than God; but insofar as it is a substance, it would not be specified by anything other than itself. Thus, it is always in relation to God as object and end, it is always in relation to the actions which allow the creature to reach this object and this end, that the creature participates in the supernatural order. As in the political life, the supernatural life presupposes the created substance, of which it is only an accident. Grace does not have the task of producing this substance any more than the city does. We can say of grace what Aristotle said about the city: it receives things generated by nature and uses them.  We maintain that, on the contrary, the family, insofar as it furnishes the human substance, keeps itself at a distance from the supernatural order.

There still remains this considerable difference between the supernatural order and the political order, that the first allows us to participate in the divine nature by making us children of God. In this higher order, the political and domestic orders are combined: citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Also, the Virgin Mary, is invoked near the beginning of the Litany as Mother of Divine Grace, but near the end as Queen of All Saints. Which of these two titles is greater? And which of these other two, Queen and Mother of Mercy?

16. The specific difference between the family and the city, and the preeminence of city should not, however, make us forget the intimacy of their relationship, nor the necessary transfusion of the influx of the family in political life. The city is the ultimate sphere of human action, which proceeds from a deliberate will. It is the sphere where man moves himself to an end that he knows objectively as the end, that is, as the principle and the measure of his actions. But, we can now see clearly how much, because of its very perfection, the causality of the end finds itself compromised. While the efficient cause only needs passivity in the subject that it moves, the causality of the end can only bloom in the secret of the appetite. Without the interior and living response of willing, the end remains ineffective, inactive, and powerless. If someone pushes you, you will move. But will you move if someone calls you? In this way, political life presupposes an intimate fulfillment in man. The city cannot profitably welcome in a man it if he has not been sufficiently raised and has not actually acquired the correct interior dispositions. Such dispositions enable him, when entering into the “kingdom of ends,” to properly answer its call. The family is necessary for bringing about this interior formation. Without the family it is impossible to work out in a connatural fashion the subministratio virtutis [the development of virtue], because only the family approaches, in the process of the generation, to the substantial and subjective regions of the individual, to his very marrow. Mitte radices.[Go to the root.]

Moreover, this intimate formation not only has the role of tracing for us determinate ways for choosing means, since these choices depend on our deliberations; it affects us more secretly. It is about animating in us this first affective and effective love of the end that is the principle of all our actions. It belongs to the family to awaken the first infused, but diffuse, inclination to want the right thing. It belongs to the family to ensure this profound apprenticeship of the heart.

However, this sort of infusion does not proceed only from the immediate family, but more largely from all that composes the mysterious, mystical, and concrete reality of the homeland. The homeland, the fatherland, is an intermediary between the family and the city. In it, the constraining environment of the family is relaxed, to mingle in the sea of political life. We need this widening. Without cutting us off from our roots, it frees us from the narrowness and the inevitably prosaic tedium found in the family. At the same time, the fatherland establishes and immerses the material of the political life in the current of heredity and tradition. Outside of our family, it is in our fatherland that we are formed, incubated, ripened, so that so many enduring sensible and spiritual goods, slowly developed by the multitude of our ancestors, are naturally transmitted to us in a warm, constant, gentle, maternal humoral symbiosis. And this is necessary to dispose us to move, to move well, to move with ease, naturalness, and freedom in the environment of the city. The fatherland brings about an intimate and living harmony between the subjective and the objective, the instinctive and the deliberate, the moveri ab alio [to be moved by another] and the movere seipsum [to move one’s self].

At the same time that it forms us from the side of the subjective interior response which such objects and the ends require, it also tempers the excess of autonomy that is a danger to what is essential to the life in the city. The fatherland reminds us that, while in some way we ourselves are principles, there are nevertheless principles from which we come. It reminds us that we cannot place ourselves above such principles and detach ourselves from them under the insolent and juvenile pretext that we are beyond them, or that everything is not rationally evident to us about them. It demands of us an attitude of piety with regard to our fathers and their descendants. This is exactly the contrary of what Rousseau recommends in these lines from the Emile:

For by a right which nothing can abrogate, every man, when he comes of age, becomes his own master, free to renounce the contract by which he forms part of the community, by leaving the fatherland in which that contract holds good. It is only by sojourning in that fatherland, after he has come to years of discretion, that he is supposed to have tacitly confirmed the pledge given by his ancestors. He acquires the right to renounce his fatherland, just as he has the right to renounce all claim to his ancestral domain.[40]

It is very certain that the original principles of man, his dependence on them, the transmission of what he receives from them, cannot be reduced to clear and distinct ideas. There are too many obscure things in generation, too much hidden grandeur in paternity. In this sense, we cannot see so deeply into the principles of our being that we could justify them geometrically.  Our adherence is something natural, instinctive, mystical and deeply interior. There is also the filial acceptance of our dependence with respect to these causes, which are prior to us and superior to us, without which we would not even exist and without which we would not be what we are. In the atmosphere of the fatherland one accepts this obscurity and this dependence, but they do not seem entirely compatible with perfect freedom, full self-control by reason and will. Hence we are tempted to free ourselves, and in particular to replace the fatherland with the nation, and to replace the piety that one owes to the fatherland with nationalism. For the nation is still a community of birth, but now it claims that it possesses a revelation, a luminous and transparent self-consciousness. In the nation we no longer feel the weight of darkness and dependence. The feeling of piety disintegrates. The causes from which we come may either be left behind or will only take their meaning and their value through the gradual revelation of the national community. Nationalism, at least in the most basic and most fierce forms, is the opposite of the fatherland and tradition.

17.

I will begin with our ancestors because it is fair and just, in such circumstances, to pay tribute to their memory. This country without interruption has been inhabited by people of the same race and, thanks to their valor, it has been handed down free until today. Our ancestors deserve praise, but our fathers deserve more still.  To the heritage that they received, they added, and have bequeathed to us, at the price of a thousand labors, the power that we possess. We have increased it, we who are still living and who have reached full maturity. It is we who have put the city in the position of being sufficient unto itself in everything, in wartime as in peace.[41]

These words of one citizen to other citizens manifest a balance between the mind of tradition and the mind of progress. The Athenians remain attached to their origins, to their principles; they venerate the springs and submerge themselves there. However, the man of the city cannot simply stand still even among the holiest sources. He must not be frozen in the cult of ancestors, in the preservation of ancient mores. The city and the complete human life are undertakings of active reason, of art, and of freedom. Without turning away from our causes nor avoiding their impulses, we must look to their ends and achieve them by our own initiatives. In this lies an attitude of wisdom and salvation.

In fact, history teaches us that the epochs in which the authority of tradition and autonomy of reason happily conspire are exceptional and brief. To leave the conservative status quo and achieve the fullness of life, men and the city launch out. However, as paradoxical as it sounds, by entering into the order of the deliberate pursuit of the end, man arrives at the infinite, the infinity of possibilities, of circumstances and contingencies, means, and movements of life. The call of purpose, of happiness is thus combined with the almost irresistible attraction that the infinite has to reason, freedom, and desire. And soon the determined and determining course of tradition is submerged by the sea of promises, of resources, of unlimited roads.

The city carries in itself this principle of infinity. To ensure the full sufficiency of life, the city must contain a certain number of men and also a whole apparatus of resources, a variety of occupations: the army and navy, industrial and commercial organizations, communication systems, etc.—all this in incessant movement, ever in the process of becoming. In this complex situation the devil of the infinite both strolls and attends to his work. Gradually from the city rises a whisper, and then a whole rumor of ideas, works, business, passions, pleasures, pains: the aura of concupiscence, of endless traffic. It looks like a nebula in limitless expansion, expanding from its own resources. Once its movements have taken too much acceleration and amplitude, it becomes humanly impossible to subordinate them to the purpose that should govern them: the good of human life. The only thing that can now be established is a sort of Leibnizian equilibrium: forces and beings struggle for life within their capabilities. The symbols of goals and ends, the acropolises of the purest design, the best-cemented capitols fade, dissolving slowly in the smoke of the city.

The city looks a little like an angel: she is sufficient unto herself in all that is necessary for the perfection of life. But the fall of cities and civilizations also resembles the fall of an angel. When man turns away from both his causes and true purpose, he acquires a sort of freedom, the freedom to move in the infinite. Then there is a tumultuous, intoxicating, and proud effervescence of life. This is not scarcity, but prosperity, even abundance. In numerous fields, discoveries and conquests indeed go their pace. And then one day civilization and the city die, exhausted, suffocated in their excessive exuberance. They have consumed themselves with their own fire. The city and civilization have wanted to conquer the infinity of the sea by their traffic, but that very sea advances to engulf them:

Thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.

Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.

Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin…

What city is like Tyre, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?[42]

And here, correspondingly, the fall of the angel:

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.

Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.[43]

18.—Theology shows us that the Holy Spirit necessarily proceeds from the Father and from the Son, not only for this reason, that if He only proceeds from the Father, He would not be distinguished from the Son, but also for a reason taken from His definition, from His proper character: the Holy Spirit necessarily proceeds from distinct persons because he proceeds from a love that is friendship.[44] It seems here that theology applies a principle like that which Aristotle opposes to Platonic communism: too much unity corrupts the city. In denying the Filioque, we would make the error of exaggerating unity in the procession of the Holy Spirit, and at the same time we could no longer maintain the bond of a union of friendship. Likewise, in exaggerating unity in certain forms of communist or totalitarian societies, we would distort and make difficult, even impossible, the strictly political union of citizens.

To make my meaning clear, let me remind you that a single essential and substantial will animates God the Father and the Son. But for a love of friendship to spring forth, it is necessary for distinct persons to be friends in active communication with one another. Likewise, a sole and common will must animate all the citizens: the conservation of the common good, the salvation of the city, etc. But this one and common will does not suffice to form the unity characteristic of society, whose living immanent link is an active communication among the citizens, in other words, a friendship.

The unity of society is not attained simply by an attitude of respect for the laws and for the rights of other members of the community. If this were enough, the Arcadians, who lived separately, each in his own home without disturbing each other, would have been real citizens.[45] But conversely, to react against the centrifugal  tendencies or isolationists tendencies of the individuals, sometimes we crowd the multitude elbow to elbow, so that we form one single mass carried by a single movement. In this way great unity is clearly achieved, but this is not a city at all, but the very opposite. Bringing about a will common to all and tending towards the same goal is one thing, but the birth of an active and communicative, vitally unifying friendship  between distinct and different persons who have this common will is another thing entirely. In a mass, individuals are unified and uniform, but also very isolated: each person can only think of himself and can only love himself. The mass, in itself, is not necessarily more than an association of tyrants diligentes seipsos magis quam civitatem [each loving himself more than the city]. This is actually the complete dissolution of the city, of the political order. But this dissolution is not opposed at all to a very compact unity: thirty tyrants and plenty more can be vigorously unified, like wolves.

When the connection between the elements of the multitude and the coherence of the political machine no longer emanates from distinct parts that organically make up the whole; when the connection of the parts and their consensus no longer comes from these various parts insofar as they are diverse, but mutually and amicably communicating in the common good; when the genius of the city is no longer living in these parts, each being in its place in the heterogeneous whole according to legal justice: then political life ceases to be in the parts, it becomes a stranger to them; political life becomes transcendent and the parts only passively receive its effects. In sum, the city is replaced by The State.

Yet, in order for the friendship that is the intrinsic bond of the city to be living, it is necessary that the citizens order themselves to the common good. The common good is not only the good in which the citizens take part, or may take part, or must take part; it is the good from which they must receive or take their part, to the distribution of which they have the right. It is true that I have the right to take my turn to sit for a certain time on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes.[46] It is true, but this is not enough to justify my pretention to citizenship. To consider the common good under this light is to consider it from a social perspective and not a political one. It is certain that this participation in the common good and this distribution of goods must be assured by society and assured in justice. But as long as we rest in this, we see in the member of the community nothing more than the subject of this good, a good in which he ought to participate. But the citizen as such is more than a subject. And to be more than a subject, he must turn towards the common good insofar as it is diffusive or communicative of itself; in other words the citizen must be the source of the communication of the good. The citizen helps himself, but he must pass the plate. It is not the subjective participation in the good that defines the activity of the citizen as a principle of the city. This subjective participation does not imply in itself any specifically political activity. When the State gets to providing all the good to each of the atoms of the uniform mass, we will no longer have anything to spontaneously communicate to each other; we will be the society of glutted subjects; we will no longer be citizens at all. This is how society curdles into the State, and how well-being ceases to be the good life.

[1] Florian Michel, La pensée catholique en Amérique du Nord (Paris : Desclée de Brouwer, 2010), p. 200.

[2] Michel, La pensée catholique, pp. 204-205.

[3] Michel, La pensée catholique, p. 206. For the controversy on Maritain’s view of “moral philosophy adequately considered” cf. Ralph McInerny, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), pp. 109-118. Maritain’s position was that, given that man’s final end is the first principle of moral philosophy, and given that in this order of providence man’s final end is supernatural, moral philosophy must be subalternated to theology to be fully scientific.

[4] Michel, La pensée catholique, pp. 199.

[5] Droit public de l’Eglise, 4 vols. Principes généraux; L’Eglise et l’éducation à la lumière de l’histoire et des principes chrétiens; L’Organisation religieuse et le pouvoir civil; L’Action religieuse et la loi civile (Québec, 1908–15). Cf. John R. Shook, “Pâquet, Louis-Adolphe (1859–1942),” in: The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, vol. 3 (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005).

[6] Laval University developed out of the seminary of Laval (founded by Bishop Laval in 1663) it was chartered as a University in 1852. The Faculty of Philosophy was established in 1935 (until then philosophy had been under the Faculty of Arts). See: Michel, La pensée catholique, pp. 198-199.

[7] Michel, La pensée catholique, pp. 207-208.

[8] Michel, La pensée catholique, pp. 208-215.

[9] Zoé was De Koninck’s wife.

[10] “Leads her children by the hand.” Quotation following: Michel, La pensée catholique, p. 223.

[11] See, for example: Andrew Williard Jones, “What States Can’t Do,” New Polity, July 24^th, 2020 https://newpolity.com/blog/what-states-cant-do (accessed November 18^th, 2020).

[12] Statesman, 259b.

[13] Constitutive Principle, c. 6.

[14] Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, III, c. 3.

[15] Ibid., c. 2.

[16] Karl Marx, The Holy Family, (taken from Selected Writings, Paris, Gallimard, 1934, p. 44).

[17] St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Physics of Aristotle, Book II, lesson 11, n. 2.

[18] Op. cit., c. 6.

[19] The Life of Bees, I.

[20] Ibid., II.

[21] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIaIIae, q. 154, a. 2.

[22] Area is South America claimed by several countries.

[23] A character in a novel by Balzac.

[24] Another character from a Balzac novel.

[25] Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1.

[26] Ibid., 1360.

[27][27] H. Bergson, La Pensee et le Movant, p. 185.

[28] John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, disp. 32, a. 5, n. 32 (ed. De Solemnes, T. IV, p. 79)

[29] Encyclopedie Francaise, T. VII, 7’14-1ss.

[30] Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, I, 68-70.

[31] John of St. Thomas, op. cit., disp. 23, a. 2.

[32] Cf. Souilhe, La Notion d’intermediaire, pp.146ff.

[33] Thucydides, op. cit., II, 38.

[34] Plato, Republic 401c.

[35] Aristotle, Politics 1258a21.

[36] Aristotle, Generation and Corruption 336b27.

[37] Op. cit., III, c. 2.

[38] John of St. Thomas, op. cit., Disp. 37, art. 2, nn. 1 and 2. (T. VI, p. 353).

[39] Illud, cuius sua natura est ipsum eius intelligere, et cui id quod naturaliter habet non determinatur ab alio, hoc est quod obtinet summum gradum vitae. [That, whose very nature is its very act of understanding, and to which it naturally belongs not to be determined by another, reaches the highest level of life.]  – S. Thomas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 18, art. 3; John of St. Thomas, op. cit., disp. 16, art. 2 (T. II, p. 336).

[40] J.-J. Rousseau, Emile, V, Des Voyages.

[41] Pericles to the Athenians. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War II, 36.

[42] Ez. 27: 25-27, 32 (KJV)

[43] Ibid, 28: 13-19

[44] John of St. Thomas, op. cit., disp. 35, art. 4 (T. IV, p. 227).

[45] Aristotle, Politics II, c. 1, 1261b29.

[46] The main botanical garden in France.

Not moments after Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti was published, many began pointing to its statements on the death penalty. In particular, Fr. James Martin appears to believe that, with this document, Church teaching has been “definitively” changed on this question. He writes:

Pope Francis’ new encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” does something that some Catholics believed could not be done: It ratifies a change in church teaching. In this case, on the death penalty.

There are many things wrong with this statement, particularly canonically, but we should focus on the most fundamental problem: Church teaching cannot be “changed” in the way he and many others regularly imply. The Church is not an authority that creates truth. It does not write down a rule book of what has been made true and what has now been made false. The Church identifies something as true, in a way an historian or a mathematician may do so. In other words, the Pope could not change a moral truth any more than he could change an historical one. The Pope, along with the bishops, certainly have the power above all others to identify truth in this way, but no one has power to make a thing false which was once true. What is true, particularly with this issue, is of course complex, but one can be absolutely certain that whatever is true cannot one day be made false, or vice versa.

The problem with Fr. Martin’s position is not merely that it’s incorrect; it’s that it undermines itself. If the teaching can be “changed” from X to Y, then there is no reason that it couldn’t be changed from Y back to X, turning the Teaching Office of the Church into something like an adversarial political process where sides lobby for their position to win out. This is not only entirely contrary to the basic fundamentals of the Church’s teaching authority, it runs afoul to the entire theme of fraternal love, submission and cooperation that carries throughout the document. The kind of thinking employed here has unfortunately plagued our civil law for generations, and it is truly disheartening to see it be promoted in the ecclesiastical space.

What’s perhaps most unfortunate about Martin’s comments and framing is that Pope Francis expresses his most nuanced approach to the question of the death penalty in this document. He moves beyond the bare question of whether capital punishment is, in principle, permissible as a matter of a moral fact to whether it is adequate in recognizing the fullness of Christ’s love. The Holy Father does not directly engage the long-established tradition that recognizes its legitimacy; he instead moves beyond, appealing to a tradition within the Church which transcends bare moral truth, to love beyond the minimal, especially when it comes to something that so cuts off the other.

This is not a “change” in Church teaching any more than “love thy neighbor” is a “change” from “the Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked.” Opposing the death penalty is to love despite and beyond any underlying moral truth, which by itself would be inadequate in expressing Christ’s unending outpouring of forgiveness and mercy.

It is unquestionable that Pope Francis, and so the Church, is opposed to capital punishment in both the personal and the political, especially when rooted in vengeance or a desire to derive pleasure from another’s punishment, but the Holy Father does not appear to be writing any sort of philosophical treatise or “definitively” defining some sort of new church teaching. He calls on us instead to dig into why he wants us to oppose the practice and to recognize that the tradition of doing so has always existed in the Church. Any statements about a “change” in Church teaching, on either side, are to miss his point entirely.

Bostock vs. Clayton: The Arguments of Gorsuch and Alito in Brief

If you have ever wondered what practical significance the understanding or misunderstanding of the natural law presented by the New Natural Law (NNL) theorists might have in public life, look no farther than the strange arguments presented in the majority’s opinion in Bostock vs Clayton.

Neil Gorsuch, a student of John Finnis (a founder and chief proponent of NNL theory), argues the following:

If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee—put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer—a statutory violation has occurred… An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.[1]
… Consider, for example, an employer with two employees, both of whom are attracted to men. The two individuals are, to the employer’s mind, materially identical in all respects, except that one is a man and the other a woman. If the employer fires the male employee for no reason other than the fact he is attracted to men, the employer discriminates against him for traits or actions it tolerates in his female colleague. Put differently, the employer intentionally singles out an employee to fire based in part on the employee’s sex, and the affected employee’s sex is a but-for cause of his discharge.[2]

He completes his argument by means of another example:

A model employee arrives and introduces a manager to Susan, the employee’s wife. Will that employee be fired? If the policy works as the employer intends, the answer depends entirely on whether the model employee is a man or a woman. To be sure, that employer’s ultimate goal might be to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. But to achieve that purpose the employer must, along the way, intentionally treat an employee worse based in part on that individual’s sex.[3]

So, to sum it up: to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation necessitates that one discriminate on the basis of sex, because if—in a thought experiment—the same inclination were present while the sex of the employee were changed, then the reason for discrimination would appear or disappear, respectively. Robert loves Susan (and openly lives in accordance with that inclination), and the employer is fine with that, but if Robert were actually Roberta, then the employer would fire her. It is all about the sex of ‘Robert(a).’

Alito is more than surprised at this line of argumentation and, in particular, the last example cited:

This example disproves the Court’s argument because it is perfectly clear that the employer’s motivation in firing the female employee had nothing to do with that employee’s sex. The employer presumably knew that this employee was a woman before she was invited to the fateful party. Yet the employer, far from holding her biological sex against her, rated her a “model employee.” At the party, the employer learned something new, her sexual orientation, and it was this new information that motivated her discharge.[4]

Yes, but Gorsuch would say that while the information was new, it was only relevant because of the sex of the employee. So, Gorsuch would say, it all comes down to the sex, and is therefore in violation of Title VII.

The key question, as both Alito and Gorsuch understand it, is what motivates the firing of the employee. Alito says it is the sexual orientation that motivates the firing, Gorsuch says that it is the sex plus the orientation that so motivates, and all that is needed (to be in violation of Title VII) is a “but-for” condition. Even while the employer focuses on the same sex orientation, the fact remains that if the sex of the employee had been different, so also would the employer’s attitude.

Alito backs up his explanation with the following argument:

The problem with this argument is that the Court loads the dice. That is so because in the mind of an employer who does not want to employ individuals who are attracted to members of the same sex, these two employees are not materially identical in every respect but sex. On the contrary, they differ in another way that the employer thinks is quite material. And until Title VII is amended to add sexual orientation as a prohibited ground, this is a view that an employer is permitted to implement.[5]

So, Alito is saying, the difference between a man attracted to women (erotically, and acting from that attraction) and a woman so oriented is not simply that one is a man and the other a woman, but rather that one is erotically inclined to members of the same sex, and the other is erotically inclined to members of the opposite sex. Gorsuch, Alito is implying, is treating the ‘erotic inclination to women’ as if it is predicated univocally of both men and women, but it is not. Thus, the motivation is not about the sex, it is about the different kinds of erotic orientation.

Alito’s charge is absolutely correct. It would be helpful, however, to explain more clearly why one cannot predicate the particular orientation univocally of men and women. Gorsuch’s mistake, which is absolutely typical of the NNL theorists in general and Finnis in particular, is that he attends to reality as if things existed in reality in the same way they exist in thought. In our thoughts, we can abstract and separate things that cannot be separated in reality. The NNL theorists and, again, Finnis in particular tend to treat of things separated in thought as if they could be separated in reality. This can be a danger in speculative understanding, to be sure, but it is deadly in questions of motivation, action, and practical reasoning in general. For we can separate good things in thought and then treat of their goodness or desirability as if they could also be parceled out, as it were, according to the separations or abstractions in our mind.

This must be further explicated. I do so by analyzing Gorsuch’s particular error, and then showing the same kind of error in the principles of the NNL theory, and Finnis’ work on fundamental human goods specifically. Finally, I show the danger to any judicial theory subject to these errors.

Gorsuch’s Particular Error Examined

Let me give an example parallel to Gorsuch’s “fateful party” example. Let us suppose that Robert invites his boss to his home for a party and introduces his boss to his ‘spouse,’ x. Is x male or female? The fate of Robert depends upon the answer. To use Gorsuch’s mode of interpretation, this means that the action of the employer—and thus the motivation of the employer—will spring from the sex of the spouse. If ‘x’ is Susan, the employer will be fine and happy. If ‘x’ turns out to be Charles, the employer will be motivated to fire Robert. Thus, but for the sex of x, Robert would be fine. It seems that the motivation for firing depends upon sex, specifically the sex of the spouse.[6]

I don’t offer this example facetiously, or to score any cheap points. I am sure Gorsuch’s response would be that the sex of Robert was just as informative of the situation. But in reframing the example slightly, I am pointing out the kind of argumentation that Gorsuch is employing. He is saying that the motivation of the action on the part of the employer comes down to the information that leads to the understanding of the situation. The employer learns of the orientation of his employee by understanding the sex of his employee plus coming to know the sex of his employee’s ‘spouse.’

This is true as stated, but the point in question is not what information leads to an understanding of the whole situation, but rather what is the reality of the situation, and in particular what is the reality of the love that is being talked about. I may say that I do not understand that a person is living a homosexual lifestyle until I see that he is erotically inclined and acting upon that inclination to individual men. I thus see that he is homosexual when I consider his sex plus his erotic inclination and action upon this inclination to other men. But at that moment, my understanding of ‘attracted to men’ is differently said of this situation than it would be in the case of a woman ‘attracted to men.’ And that is because I hold that erotic love is only naturally ordered when it is between men and women. Thus, while my understanding of the reality comes from the putting together of terms in the way Gorsuch sets out, my understanding of the terms themselves changes as they come together. I cannot predicate/say ‘attracted to men’ in the same way of men and women unless I am merely attending to the reality according to the abstraction and separation in my mind. Thus, the employer really can be motivated by the orientation as opposed to the sex, to complete Alito’s argument because it is not important whether the employee is a man or woman; what matters to the employer is the reality of erotic love, and he wants his employees to live in accordance with that reality.

Gorsuch is doing something the NNL theorists do consistently (if usually more broadly) and especially in their accounts of the principles of human agency. He is analyzing a situation abstracted from concrete reality, separating terms, and then saying that the agent is motivated according to this abstraction and separation of terms. Gorsuch thus considers a situation wherein a man is attracted to men (in the relevant ways) and separates the terms “man” and “attracted to men” as if the understanding of what it means to be ‘attracted to men’ is something that can be understood so abstracted and applied univocally in reality. But ‘attracted to men’ does not exist in a vacuum; it only exists in this or that individual, or you can say it exists in the mind of one considering it abstractly. However, the point is that it does not exist in reality in the same way that it exists in the mind. In the latter, it is predicable of either men or women, and thus it exists in the mind abstracted from proper or improper orientation. By itself, it indicates neither. That is why it can be said of both. But it exists in men (and in this man) as an improper orientation—i.e. not in accordance with nature, and in women (and in this woman) as a proper orientation—i.e. in accordance with nature. It is therefore the inclination as it exists in the subject that is pertinent. The employer is concerned not about the sex, but the proper or improper orientation of the individual employee regardless of sex.

To get technical,[7] this is why logic and metaphysics (and also natural philosophy) are not the same science—in the scholastic sense—and why logic is an art rather than a science. Logic concerns the existence things have in the mind and the production of intentions, statements, and syllogisms, while metaphysics considers being as such (and natural philosophy considers natural being specifically). For the logical intentions exist in the mind and we incline to the reality through logical intentions. And thus while we use them in every science, we must recognize when we are considering the reality in itself, or considering it according to the logical abstraction through which we incline to the actual subject. It is not bad to do the latter as we do it of necessity as the above examples indicate, but we must not confuse the abstraction’s existence with the reality’s existence, or the kind of predication that works univocally in abstraction with the analogical or equivocal predication that obtains in reality. This is the case in both speculative and practical matters, but perhaps there is a special urgencyin practical matters where what is important to the agent is what his action is about in reality.

Gorsuch’s argument is practical (in kind) inasmuch as he is talking about the way reason shapes action. Again, he argues that because the employer would act differently based upon whether or not the employee is a man or woman who lives out an erotic attraction to women or a man, therefore the reason for the employer’s action in part comes down to sex. But this is to claim that action is rooted not in being as it is in things, but rather as it is in the mind. While it is true to say that we cannot desire what we do not know, and to this extent it must be in our mind, it is foolish to say we want things according to the existence they have in the mind. When we incline to a thing, we want it, not the thought of it. When we make something (and this the NNL is better about), we want the being of the thing in reality and not merely in our mind. But the being that we want (or don’t want) is always the existence outside of the mind. As Aristotle and Thomas consistently say, goodness is in things.

So, to close off this section on Gorsuch’s error, we should emphasize that the employer who is concerned that his workplace respect the natural order, and therefore wishes to prevent any scandal in regards to the true ordination of erotic love, is not concerned with the sex of his employees even in part. He is focused upon the good of the natural law and order regardless of a person’s sex. Whether or not the employee is a man or a woman, the employer simply requires the same reality be respected.

John Finnis and the (lack of a) hierarchy of goods

In the next section, I detail the general version of Gorsuch’s error that permeates the most basic principle of the NNL theory. To do so, let’s first examine an identical mode of argumentation and confusion in John Finnis’s work. In his influential book, Natural Law and Natural Rights, John Finnis argues that there is not an intrinsic hierarchy amongst the basic or fundamental goods of human life.

To understand his position adequately, we should first explain what is meant by “basic” or “fundamental human goods” in NNL theory. Inasmuch as something can be listed as desirable for its own sake such that one need not reference anything further in order to explain its desirability, that something is called a basic or fundamental human good. Christopher Tollefsen gives a nice summary of the basic goods position of the NNL theorists:

… practical reason, that is, reason oriented towards action, grasps as self-evidently desirable a number of basic goods. These goods, which are described as constitutive aspects of genuine human flourishing, include life and health; knowledge and aesthetic experience; skilled work and play; friendship; marriage; harmony with God, and harmony among a person’s judgments, choices, feelings, and behavior. As grasped by practical reason, the basic goods give foundational reasons for action to human agents. Moreover, they are recognized as good for all human agents; it is equally intelligible to act for the sake of the life of another as for one’s own life.^[8]

The actual list of goods has been something the NNL theorists have gone back and forth on, but they remain consistent in claiming that the basic goods are those that can be reasons for action all by themselves. Anything that is desirable for its own sake (such that one need look no further for a reason for action) is a basic good or the instantiation of one.

John Finnis argues, in line with the rest of the NNL theorists, that these goods have no intrinsic order amongst themselves, since they can all be ‘good for their own sakes.’ And here is how Finnis defends the position in a critical passage in Natural Law and Natural Rights:

If one focuses on the value of speculative truth, it can reasonably be regarded as more important than anything; knowledge can be regarded as the most important thing to acquire; life can be regarded as merely a precondition, of lesser or no intrinsic value; play can be regarded as frivolous; one’s concern about ‘religious’ questions can seem just an aspect of the struggle against error, superstition, and ignorance; friendship can seem worth forgoing, or be found exclusively in sharing and enhancing knowledge; and so on. But one can shift one’s focus. If one is drowning, or, again, if one is thinking about one’s child who died soon after birth, one is inclined to shift one’s focus to the value of life simply as such. The life will not be regarded as a mere precondition of anything else; rather, play and knowledge and religion will seem secondary, even rather optional extras. But one can shift one’s focus, in this way, one-by-one right round the circle of basic values that constitute the horizon of our opportunities.^[9]

It all depends on what one focuses on in the moment or a given set of circumstances. Each basic good can be seen to be more important than the others, or perhaps one set over another. To present a parallel example, if one witnesses another person drowning, in that moment, the goodness of life will seem more important than the goodness of knowledge. But in a moment of persecution, one might recognize that one should be willing to stand up for the worth and goodness of truth even if it means risking or losing one’s life.

But this mode of argumentation—while presenting the truth in part—is exactly like Gorsuch’s insofar as he tries to make a conclusion about the order of goodness by an analysis according to the existence things have in the mind. His example—where one’s analysis of the situation rests upon certain concepts separated from others in thought (health and the further perfection of truth)—shows that one thinks about the situation through these concepts, and then concludes that in the given situation under consideration, one’s desire and motivation for action is in accordance with that separation. In the struggle for life that occurs when one is drowning, one aims at the goodness of life, and probably doesn’t even think about the goodness of knowledge in any explicit way. Yet, if I take a step back, is it not evident that even the drowning man desires life and health for what it is in reality and not according to the kinds of separation that occur in his mind? He may not attend to the fact that being alive and healthy makes him able to pursue the truth (or any number of other goods—indeed, all of them!) but what he wants in reality is a condition for the pursuit of these other more perfect goods, for that is what life is. If we recognize, as we should, that man is ordered to the contemplation (knowledge and love) of the supreme truths—for it is man’s intellect and rational will that distinguishes him from all other creatures in the visible world—then we see that life and health are ordered to the knowledge and love of truth. There is an order in reality, and we desire goods according to that reality.

Whatever Finnis makes of Gorsuch’s argument (and I suspect that NNL theorists could still object to Gorsuch’s argument on other grounds, such as claiming that this sort of ruling violates the human ordination to all the basic goods—especially to the good of marriage—and also the genuine political harmony required for pursuing the basic goods), it is evident that Gorsuch is falling prey to the same kind of confusion found in the Finnis example.

The broader confusion in NNL principles

To be clear, the problem here is not what I will call the ‘logical analysis’ of the situation. Our actions are rooted in such analysis inasmuch as we come to know the situation in light of these separations in thought. This is what makes the NNL approach potentially more dangerous than most errors; it is so close to the truth in a certain respect. For it is true that in a moment of decision the agent will categorize and compare his options through such separations in thought. If I am thinking about eating some ice cream, I will likely in some respect weigh the good of health over against the good of sweetness and pleasure, etc. In that moment, the desirability of health can be considered apart, as Finnis says, from the goodness of knowledge or marriage or harmony amongst my inner passions, etc. But none of this analysis actually explains the motives of action, for it does not address the kind of desire. I may desire health itself for all sorts of reasons, or at least three, finally.[10] I may desire it because it is useful for many other activities, as Finnis first intimates. Or I may desire it because it is pleasurable (for instance, when one feels ill and in pain, the desire for health may be mostly about a desire to be free from pain). Or, I may recognize that my life according to my nature—and thus also all human life—and all other life in its own measure is a share in the divine, as Aristotle puts it,[11] and thus something to be loved for its own sake. The point is that the kinds of desire are not identical with distinctions in the kinds of things. We desire many things and can desire them for diverse reasons. The basic goods are rooted in a division of things, but diverse motivations for action are finally explained according to a proper division of goods as such.

As one becomes more familiar with the NNL theory, there is a kind of irony here. For the NNL theory is predicated upon the division between the speculative order (knowledge for its own sake) and the practical order (knowledge ordered to action).[12] From the beginning, the key NNL point has been that the practical order has its own first principles that are parallel to the speculative first principles and totally underived.[13] One does not act except insofar as something is seen to be good. We only move toward something insofar as we are focusing upon its goodness. Thus, they argue continually, and with some real truth, that a good explanation of action must remain in the realm of practical truths which are all about the good that moves desire. And yet, the kind of analysis we see above is not in the practical realm, for it abstracts from an account of goodness as such. I do not incline to health according to the separation made in my mind, or knowledge cut off from life. To desire the truth presupposes the goodness of life. Even when I think it worth sacrificing my life for the truth, I am desiring in my final acts to adequate my mind to the reality, and that adequation presupposes my life. Desire does not follow the separations in thought and get cut off from what—in reality—is not separate.

And this allows us to see the broader error in the principles of the NNL theory. Consider its beginning. The NNL began as an interpretation of Aquinas’ article on natural law in the middle of his discourse on law in the Summa Theologiae.[14] The first precept of the natural law, which is also the first principle of all practical reasoning, is that good is to be done and pursued, and evil shunned.[15] This good is the end or goal of action inasmuch as in practical things the end or goal is the principle of action and thus reasoning about action.

Here is how Grisez interprets this in his foundational article. He holds that the first precept directs man to his ultimate end—which Thomas is absolutely clear about—but argues that this end is nothing definite:

The will necessarily tends to a single ultimate end, but it does not necessarily tend to any definite good as an ultimate end. We may say that the will naturally desires happiness, but this is simply to say that man cannot but desire the attainment of that good, whatever it may be, for which he is acting as an ultimate end. The desire for happiness is simply the first principle of practical reason directing human action from within the will informed by reason. Because the specific last end is not determined for him by nature, man is able to make the basic commitment which orients his entire life. The human will naturally is nondetermined precisely to the extent that the precept that good be pursued transcends reason’s direction to any of the particular goods that are possible objectives of human action.^[16]

In other words, Grisez is making the same general sort of error we saw in Gorsuch and Finnis. The beginning of practical reasoning, he is arguing, is not goodness as it is in reality, but rather a non-determined ‘goodness,’ a logical concept of goodness that is open to all kinds of goods precisely because it is in fact none of them. There is a separation in thought, a separation that allows for universal predication, so that the principle of action is in things insofar as ‘good’ is predicable of them. Gone is the notion that the principle of action is the source of all goods, God Himself.[17] The NNL bases action on the conceptual good rather than the final cause. The good that grounds action is the good abstracted.

Aquinas explicitly rejects this notion of the end when he talks about how the final cause of any law is the common good. When considering the objection that law must order particular actions, Aquinas responds:

Operations indeed pertain to particular matters: but those particulars are referable to the common good, not as to a common genus or species, but as to a common final cause, according as the common good is said to be a common end.[18]

Aquinas sees that actions are not ordered to generic good, but the actual common good. Action is all about ordering our lives to the ultimate final cause. For a rational creature, this must be, finally, God Himself.[19] Grisez thinks of the good of the first precept as a mere generic orientation, not as the actual good itself. For him the ultimate end must be something constructed and based upon a vague orientation. For the NNL theorists, goodness is in the mind, not in things. Not because they think anything so silly as that we want things merely to exist in the mind, but rather because the desirability that motivates action follows the rational operations rather than preceding them.

One can see in all this the NNL’s need for the basic goods, since the ‘good’ of the first precept is insubstantial. And in the spelling out of these goods, we see the same general, logical error brought to fruition in the notion that there is no longer an intrinsic hierarchy of goods because all analysis of action and goodness comes down to the predictability that is rooted in the abstract separation of ‘good.’ Actions and things that are in reality ordered to one another are no longer so ordered, because their goodness is considered according to a separation in thought that allows for universal predication precisely because it refrains from precision.

In sum

This kind of error is by no means unique to the NNL theorists.[20] And, indeed, because the NNL theory is rightly grounded in the absolute importance of truth, its supporters avoid many erroneous conclusions about human life. Grisez for instance saw the problematic character of contraception before it was clearly understood by many.[21] And in general, because they are so focused upon the logical analysis, the NNL theorists do an admirable job, often, of breaking a situation down into its parts.[22] But they never explain the actual agency of the agent, for they do not consider goodness as such. Rather they remain in the realm of ‘things that can be called good.’

But while I suspect that most of the NNL theorists themselves would find ways to avoid the conclusions of Gorsuch, we see in his opinion the same fundamental error of logical analysis. It’s a perfect example of how this kind of reasoning—which orders desire and motivation according to the separation of concepts in the mind as opposed to the reality being analyzed by such separations—leads to absurdities in practical application. One loses sight of the real.

[1] See p. 9 of the majority opinion. This – along with the dissents of Alito and Kavanaugh – can be found at  https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf

[2] See pp. 9-10 of the majority opinion.

[3] See p. 11 of the majority opinion.

[4] See pp. 11-12 of Alito’s dissent – found in the same pdf file linked to in footnote 1.

[5] 14-15 of Alito’s dissent.

[6] One could push the original example further in other directions, though. For example, as pointed out to me by Richard Berquist, could not one make the same kind of argument that Gorsuch suggests with reference to a man (not a transgender man, to be clear) being ‘discriminated’ against because of his sex when he isn’t allowed into a women’s locker room? I presume Gorsuch would distinguish the examples, but one would have to say by the same line of reasoning that he presents in the majority opinion that the sex of the man is a ‘but-for’ condition. Take the same example and change the sex of the individual, and no one has a problem.

[7] To see a more technical account of the sort of distinctions that Gorsuch and the NNL theorists tend to miss, see Aristotle’s distinction between the subject genus and the predicate genus in his Metaphysics (Book 5, 1024b 1-20) as well as Aquinas’ commentary on these passages (Sententia Libri Metaphysicae, Lib. 5, lect. 22, no. 6-9 (Marietti). Also, in the de Ente et Essentia, Chapter 3 (Leonine ed., vol. XLIII, pp. 374-375) Aquinas details the way essence is in the logical intentions, and thus also the ways in which a logical definition is helpful but not sufficient for science. The logical intentions always treat according to a certain level of imprecision, and this why they can be predicated univocally, because the differences between things are explicitly left out. Gorsuch is bringing logical intentionality to a fight over the nature of things, you might say. (Note: you can find a nice online transcription of Aquinas’ commentary using the Marietti text as a basis here (and an English translation here), and a nice Latin and English version of the de Ente here, though you should look at numbers 50-64 inasmuch as the chapters do not line up with the Leonine edition.)

[8] Christopher Tollefsen, “The New Natural Law Theory,” Lyceum X, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 2.

[9] John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 92-93.

[10] The useful, the pleasant, and the honest/honorable good. See Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (henceforth ST), I, Q. 5, A. 6, c.

[11] See in particular his De Anima, Book II, Chapter 4 (415a26-415b2) where Aristotle reflects that the preservation of the individual and the species is the way in which each material life inclines towards the divine, since it is that share in immortality and life that is possible to the material being’s activity. Rational beings have a higher participation, as one sees in the Nicomachean Ethics,Book, X, Chapter 7, (1177b26-1178a9) and the Eudamian Ethics, Book 8, Chapter 3 (1249a22-1249b25) in particular.

[12] For an introduction to this notion, one could look directly to ST, I-II, Q. 94, A. 2, c. But I suspect a more worthwhile introduction could be found in ST, I, Q. 79, A. 11, which, along with much more (such as I-II, Q. 3, A. 5), Aquinas expects the reader to have under his belt, so to speak. Practical reason is reason ordered to action, and thus practical truths are truths that are or can be the basis of the reasoning that goes into setting one’s course.

[13] Again, see Tollefsen (“The New Natural Law Theory,” 2-3) for an excellent summary of this point.

[14] ST, I-II, Q. 94, A.2, c.

[15] “Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.”

[16] Grisez, “First Principle of Practical Reason,” 199-200.

[17] See, for example, Questiones Disputatae de Veritate, 22, 2, c. (Leonine ed., v. 22, 617, 54-71). God is sought in every action implicitly because just as he is the first efficient cause that grounds all other causes, so is he the last end that grounds all other ends.

[18] I-IIae, Q. 90, A. 2, ad 2. “…operationes quidem sunt in particularibus, sed illa particularia referri possunt ad bonum commune, non quidem communitate generis vel speciei, sed communitate causae finalis, secundum quod bonum commune dicitur finis communis.”

[19] See ST, I-II, Q. 3, A. 8, c. in particular.

[20] Perhaps the single best illustration of this error is seen in the Epicureans and the Utilitarians. They confuse the pleasurable and the honest good throughout all their treatises. They implicitly see that both are delightful, but are then unable to see that there is a fundamental difference in each case with respect to where the will rests. They thus confuse the motive of action with the predication that can be common even though in reality there is a fundamental difference of motivation.

[21] See his comments to Fr. Ford (who was on the commission set up by John the XXIII and continued by Paul the VI before Humanae Vitae). In particular, note his first set of responses.

[22] Robert George, In Defense of the Natural Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 46-48.

Nineteenth and early twentieth century Catholicism was rich in militant initiatives pursuing global evangelization outside the older borders of Christendom as well as spiritual and socio-political revivification of the troubled lands within them. These initiatives were stimulated by a general movement of Catholic revival vigorously opposing an Enlightenment-inspired secularization of European and American lands that had already begun before 1789, and which was intensified and spread still further due to the violence and warmongering of the French Revolution.

Spokesmen for this general revival insisted upon the reality of a dramatic “culture war” with enormous consequences for earthly life and the salvation of souls being waged between those proclaiming Christ as their King and the adherents of a soul-killing revolutionary naturalism. Global evangelists and militants inside ancient Christendom took their words to heart. They felt compelled to do everything in their power to achieve success in this conflict as fast as possible. But that passion for success, laudable though it was in and of itself, was destined to lead a number of them to give their support to what I am calling a “vital error” equating Catholicism with the triumph of the arbitrary but “energetic” human will.

Let us begin our tale by calling up the “noonday devil” of demoralization that always lay there lurking, waiting to pounce upon the drooping spirits of zealous nineteenth and early twentieth century activists. This demon crept from its den to plague militants of all types at just those moments when a sense of failure to obtain any truly serious impact upon the populations that they had targeted for swift conversion and transformation in Christ began to overwhelm them.[1]

Such perception of lack of success was already noticeable in certain militant circles before the First World War, with some of the “Outer Missionaries”—those dealing with non-Christian lands—expressing deep frustration over their inability to make a telling dent in the armor not just of the seemingly impregnable Moslem world, but even in that of their beloved and long-lived Chinese field of operation. They were joined in their brooding by a number of influential members of European Catholic political parties grappling with their own “Inner Mission” limitations, conscious as they were of having painfully little impact outside their narrow confessional base.

World War One and its troubled aftermath increased the influence of this noonday devil immensely among those militants laboring in one of the fields of the “Inner Missions” known as “Specialized Catholic Action”, whose organizations focused on youth in precise types of industrial and agricultural labor. The meager fruits of their work were especially driven home to them upon mingling with a young population of overwhelmingly un-churched fellow soldiers in the trenches. They were further shocked by discussions with some of the more articulate of these comrades in arms who were convinced that the war had indeed given European peoples the chance to purify and spiritualize their banal, materialist, prewar lives, but through bonding together with their mates in the front lines without any concern whatsoever for their previous religious backgrounds and aspirations. Yet a third and perhaps even more powerful stimulus to demoralization came at the conflict’s end, when this small band of committed Inner Missionaries marched home in the ranks of masses of their battle-scarred fellow soldiers who were now displaying a willingness to devote themselves, body and soul, to atheist Marxist and budding neo-pagan Fascist Faiths.

Once the activists returned, some of them began openly to hunt for reasons explaining the failure of their apostolic endeavors in a world where others were having great success enticing converts to sacrifice themselves for their relatively recently born or utterly new anti-Catholic creeds. They hoped that knowledge of these reasons would allow them to correct what must only be “pastoral” errors in their approach, given their consciousness of possessing a Catholic Faith as solid as the rock of Peter. Their attempts to provide answers enabling them to address and remedy these crucial pastoral as opposed to faith problems brought them together with other Christian “seekers” whose passion for success intersected with their own.

One of these groups of seekers was composed of the Outer Missionaries and influential members of Catholic political parties working with the Inner Missions already mentioned above. Another was formed by promoters of liturgical renewal exploring ways of attracting the mass of modern men and women to a life of prayer and peace that could calm the individual and social ravages brought about by the world conflagration before these ignited a new inferno. A third group involved dedicated members of the growing ecumenical movement, concerned lest Christians remain divided in their private, limited efforts to fend off what to them was the greater and obviously more imminent threat posed by contemporary atheism and neo-paganism.

Among those prominent in bringing together Christian intellectuals for extensive discussion of theoretical problems, practical failures, and pastoral projects that might enable them to snatch spiritual victory from demoralizing defeat, was Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). Maritain served as the host of regular gatherings probing such subjects at his home in Meudon, near Paris, after the papal condemnation of the Action Française in 1927 removed him from the camp of Charles Maurras (1868-1952) and his Integral Nationalists with their slogan of politique d’abord.

Supporters of all of the western forces noted above attended these soirées, but the Christian East made its presence felt there as well. For also visiting Meudon were men from among that Russian Orthodox diaspora which was so visible in Paris, London, and Oxford, particularly the philosopher-theologian Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948). Thinkers like Berdyaev brought with them as great a passion for finding an explanation for the collapse and a hope for the revival of their Church in the aftermath of their Revolution as that which had stimulated zealous anti-revolutionary Catholics a hundred years earlier.

One of the names given to the intellectual and practical “programs for success” discussed at the Meudon soirées was Personalism. Personalism, whose story encompasses more than just the Meudon experience, must be defined as a tendency rather than a program, its name being used by a wide range of thinkers reflecting a myriad of contrasting nuances, with Maritain’s own “practical philosophy” of Integral Humanism among them. But whatever their particularities and nuances may be, I would argue that these varied forms of Personalism all owe an essential debt to a late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century emphasis upon the importance of the “vital energy” of “natural forces and values” as a guide to the truth and its transmission into practical action.

Central to the introduction, further development, and dissemination within the Catholic world of this emphasis upon vital energy was the thought of the Abbé Félicité de Lamennais (1782-1854).[2] Lamennais’ work was consciously or unconsciously carried on by a segment of the Modernist camp condemned by St. Pius X (1903-1914). This “Mennaisien” heritage, reinvigorated through the meditation of our Inner Mission veterans upon the puzzling question of how soldiers who had been hopelessly divided at home before the war successfully created a fraternal unity at the front then entered into the conclusions elaborated by the various Personalists and their fellow travelers at Meudon and elsewhere.

What emerged was a recipe for escaping Catholic failure in the dramatic modern culture war and more swiftly gaining that victory for Christ that every militant, firm in the Faith, desired. Unfortunately, however, it is this recipe that constitutes the “vital error” leading to the equation of the triumph of that Faith with the dictates of the strongest successful will. Let us explore the transformation of this hunt for success into a divinization of effective but mindless will, destructive of the Catholic Faith, by focusing on what I think to be the most logical of the many contemporary forms revealing this development: Communitarian Personalism.[3]

Communitarian Personalism was the brainchild of one of Maritain’s Meudon guests, the French philosopher-journalist, Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), founder in 1932 of the Parisian journal promoting his vision, Esprit. Mounier maintained contacts with a kaleidoscope of thinkers, outside as well as inside the Meudon circle: Jean Guitton (1901-1999), who would one day become a close friend and advisor to Pope Paul VI; Henri Daniel-Rops (1901-1965) and his fellow members of the organization Ordre Nouveau (New Order); Jean Danielou (1905-1974), the future cardinal; Belgians inspired by the “spiritualized socialism” of Henri de Man (1885-1953); proponents of European cooperation like Otto Abetz (1903-1958), Nazi ambassador to fallen France in the 1940s; and a group of “revolutionary National Socialists” who gathered in the early 1930s around the Hitler rivals Gregor (1892-1934) and Otto Strasser (1897-1974).

Mounier sees a successful Catholic conquest of society as emerging from the transformation of limited “individuals” into full-fledged community-minded “persons”. For him, an individual on his own is a living dead man, “trapped” by his private intellectual mind games and atomistic behavioral concerns. To become a full person, capable of realizing his deepest potential and fulfilling his true God-given destiny, the individual must find a way to get out of himself and his deadening introspective existence. He can only accomplish this by diving into the richer life provided by communities, the most important of which, on the supernatural level, is the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

But the Mystical Body of Christ, having taught the value of nature, also points out the need for enriching and perfecting one’s existence by immersing oneself in the life of “natural communities” and the “natural values” they incarnate. Which natural communities? Which natural values? The answer is those communities the beauty of whose natural values is demonstrated by the “vital mystiques” they exude; vital mystiques revealed by the energetic, action to which they move the individuals embracing them and the successes that they obtain through them over the world at large. Committed adherence to such vital mystiques and their demands, together with acceptance of the vital mystique of the Catholic Church, would transform crippled, atomistic individuals in need of what they have to offer into truly fulfilled and successful persons.

For Mounier, the Catholic believer who approached the Faith of his own supernatural community and its vital mystique as a set of intellectual precepts to be studied and put into practice on the individual level was just that sort of self-crippling, introspective atomist that he loathed, a man in desperate need of awakening to full personhood. Such an awakening would ultimately require shaking him out of an obsession with whatever parts of his heritage blocked his opening to the energetic pursuit of the natural values of whatever vital communities his life needs called upon him to join. This was particularly true with respect to any rigidly intellectual spirit of theological, philosophical, and legal dogmatism that could dampen his commitment to spontaneous, natural, energetic action.

We will have much more to say about this topic below, but for the moment let us simply underline Mounier’s conviction that an individual Catholic’s acceptance of and immersion in the vital mystiques of the energetic and successful communities around him were essential not only to the full perception of the natural values that they reflected, but also to the spiritual perfection of Christian personhood and the pastoral success of the Faith themselves. Yes, he admitted, the successful vital mystiques of a number of contemporary communities and the movements they engendered that he was urging Catholics to join might appear at first glance to reflect purely natural values and dubious ones, seemingly dangerous to the spiritual life, to boot. Nevertheless, the energies that they unleashed, and the successes that they were clearly obtaining demonstrated that there was something supernatural at work through them: the providential action of the Holy Spirit developing Christ’s teaching and bringing it to fruition in history.

Hence, to tie the argument back to our main theme, what this all meant on the practical level was that any militant who was engaged in the work of the Outer or Inner Missions and understood the crucial need for victory for Christ, had to pursue that undoubtedly laudable goal through a pastoral methodology of immersion in the energetic, vital mystiques of successful communities. This entailed no longer seeing their natural characters as potentially flawed forces whose erroneous characteristics had to be overcome, but as trustworthy reflections of the obvious presence of the Holy Spirit within them. The Outer and Inner missionary’s task was that of  “witnessing” to his Catholic Faith by humbly listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit through the vital mystique in question and helping Him to nurture it and bring it to its innate natural perfection. Such immersion and abandonment demanded a pastoral strategy of root and branch abandonment of any educational or practical activity that gave the militant missionary the perspective and appearance of an alien trying to dampen the natural value that he was confronting.

One day, the Holy Spirit would guarantee the “convergence” of all the seemingly contradictory, vitally energetic, age-old or recently emerging communal mystiques and natural values to which such militant missionaries were witnessing. The result would be the establishment of a unified Catholic “community of communities” capable of producing what would, in effect, be super-persons, “the grandest transformation to which humanity has ever submitted.”[4] Once again, the key to achievement of this goal was that Catholic believers witnessing to mystiques on the path to convergence must never sit in judgment of them as “outsiders”. For they could not even fully know what the Catholic Faith they were trying to transmit entailed, and what the Holy Spirit was seeking to do with it, until the natural values that the various mystiques enshrined had all completely blossomed and merged together. Hence, the violent, secular, twentieth century communal movements hostile to the Faith that were encountered by returning Catholic activist soldiers had to be viewed in the long run not as enemies to be fought and defeated, but as splendid, Spirit-guided organisms calling men and women to an “eminently-Catholic” perfection of their varied natural values.

A number of the activists of the Outer or Inner Missions attentive merely to the key words of Mounier’s thought, perceived in them a confirmation of what they, with their—at that time—much more traditional goals in mind, were also trying to do: follow in the footsteps of Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) by “getting under the skins” of the various peoples or groups they were trying to evangelize or revitalize and “inculturate” the Faith. Thus, he could be seen as simply urging the Christian missionary to “go native” and thereby soften the opposition of potential converts and facilitate their willingness to accept the True Faith. The names of Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), Vincent Lebbe (1877-1940), and their disciples are very important with respect to this “going native” outlook in the Outer Missions, while their parallel in the Inner Missions can be seen in the work of men like Fr. (later Cardinal) Joseph Cardijn (1886-1967), probably the most important proponent of the Specialized Catholic Action with which we are already familiar.

That strange mixture of Anglicans and members of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora working together in various postwar ecumenical projects also could and did connect with and further influence Communitarian Personalist ideas. Its organs were dedicated to promoting a supposedly superior Eastern spirituality and recipe for Christian living to be found in the mystical writings of the Philocalia and in those of the Slavophiles dealing with the relationship of the individual and the community referred to by the term sobornost. Both these types of writings were used by them to drive home two criticisms of the “Roman” school of Catholic Christianity much related to those of Mounier: 1) that it crippled souls through an intellectually rigid theological, philosophical, and legal dogmatism under the micromanagement of the Supreme Pontiff; and 2) that is could never truly be “successful” in the fight against Enlightenment naturalism because it shaped atomistic individuals working for sanctification totally on their own, rather than the fully spiritual Christian persons formed by individual immersion in and obedience to community as understood by the teachers of sobornost.

The French Catholic scouting movement, filled with a youthful energy that was both anti-atomist and communal in spirit, as well as possessed of a very clear and distinctive mystique of its own, offered a fruitful soil in which Communitarian Personalism, often in union with the ideas of the missionaries and ecumenists just mentioned, could plant its tents.

Moreover, scout troops also served as regular centers for experimentation with that branch of the liturgical renewal movement rooted in a number of monasteries and intellectual circles in Northern Europe nurturing Mounier-like ideas. One person worthy of mention in this regard is Fr. Jean-Augustin Maydieu (1900-1955), who celebrated mystique-friendly masses for the scouts during which he faced his congregation so as to better connect with its needs, providing it with a French narration of the advancing liturgical action in the process. Another is Fr. Paul Doncoeur, S.J. (1880-1961), who, terrified that Catholics had lost touch with vital life forces, had become enthusiastic for pastoral liturgical developments in Germany that were seeking a closer linkage with “deeply felt reality” as early as 1923. He honed in on the French scouting movement’s concern for communal games and sports for a cue to teaching a better understanding of the liturgy that might perhaps influence its future development throughout the Catholic world:[5]

Games can also be an excellent preparation for worship, which to the little ones appears to be very little different from a game. This should not scandalize us. The word game is not in the child’s vocabulary, and particularly in the realm of scouting, it is a synonym for diversion. A game is an action, passionate insofar as it is sincerely played. Well, official worship is eminently sincere. Children sense this. They find satisfaction in this atmosphere of truth. They savor this serious action, wherein all participate, body and soul, this collective and ordained action, similar in nature to those grand modern sports events wherein modern youth finds its discipline and sometimes its mystique. But the little faithful heart senses well that worship is more noble than sports. Worship is the Big Game, the Sacred Game which is being played for the Chief of Chiefs…. Among the troops the Mass is generally a Dialogue Mass at which all actively participate. Certain among them make the offering. The cadets which Father Doncoeur leads each summer with knapsacks across France’s roads also have the Dialogue Mass. Gathered before the altar, they respond to the liturgical prayers, {and} make the offering of the host which will be consecrated for them at the Offertory….

Many supporters of Communitarian Personalism, convinced of the innate weaknesses of the atomistic, individualist, “Established Disorder” of the liberal, bourgeois western world, were highly sympathetic to Fascist movements. Fascism clearly revealed an appreciation for vital, energetic, virile manliness, combined with self-sacrifice to the community through obedience to its charismatic leader. While flawed, Fascism was nonetheless said to be a “monstrous prefiguration” of the new humanity of truly unified and faith-filled communal persons waiting to be born. The initial German victories of the Second World War were, in consequence, in no way surprising to such sympathizers, who insisted that liberal bourgeois defeat at Fascist hands had to be looked at from a hopeful perspective. What really concerned Mounier and his followers was whether Catholicism could find a way to turn what to the superficial observer seemed to be an apocalyptic situation to the advantage of the higher, long-term good. By “witnessing” to the construction of the German-guided, European-wide New Order, it would turn that budding super society down the direction that the Holy Spirit—who, unbeknownst to the Nazis, was the force that really stood behind their successes—ultimately wanted it to go.

Marshal Philippe Pétain’s (1856-1951) so-called National Revolution, born out of the defeat of the Third Republic in June of 1940, was appreciated by the Communitarian Personalists both because of its condemnation of liberal bourgeois individualism and its freedom from what they understood to be the more grossly materialist aspects of Nazism. They hoped to make Vichy France a wartime laboratory for educational and evangelical schemes designed to reshape the world in the more vitally energetic spiritual manner that the Holy Spirit so obviously demanded.

One major example of educational experimentation combining the ideas of Communitarian Personalists and their fellow travelers discussed above together with those coming from National Socialist Ordensburgen— castle training centers for the new elite of German youth—was the École Nationale des Cadres at the Château Bayard above the village of Uriage, near Grenôble. Founded in the waning months of 1940, this institution became especially significant by June of 1941, when the Vichy regime determined to require a session at the École for all future high government functionaries.

The teachings of a vast array of contemporary Catholic luminaries destined for an influential future were marshaled under the banner of the National Revolution to play a role at Uriage. Under the day-to-day direction of Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac (1906-1968) and the Study Bureau of Hubert Beuve-Mery (1902-1989), Mounier’s Communitarian Personalism was very much central to this labor. This was true even after political problems led to Mounier’s personal removal from the Uriage staff. For his vision continued to prosper through the similar teaching of his friend, Jean Lacroix (1900-1986), and their common master, Jacques Chevalier (1882-1962), a professor at the university in Grenôble and sometime Vichy Minister of Education.

Allied with Communitarian Personalism at Uriage was the radicalizing influence of the budding New Theology, itself also sharing many aspects of the common Mennaisien “vital energy” approach. This arrived via the Dominican houses of Saulchoir and Latour-Maubourg, the Jesuit center at Fourvières in Lyons, journals La vie intellectuelle, Sept, and Temps present, and French scouting, liturgical, and Specialized Catholic Action groups also open to Communitarian Personalist and New Theology teachings. Segonzac and Beuve-Mery had frequented such circles before the war. They happily brought to Uriage priests like Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Victor Dillard (1897-1945), along with the above-mentioned Abbés Jean-Augustin Maydieu (1900-1955) and Paul Donceour (1880-1961). Uriage also had links, direct and indirect, with Frs. Louis Joseph Lebret (1897-1966) and Jacques Loew (1908-1999), founders of the Catholic social movement, Economie et Humanisme, which was destined for a significant “progressive” future both in Latin America as well as in Europe after the Second World War.

Through all these sources, students were introduced directly to the writings of Lamennais, as well as those of Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), Charles Péguy (1873-1914), Marie-Domenique Chenu (1895-1990), Yves Congar (1904-1995), Karl Adam (1876-1966), Romano Guardini (1885-1968), Charles de Foucauld and, perhaps more importantly than anyone else, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Their instruction combined Communitarian Personalism together with currents of biblical, philosophical, historical, spiritual, liturgical, and ecumenical thought that, while marginal at the moment, would become immensely powerful and instrumental in guiding the Second Vatican Council and the “spirit” of the post-conciliar Church. The names of Congar, Chenu, and Lebret (who was an author of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes) are alone sufficient to make that point obvious. And this team, “ensconced in a chateau up in the mountains with a commission to completely rethink and transform the way France educated its young people”, was even then absolutely and enthusiastically convinced that it was the prophetic guide to witnessing and perfecting the vital mystiques of numerous groups and natural values backed by the vigor of the Holy Spirit.[6]

A stunningly broad Uriage “ecumenical” commitment to the value of all forms of vital communal mystique and energy was testified to in a myriad of ways. One could note Segonzac’s ability “to form friendly relations, on the spiritual plane, with Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Moslems, agnostics,” since he “preferred (rooted) people…in their own setting, in their own culture”. [7] Uriage’s Charter proclaimed the truth that “believers and non-believers are, in France, sufficiently impregnated with Christianity”, so that “the better among them could meet, beyond revelations and dogmas, at the level of the community of persons, in the same quest for truth, justice and love”.[8] And Mounier, “whose belief that there was an element of truth in all strong beliefs coincided with Teilhard’s vision of the inevitable spiritualization of humanity”,[9]  prophesied the mysterious and convoluted growth of the “perfect personal community,” where “love alone would be the bond” and “no constraint, no vital or economic interest, no extrinsic institution” would play a role:[10]

Surely [development] is slow and long when only average men are working at it. But then heroes, geniuses, a saint come along: a Saint Paul, a Joan of Arc, a Catherine of Siena, a Saint Bernard, or a Lenin, a Hitler and a Mussolini, or a Gandhi, and suddenly everything picks up speed…[H]uman irrationality, the human will, or simply, for the Christian, the Holy Spirit suddenly provides elements which men lacking imagination would never have foreseen. May the democrat, may the communist, may the fascist push the positive aspirations which inspire their enthusiasm to the limit and plenitude.

We have seen that intellectual rigidity was considered to be a bad thing by Communitarian Personalism, and the message taught at Uriage was definitely not a rational one at all. What counted most was the deeply felt intuition of the teachers giving prophetic witness to the future, and their strength of will in leading the young men under their control to a creative action; a creative action, once again, formed by taking seriously the Holy Spirit-backed messages of all of the varied vital mystiques contributing to the construction of the coming New Order. Any appeal to critical logic questioning the existential or moral appropriateness of aspects of successful mystiques and the natural values they represented was dismissed as dangerous, decadent, crippling, atomistic, scholastic pedantry blocking the obvious will of the Holy Spirit for the future.

Better to bury the critical temptations emerging from a sickly rationalism through the development of the obvious virtues of a vitally energetic “manliness”—virtues defined in completely anti-intellectual ways: the ability to leap onto a moving streetcar; to ride a bicycle up the steep hill to the École like Jacques Chevalier; to look others “straight in the eye” and “shake hands firmly”; to endure the sweat-filled regimen labeled décrassage devised for students under the inspiration of General Georges Hébert (1875-1957); to sing enthusiastically around the evening fire in the Great Hall; to know how to “take a woman”; and, always, to feel pride in “work well done.” Such vitality was said to have deep intellectual and spiritual meaning in and of itself on the more developed “personal” level, aspects of which were elaborated in lectures like de Lubac’s Ordre viril, ordre chrétien (Virile Order, Christian Order), and Chenu’s book, Pour être heureux, travaillons ensemble (For Happiness, Let Us Work Together).[11]

Finally, let us stress that Uriage’s teaching was unabashedly elitist. In fact, the particular mystique of the École was that of developing the natural value expressed through Fascism by means of the Leadership Principle. “The select youth of Uriage” were said to be “the first cell of a new world introduced into a worn-out one” [12], “entrusted with the mission of bringing together the elite from all of the groups that ought to participate in the common task of reconstruction in the same spirit of collaboration”.[13] Students had to learn to lead others in witnessing to the development of the Spirit-guided future.  

Since they were destined to reveal the higher supernatural significance of the natural values in the mystiques of all the vitally energetic communities to which they must give witness, Uriage students had to be trained as priestly figures. Each class was “consecrated” and given a great man’s name as a talisman. But, once again, learning to lead came through future leaders first learning to obey their own infinitely more priest-like, intuitive, prophetic teachers. Segonzac especially “took upon himself a certain sacerdotal role, even regarding the wives and children of his instructors”.[14] This entailed a “separation between the leaders, the lesser leaders, the lesser-lesser leaders, the almost leaders and the not-at-all leaders”. “The central team,” as one of the interns indicated, “were gods”.[15]

According to the doctrine taught at Uriage, the National Revolution ultimately had to be judged upon its success in the creation of “persons” open to communal life with many varied “others” as opposed to shriveled atomistic “individuals”. Liturgy would be central to this process, and Uriage was permeated with a spirit of “pastoral concern”, through the liturgists active in its ranks. In fact, Uriage turned the entire day into a vital, energetic, and therefore liturgical experience. Bonfires were lit, backs slapped, virile poems and hymns composed, and special pageants mounted. All these were said to be inspired by the “deep feeling” coming from vital mystiques requiring the participation of the still atomistic-minded but developing Uriage persons. Failure to participate in the communal liturgies of the entire Uriage day would be a breach of Volksgemeinschaft equivalent to an individualistic sin against the Holy Spirit and the super personhood of the future. And all of this new, “natural”, participatory, creative—and expensive—liturgical life emerging “from the bottom up” as guided by priest-like leaders was elaborated at the same time as Frs. Maydieu, Doncoeur, Chenu, Congar and others were bringing into existence what would become the extremely influential “Center for Pastoral Liturgy”, designed to effect similar liturgical changes in the life of ordinary parishes.  

Yes, Fascism, with its exaltation of individual abandonment to the vital energy and will of a community guided by its charismatic leader or leaders, and with its denigration of sickly, individual, rationalist criticism, was intensely appealing to Uriage. Nevertheless, Fascism’s dominant National Socialist strain was unavoidably tied to the racial vision of the Volksprinzip, and Mounier, his followers, and Personalists in general never accepted the ideology of modern racism. After all, different races could be just as energetic in the support of their beliefs and traditions as the Nazis were of Aryan supremacy. It is not surprising therefore, that important Personalists of all types courageously and openly opposed National Socialist racism from the very outset.[16] And whether it was their growing horror over the intensification of Nazi racial persecution, or their increasing awareness as the war went on that the Fascists possessed less “vital energy” than their United Nations Alliance opponents, Personalists in general came to realize that any flirtation with the ever less successful Nazi regime had to be jettisoned.

Nowhere was this need to flee National Socialist racism and military failure more felt than at Uriage.[17] The deportation of French youth to forced labor camps, the tightening German control of internal Vichy affairs, and the outright takeover of the Unoccupied Zone in the latter part of 1942, had already moved its leadership closer to the growing Resistance Movement: long before allied success in combat was assured. This tendency matured by December of that fateful year, when the enemies of the project at Vichy managed to have the École expelled from the Château Bayard entirely.

Uriage never did anything haphazardly. Building upon its sense of constituting a modern band of crusading knights, the exiled École leadership now created a ‘Chivalric Order” whose inner circle was bound by spiritual vows of a character that Fr. Maydieu compared to those of matrimony. Members of the Order were to sally forth to show the various communities composing the Resistance how to perfect their “mystiques” and “natural values” in the Uriage manner. Thus, high-level emissaries were dispatched to contact de Gaulle, and “flying squadrons” into the countryside to guide the Communist maquis so that both of their deficient mystiques could be “transcended spiritually” and “converge” in the construction of the better world of the Teilhardian Omega Point.

The enthusiasm with which this labor was undertaken was genuine, but especially so with respect to the Marxist component of the Resistance Movement. Most Uriage men felt a preference for the vital energy of Marxism-Leninism. Despite its anti-spiritual Enlightenment mechanist foundation, the Marxist “communal” emphasis, as reflected in the Soviet collective experiment, was much more satisfying to their own pronounced social sense than the natural value shaping the vital mystique of the other crucial community forming the United Nations Alliance: the Lockean individualism of the United States. “The Americans,” complained Beuve-Mery —-who ultimately moved from Uriage to the management of the highly influential postwar French newspaper, Le Monde— “could prevent us from carrying out the obligatory revolution, and their materialism does not even have the tragic grandeur of the materialism of the totalitarians”.[18]  Round Two of the creation of super-persons through super-communities  was thus to involve “witnessing” to the vital, successful energy of the Marxist Mystique as another monstrous prefiguration of a happier future coming into being with the aid of the Holy Spirit .

One sees this outlook expressed not only among members of the Uriage Chivalric Order but also in the writings and labors of priests trying to understand and witness to the Marxist mystique of the proletariat in two different contemporary settings. One of these settings was the German labor camps to which these priests had either themselves been deported or chose voluntarily to move as an apostolic service to the exiles. The other venue was that of ordinary French factories, where experiments were being conducted to address the problem of the industrial population’s manifest de-christianization, as outlined by Fr. Henri Godin (1906-1944) in his famous text: France: Pays de Mission? (1943). Under the patronage of the supra-diocesan Mission de France, set up in response to this book, “worker priests” were given systematic preparatory training for “witnessing” to that energetic French industrial “proletarian mystique” whose energy also revealed the presence of the Holy Spirit calling out for Catholic aid to perfect.[19]

In any case, a cleric like Fr. Dillard canonized the Soviet citizens he encountered in the camps in which he labored, insisting that all the workers slaving therein were endowed with specific virtues denied to ordinary people outside the compounds. Other priests praised the “riches in modern disbelief, in atheist Marxism, for example, which are presently lacking to the fullness of the Christian conscience”.[20] They urged enlightened spirits “to share the faith in and the mystique of the Revolution and the Great Day (i.e., when all spiritually valid approaches would converge together)”.[21] One cleric asked to die “turned towards Russia, mother of the proletariat, as towards that mysterious homeland where the Man of the future is being forged”.[22]

Personalist-Marxist-Soviet-Worker fervor inevitably increased the hunt on the part of liturgical reformers for a pastoral response to the particular mystique in question. Those committed to the factory workers said that the liturgy and the priesthood were completely out of sync with the vital energy of the proletarian world. The Mass was clearly nothing other than the precious toy of atomistic, bourgeois minds that could not understand the spiritual beauty of the entire Marxist mystique. Hence, the critique of Fr. Dillard, who dismissed the dominant “anachronistic” definition of the Catholic priestly mission as useless. He insisted that his proletariat clientele was able to sense the superior spirituality of what pathetically limited old style Catholics might be tempted to label a secularized clergy pandering to its audience. This ability was due to a je ne sais quoi emanating from that “new” clergy’s fresh sacerdotal adoption of the Marxist mystique. A more complete and effective Catholicism was thereby in the making. [23]

My Latin, my liturgy, my mass, my prayer, my sacerdotal ornaments, all of that made me a being apart, a curious phenomenon, something like a (Greek) pope or a Japanese bonze, of whom there remain still some specimen, provisionally, while waiting for the race to die out. Religion as they [the workers] knew it is a type of bigotry for pious women and chic people served by disguised characters who are servants of capitalism….If we succeed in ridding our religion of the unhealthy elements that encumber it, petty superstitions, the bourgeois “go to Mass” hypocrisy, etc. we will find easily with the Spirit of Christ the mystique which we need to reestablish our homeland.

But there were many problems blocking success in this mission of witnessing to the voice of the Holy Spirit as expressed through the Marxist Mystique. Those peoples who ultimately came under Soviet control, exercised through a party dictatorship backed by the military strength of the Red Army, did not show themselves as open to the charms of Marxist-Leninist vital communal energy as its Uriage engendered supporters had been. Moreover, Communist General Secretaries did not seem as responsive as they ought to have been to the witnessing mission of the priest-prophets sent to raise their monstrous pre-figuration of a new world to the seventh heaven. And these hopeless leaders were even less receptive when “security for the apparatchiks” became the Party’s chief goal under Leonid Brezhnev, solidifying both the advantages of a petty bureaucratic elite as well as the general cynicism regarding Marxism of the peoples under its disappointing yoke. 

This difficulty aside, there was also no denying that the vital mystique and energy of the United States on behalf of its own “natural value” of individualist materialism combined with spiritual and intellectual indifferentism—once referred to as Americanism, but now marketed under the more suitably globally applicable term of Pluralism—had also been “successful” in the war against the Fascists. Using the innate and often unconsciously felt power and prestige that came from “success”, the United States had been hugely effective in reshaping the heritage of Western Europe to fit pluralist demands—and, unlike the Soviets, with voluntary support from the peoples of the Old World.

Moreover, Jacques Maritain, one of the historic pillars of the many-headed Personalist hunt for Catholic success, rejected the skepticism of men like Beuve-Mery regarding the value of diving into the American mystique. His experience in the United States led him to realize that its Pluralism was an immensely powerful revolutionary force suitable for breaking down many petrified traditions—if only Catholics witnessed to it and aided the work of the Holy Spirit within it properly. The pluralist offer of a practical, “pastoral method” for dealing with the diversity and divisions of modern life by guaranteeing freedom for all beliefs and cultures amounted to an Emancipation Proclamation for each and every natural value and vital mystique. Their Long March to convergence for the perfection of Catholic personhood could not help but be promoted through an embrace of American Pluralism.

Maritain argued that the pluralist vision, in permitting liberty even for the natural communal values represented by the Marxist mystique to thrive, could promote that necessary spiritualization of its mission under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that had been so badly botched by the Soviets. And some of the “usual suspects”, including Mounier, Chenu, Lebret, and Maritain himself, saw hopes for a fresh chance for open minds and hearts freely to witness to and perfect those aspects of the Marxist mystique that they most appreciated coming out of Latin America in the postwar era. A number of Personalists and fellow travellers with connections to Uriage grew especially excited when the Cuban Revolution unleashed by Fidel Castro (1926-2016) and Che Guevara (1928-1967) was crowned with “success” at the beginning of 1959, thereby proving the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon its own vital energy. Subsequent events in Chile confirmed their hopes for the future in this regard.

Meanwhile, step by step, making their way to the center of the world stage, were so many other vital communal mystiques representing natural values to which Catholics heeding the voice of the Holy Spirit must witness, uplift, and allow to converge with one another. These included not just the mystiques of different Faiths, whose inner meaning Outer Missionaries—now reflecting Mounier’s thought much more than that of Ricci—were claiming much better to appreciate, but those of all the cultures of the newly independent nations of Asia, Africa, and Oceania as well. Perhaps even more exciting was the recognition of the existence of communities inside the borders of old Christendom composed of people energetically promoting the needs of specific gender, sexual, and psychological mystiques. Embrace of the revolutionary message of American Pluralism could allow the thousand vital flowers of all these manifold mystiques to blossom, as well as Catholic freedom to “witness” to the natural values that the Holy Spirit wished to uplift and bring to fruition through them.[24]

But before the priest-prophets of the various Personalist camps could do their work of Christian witnessing to a new form of Marxism,  the religions and cultures of a “Third World”, and the hitherto neglected mystiques of gender and sexual character, with or without the aid of American Pluralism, something much more obstructive had to be destroyed: Traditional Roman Catholicism itself. Mounier and Uriage had already denounced “frozen” teachings and rituals that “feared the insistence on bringing together men with different ‘mystiques’”. They had long felt “a ‘manly’ impatience with clericalism, dogma and the orthodox”.[25]  Before the end of the war, Fr. Dillard had reached the point of saying that his work in the vibrant forced labor factory was more important than his Mass under any form whatsoever, and, indeed, that the very machine on which he toiled itself actually had a soul of its own. [26].

 Mounier is particularly instructive with respect to this ever- intensifying dismissal of the whole of the Church’s traditional teaching and practice as an obstacle to the voice of the Holy Spirit. His vision had always logically involved the possibility of shelving entire realms of Christian scripture, theology, and spirituality, should they clash with embrace of the energies of the “emerging convergence.” By the last years of the war, “there was little place for sin, redemption and resurrection in the debate; the central acts of the Christian drama were set aside”.[27] Nietzsche’s critique of slavish Christianity now seemed to him to be unanswerable, and he “came to think that Roman Catholicism was an integral part of almost all he hated. Then, when he searched his soul, he discovered that the aspects of himself which he appreciated least were his ‘Catholic’ traits”.[28]

Not surprisingly, everything rational from the Greek tradition that had been used to support Christianity to critique and often dampen the vital will and its energy as often both wrong headed and immoral, was execrated alongside Catholicism. The Socratics, for Mounier, were indeed Seeds of a Logos that confirmed the importance of the work of the energy-taming intelligence—and, as such, had to be driven into the wilderness with a fiery sword. Philosophical thought was as dangerous an enemy as theological speculation. Both blocked that “going with the vital flow and the willful energy stimulating it” that was the unum necessarium of the New Catholicism of the Holy Spirit.

Mounier’s denunciations became increasingly vitriolic. Christianity, he wrote, was “conservative, defensive, sulky, afraid of the future.” Whether it “collapses in a struggle or sinks slowly in a coma of self-complacency,” it was doomed. Christians were castigated as  “these crooked beings who go forward in life only sidelong with downcast eyes, these ungainly souls, these weighers-up of virtues, these dominical victims, these pious cowards, these lymphatic heroes, these colourless virgins, these vessels of ennui, these bags of syllogisms, these shadows of shadows…”.[29] Metaphysical speculation was a characteristic of “lifeless schizoid personalities.”…He referred to intelligence and spirituality as “bodily diseases” and attributed the indecisiveness of many Christians to their ignorance of “how to jump a ditch or strike a blow.” “Modern psychiatry,” Mounier wrote, had shed light on the morbid taste for the “spiritual,” for “higher things,” for the ideal and for effusions of the soul…”. Thus, he dismissed many forms of religious devotion as the result of psychosis, self-deception or vanity. Psychiatric treatment must address the psychological illness revealed by obsession with doctrine and prayer, although vigorous exercise would help to cure some of this as well.[30]

How was it that the powerful influence of the American mystique over postwar Europe created the conditions under which its Pluralist vision could facilitate the projects of all the above-mentioned Personalist forces and their fellow travellers? How did they come to mold the Second Vatican Council and place people of their kind of outlook in charge of the implementation of its many non-dogmatic, pastorally-focused, dangerously ambiguous “mission statements” and decrees? It would require an entire book to demonstrate this in sufficient detail.[31] At the moment I can only assert that they actually did gain such control, and that the consequence has been the victory of the “vital error” posited at the start of this article.

That vital error is the reconstruction of the Catholic Faith upon a foundation that is fundamentally Fascist in character. For this reconstructed Catholicism is built upon nothing other than the Leadership Principle and the need for obedience to the triumph of the strongest arbitrary wills rejecting all reference to anything outside of their deeply felt intuition: namely, the interpreters of the “Spirit of Vatican Two”, whose charismatic dictates lesser believers with their obstructive appeal to Faith and Reason in defiance of the obvious demands of the Holy Spirit are allowed no means of criticizing whatsoever.

Such an outcome was totally predictable, and, in fact, a number of precisely those thinkers who inspired the militants of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival who so desperately wanted “success” as quickly as possible foresaw it. Obviously, they did not use the word “Fascism” to describe the  “rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born” since the time of Lamennais. On the other hand, they very much saw where the logic of his arguments was going, and it was these arguments and that logic that  continued to be central to the ideas of the Personalists and the pastoral stimulus offered by their Pluralist facilitators.

For all of the main features of this Catholicism-as-Fascism mystique are present in Lamennais, the subsequent contributions of radical Personalists like Mounier being little more than refinements on the original theme, with those of more moderate thinkers such as Maritain, whose Thomism caused him to see the dangers lurking therein, merely offering intellectual warnings regarding an end result that his Integral Humanism and Pluralism nevertheless make “pastorally” inevitable. All we need to do to make the Fascist end game palpable is briefly to sketch its founder, Lamennais’, own personal trajectory.

 Exactly like his twentieth century heirs, Lamennais was desperate for Catholic success against the foe. This, he felt, could easily be achieved if the vital energy of the believing Catholic People, who knew, by instinct, what the Faith was all about and what needed to be done with it, were free to fight the obvious evils perpetrated by the enemies of God around them. But instead of unleashing that energy, bishops and popes collaborated with political forces that wanted to control this absolutely reliable source of the Faith. Worse still, the believing Catholic People, acquiescing in their continued chains, did not itself display the energy that it obviously innately possessed.

Hence, the need for the believing Catholic People to be awakened and put into energetic action by means of the witness that was being given to its central role by a prophetic figure who saw what the Holy Spirit demanded of it. That figure was, of course, Lamennais himself. Upon being attacked by a Papacy making reference to traditional doctrines to justify its condemnation, he began to argue that the sole source of the Faith came through the believing Catholic People, under his prophetic guidance, even if it pronounced itself against what the Papacy and Sacred Tradition had always taught and were teaching anew. Moreover, he began to claim that that Faith was evolving under the action of the Holy Spirit expressing Himself through the voice of the energetic People in general, not just that which at the moment called itself Catholic. This voice had to be heard, witnessed to, and uplifted by the prophet to create the Faith of the future, as Lamennais’ friend, Giuseppe Mazzini reminded him when, at times he seemed still too intellectual in his approach at the expense of energetic action:[32]

Why do you only write books? Humanity awaits something more from you…Do not deceive yourself, Lamennais, we need action. The thought of God is action; it is only by action that it is incarnated in us…So long as you will be alone, you will only be a philosopher and a moralist in the eyes of the masses; it is as a priest that you must appear before it, a priest of the future, of the epoch which is beginning, of that new religious manifestation of which you have a presentiment, and which must inevitably end in that new heaven and new earth which Luther glimpsed three centuries ago without being able to attain it, since the time had not yet come.

It is this same principle that the Personalists and their Pluralist facilitators adopted and expanded upon by dividing The People up into many mystique-driven communities all of which they, in their non-rational, Tradition hating wisdom, charismatically understood how to allow to converge to obtain the victory of the Holy Spirit. All theological and philosophical tools for distinguishing between a good and bad manifestation of the communal energy promoting a specific “natural value”, and how to put it into practice were now verboten.  No existing theology, no philosophy, and no contact with the vital, active historical Christ outside of and above the energy and will of the People as interpreted by the charismatic prophet guiding it to the Omega Point was permitted.

The “success” that was to be won for the Catholic Faith is thus won for a Catholic Faith that defines itself solely through abandonment to passionate energies and arbitrary wills. Someone among our own dominant Priest-Prophet Leaders who is actually sincere in giving way to the vital mystiques he encounters, thereby finds himself to be incapable of rejecting any energetic fraud; “barren in the face of a Ramakrishna”, as Jacques Maritain—whose love of Pluralism nevertheless precisely encourages, in practice, this surrender—quite justly lamented.[33] But we have now reached the stage where it is difficult to believe that Catholics who hope for “success” through the nurturing of “vital mystiques” and the natural values they energetically promote can be acting in good faith.

[1] For the entire following argument on the missions, Russian Orthodoxy, and Personalism, see Mayeur, J.M., ed., Histoire du Christianisme (Desclée, Thirteen Volumes, 1990-2002), XII, 87-158, 259-345,451-522, 617-694, 769-779, 813-819; Jedin, H., and Dolan, J. History of the Church  (Crossroad, Ten Volumes, 1981), X, 229-409, 458-488, 583-600; J. Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left: 1930-1950 (U. of Toronto, 1981); The Knight-Monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945 (McGill, 1997); Cholvy, G., Jeunesses chrétiennes au xxe siècle (Ouvrières, 1991, III, 19-66; Meinvieille, J., De Lamennais à Maritain (La Cité Catholique, 1949); pp. 89-262, 281-300, 134-142; Zernov, N., The Russians and Their Church (St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1978), pp. 134-187; Ware, T.K., The Orthodox Church (Pellican, 1993).

[2] For this argument, see Blum, C., Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue (Cornell, 1986);

Billington, J.H., Fire in the Minds of Men (Basic Books, 1980), pp. 125-364; Mayeur, X, 427-477, 628-906; Jedin and Dolan, VII, 261-292; Meinvieille, Op. cit.; Cranston, M., The Romantic Movement (Blackwells, 1994). pp. 94-97. Also, J. Rao, “Lamennais, Rousseau, and the New Catholic Order” (http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20050201.html; http://jcrao.freeshell.org/.

[3] See footnote 1, particularly with respect to the two works by Hellman.

[4] Hellmann, Knight Monks, p. 178.

[5] J. Duquesne and Abbé Aigrain, quoted in Didier Bonneterre, Le mouvment liturgique (Fideliter), pp. 38, 39.

[6] Hellman, Knight Monks, p. 56. Courrier de Rome, La ‘Nouvelle Théologie’ (Courrier de Rome, 1994); Mayeur, XII, 168-186, 451-522; Jedin and Dolan, X, 229-336; Cointet, M., L’Église sous Vichy (Perrin,1998), pp. 140-161; Cholvy, III, 19-66,  107-166; Also, J. Rao, “The Good War and the Rite War”, Latin Mass Magazine (Spring, 2001), pp. 34-38; “The Bad Seed: The Liberal-Fascist Embrace and its Latin Postconciliar Consequences”, Latin Mass Magazine (Fall, 2001),

[7] Hellman, Knight Monks, p. 83.

[8] Ibid., p. 59.

[9] Ibid., p. 128.

[10] Hellman, Mounier, pp. 85, 90.

[11] Hellman, Knight Monks, pp. 4-52, 68-92, 139-162.

[12] Ibid., p. 65.

[13] Ibid., p. 63.

[14] Ibid,, p. 90.

[15] Ibid., p. 75.

[16] Chelini, J., L’église sous Pie XII (Fayard, Two Volumes, 1983, 1989), pp. 213-311;

Poulat, E., Les prêtres-ouvriers: Naissance et fin (Cerf, 1999), pp. 179-375; Cholvy, III, pp. 67-125.

[17] Hellman, Knight-Monks, pp. 182-254.

[18] Hellman, The Knight Monks, p. 213.

[19] See Poulat, Les prêtres-ouvrières, passim.

[20] Ibid., p. 408.

[21] Ibid., p. 386.

[22] Ibid., p. 244.

[23] Ibid., 329, 333.

[24] For the union of the Soviet and American “magisterium” see Meinvielle, pp. 216-39, 257, 260, 291; On the atmosphere in the Catholic world down to the opening of the Council, see Chiron, Y., Paul VI: Le pape écartelé (Perrin, 1993), pp. 77-168; Scaglia, G.B., La   stagione montiniana: Figure e momenti (Studium, 1993); Cholvy, III, 127-255; Jemolo, A.C., Chiesa e stato in Italia dalla unificazione agli anni settanta (Einaudi, 1970),pp. 283-310. On Latin America, see Mayeur, XII, 941-1022; XIII, 509-577; Jedin and Dolan, X, 672-750; Letamendia, P., Eduardo Frei (Beauchesne, 1989), pp. 13-182.

[25] Hellman, The Knight Monks, p. 88; also Meinvielle, pp. 224, 262.

[26] Poulat, p. 327

[27] Hellman, Mounier, p. 255.

[28] Ibid., p. 190.

[29] Ibid,, p. 191.

[30] Ibid., pp. 192-193.

[31] See Rao, J., “He Who Loses the Past, Loses the Present: Putting Dignitatis Humanae in its Full Historical Context”, in Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium (Dialogos Institute).

[32] Mayeur, X, p. 893.

[33] Hellman, Mounier, p. 42

Header Image: Wassily Kandinsky, The Rider, 1911.

How important was Vatican II? On the one hand it seems a ridiculous question. The Council has clearly, for good or ill, been revolutionary in its impact upon the Church in the sixty years since it was summoned by John XXIII. Fr John O’Malley S.J. veteran Church Historian of Georgetown University and author of weighty histories of Trent, Vatican I and Vatican II, has no doubt as to the importance of the twenty-first Ecumenical Council and seeks to shed light upon it by contrasting its teaching and style with that of its two immediate predecessors in his book-length essay ‘When Bishops Meet’.[1] And yet, while admitting the undoubted contrasts between the Second Council of the Vatican and all its predecessors perhaps we should not take its importance as so much a first principle as Fr O’Malley elects to do, but rather subject it to examination.

Fr O’Malley defines ecumenical councils as “meetings [of bishops] that make decisions binding on the church.”[2] Perhaps this is not a perfect but it is certainly an adequate definition. How far then did Vatican II actually make decisions binding on the Church? As Fr O’Malley himself concedes, not very much. No canons dogmatic or disciplinary were issued by the twenty first council. Paul VI himself observed at the end of the council that “it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions engaging the infallibility of the ecclesiastical Magisterium”[3] and during its course the Theological Commission reassured the fathers that “the sacred Council defines as binding on the Church only those things in matters of faith and morals which it shall openly declare to be binding.”[4] With admirable lucidity Lumen Gentium, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church distinguished between the various levels of ecclesiastical teaching and – applying its own rules to itself – it is clear that the Council’s documents overwhelmingly fall into the lowest category of ‘authentic’ i.e. non-infallible teaching.[5]

Not all of Vatican II’s teaching is merely authentic however. There are passages which certainly employ declaratory language which would seem to indicate a definitive judgement on the part of the Council Fathers. If we are to respect Paul VI’s assertion that he intended to promulgate no new dogmas in the council we must assume that these assertions are infallible definitions belonging to the secondary object of the Church’s magisterium: that is, not revealed directly but connected with revelation by logical or historical necessity. They are, accordingly, not dogmas but infallible doctrines the contrary of which is not heresy but error.[6]

There are other Ecumenical Councils which have made no disciplinary canons (notoriously the fifth and sixth)[7] and others which have issued no dogmatic or even merely doctrinal definitions (e.g. the ninth, tenth and eleventh).[8] If we are to rate the importance of Vatican II by objective standards therefore and in accordance with Fr O’Malley’s own definition of a council we ought to place it above those with no definitions at all and below those which elected to define dogmas. By the present writer’s reckoning that puts it seventeenth in importance among the twenty-one ecumenical councils, uniquely occupying the category of councils which have issued Doctrinal Definitions only with no Dogmas or disciplinary canons.

Certainly, the Council expressed its view on many points as to what ought to be done on a disciplinary level after its conclusion by the Supreme Pontiff but it left the actual implementation to him and, as scholars of the post-conciliar liturgical reform have had occasion to observe, the implementation did not always resemble the Council’s instructions very closely.[9]

The objective theological significance of the twenty-first council must therefore rest upon its doctrinal definitions. Very few of these definitions could seriously be considered novel and where they do decide a hitherto vigorously disputed question their choices taken in isolation would scarcely have made a great impact upon the faithful. But of course, from an historical perspective, which perspective naturally weighs most heavily upon Fr O’Malley, they cannot be taken in isolation and it is in the context of the nineteen sixties and of the merely authentic teaching in which they are imbedded that these definitions made the impact that they did. It must be confessed that, with the exception of its definition concerning religious liberty, it was not, in the end, the definitions which had the impact but the much lower ranking authentic teaching which by its sheer, indeed unprecedented, volume obscured the handful of definitive acts performed by the council but by association acquired a rhetorical force that it lacked theologically. For Fr O’Malley is undoubtedly correct that Vatican II’s greatest innovation relates (not to substance but) to style. However, decisions of style are not binding upon the Church and insofar as any future Council may consider whether to follow the twenty-first in its stylistic choices it may surely be excused if it pause for a moment to contemplate their fruits.[10]

But if by Fr O’Malley’s own definition of a council Vatican II, without prejudice to its undoubtedly revolutionary impact as an historical event, is really not that important as a council, is it not incumbent upon the faithful both lay and clerical to seek to rein in the impact of the conciliar event until it is reduced in its influence to its objective theological proportions? One doubts very much that Fr O’Malley would take this view. For whatever the implications of his definition of a council it is clear that he takes the non-binding teaching of the Council and its stylistic choices as somehow normative all the same.[11] And, although he seems unaware of this paradox at the heart of his analysis, Fr O’Malley’s paradox and his obliviousness (and others’) to it constitutes the heart of the destructive impact that the conciliar ‘event’ has inflicted upon the Church as a visible reality in history. As Joseph Ratzinger, whose attitude to the Council Fr O’Malley has elsewhere[12] described as an ‘Augustinian vision’ arising ‘out of fear’, observed:

The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council: and yet so many treat it as though it made itself into a sort of super-dogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.[13]

Surely the Council itself is not wholly inculpable for this impression which was undoubtedly generated by the verbosity of its authentic teaching which constitutes vastly more than the mere five percent of the total of all conciliar teaching that one might expect.[14] In this respect though, the Council was only imitating the popes themselves who, since the invention of the encyclical as a genre in the mid-eighteenth century, have increasingly deployed it and with an ever-rising word count to express their sentiments to the universal church. It is not clear what the justification is for this tidal wave of fallible papal teaching. There already exists a divinely instituted mechanism endowed with a rebuttable presumption of reliability for the instruction of the universal church. It is called the episcopate. Yes, as Lumen Gentium observes, the papacy enjoys this rebuttable presumption in a ‘special way’[15] but it is rebuttable none the less and it is undoubtedly true that, as with Vatican II, the definitions of recent popes (one thinks of those issued by John Paul II) in Evangelium Vitae and Ordinatio Sacredotalis have been obscured by the volume of merely authentic teaching directed by the popes at the universal church. Like the ‘conciliar event’ this material, some of it such as ITC and PBC reports or the ‘Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church’ not even magisterial, has seriously hindered the proper task of the Holy See – to strengthen the brethren.

It is sometimes observed that the Second Vatican Council has become the Council of the laity in a way wholly unanticipated by the council. That is, by precipitating an unprecedented crisis in the clergy and in the confidence in which the lay faithful hold them, the twenty-first council has undone the long process by which the priesthood and the episcopate had risen to an unchallengeable prestige from the cynicism that characterised many Catholics immediately prior to the Reformation.[16] In the same way it may be that by problematising the authentic magisterium Vatican II may eventually liberate the episcopate from the de facto usurpation of their teaching function by the Holy See. But before that new dawn is visible their lordships will have to hack their way through the dense undergrowth of episcopal conferences and jerrymandered synods.[17] For it is not any episcopal conference or synod that will answer to Christ for the teaching handed down to the lay faithful of any given particular church but its own proper bishop.

Fr O’Malley observes that at Vatican II the influence of the laity was at best indirect while at previous Councils it had been significant due to the presence, even presidency, of lay rulers.[18] The first eight councils were after all summoned by the Roman Emperor (in the case of Nicaea II, Empress) and until Vatican I the envoys of the Catholic Princes played a significant role in the western councils which often involved themselves in the summoning of crusades, imperial elections and the confiscation of territory from heretical rulers. What Fr O’Malley does not observe is that Vatican II might be claimed as a uniquely clericalist council. Its concern with the role of the laity in fact reflects a complacent assumption that the function of the clergy even perhaps their identity with the church herself is unproblematic while the task assigned the laity is mysterious and requires discernment. If this is so, surely the Council’s own Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humane by obscuring the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ, albeit insisting all the while that it remains ‘untouched’, bears the lion’s share of the blame for making the proximate objective of the lay mission in the world functionally impossible. Even if a council summoned today were to condescend to receive the envoys of the Catholic Princes it would find that the President of the Dominican Republic was the only potentate entitled to appear.[19] If it is true that a number of scholars in recent years, most notably Thomas Pink have, by disentangling the Maritainian logic behind the Declaration, demonstrated that in its substance if not its rhetoric it does leave “untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” it is also true that the curia following the rhetoric and not the logic of the Declaration busied itself in the succeeding years encouraging various Catholic polities to renounce the fulfilment of that duty.[20] Once again, the binding teaching of the Council was swallowed up by the ‘event’.

Perhaps Fr O’Malley for whom the event of Vatican II is so important would protest that the very form and function of the Council itself is one of those elements of the conciliar phenomenon that has ‘developed’ over the course of its history so that the event itself has become the binding norm rather than the non-existent canons and the elusive doctrinal definitions of Vatican II.[21] But if Councils really are binding on the church then surely, they are binding on their successors at least in dogma and doctrine. If some future council could dispense with the divinity of Christ, the Filioque or the ex opere operato efficacy of the sacraments, then the councils themselves are reduced to a sort of ecclesiastical politburo circa late June 1941 frantically explaining why in the light of the signs of the times we have always been at war with Eastasia. And this is significant because, despite Fr O’Malley’s claim that the question of doctrinal development was confronted for the first time at Vatican II, Vatican I in its definitive teaching makes very clear what the Church’s understanding of authentic development is in the final paragraph of the first of its two Dogmatic Constitutions Dei Filius.

May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding.[22]

If therefore councils really do make decisions binding on the Church, then the transmutation of the conciliar institution itself from a binding decision making body into a normative stylistic ‘event’ is excluded in principle as a divergence from its own proper kind. The idea that the preceding twenty councils were innocent of the concept of doctrinal development is of course indefensible. Indeed, the very first Council Nicaea I very self-consciously adopted the novel and unscriptural term ὁμοούσιος precisely because it was necessary to pin down and exclude the Arians whose slippery Pickwickian ways were not susceptible to the use of censures constructed out of biblical language. This reflects the same conception of doctrinal development avant la lettre as was expressed by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century when he remarked of the Council of Ephesus’s prohibition on the alteration of the Creed of Nicaea that “this decision of the general council did not take away from a subsequent council the power of drawing up a new edition of the symbol, containing not indeed a new faith, but the same faith with greater explicitness. For every council has taken into account that a subsequent council would expound matters more fully than the preceding council, if this became necessary through some heresy arising.”[23] Of course, both Nicaea and Ephesus were distinguished by the fact that for all the imperishable glory of their acts they precipitated crises in the Church which in the end could only be resolved by the convening of another council some decades later to confirm and clarify their teaching. If this was true of synods armed with anathematizing dogmatic canons and the soul of wit how much more will it surely prove necessary to deal with the limbs and outward flourishes of the irrepressibly loquacious twenty-first ecumenical council?

[1] John O’Malley S.J., When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II (Belknap Press : Harvard, 2019).

[2] O’Malley, 55.

[3] Paul VI, General Audience of 12th January, 1966.

[4] Notification given by the Secretary General of the Council at the 123rd General Congregation, 16th November, 1964.

[5] Second Vatican Ecumencial Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium (Rome : 1964) §25.

[6] For example: Inter mirifica §6; Lumen gentium §18; Lumen gentium §21; Orientalium Ecclesiarum §5; Unitatis Redintegratio §16; Nostra aetate §4; Dei verbum §18; Dei Verbum §19; Dignitatis Humane §§1-2 & Gaudium et spes §80. These documents employ such formulae as ‘the council decrees’, ‘This holy synod … teaches and declares’, ‘The Sacred Council … solemnly declares’, ‘this holy Council solemnly declares’, ‘the Church has always held and holds’, ‘the church has always and everywhere held and still holds’, ‘Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold’, ‘the council professes its belief … This Vatican Council declares’, ‘which is to be firmly and unhesitatingly condemned’ which clearly indicate definitive judgment.

[7] Constantinople II (553) and Constantinople III (680-681). The Emperor Justinian II sought to supply for the lack of disciplinary canons at these councils by holding a purely disciplinary (perhaps even ‘pastoral’) council, the so-called ‘Council in Tullo’ or Quinisext Council, in 692 which precipitated a crisis in relations with the Latin West due to its canonisation of distinctively Eastern practices incompatible with ancient Western discipline.

[8] Lateran I (1123), Lateran II (1139) and Lateran III (1197).

[9] Exemplified by the work of Msgr. Klaus Gamber so admired by Benedict XVI. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background (Una Voce Press : San Juan Capistrano, 1993).

[10] Stephen Bullivant, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (OUP : Oxford, 2019).

[11] As he says of John XXIII, “He gave the council freedom to do something new. He gave the council freedom to be something new” [emphasis in the original]. O’Malley, 25.

[12] Fr John O’Malley S.J., “What Happened at Vatican II” Address at Vanderbilt University 22^nd October 2010.

[13] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Address to the Bishops of Chile”, 13^th July 1988.

[14] Norman Tanner. S.J. ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Georgetown University Press : Washington D.C., 1990). The first eighteen councils occupy one volume of this edition while Vatican II occupies more than half of the second and concluding volume.

[15] Lumen Gentium §25.

[16] Scarisbrick, J. J. (1955). The conservative Episcopate in England, 1529-1535 (Doctoral thesis) 40-41.

[17] Edward Pentin, The Rigging of a Vatican Synod: An Investigation into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family (Ignatius Press : San Francisco, 2015).

[18] O’Malley 126-7.

[19] The Dominican Republic’s 1954 concordat with the Holy See recognizes that the “the Catholic Church is a perfct society” and that the “Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Religion is the Religion of the Dominican Republic, and shall enjoy the rights and prerogatives due to it under Divine and Canon Law.”

[20] See: T. Crean and A. Fimister (ed.), Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium: Dialogos Institute Collection, vol. 1 (Dialogos Institute: 2017).

[21] O’Malley 200ff.

[22] First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Dei Filius (Rome : 1870).

[23] IaIIae, 1, 10 ad 2.

Header Image: Collection of Contemporary Art, Vatican Museums.

–The Editors

By John G. Brungardt

The purpose of this post is to recall the contours of the debate about Catholic integralism that have taken place in the “Internet Republic of Letters” over the past several years. The post is part genealogy, part introductory survey, and part reflection on the warp and woof of a discussion that is now intertwined with others in the public square. I do not aim to break new ground, but I do hope to provide a reflective tour for newcomers or recollection to familiars of the debate’s high and low points. Learn or take from it what you will.

Why consider “Catholic integralism” at all? One reason is to clarify the difference between understanding the principles of political philosophy and Catholic social teaching versus a discussion of practical statecraft and “soulcraft,” the realm of particular actions and practical decisions. The question of integralism framed solely on the terms of the latter’s demands easily results in conclusions such as Rod Dreher’s, that “integralism is a dead end,” or George Weigel’s, that integralism is a “game intellectuals play,” or, worse, the verdict that it is “an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi.” Integralism’s proponents have also been accused of the opposite mistake, namely, of speculative errors concerning the difference between power and authority, or of lacking a speculative vision altogether, or, some wonder, misrepresenting Catholic social doctrine. Consequently, achieving some measure of clarity about the proper register of the question—is it speculative, practical, pragmatic, rhetorical?—and the corresponding answer is desirable.

Another, deeper reason is that, since the question of Catholic integralism concerns properly understanding first principles (nature and grace, faith and reason, the hierarchy of common goods) and acting with regard to those principles in concrete affairs that must take into account not just days or years but decades and centuries, it makes no little difference what the true answer is, even if that answer must come with many parts and qualifications. For human life must be ordered by that eternal truth in which the vicissitudes of human history participate. The task of the examined life is that each one in each generation know the measure of that standard, insofar as he or she can know it. To do so, we must begin dialectically, by seeing the questions and the arguments clearly.

So, what ought we to think of the question of Catholic integralism? Does it propose a deep truth or a dangerous falsehood?

Some Basics

First, what is integralism? The now most-referenced definition is the “Three Sentences” definition from The Josias, which one finds referred to numerous times in the essays listed below:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding 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 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.

The key to understanding “the two powers” in this definition is to understand what “spiritual” means in the definition. In “A clarification on integralism,” the philosopher Edward Feser notes that the question ought not to be whether one is for or against integralism, but for or against what sort of integralism. The natural law mean standard, Feser argues (and it is bound to sound like an extreme to many), is that “a generic theism should be affirmed by the state and that government policy should be consistent with the principles of natural law.” However,

the debate over Catholic integralism has to do with whether specifically Catholic doctrines, which concern our supernatural end and are matters of revealed theology, should have an influence on public policy. The state should favor theism, but must it favor the Church?

Immediately, one sees why the integralism question is, by the vast majority of people, taken to be too irrelevant, if not too dangerous, a topic to take seriously. Haven’t the issues of “Church and State” been decided by the modern political synthesis of the post-Enlightenment? Didn’t Vatican II decisively condemn 19th-century notions of religious liberty?

To explain the “sort” of integralism one is asking about, Feser proposes three options: soft, moderate, or hard integralism. Hard integralism maintains that “it is always best for the Church to try to implement integralism as far as she can,” while soft integralism holds that “though in theory the state may and ideally should favor the Church, in practice this is extremely unlikely ever to work out very well.” Naturally, moderate integralism

falls in between these extremes. Whereas the soft integralist thinks it is never or almost never a good idea to try practically to implement integralism, and the hard integralist thinks it is always or almost always a good idea to do so, the moderate integralist thinks that there is no “one size fits all” solution and that we have to go case by case. In some historical and cultural contexts, getting the state to favor the Church might be the best policy, in others it might be a very bad policy, and in yet others it might not be clear what the best approach is. We shouldn’t assume a priori that any of these answers is the right one, but should treat the question as prudential and highly contingent on circumstances.

Nor does one have far to look to find an example of a moderate integralist of no small stature. In The State in Catholic Thought (1945; reviewed here by Leo Strauss), Heinrich Rommen writes:

A union between Church and state, or better a cooperation in concord and unity of both, would mean mutual respect for the independence of each in suo ordine. … It needs no proof that such a union is possible as a practical policy only where the people of the state are in great majority Catholics. Yet under this condition the union is actually no problem at all, but simply a truism. Therefore it would be wrong to say that such a union between state and Church is a necessity or should always take place. The condemned thesis 55 of the Syllabus of 1864 (the Church should be separated from the state, and the state from the Church) does not imply this. The true thesis would demand that the circumstances be considered. St. Robert Bellarmine expressly states that state and Church may live in union or in separation, because fundamentally each can exist without the other. (pp. 595–96)

Still, for the contemporary reader, this simply reinforces the previous concerns about theoretical and political relics. It also clearly raises profound metaphysical questions about assumptions Rommen is making. Isn’t it long past the time when such ideas, or such discussion, were practical, let alone thought to be true or relevant? Don’t proposals like Rommen’s involve, somewhere in the footnotes, writs of Inquisition and coercion of religious belief?

Kevin Vallier says that the knee-jerk reaction argument against integralism usually goes something like that:

If integralism is true, religious coercion is not wrong.
But religious coercion is wrong.
Therefore, integralism is false.

However, Vallier adds:

I don’t think integralism can be so easily dismissed. The reason is that integralism has a certain elegance and simplicity and even obviousness. It tells us that states should help people achieve their ultimate good. Besides feasibility worries, why wouldn’t this be the best thing for the state to do? Are non-integralists really asking the state to do less than the best? Doesn’t that just sound crazy when we state it openly?

And indeed, many non-integralists defend the current model of the now centuries-old, minimalist, secular, and in principle non-confessional status of liberal political order. In the academic jargon, “the public good” is a “thin” one, not a “thick” one. Thus, the question becomes manifold: one of the good, the political good, and the ideal political regime simply speaking versus the best one achievable practically speaking (Politics, 1288b37). So Vallier concludes, “What anti-integralists need is a satisfying explanation as to why integralism is axiologically false. The anti-integralists need to explain why integralism has the wrong conceptions of value, reasons, and practical rationality.”

Some Origins

To gain only some of the historical sensibility required to appreciate how far back into the formation of modernity and the disintegration of Catholic Europe this question takes one, read this essay at First Things on the 1782 Decree on the Dissolution of Religious Orders in Austria. That is, the deep background to the question of Catholic integralism in the face of modern nation-state democracies began with earnest during the long 19th century, when the issue of the compatibility of the Catholic faith and (then) modern liberalism was raised.

For instance, a positive answer to the compatibility question was put forward in L’Avenir by Montalembert, Lamennais, and Lacordaire. This led to a wide-ranging and controverted debate and even outright conflict that—when combined with many other strains of 19th-century secular thought—culminated in Pope Pius IX’s Quanta Cura (1864) and its appended Syllabus of Errors, mentioned above by Rommen. This 19th- and early 20th-century backdrop also has many other parts, some now long-forgotten by most (e.g., Ralliement and Action française, among others).

Why, then, is Catholic integralism a topic of discussion now? That answer also has many parts. A first part is the work of Fr. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., among the founders of The Josias, the “online manual” of Catholic integralism. Rod Dreher once called Fr. Waldstein “perhaps the foremost advocate of [integralism] today.” For the roots of Catholic integralism stretching back even further than 19th-century Catholic politics, one must read Waldstein’s essay “Integralism and Gelasian Dyarchy,” which he described as his “fullest account to date of what I call ‘integralism’.” In the (perhaps) near future, that account will be surpassed by a book-length treatment.

But there is another, non-integralist side to this origin-story that must be noticed, what Deneen in a 2014 American Conservative article called “A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching.” Deneen outlined two Catholic responses to political liberalism in the 20th century. The first is an older tradition of Catholic compatibilism—also of late called Catholic fusionism—which proposes that “there is no fundamental contradiction between liberal democracy and Catholicism” or (from the fusionist angle) that “the principles of American conservatism and those of Catholic social teaching might be seamlessly and unproblematically combined.”

The second is a newer “radical” camp (in which Deneen included himself):

The “radical” school rejects the view that Catholicism and liberal democracy are fundamentally compatible. Rather, liberalism cannot be understood to be merely neutral and ultimately tolerant toward (and even potentially benefiting from) Catholicism. Rather, liberalism is premised on a contrary view of human nature (and even a competing theology) to Catholicism.

Deneen pointed out that this group included (and still includes) prominent thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre and David L. Schindler. As for his own questioning of Catholic-liberal compatibilism—of course, this was before his 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed—Deneen pointed to his essay written two years earlier in First Things, “Unsustainable Liberalism.” That essay also sparked a series of debates, including a lengthy one at Public Discourse.

These radical, “illiberal Catholics” (a charge mentioned in Deneen’s 2012 American Conservative piece, and answered, among many others, by Waldstein here) now tends to go by the name “post-liberal Catholicism,” a moniker that became popular after the so-called “Franco-Persian Wars,” the debates between David French and Sohrab Ahmari over the possibility, plausibility, and desirability of “a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”

The debate over the compatibility of Catholicism and liberalism, then, is a broad question raised both back in the 19th century (about the old liberalism) and now again in the 21st (about a new liberalism, where “liberalism” often signifies a confusing mélange of Locke, Rousseau, post-progressive era thinking, and soixante-huitard leftism). And all this despite its being given an apparently conclusive answer during the 20th century. But the broader, renewed question of compatibility and the new Catholic integralism’s proposed solution did not remain separate.

The Debates, A Brief History

One should know that neither is the question of the coherence or “sustainability” of liberalism new to contemporary debate. Take Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, for instance:

The liberal, secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself. This is the great adventure it has undertaken for freedom’s sake. As a liberal state it can only endure if the freedom it bestows on its citizens takes some regulation from the interior, both from a moral substance of the individuals and a certain homogeneity of society at large. On the other hand, it cannot by itself procure these interior forces of regulation, that is not with its own means such as legal compulsion and authoritative decree. Doing so, it would surrender its liberal character and fall back, in a secular manner, into the claim of totality it once led the way out of, back then in the confessional civil wars.

That is, Böckenförde’s dilemma or paradox is that liberalism, if it were to attempt to guarantee its institutional, cultural, educational, and moral prerequisites, would have to be illiberal, give up its claims of substantive neutrality concerning the good life for human beings, and “fall back … into the claim of totality.” Besides Böckenförde’s paradox of liberalism, one could consider the debate between perfectionist liberalism and political liberalism. The question of the totalizing claims of the complete human end, then, is inescapably the foundational question of political order—liberalism of any sort cannot claim to be anything more than an answer.

The question of Catholic integralism and the broader, more recent debate about sustainability of liberalism did finally meet. For instance, the Closing Colloquy of the Center for Ethics and Culture’s 2018 Fall Conference at Notre Dame featured a discussion between Patrick Deneen, Phillip Muñoz, Gladden Pappin, and Adrian Vermeule (discussed by Rod Dreher here and here). “Liberalism vs. Integralism” was also the theme of a conference held earlier in 2018 at Harvard, hosted by the Thomistic Institute.

As one can easily see by perusing the conferences and their reports, the substance of the discussions were animated not merely by the debates mentioned above. Some of the new discussion material was from the post-liberalism element—especially Deneen’s recently published Why Liberalism Failed—other was provided by Adrian Vermeule’s integralist critique of Deneen’s solution.

Now, these debates on prominent university campuses over the nexus between the question of liberalism generally and the question of Catholic integralism specifically had already cropped up before these 2018 conferences in various loca of the “Internet Republic of Letters.”

First Things

First Things during 2017 published reviews of Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy (by Vermeule, titled “Liturgy of Liberalism”) and Willard Jones’s Before Church and State (by Waldstein, under the title “An Integralist Manifesto”). It published essays on a strategy for Christians living in liberal nations (again by Vermeule), as well as an interview about “The Possibility of a Catholic Social Order” and a call for a “humane integralism.” The tension continued to be that between the concern for discerning the truth of Catholic principles and the practicality of how to apply them in the concrete historical order, between nostalgia for the achievements of past cultures and strategizing in the now with little-to-no societal room to maneuver.

The question of principle and policy provides the occasion to note Thomas Pink’s earlier, 2012 First Things essay, “Conscience and Coercion.” In it, Pink argues that Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae changed the Church’s policy, not her principles or doctrine, in regard to the religious liberty of individuals, an essay that generated not a few reader responses (wherein one also finds letters about Deneen’s “Unsustainable Liberalism,” published in the same issue as Pink’s essay). The issue of the coercion of believers—that compelle intrare (Luke 14:23) so heatedly debated in the early modern era—is a subset of Pink’s debate with Fr. Martin Rhonheimer in issues of Nova et Vetera, a debate carried on at the 2015 Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture Fall Conference.

The broader issue yet, then, is the same question of Catholic integralism. Pink’s position is decidedly in the minority. The majority view is clear from the vehement and profuse reaction to First Thing’s early 2018 article by Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Non Possumus,” a review of the 2017 publication of the memoirs of Edgardo Mortara.

As an aside, the “new” Mortara affair was impactful enough to be able to function as the opening framework of Schwartzman and Wilson’s 2019 law review article “The Unreasonableness of Catholic Integralism” (which also has a useful bibliography in its footnotes, apart from citing most of the above sources). However, as Kevin Vallier pointed out about the article’s judgment of Catholic integralism generally, its definitional approach is Rawlsian, and thus conceptually incommensurable with integralism’s premises about the human person and what it means to be reasonable. At issue is not a technical debate, but a deeper metaphysical discussion that answers first-principle level questions about what it means for individuals to act and how they ought to act.

After early 2018, integralism did not make much of an appearance in First Things, at least until the return of talk of “the common good and the Highest Good,” the start of the debate turned speaking tour between Sohrab Ahmari and David French. Ahmari’s essay, “the article that launched a 1,000 think pieces,” did not touch upon integralism or the coercion of the baptized per se. Nonetheless, that debate over the true nature and coherence of liberalism and the America’s political and providential constitution had the long-range effect of continuing to join the two debates. More to come below.

Public Discourse

Nor did the debate over integralism escape the editorial eyes or professorial pens at Public Discourse. In May 2018, citing as occasions the essays from First Things and the Harvard conference noted above, as well as various discussions of Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, Joseph Trabbic defended the continued, doctrinally normative character of a Catholic confessional state as the ideal political arrangement. (Later in 2019 Trabbic wrote a three-part series for Catholic World Report, “Thomism and Political Liberalism,” to illustrate how “there are some pretty stark and irreconcilable differences between Thomas’s political theory and liberal political theory”; see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

Trabbic’s essay received a fierce response from Robert Miller, who called Trabbic’s thesis “almost the exact opposite of the truth,” and argued that “integralism is contrary to Catholic doctrine.” Miller’s essay prompted responses, among others, by John P. Joy (at another venue) and by Thomas Pink at Public Discourse in August 2018. Miller, along with Lawrence King, responded to Pink and Joy in early 2019. As one might expect, these debates hinge heavily on how to properly understand Vatican II’s declaration Dignitatis Humanae. A December 2019 article by Matthew Shadle continued the response to Pink, presenting further nuances of the debate over evolution, rupture, or development of religious freedom doctrine in Dignitatis.

But Public Discourse did not merely present debates over fine points of Catholic doctrine; the scope was broadened. The May 2019 essay by Korey D. Maas, “The Coming Anti-Catholicism,” after reviewing and citing nearly all of the above genealogy, concluded that “insofar as prominent and influential Catholics insist that Catholicism is fundamentally incompatible with the liberal tradition, liberals will feel increasingly justified in reaching the same conclusion.” That is, apart from the proper grasp of theological principles, a certain “Realtheologie” looms large in integralism’s and Catholic post-liberalism’s cultural scene. We could, argued Gerard Bradley, learn certain lessons from integralists’s “thought experiments” by taking them as accurate diagnoses of current problems, but that is all. Yet as recently as this May, in “Integralism, Political Philosophy, and the State,” Thomas Pink has replied to both Bradley and Shadle that integralism’s political philosophy is more realistic in its understanding of how states—confessional or secular—actually function.

Church Life Journal

Caleb Bernacchio’s “The Anti-Integralist Alasdair MacIntyre,” published by Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal in early 2018, argued to separate MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism from the integralist position, saying that given MacIntyre’s critique of modernity “there is no need to pursue the impossible and nostalgic goal of returning to an integralist state.” A positive exposition by Waldstein, “What Is Integralism Today?”, was published later in 2018 (coinciding with the above-mentioned Center for Ethics and Culture colloquy at Notre Dame).

Waldstein’s answer to the quid sit question led to a brief debate at CLJ, between Waldstein and Timothy Troutner, over the true nature of integralism. In his “The Integralist Mirroring of Liberal Ideals,” Troutner argued that “criticizing integralism need not imply a defense of liberalism,” and that “integralism flourishes by posing this false dichotomy, by defining itself as the theologically orthodox antithesis to a heretical liberalism.” Waldstein’s response, “Integralism and the Logic of the Cross,” argued that

Troutner’s conclusion that integralism must be rejected by Catholics is, however, false. The arguments that he uses to support it are based on exaggerations and misunderstandings. He tries to distinguish his own understanding of freedom and equality from the liberal understanding. But he does not distinguish them enough. For Troutner, as for liberals, freedom and equality are opposed to hierarchy and obedience. Whereas, in reality, true freedom and true equality depend on hierarchy and on obedience.

Other Criticisms and Defenses

Apart from the above journals, various other criticisms, defenses, and interweaving themes could be mentioned, bringing this review from 2019 to the present. Recent debates over “common good constitutionalism” and the continued rethinking of American conservatism or European populism and nationalism also bear upon this question, to varying degrees of remove. Some of these are listed below, and I’ll not discuss them in detail.

I will, however, note two of the most substantive in passing: Park MacDougald’s thorough review of the recent history of issue, “A Catholic Debate over Liberalism,” published in City Journal, and Michael Hanby’s “For and Against Integralism,” published in First Things in March. MacDougald’s history also illustrates what I’ve sketched here, namely, the joining of general discussions about the sustainability of modern political liberalism. Hanby’s essay and the reader replies show that the debate about Catholic integralism is, ultimately, about the metaphysical foundations of politics and their relevance for political practicalities and deep moral and cultural conversion.

Perennial Questions about the Highest Good

It is patent from reviewing the topics, reasons, and interlocutors in the above debates that the question of Catholic integralism today does not turn upon irrelevant or insubstantial issues, but rather concerns perennial and foundational principles of political order. It is rash to think otherwise when the question is being discussed at the highest levels and in the profoundest terms. If one presses beyond the internet-based essays and into the recent books cited or past thinkers relied upon, it is impossible not to see that the stakes for getting the answer to the question of Catholic integralism right are immense.

This is because the debate has made compelling and even pressing the reconsideration of questions that many had long considered culturally settled. What is the proper understanding—if a rational defense of its existence is to be had—of a common good beyond the political order? What vision of human perfection ultimately sets us free in the profoundest sense? What is the proper relationship between the Church and the modern nation-state? Is there a clear meaning of “liberalism” that proposes the true account of that relationship, or must liberalism cede to the “new Catholic integralist” account? If so, what is the true nature of religious liberty?

And it is not as if clear—albeit controversial and in some cases unconvincing—answers to such questions have failed to be given in the various essays cited throughout this review. And achieving such sound speculative vision is a sine qua non to advance, for, as Fr. Thomas Joseph White said in his closing “exhortation” at the Harvard conference mentioned previously: “Practical truths are grounded more fundamentally in speculative or theoretical visions. And vision always wins out in the end.”

Concluding Thought

I’d like to end by quoting a passage from the introduction to Rommen’s The State in Catholic Thought. There, Rommen defends the idea that a perennial political philosophy exists, and that, in the providential contingencies of history, it has been taken up into the Catholic Church. It is a “Catholic political philosophy” in a contextual and not an essential sense, that is, “the adjective ‘Catholic’ here means, so to speak, the place where this philosophy grew and found its home. It does not imply that this political philosophy is based on theology or revelation. It is based on natural reason and on rational principles” (p. v).

As a consequence, the unfolding application of its principles, like the apparent fluctuations of the content of natural law through history, can be traced to a similar matrix of causes. The “ebb and flow” of human affairs and the human limitations of circumstance and character to the realizing of higher goods in political community causes an apparent but not real variation of the truth:

Some critics forget that this is an everlasting process which is repeated again and again in all fields of intellectual life. Thus the new democratic and social ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could be fully received only after a process of toilsome clearance in embittered discussions, as, for instance, in the controversies between Lacordaire, Montalembert, and the Catholic liberals in France, and the adherents of monarchy. These internal disputes do not destroy the unity of polar tension. No new philosophy is founded; only new problems are put before the philosophia perennis, that is by no means a static and brittle system. To be sure, Catholic political philosophy as a part of this philosophia perennis may be called conservative. It does not easily give up what has proved its value in long experience for alluring but unproved new ideas. But, on the other hand, it is not compelled to mummify theories and opinions in a stubborn conservatism that is closed to the perpetually changing life of God’s creation. What may be called linear thinking goes straight out from one pole or from one idea of the cosmos of ideas, which every true philosophy is. This idea, cut off from its interrelations and interdependencies with the cosmos, it then fanatically thinks to a finish. Thus it becomes radical individualism or socialism or totalitarianism or anarchism. This linear thinking, so characteristic of the modem mind and its countless isms, is a stranger to Catholic political philosophy. For Catholic political philosophy is ‘spheric’ thinking. Of the interdependencies and the mutual relations between ideas as united in a spheric cosmos and the concordance of these, spheric thinking must be always aware. This explains the unity in diversity, the conservative perseverance in principles and the flexible progressiveness, promoted by the disputes of the schools, in the application of the identical principles in a ceaselessly changing life. (pp. 22–23)

Recall that the same author, some 500 pages later, defends the possibility and ideal of a Catholic confessional state. Perhaps there are unresolved tensions in Rommen’s presentation of the “spheric thinking” of perennial political philosophy. Clearly they still exist unresolved in the discussion at large today.

* * *

Select Bibliography (Listed in Approximate Order of Appearance/Reference)

Basics and Origins of Integralism

• The Josias
  • Waldstein, “Integralism in Three Sentences.” http://thejosias.net/2016/10/17/integralism-in-three-sentences/
  • Waldstein, “Integralism and Gelasian Dyarchy.” https://thejosias.net/2016/03/03/integralism-and-gelasian-dyarchy/ (he’s writing a book-length expansion of this essay’s subject)
• Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.
  • His blog, Sancrucensis
• Feser’s Clarification
  • “A Clarification on Integralism.” 2019 June 7 https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-clarification-on-integralism.html

Post-Liberalism

• Deneen, “A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching,” TAC, 6 Feb 2014: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-catholic-showdown-worth-watching/
  • Refers to:
  • Deneen, “Unsustainable Liberalism,” First Things, 2012 August: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/unsustainable-liberalism
  • Series of debate about this in Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/03/9458/
  • Zmirak, “Illiberal Catholicism,” Aleteia, 2013 Dec 31: https://aleteia.org/2013/12/31/illiberal-catholicism/; Reply by Waldstein, “Integralism,” Sancrucensis, 2014 Jan 16: https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/integralism/
• The Franco-Persian War
  • Ahmari, “Against David French-ism.” First Things, 2019 May 29: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism
  • French, “What Sohrab Ahmari Gets Wrong.” National Review, 2019 May 30: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/david-french-response-sohrab-ahmari/
  • Select responses:
    • Pecknold, “French, Ahmari, and the Common Good.” First Things, 2019 June 13: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/06/french-ahmari-and-the-common-good
    • Peterson, “The American Founding Was Not Libertarian Liberalism,” The American Mind, 2019 June 14: https://americanmind.org/features/why-the-new-right-rises/the-american-founding-was-not-libertarian-liberalism/
  • Follow-ups
    • “Against the Dead Consensus,” First Things, 2019 March 21: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/03/against-the-dead-consensus
    • Continetti, “Making Sense of …” Free Beacon, 2019 May 31: https://freebeacon.com/columns/making-sense-of-the-new-american-right/
    • Reno, “What Is At Stake,” First Things, 2019 Sept 19: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/09/whats-at-stake-in-the-french-ahmari-debate
    • Ahmari, “The New Right,” First Things, 2019 Oct: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/the-new-american-right
    • Ahmari, “Our Integral Regime,” First Things, 2019 Dec 19: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/12/our-integral-regime
    • Thompson, “Pajama Boy Nietzscheans,” American Mind, 2020 May 13: https://americanmind.org/essays/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-pajama-boy-nietzscheans/

First Things

• Pink, Thomas. “Conscience and Coercion,” First Things, 2012 Aug. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/conscience-and-coercion
• Vermeule, Review of Demon in Democracy, First Things, 2017 Jan: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/01/liturgy-of-liberalism
• Waldstein, “An Integralist Manifesto.” First Things, 2017 Oct. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/10/an-integralist-manifesto
• Vermeule, “A Christian Strategy.” First Things, 2017 Nov. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/11/a-christian-strategy
• Smith, PJ, Interview of Kwasniewski, on A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching, First Things, 2017 Dec 18: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/12/the-possibility-of-a-catholic-social-order
• The Mortara Affair in First Things
  • Cessario, 2018 Feb: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/02/non-possumus
  • Reno, 2018 Jan 1: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/judaism-christianity-and-first-things
  • Carmy, 2018 March: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/03/not-power-but-glory
  • Letters in Response, 2018 April: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/letters
  • Other responses, selected
    • Miller, 2018 Jan 11: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/01/20868/
    • Peters, 2018 Jan 15: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/01/20884/
    • Frater Asinus, 2018 Feb 7: https://thejosias.net/2018/02/07/debemus-in-defense-of-fr-cessario-bl-pius-ix-and-the-catholic-faith/
• Reno, “Liberal Integralism” First Things 2018 March 14: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/03/liberal-integralism
  • Refers to Spadaro, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism,” La Civilta Cattolica, 2017 July 13: https://www.laciviltacattolica.it/articolo/evangelical-fundamentalism-and-catholic-integralism-in-the-usa-a-surprising-ecumenism/
• Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” First Things 2020 March: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/03/for-and-against-integralism
  • Letters, replies, 2020 May: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/05/letters

Public Discourse

• Peters, “Liberalism vs. Integralism” at Harvard, Public Discourse, 2018 April 11: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21306/
• Trabbic, “The Catholic Church, the State, and Liberalism,” Public Discourse, 2018 May 2: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/05/21405/
  • See also Trabbic at CWR: “Thomism and Political Liberalism” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Miller Debate
  • Miller, “Integralism and Catholic Doctrine” Public Discourse, 2018 July 15: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/07/22105/
    • Response by Pink, “In Defence of Catholic Integralism,” Public Discourse, 2018 Aug 12: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/08/39362/
    • Response by Joy at Dialogos, no date: http://dialogos-institute.org/blog/wordpress/the-theological-note-of-integralism/
  • Miller and King, “On Integralism, Religious Liberty, and the Authority of the Church: 19th Century Popes and 20th Century Popes Disagreed,” (replies to Pink and Joy) Public Discourse, 2019 Feb 2: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/02/49141/
    • Response by Joy at Dialogos: http://dialogos-institute.org/blog/wordpress/integralism-and-the-infallibility-of-quanta-cura/
• Maas, “The Coming Anti-Catholicism”, Public Discourse, 2019 May 1: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/05/51277/
• Shadle, “Religious Freedom, the Church, and State Coercion,” Public Discourse, 2019 Dec 3: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/12/58486/
• Bradley, “Learning From Integralism,” Public Discourse, 2020 Jan 9: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/01/59146/
• Pink, “Integralism, Political Philosophy, and the State,” Public Discourse, 2020 May 9: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/05/63226/

Church Life Journal

• Bernacchio, “The Anti-Integralist Alasdair MacIntyre,” CLJ, 2018 May 8: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-anti-integralist-alasdair-macintyre/
• Waldstein, “What Is Integralism Today?” CLJ, 2018 Oct 31: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/what-is-integralism-today/
• Troutner-Waldstein Debate
  • Troutner, “The Integralist Mirroring of Liberal Ideals,” CLJ, 2019 March 8: http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/03/08/the-integralist-mirroring-of-liberal-ideals/
  • Waldstein, “Integralism and the Logic of the Cross,” CLJ, 2019 March 19: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/integralism-and-the-logic-of-the-cross/
• Vermuele, “All Human Conflict Is Ultimately Theological,” CLJ, 2019 July 26: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/all-human-conflict-is-ultimately-theological/
• Leithart, “A Protestant Integralist?” CLJ, 2020 Jan 23: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-protestant-integralist/

Scattered Notices, the Latest

• Massimo, “Beware of ideological efforts to reinvent a mythical medieval Church,” La Croix, 2018 Dec 4: https://international.la-croix.com/news/beware-of-ideological-efforts-to-reinvent-a-mythical-medieval-church/8993 (see also Commonweal)
• Carter, “What You Should Know about Integralism,” Providence Mag, 2019 June 25: https://providencemag.com/2019/06/what-you-should-know-integralism/
• Fernandes, “Against the New Integralists,” Catholic Insight, 2019 Sept 12: https://catholicinsight.com/against-the-new-integralists/
• Millies, “What Is Catholic Integralism?” US Catholic, October 14, 2019: http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201910/what-catholic-integralism-31851
• Walker, “The Problem with Integralism in One Tweet,” Providence Mag, 2019 Nov 27: https://providencemag.com/2019/11/problem-catholic-integralism-tweet-adrian-vermeule/
• MacDougald, “A Catholic Debate over Liberalism,” City Journal, Winter 2020: https://www.city-journal.org/catholic-debate-over-liberalism
• Verbruggen, “How Many Integralists Can There Possibly Be?” National Review, 2020 April 2: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/catholic-integralism-how-many-can-there-possibly-be/
• Burns, “The New Intellectuals of the American Right,” The New Statesman, 2020 April 7: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2020/04/new-intellectuals-american-right
• Patterson, “After Republican Virtue” Law & Liberty, 2020 April 22: https://lawliberty.org/after-republican-virtue/
  • Reply by: Pinkoski, “How Not to Challenge the Integralists” Law & Liberty, 2020 April 30: https://lawliberty.org/how-not-to-challenge-the-integralists/
• Bothur, “A Workingman’s Case For Integralism.” TAC, 2020 April 30: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-workingmans-case-for-integralism/
• Weigel, “Games Intellectuals Play,” 2020 May 20: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/05/games-intellectuals-play

American Affairs

• Vermuele, Review of Deneen “Integration from Within,” Why Liberalism Failed, Spring 2018: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/integration-from-within/
• Gallagher, Kevin, “The Eclipse of Catholic Fusionism,” American Affairs, 2018 Aug: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/08/the-eclipse-of-catholic-fusionism/
  • Critique: Patterson, “Why Integralism Is an Ideology of Despair,” 2018 Nov 28 : https://lawliberty.org/why-integralism-is-an-ideology-of-despair/
• Spring 2019, 3.1, section on “Liberalism’s Limitations”
  • Vermuele, Spring 2019: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/liberalism-and-the-invisible-hand/
  • Pappin, Spring 2019: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/toward-a-party-of-the-state/

Vermeule & Common Good Constitutionalism

• Links by Vermeule here at Mirror of Justice
• Select critiques:
  • Levitz, NY Mag, 2020 April 2: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/vermeule-catholic-integralism-theocracy-progressives-conservatives-constitution.html
  • Hochman, TAC, 2020 April 6: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/adrian-vermeules-moral-madness/
  • See also Peterson et al, “The Constitution and the Common Good,” a series of essays at The American Mind
• Common Good Constitutionalism and Integralism: Fitzgerald, TAC, 2020 April 7: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/adrian-vermeules-nosebleed/

Discussions in the Academy

• ND Ethics Conference 2018, Closing Colloquy; TAC Dreher here and here
• Harvard Conference 2018, Christianity and Liberalism; PD report by Peters here
• Harvard course; Robert George and Adrian Vermeule, here
• Witherspoon Inst., “Integralism & Liberalism” here

Some Academic Publications

Crean, O.P., Thomas, and Alan Fimister. Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy. Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae, 2020.

Schwartzman, Micah, and Jocelyn Wilson. “The Unreasonableness of Catholic Integralism.” San Diego Law Review 56, no. 4 (2019): 1039–67.

^[1] Natural science does regularly achieve many interesting findings with respect to the order of natural bodies; not just the very small subdivisions of matter.

^[2] GS 26, §1.

^[3] GS 74, §1.

^[4] Thomas Aquinas, Super Sent., lib. 1 d. 24 q. 1 a. 1 co.

^[5] Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia,trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 36 (IV.iii).

^[6] Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, 3, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947). At https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/CG03.HTM

^[7] Aristotle, Physics,199a12

^[8] Perfection is synonymous with completion or the fulness of its own being.

^[9] Aristotle, Physics, 195a 26

^[10] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate,22.i

^[11] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 52, a. 1

[12] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 5, a. 3, c. I am grateful to Pater Edmund Waldstein for help with the general account of order.

[13] Thomas Aquinas, In Ethica I, lect. 1.

^[14] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, 22.i

^[15] The free participation of rational creatures in the Eternal Law is the Natural Law.

^[16] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39 a. 3 co.

^[17] Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet VI, q. 11 co.

^[18] Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, lib. 2 cap. 58 n. 5.

^[19] Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3 a. 16 ad 2.

^[20] Aristotle, Politics, I.2, 1253a3-17

^[21] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 4, a. 8

^[22] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 5, a. 5 ad 1; Ia-IIae, q.3 a.8

Header Image: Standing Figures, by George Tooker.

1 Virtue in general

1.1 Etymologies

Like so many words in English, “virtue” is derived from the Latin. This Latin derivation has the disadvantage of obscuring the original experience from which the concept signified is abstracted. Moreover, the cultural history of 19^th century Britain has given “virtue” a sort of missish ring, whereas it and similar words in other languages originally had martial connotations. Unfortunately, there is no good Anglo-Saxon equivalent still in use. The closest would be “dought” or, in the more common adjective form, “doughty,” derived from Old English dohtig, which now has an almost comically archaic ring to it: “Yet many doughty warriours often tride / In greater perils to be stout and bold.”[1] Doughty now means “brave,” and that was probably its oldest meaning as well, but in the 11^th century it was used in an extended sense to mean “competent” and “good” as well. Thus Bosworth-Toller cites the following line from a charter of Earl Godwin from sometime around the year 1016: Ðyssa þinga is gecnǽwe ǽlc dohtig man on Kænt and on Súþ-Sexan. (“Of these things is cognizant every good [doughty] man in Kent and Sussex”).[2] Dohtig is related to dyhtig (strong) and dugan (to be fit, able, strong). It is thus etymologically equivalent to the Modern German word for virtue Tugend from taugen (power, ability, efficiency).

In any case, the Latin virtus, from which the Modern English “virtue” is derived, has a similar history to dohtig. Virtus is derived from vir, man, and originally meant manliness, bravery, or valour. It was thus the equivalent to the Greek ἀνδρεία (andreia)(courage). It was, however, used as a translation of the Greek ἀρετή (arete), which is probably related to the name of Ares, the God of war. Arete too originally meant bravery, valour, etc. Arete is the word used for virtue in Greek philosophy and in the Septuagint and the New Testament. It is therefore worth examining more closely.

1.2 The General Meaning of Arete From Homer to Aristotle

In Homer arete means in the first place the qualities that make a good warrior, namely, those qualities that allow a warrior to be effective in battle. But it is also extended to mean the qualities that allow men, women, and children to do well the actions their respective station in life requires, whatever that station might be: “In the Homeric poems a virtue is a quality the manifestation of which enables someone to do exactly what their well-defined social role requires.”[3] This is then extended beyond human beings to animals and even inanimate objects: “the arete of a horse consists in its swiftness of foot, the arete of soil in its fertility, the arete of a woman in her being a good housewife, the arete of a slave in his or her loyalty to a master.”[4]

It is basically the Homeric idea of virtue that Meno gives in his first attempt at defining virtue in The Meno:

First of all, if you take the virtue of a man, it is easily stated that a man’s virtue is this—that he be competent to manage the affairs of his city, and to manage them so as to benefit his friends and harm his enemies, and to take care to avoid suffering harm himself. Or take a woman’s virtue: there is no difficulty in describing it as the duty of ordering the house well, looking after the property indoors, and obeying her husband. And the child has another virtue—one for the female, and one for the male; and there is another for elderly men—one, if you like, for freemen, and yet another for slaves. And there are very many other virtues besides, so that one cannot be at a loss to explain what virtue is; for it is according to each activity and age that every one of us, in whatever we do, has his virtue; and the same, I take it, Socrates, will hold also of vice.[5]

Meno merely lists the various kinds of virtue, without making the implicit account explicit. Aristotle, in the Ethics, will, however follow this line of reasoning to come to a general definition:

We must explain, therefore, that virtue perfects everything of which it, is the virtue, rendering both the possessor good and his work (ἔργον αὐτοῦ) good. Thus the virtue or power of the eye makes good both the eye and its operation, for it is by the power of the eye that we see well. Likewise the virtue or excellence of a horse makes the horse good and also makes him good for running, riding, and awaiting the enemy. If this be true in all other things, then human virtue will be a habit making man good and rendering his work good.[6]

The key term here “his work,” ergon autou. This is what is often translated as a thing’s “own act” or “proper act.” As Duane Berquist puts it, “A thing’s own act is the act which that thing alone can do or, at least, do better than other things.”[7] From this he derives Aristotle’s entirely general definition of virtue: “Virtue is the disposition of a thing which makes it good and its own act good.”[8]

2. Human Virtue

If virtue is what enables a thing to do its own act or work well, then human virtue is what enables a human being to do the proper act of a human being well. But what is the proper act of a human being? Aristotle raises this question in determining the end of human life in Ethics I:

For just as the fluteplayer and the sculptor and every artist and generally everyone for whom there is something to do (ἔργον) and some act (πρᾶξις), the good and well-being seems to be in doing this, so also it would seem for man if there is something he does (ἔργον). Are there then some doings and acts of the carpenter and the shoemaker, but of man there is none, and he is by nature without anything to do? Or just as there seems to be something done by the eye and the hand and the foot and generally by each of the parts, should one also lay down something that man does besides all these? What then will this be? To live seems to be common even to the plants, but what is man’s own is sought. The nourishing and growing life therefore should be set aside. Following this, there would be something sensing. But this also seems to be common to the horse and the ox and every animal. There remains the doing of what has reason. But of this, the one as obeying or persuaded by reason and the other as having reason and thinking.[9]

What is proper to human beings, what distinguishes them from other bodily, living things is reason. The absolutely final end of human beings is an act of reason that completely transcends human nature: Beatific Vision. In the natural order, the highest act is the contemplation of God through His effects in philosophical wisdom. Wisdom is the highest intellectual virtue— the others are understanding (knowing the first principles of reasoning), science (knowing the conclusions of reasoning), and (in a qualified way) art and prudence.

But, Aristotle points out that there are parts of the human souls beside reason itself that have acts proper to human nature: namely the parts that obey or are persuaded by reason. These are the parts of the soul that have to do with desire in all its forms. “For the vegetative element in no way shares in reason, but the appetitive and in general the desiring element in a sense shares in it, in so far as it listens to and obeys it.” (1102b) Taken together, we might call these desiring parts “the heart.” The virtues of these parts of the soul are called “moral virtues.” Because, as Aristotle points out, when we speak of someone’s morals (ἤθους), we mention temperance and good-temper rather than wisdom (1103a). There seems to be a puzzle here. The highest activity of a human being is found in the acts of the intellect, and yet when we say that persons are “good,” without qualification, we mean that they have the virtues of the heart, rather than those of the intellect.

St. Thomas explains the reason for this. Virtue is what makes both a thing and its proper act good without qualification. Now, what moves a person toward an end as good is the heart (any one of the desiring faculties). Thus, in order to do one’s own act well, and thus be oneself good, one’s heart must be rightly directed toward the good. If I do not desire the good, I will not do the actions which lead to it or in which it consists, and therefore I will not myself be good. Thus St. Thomas writes:

When we speak simply of virtue, we are understood to be speaking of human virtue. But as was explained above (q. 56, a. 3), a human virtue, in the most perfect sense of virtue, is a virtue that requires rectitude of appetite [i.e. the heart], since a virtue not only bestows a facility for acting well but is also a cause of the very use of a good work (usum boni operis causat). Still, in a less perfect sense of virtue, a virtue does not require rectitude of appetite, since it only bestows a facility for acting well but is not a cause of the use of a good work.[10]

Moral virtue causes the right use of the intellectual virtues. It will be desire for the good that moves me to use the intellectual virtues to actually contemplate some truth. And therefore, the virtues which rectify the desires are necessary for the proper use of intellectual virtues. As Henri Grenier puts it:

The intellectual virtues give man the power of performing good acts, but do not give him the right use of this power, i.e., do not make him use this power in a right manner. Hence they render good the operation of a particular faculty, but do not make man good in an absolute sense; v.g., as a result of intellectual Virtue, a person can be a good philosopher, but yet not a man who is good in every respect, for he can knowingly, and without sinning against intellectual virtue, be the author of sophistries. The moral virtues not only give man the power of performing good act[s], but make him use this power rightly, for the moral virtues perfect the appetite, whose function consists in moving the other powers to act. Hence the moral virtues make man good in an absolute sense.[11]

The moral virtues not only immediately enable persons to do the acts of the faculties of the heart well, they are also necessary to use the other faculties— even the higher faculties of the intellect— well. A person who has the virtue of science can use that virtue to lead his students astray, and the habit of science does not prevent this. Indeed, it is because he has science that he will be good at inventing sophistries. But if such a person also has the virtue of justice, this will mean not only that he will do acts of the will well, but also that he will do the acts of reason perfected by science well— leading his students to the truth.

Human virtues in the strict sense are therefore the moral virtues, which perfect the heart, the desiring and appetitive parts of the soul. But, as we shall see, the greatest of the moral virtues is prudence, which in terms of its subject is an intellectual virtue.

3 The Powers and Passions of the Soul

3.1 The Powers of the Soul

Human beings are rational animals. They are distinguished from the other animals by having the spiritual power of reason. They are distinguished from the angels by having senses, dependent on material organs. Human knowledge begins with sensation. The world is sensed through the five external senses, and the sense-impressions are received into the interior senses (the common sense, memory, imagination…). And then these sense experiences are illuminated by the intellect, and the intellect abstracts universal truths from them.

The intellect can be considered in two ways: as theoretical, and as practical. The theoretical (or “speculative,” i.e. “looking”) intellect simply looks at and contemplates the truth. The practical intellect looks at the truth of reality insofar as it contains attainable goods and orders this knowledge to action.

The knowledge of the good causes a desire for the good, or a striving after the good. This takes place already at the level of the sensible soul. The sensible good (the pleasant) is “known” by the external and internal senses, and this causes the sensible appetites to desire that good or the overcoming of what threatens the good. There are two desiring powers at the sensible level: the concupiscible appetite, and the irascible appetite. The first and more fundamental is the concupiscible appetite, or concupiscence. This is what is usually meant when we say the “desiring part of the soul.” It answers to epithymia (ἐπιθυμία) in Plato’s tripartite division of the soul. This power strives after the pleasurable and flees the painful. The second is the irascible appetite. This appetite depends on concupiscence, and it is concerned with overcoming difficulties and repelling threats to the goods desired by concupiscence. It answers to thymos (θυμός) in the Platonic division.

Desire for the good as good, and not merely as pleasant, belongs to the practical intellect, which can understand the good and the end. Intellectual knowledge of the good leads to a spiritual desire of the good in the “rational appetite” known as the will. The two levels, the sensible and the rational, mutually influence one another. Sensible appetite has an influence on our knowledge of the good, and therefore our will. But on the other hand, sensible appetite can also be directed by reason and will.

3.2 The Passions

Passions are movements of the sensitive desiring faculties, resulting from the sense-knowledge of good or evil, accompanied by bodily changes. The fundamental passion is sensual love which arises in the concupiscible appetite. Love is a conformity of the concupiscence to some desirable object. From love arise desire (when the loved object is not yet possessed) and joy (when it is possessed). From love also arises the opposite sensible passion, hatred, which is the lack of conformity that the appetite has with some sensible evil. To love something implies hating its opposite (to love pleasure is to hate pain). From hatred arise flight (when the evil has not yet come to pass) and sorrow (when it has come to pass).

In the irascible appetite, the passions of hope and despair arise with respect to goods apprehended as difficult to attain, whether possible (hope) or impossible (despair). With respect to evils, the irascible appetite brings forth fear (aversion from an evil considered unconquerable), daring (turning toward an evil considered conquerable), and anger (the inclination to inflict evil for evil). The following diagram gives a rough sketch of the passions. (A deeper consideration would show that more distinctions are necessary.)

4. The Cardinal Virtues

Thus, there are four powers of the soul that are immediately concerned with the good to be attained through human action: practical intellect, will, concupiscence, and the irascible appetite. There are therefore four principle virtues, dispositions of the soul that allow human beings to do the actions arising from these four powers well:

1. A virtue of the practical intellect that allows persons to know their good easily and direct their actions to the good: prudence, or practical wisdom.
2. A virtue of the will that enables persons to easily will not only the goods closest and most known to them, but also the good of other persons and the more universal and common goods to which they are ordered: justice.
3. A virtue of the irascible appetite that renders it, and the passions arising from it, subject to reason: courage.
4. A virtue that perfects the concupiscible appetite and renders it, and the passions arising from it, subject to reason: temperance.

These four virtues are called cardinal virtues, from the Latin cardo, meaning hinge, because all the other virtues hinge on them.

5. The Mean

The goods and evils with which sensible appetites are concerned are destroyed by excess and defect. For example, it is good to eat food because this is necessary to conserve our substance, but it is bad to eat too much or too little food. It is good to face dangers in pursuing the good, and it is bad to face danger too little (cowardice) or too much (foolhardiness). Thus it is evident that the virtues of temperance and courage are concerned with a mean relative to the subject. The mean is not in this case mediocrity, but perfection, just as in Greek music, the tonic note was called the “mean note” because the scale moved both toward and away from it.

Justice is also concerned with a mean because it is concerned with giving to each his due. But this is an objective, rather than a subjective mean. It is the mean between giving someone more than he is objectively due (e.g., punishing a criminal more than he deserves) or less than he is objectively due (e.g., giving a store keeper less than the price of his wares).

In each case, the mean is determined by prudence: prudence rules the other moral virtues by laying down what the mean is for them. By analogy ad unum, therefore, we can say that prudence is also concerned with the mean.

6. Habit

The powers of the soul are not limited to one fixed activity but are capable of acting in various ways. It is therefore necessary that they be determined to good activity by stable dispositions or habits. Such dispositions are acquired by repeatedly acting in the right way, until it becomes easy. This ease of action allows the pleasure of good activity. Aristotle compares the acquisition of moral habits to the acquisition of skill in making things (art):

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.[12]

In the case of the virtues of the sensitive part of the soul, habituation rectifies the appetites by training them to delight in the mean determined by reason. Since our knowledge begins with the senses, our desires begin with the senses as well, and the desires most obvious to us are the desires for sensual pleasure. It therefore requires training for the appetites to participate in reason. The habits resulting from such training are temperance, courage, and the other virtues that flow from them.

In the case of the will, training is necessary that the will can choose not only the closest and most immediate good (the proper good of the one willing), but also to love a more transcendent good (the good of the other). This is justice: willing the due good of the other.

In the case of the practical intellect, habituation is necessary simply because of the variety of circumstances in human affairs, and the quasi-infinite number of the means that can lead towards the end. The result of such habituation is prudence.

If virtue in general is the disposition of a thing which makes it good and its own act good, then we can now see that moral virtues are habits that make the powers of the human soul concerned with practical action good, and the actions proceeding from those powers good.

These notes have only considered natural or “acquired” virtue. There is a higher kind of virtue that is not acquired by training, but is “poured” directly into the soul by God. Such “infused” virtues are in reality a participation in a higher life, the Divine Life. Through the infused virtues, human beings have a foreshadowing and beginning of supernatural happiness.

[1] Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book IV, Canto 10, Stanza 18.

[2] T. Northcote Toller (ed.), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1882), s.v. “dohtig;” cf. Benjamin Thorpe (ed.), Diplomatarium Anglicum Ævi Saxonici (London: MacMillan & Co., 1865) p. 313.

[3] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3^rd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 183-184.

[4] Margalit Finkelberg (ed.), The Homer Encyclopedia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), s.v. “aretê.”

[5] Meno, 71e-72a.

[6] Nocomachean Ethics, VI,2 1106a; trans. C.I. Litzinger, O.P.

[7] Duane Berquist, “Note on End or Purpose of Man,” p. 1.

[8] Duane Berquist, “Note on End or Purpose of Man,” p. 3.

[9]  Ethics I,7 1097b-1098a; trans. Duane Berquist.

[10] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae Q 61, A1, c. In the translation I follow Alfred Frodosso, except that I have translated usum as “use” rather than “execution.” This sounds clumsy in English, but is essential to the meaning.

[11] Henri Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 4, Moral Philosophy, trans. J.P.E. O’Hanley (Charlottetown: St. Dunstan’s University, 1950), § 929.

[12] Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b.