(Source: Inter Minores, March 2010)
In the 28/10/2009 edition of the Southern Cross, Fr
Ron Rolheiser OMI had an article entitled “Church needs Liberals and
Conservatives”. In an earlier article in 2001 entitled “Beyond Ideology”,
Rolheiser weighs up the pros and cons of both the liberal and conservative
ideologies. (1). I’d like to define here what I mean by liberalism. In general
liberalism advocates latitude in interpreting dogma, oversight or disregard of
the disciplinary and doctrinal decrees of the Vatican, sympathy with the Sate
even in its enactments against the liberty of the church, in the action of her
bishops and clergy and a disposition to regard as clericalism the efforts of
the Church to protect the rights of the family and of individuals to the free
exercise of religion. By asserting man’s absolute autonomy or freedom of action
in the intellectual, moral and social order, liberalism denies, at least
practically, God and supernatural religion. Liberalism, like modernism is the
total harnessing of religious belief and practice to the cultural modes and
vagaries of civilisation in any given epoch.
Rolheiser quotes Cardinal Francis George OMI of
Chicago as saying that “Liberal Catholicism is inadequate in fostering the
joyful self surrender called for in Christian marriage, in consecrated life, in
the ordained priesthood, even in discipleship ... A sociological theory that
defines the central value as autonomy is only with great difficulty able to
hear a doctrinal or gospel call to surrender”.
Liberalism’s Other Gospel Values: Rolheiser admits that liberal ideology is not strong
on this point and doesn’t easily bend the knee in joyous doctrinal and gospel
surrender. But he adds that liberalism ‘fosters other gospel values’ and that
in history liberals often led the way in the fight against racism, sexism,
ecological insensitivity and undue privilege for the rich.
But surely in the Catholic tradition ‘doing follows
being’ and Gospel surrender before Gospel activity? Anthony Gilles maintains
that “Christianity predates liberalism by about 18 centuries. Long before
liberalism, there was an impulse within the Judeo – Christian tradition to care
for the less fortunate, and to make society’s goods available to the greatest
number”. Yahweh was seen as a God “who executes justice for the orphan and the
widow, and befriends the alien, feeding and clothing him”. (Deut. 10:18). Jesus
summed up the law and the prophets when he said: “Treat others the way you
would have them treat you”.
(Mt. 7:12). (2)
St John Chrysostom in the 4th century
outraged the rich and powerful by his campaign on behalf of justice for the
poor and powerless and yet he was very orthodox in his theology. Today he would
be regarded in his work for justice as a great liberal and in his orthodoxy as
a great conservative. But it’s not a case of either being a liberal or a
conservative but fidelity to gospel truth that we should strive for. In fact
the categories liberal and conservative seem very arbitrary and break down when
it comes to dedicated committed Christians like the evangelical Edmund Burke
regarded as a great conservative thinker but who fought for the abolition of
slavery and the anti-Catholic Penal Laws in Ireland as did his friend
Wilberforce. (3)
Oscar Romero was regarded as a liberal hero of the
liberation struggle in Nicaragua but his spiritual director was an Opus Dei
Priest and Romero lauded the ‘superb doctrinal fidelity’ of Opus Dei and worked
for the cause of its founder Escriva to be fast tracked to canonisation. (4)
Gospel : neither Liberal or Conservative: As Jim Wallis put it: “It is time for the left and
the right to admit that they have run out of imagination, that the categories
of liberal and conservative are dysfunctional and that what is needed is a
radicalism that takes us beyond the selective sympathies of both the right and
the left. Such a radicalism can be found only in the Gospel which is neither
liberal or conservative.” (5)
Two theologians who needed to move beyond their
selective sympathies in the direction of gospel truth were Karl Barth and Paul
Tillich.
Barth and Tillich: Karl Barth, the neo orthodox conservative theologian was “liberal
enough to have a mistress in his household as well as a wife”. (6) His arch
rival the very liberal Paul Tillich was divorced and remarried to a divorcee
and was addicted to pornography and drugs. (7) Obviously both needed to be
challenged by the Gospel.
Margaret Thatcher claimed to be a Christian
conservative. She read the Peace Prayer of St Francis on the steps of 10
Downing Street as she began her premiership. Conservatives claim to be family
oriented but her notorious poll tax was levied to get women out of the home and
to succeed in the workplace as she had done – whether they wanted to or not! In
a recent survey 60% of women interviewed in the USA said that if they had to
start married life all over again, they would not go out to work but remain at
home for the sake of their families.” (7A)
Going back to Rolheiser’s “Beyond Ideology”, he
stresses the strengths and weaknesses of liberals and conservatives and some of
the former values I have already given. He says that “Conservative Catholicism
is strong on doctrinal and gospel surrender, and, the theory at least,
emphasises that this surrender be a joyful one. But he admits that often this
is not the case and that it often produces the older brother of the prodigal
son, namely someone who can, in truth say:
“All these years I have been faithful. I have never
done anything seriously wrong”.
On the other hand liberal ideology, he admits can
easily make for prodigal sons.
But Rolheiser argues that conservatism with its
emphasis on other worldly values helps make its devotees a bit more willing to
sweat the blood of self-sacrifice and so has an important prophetic voice.
Mahatma Gandhi believed that there was no true religion without sacrifice. (8)
Liberalism on the other hand loses its prophetic edge
by accommodating too readily to cultural trends and assumptions. Richard
Niebuhr saw liberals as accommodating Christianity to the prevailing culture,
to the zeitgeist, to the fashion of the hour, in fact to the supreme
infallibility of current fashion. Someone has said that “a church which is
married to the spirit of the age .... will be a widow in the next. We are not
set on this earth to help a fallen world function smoothly ... We are signs of
contradiction or we are nothing”. (9)
Libs Eschew Sacrifice: Douglas Hyde, the Catholic convert from communism
saw the importance of sacrifice in life. He could have been talking of Christian
liberals when he said “Christianity without high ideals, which makes no call
for sacrifice, which stresses that it demands only the minimum of men and not
their whole lives will be something which makes no impression on them. Why
desert the easy ways where sin is no problem and eternity does not exist for a
lukewarm creed practised in a half-hearted fashion? (10)
Douglas Hyde’s famous contemporary George Orwell,
himself a democratic socialist once commented:
“Nearly all western (liberal) thought since the last
war has assumed tacitly that all human beings desire nothing beyond
ease, security and avoidance of pain. Hitler knows that human beings don’t
only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth control and in
general, common sense, they also at least intermittently want struggle and self
sacrifice. Whereas socialism and even capitalism have said to people ‘I offer
you a good time’, Hitler has said to them, ‘I offer you struggle, danger and
death and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet’. (11)
William Barclay maintained that Jesus had come not to
make life easy but to make men great. (12). Hard places produce enduring
religion. Liberal religion on the other hand does not seem to last.
Liberalism : A Threat to Christianity: Of the two ideologies liberalism and conservatism, I
personally believe the former poses the greatest threat to Christianity because
as Professor James Hitchcock says “Liberalism in religion has never been a way
into faith; it has always been a way out”. (13) The Tablet quoted a British
Mormon elder as saying that the liberal teaching of other churches was ‘very
definitely’ an important reason why many were leaving to join the Mormons. (14)
Fr Mitch Pacwa S.J. describes the heterodox liberals as spiritual geldings and
spays; they have removed the essentials of their faith and cannot reproduce,
bringing in neither converts nor vocations. The best they can do is make
geldings and spays of those who do possess the faith. (Ignatius Productions,
April 2008).
However a much more famous British critic of liberalism
was the ex liberal/socialist Malcolm Muggeridge who wrote the following in his
conversion story:
“The process of death wishing, in the guise of
liberalism, has been eroding the civilisation of the West for a century and
more, and now would seem to be about to reach its apogee. The Liberal mind,
effective everywhere, whether in power or in opposition, has provided the
perfect instrument. Systematically, stage by stage, dismantling our Western way
of live, depreciating and deprecating all its values so that the whole social
structure is now tumbling down, dethroning its God, undermining all its
certainties. And all this, wonderfully enough, in the name of the health,
wealth and happiness of all mankind. Previous civilisations have been
overthrown from without by the incursion of barbarian hordes; ours has dreamed
up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual élite. Not
Bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with all the old Bolsheviks; not
Nazism, which perished with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not Fascism, which was
left hanging upside down from a lamp-post along with Mussolini and his mistress
– none of these, history will record, was responsible for bringing down the
darkness on our civilisation, but Liberalism. A solvent rather than a
precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a
precipice; blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of
beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish ....” (15)
It’s alarming how readily liberals in the Church
fraternise with liberals outside the Church. The attempted legislative takeover
of the Church in Hartford Connecticut in March 2009 exposed once again the
partnership between Catholic dissenters and secularists. (16). Bill 1098 was
introduced into the state legislature by two Democrats and if it had passed it
would have allowed the state to control Catholic parishes. The real force
behind that bill was a small but well-organised group of Catholics unhappy with
Church teachings on moral and governance issues and attempting to enlist the
state as a partner in radically transforming the Church from within.
Another American example: At a remarkable conference
in Cincinnati, USA, in 1998 sponsored by liberal Catholic institutions,
attended by mostly consecrated women religious, speakers explored the outer
boundaries of ecological extremism and New Age Spirituality. Rosemary Radford
Ruether the liberal theologian and doyen of Catholic feminists and a population-control
advocate echoed the cold sentiments of eugenicist Margaret Sanger, the founder
of Planned Parenthood, when she suggested that we should ‘find the most
compassionate way to weed out people’! (17)
Liberalism Vanquished Religion: Francis Fukuyama in “The End of History and the Last
man” says that “liberalism vanquished religion from Europe”. (18). But isn’t he
talking of political not theological liberalism? It’s not easy to separate
them. John L McKenzie S.J. says that “anyone who says that his theological
thinking rises serenely above the turmoil of contemporary events is lying in
his teeth”! The environment evangelises and we imbibe its values almost by
osmosis. As the region goes politically so does the religion!
BOILING
FROG SYNDROME:
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, the famous South African activist
recently referred to what she called the “boiling frog syndrome’: a frog if
thrown into hot water will dramatically leap out again to save its life but if
the water heater is very gradually turned up the frog will gradually be boiled
to death and not try to escape.
The same thing is happening to many Christians worldwide
in liberal democracies. Many have survived persecution but cave in when the
stick is replaced by the carrot. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg said that “modern
cultures are more difficult to resist because they are so kind and accepting.
Because of persecution you get stubborn, but when, you are kissed and hugged
you relax”. (19)
FATHERS
ON SEDUCTION :
St Hilary of Poitiers lived thru a similar moment in history,
experiencing the shift from an open persecution to a more effective and hidden
persecution in the mid-fourth century: “Today instead we fight against an
insidious persecutor, an enemy who flatters, the anti Christ Constantinus”,
Hilary wrote in a book against the powerful Roman emperor. “He does not wound
the back but caresses the breast; he does not confiscate our goods, and thus
give us life, but he enriches us and thus gives us death,’ he continued. “He
does not push us toward freedom by imprisoning us but toward slavery by
honoring us in his palace. He does not attack from the side, but takes
possession of the heart; he does not cut off the head with a sword, but kills
the spirit with gold. He does not threaten officially with the stake, but secretly
lights the fires of hell. He does not battle to avoid being defeated, but
worships in order to dominate. He affirms Christ in order to deny him; he seeks
unity to block communion.” (20)
In a similar vein, St Basil, a contemporary of Hilary
wrote:
“When the devil saw that because of the pagan
persecutions the Church grew and prospered, he changed his plan and did not
engage in open battle but laid secret traps and hid his treachery under the
very name they (Christians) bear. This way we suffer as our fathers suffered
but not in the name of Christ, because the persecutors call themselves
Christians”. (21) Like many politicians
today! Not for them the stern words of St. Thomas More who said “that when
statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public
duties, they lead their country by a short cut to chaos” or Pope Benedict: “A
man of conscience is one who never acquires tolerance, well being, success,
public standing and approval on the part of prevailing opinion at the expense
of truth”.
SEDUCTION
OF HUMANITARIANISM:
Both Saints Hilary and Basil warn of the danger of
seductions by the enemy just as in our own times Vladimir Soloviev in “The
Antichrist” and Robert Hugh Benson in “Lord of the World” warn of this danger.
Soloviev warns of the great seduction of humanitarianism which is a religion
without Christ or Cross in which man saves himself by his own intelligence. (22) Cardinal Ratzinger praised Benson’s book in
1992 on the occasion of its republication in Germany. (23)
LIBERAL
TRIUMPH OVER RELIGION:
Fukuyama says of Christian Democratic parties in Europe
that they “are democratic before they are Christian and the secular nature of
their interpretation of Christianity is simply a measure of liberalism’s
triumph over religion”. He continues: “Religion has thus been relegated to the
sphere of private life – exiled … from European political life”. Kenneth
Craycroft maintains that “Fukuyama is correct, but he does not go far enough.
Even in the private sphere liberalism decides which religions (or peculiar
expressions of a particular religion) are worthy of respect. Catholicism is one
of the worst religions, for instance, it denies the ‘right’ of its members ‘to
make up their own minds’ and believe what they will’. Religion in a liberal
democracy is legitimate only to the degree that it adopts liberal democratic
principles in its own internal life. Its legitimacy is directly proportionate
to its compliant irrelevance. Thus Fukuyama crows “liberalism vanquished
religion from Europe”.
Craycroft argues that “liberal political theorists
realized the impossibility of
eliminating religion by force, so they devised a scheme that would achieve the
same effect: they made religion the ally of liberalism by taming religion’s
recalcitrant claims to particular, exclusive truth, and by inducing religion to
accept tolerance as its highest and most central virtue”. “With (liberalism’s)
advent”, says Fukuyama, “religion was defanged by being made tolerant”. (24)
TOLERANCE:
Tolerance is certainly one of liberalism’s most characteristic
self proclaimed virtues and this in inculcated in children in all liberal
democracy schools from, an early age. Steven Bates says:
“Tolerance may indeed be the dominant theme of the modern curriculum. The authors of a recent study of high schools concluded that tolerating diversity is the moral glue that holds schools together. One study of history books found toleration presented as “the only religious idea worth remembering.” (25)
“Tolerance may indeed be the dominant theme of the modern curriculum. The authors of a recent study of high schools concluded that tolerating diversity is the moral glue that holds schools together. One study of history books found toleration presented as “the only religious idea worth remembering.” (25)
One writer in the magazine “Teaching Tolerance” stated
that tolerance is an idea that is universally relevant (to every class) and it
belongs everywhere in the curriculum”. Teachers are being told how to teach it
in every single subject. From history to literature to mathematics, the
children are learning tolerance. As one school administrator said: “It is the
mission of the public schools not to tolerate intolerance”!
But isn’t tolerance a gospel value? Josh McDowell in a
new book entitled “The New Tolerance” shows that this new tolerance has nothing
to do with traditional tolerance. The ‘new tolerance’ means this : not only do
you put up with and endure and bear with
those who have different views, habits and/or lifestyles than your own,
but you must agree with their views as well. Furthermore, you must be willing
to promote and endorse that other lifestyle, since it is every bit as good as
yours. So no way can you claim to love the sinner and hate the sin!
McDowell believes that this travesty of the truth begins
with the liberal democratic idea that there is no absolute truth and everything
is relative. Therefore, one kind of lifestyle is as good as another. You must
not judge because there is no absolute standard to judge by! (26) As
Dostoyevsky said: “Anything is permissible if there is no God.”
Tobias Jones of the Guardian newspaper surprisingly calls
such people the ‘new totalitarians’ who disguise themselves as being ‘more
tolerant than thou’ and of being devotees of the great god Tolerance. Owen
Williams says of them “I have rarely met anything as dogmatic as some committed
liberals”. (27)
And the aim of the
new totalitarians according to Jones is “nothing less than the eradication of
religion and believers from the face of the earth”.
Why? Perhaps the Bible has the answer: “the virtuous man
annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches us for our breaches of the
law and accuses us of playing false to our upbringing. Before us he stands; a
reproof to our way of thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down
…..In his opinion we are counterfeit; he holds aloof from our doings as though
from filth”. (Wisdom 2:12-16)
James Kalb has written a detailed study of the tyranny of
liberalism in a book of that name with the subtitle: “Understanding and
overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by
Command.” (28)
EQUALITY
Another characteristic of liberalism is equality. Kalb
says that ‘at the heart of the liberal system is a very simple principle: equal
freedom … this involves the promotion of some combination of freedom and
equality”. Kalb traces the origins of this back to the American and French
revolutions and believes that liberal governments set out “systematically and
relentlessly to establish formal equality in every realm of human existence:
economic, political, social, cultural and religious”.
DE
TOCQUEVILLE:
One of the most perceptive observers of democracy was
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 -1859). He believed that “another political system
could emerge from democratic society,
a tyranny more extensive than ever before, using hatred
of inequality and the absence of alternative centers of power to increase
and intensify governmental control of individual life”. (29)
De Tocqueville thought that America had escaped this
frightening possibility but James Kalb’s :Tyranny of Liberalism” would probably
disagree. Pope John Paul 11 said that “history demonstrates, a democracy
without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism”. (30) His successor Pope Benedict goes further
when he said in 2005 that “we are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism
which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest
goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires”. (31)
‘DEMOCRATIC
SPIRIT’: As regards equality, in the eyes of God
of course all people are equal but in reality there are differences in
intelligence and talents and aptitude. C.S. Lewis in “Screwtape Proposes a
Toast” has the devil Screwtape lauding the “democratic spirit” with its slogans
“all are equal”, “ I‘m as good as you” ”being like folks” for this leads to
“the discrediting and finally the elimination of every kind of human excellence
– moral, cultural, social or intellectual”. Screwtape says that the basic
principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made
to feel inferior, to intelligent an industrious pupils for that would be
“undemocratic.” “At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly
all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that
all or nearly all, citizens can go to universities “. No one must feel that
their self esteem is in danger. Pass one, pass all!
Of the long American experience with democracy Thomas
Molnar says it has turned 250 million Americans into robots. (32) De Tocqueville
observed that aristocratic nations are naturally too apt to narrow the scope of
human perfectibility and democratic nations to expand it beyond compass”. (33)
NO ELITES:
Generally in democratic nations there is no room for
elites, all must be cut down to the same level for all are equal.
There is obviously a fair amount of cross fertilisation
of ideas between socialist and liberal democraties – both spreading the same
errors. Many socialist countries initially supported such ideas of levelling
down or dumbing down and then expected their scientists etc. to excel! They
were usually forced to do a u-turn on this and introduce elitist schools for
high fliers to get the scientists and technicians that a modern democracy needs
to run its country. Democratic societies seem to learn nothing from history. No
wonder Churchill talked of the “confirmed unteachability of mankind”.
GENDER
FEMINISM:
Democratic emphasis on equality usually has bizarre
results e.g. gender feminism. These people believe that since all are equal and
there’s no difference between girls and boys so all children should be taught
the same way. Any attempt to treat boys as boys and girls as girls is
stereotyping and negative, ignoring all the studies that show that single sex
schools do best academically. (Sunday Times, 18/10/2009).
So in society or in language anything faintly resembling
inequality such as “in the name of the Father and the Son etc,” they are
willing to fight over in favour of a gender neutral world. As Thomas Howard
puts it they want “to drain out your nouns, to accommodate a drab and
punctilious androgyny, create a gender-neutral society and destroy any
sex-rooted distinctions between men and women. (34)
GENDER
MAINSTREAMING:
The “Looney left” have now produced “gender mainstreaming” the purpose of which is to create a ‘new man’ who can arbitrarily decide whether he is a man, a woman, or some other gender unrelated to the natural distinctions of biology. According to them there are not two sexes but six or more, depending on sexual preference. This is done under the rubric of ‘equality’ legislation. One commentator Gabrielle Kuby in “Gender Mainstreaming, the Secret Revolution” says that behind the façade of equality lurks the general attack on the moral standards to which we owe the western culture. Without it, neither the family nor Christianity can survive”. (35) One Dominican Priest goes as far as saying that “equality has become a battering ram for the destruction of Christian society and culture”. (36)
The “Looney left” have now produced “gender mainstreaming” the purpose of which is to create a ‘new man’ who can arbitrarily decide whether he is a man, a woman, or some other gender unrelated to the natural distinctions of biology. According to them there are not two sexes but six or more, depending on sexual preference. This is done under the rubric of ‘equality’ legislation. One commentator Gabrielle Kuby in “Gender Mainstreaming, the Secret Revolution” says that behind the façade of equality lurks the general attack on the moral standards to which we owe the western culture. Without it, neither the family nor Christianity can survive”. (35) One Dominican Priest goes as far as saying that “equality has become a battering ram for the destruction of Christian society and culture”. (36)
James Kalb maintains that the ultimate basis of
liberalism is rejection of ‘moral authorities that transcend human purposes’.
INCLUSIVENESS:
For example private Christian schools in the U.K. are
forced to take active gays and lesbians whether they agree or not. Liberals
demand inclusiveness in the name of equality so no one can be excluded (except
Christians who stand up for their principles). Recently British Catholic
Bishops said they could be at risk of prosecution under a proposed law, the
Equality Bill, unless they accept women, sexually active gays and trans-sexuals
as candidates to the priesthood. The Church could not only be sued but bishops
face imprisonment and fines and Church assets be sequestered and make it
impossible for bishops to discipline clergy who wanted to live ‘alternative
lifestyles’. Catholic schools and clinics could be forced to remove crucifixes
in case they offend non-Christian employees. (36A) Perhaps the bishops need to
read James Kalb’s “The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered
Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance and Equality by Command”!
In Holland jubilees of faithful priests must include
those who have defected or betrayed their vows all in the name of the great
gods of Tolerance, Equality, and Inclusiveness! In pursuit of equality Sister
Susan Rakoczy IHM, an American nun lecturing at a South African seminary
dismisses Pope John Paul’s ‘theology of the body’ because he presents a
‘biology is destiny’ approach to the differences between men and women and so
has a “biologically based interpretation of gender roles”! (37) and this is not
politically correct! But as Time Magazine once observed “The Vatican does not
take its cues from Gallop polls or what it hears on T.V. talk shows or
Protestants” (38) or liberals for that matter!
Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of South Africa in an article
entitled “Political correctness a highway to heresy?” mentioned a Catholic
School Congress where it was stated that “we must use the word God instead of
Father because we do not want the document to be exclusive”! (39) Aligning with
the Zeitgeist is more important than fidelity to church teaching it seems.
RIGHTS:
Another mantra of liberalism is rights – everyone and
everything has rights. There is the right to life, to food, to jobs, to be gay
or whatever (but unborn children have no rights!). Liberal democracies
are good on rights but not duties. “in a liberal democratic regime”, says
Fukuyama, men have perfect rights, but no perfect duties to their communities”.
Words like duty are seen as almost synonymous for fascism. (40) And yet as
Louis Sullivan, the Black American politician once said “If character means the
courage to insist on our rights, it also means the willingness to live up to
our responsibilities”. (41)
Rob McCafferty goes further when he says “in liberalism
freedom comes to mean the freedom and right to sin”. (42) This sounds a bit odd
but that great seer of totalitarianism Dostoevsky said something similar in the
middle of the 19th century: “Yes we shall set them to work, but in their
leisure hours we shall make their life a child’s game … Oh, we shall allow them
to sin, they will love us like children because we allow them to sin … and they
will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great
anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for
themselves”. (43)
NANNY
STATE AND SUBSIDIARITY:
The liberal democracy seems to have a tendency to become
a nanny state providing all material goods as long as people are prepared to
give up their freedom and free will – but not even God asks that! Needless to
say the welfare or nanny state, offering cradle–to-grave material security and
attempting to provide for all material human needs, expands the state beyond
its proper scope and violates the principle of subsidiary. (44)
1984
ETC.
Perceptive writers and futurologists like de Tocqueville,
Dostoyevsky, Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), George Orwell (1984) and Ira
Levin (This Perfect Day) all seem to be alarmed at what they perceive to be the
path of democracies of the future – all seem to be totalitarian! How is it
possible? Perhaps Pope John Paul 11’s observation is true “as history
demonstrates a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly
disguised totalitarism”. Future clashes between the liberals and the Catholic
Church’s claim that “there is no other name under heaven by which we can be
saved” (Acts4:12) seem inevitable.
Was De Tocqueville right when he believed that another
political system could emerge from democratic society, a tyranny more extensive
than ever before, using hatred of inequality and the absence of alternative
centers of power to increase and intensify governmental control of individual
life?
It needs to be remembered that Hitler’s Nazism was
totally democratic and legal! A majority of Americans tolerated systematic
slavery and racial segregation until very recent times.
HURLEY
AND DEMOCRACY:
Archbishop Denis Hurly omi, ex Archbishop of Durban was
once asked what right the Catholic Church had to speak about democracy when it
is not a democracy itself. His answer was: “I think the response is twofold.
Firstly the Catholic Church seeks to promote relations among people that are
deeper, wider, more meaningful and more effective and more truly human than any
political democracy. Secondly in promoting these relationships it is laying the
basis of the foundations for the democracy of today. How is it trying to do
this? By trying to live out the words of the Gospel especially John chapter 15”.
(45) Back to the Gospel again!
A contemporary of Archbishop Hurley, Bishop Pedro
Casaldaliga of Brazil once said in a similar vein: “People say the Church is
not a democracy, and that is true. But I don’t want the church to be a
democracy – I want it to be something better than a democracy. I want it to be
a community”. (46)
The Church as we can see is not a democracy and looking
back over 2000 years of Christianity she gives the impression of being a
monarchy or Kingdom! Of democracy Winston Churchill famously remarked “that it
is the worst form of government – except for all the rest”!
WHAT
OR WHO ARE WE SERVING?
Anthony Gilles in an article in the St. Anthony Messenger
entitled “Is Christianity Liberalism?” asks should Christians be dedicated to
causes as liberals are or, should they be dedicated to people or, more
particularly, should they be dedicated to serving Christ in others? Serving
causes as opposed to serving Christ in others makes a tremendous amount of
difference, in terms of both one’s motivation, and the result of one’s service,
Gilles maintains.
CHRIST
OR CAUSES:
Serving causes, he says, changes little. Serving Christ
in others on the other hand, produces at least two profound changes. First, it
gives those whom we serve the hope in Christ that St. Paul talked about, ‘the
mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory’ (Col.1:27)
Secondly, serving Christ in others, changes not only
those whom I serve but also, and more importantly perhaps, it changes me.
Serving causes, he says, may broaden a person’s contacts and experiences, but
it is doubtful that it will remake anyone into a radically, new, happier, more
peaceful person. A good example of Anthony Gilles’s suggestion that serving
Christ in others changes me is perhaps to be found in the life of Evelyn Underhill.
EVELYN
UNDERHILL:
When in 1920 Baron Friedrich von Hügel undertook to
direct the spiritual life of Evelyn Underhill (Mrs. Stuart Moore), she was
already in middle life, married, and one of Britain’s most accomplished
writers. The Baron began insisting that she ‘visit the poor.” These two
afternoons a week of immersion in the life of the London poor were not
suggested with any primary idea of doing them good, but rather of restoring her
to a responsible personal relations with the brave, bold, boisterous stream of
suffering humanity which makes up Christ’s earthly body. It worked in her case
and brought her nearer to people, and in their midst she found Christ. (47)
Gilles continues: Finally, the motivation for Christian
service flows spontaneously from one’s prayer life, or from inner contact with
the Spirit. This purifies our intentions
and provides a directive as to whom and how we are to serve. It’s easy to fall
into the liberal trap of thinking that every human problem must be solved by my
effort. One person can only do so much. Our little bit is best defined for us
by the Spirit rather than by the liberal agenda. Mother Teresa once noted, “Jesus
didn’t say, ‘Love everyone’; he said, ‘love one another.’”
Liberalism, it seems to me, demands love of everyone, and
then produces love of hardly anybody at all. Christianity, on the other hand,
urges love of those around me, a much more demanding requirement, and one that
requires patient commitment. Liberalism throws a little money here and a little
money there, and then moves on restlessly to the next cause and to the one
after that. Christianity must stop and suffer with and, if necessary, die for
those whom it serves. Liberalism seldom digs in for the long haul. Its focus is
always on the next cause, and seldom on the suffering brother or sister in the
present. Perhaps Christianity can learn a thing or two from Liberalism, but
Christianity can’t be Liberalism.
Gilles maintains that the motivation for Christian
service flows from one’s prayer life, and another writer says that loss of
interest in prayer is one of the first signs of the disease “collapsed
eschatology” (read liberalism!)
AN
INFLAMMATION OF THE SOUL:
In a witty but perceptive article in the Southern Cross,
Fr. Michael McCabe SMA, says that “collapsed eschatology” is “one of the most
dangerous diseases that can affect the theological species”. He quotes that
hammer of the liberals Richard Niebuhr to the effect that the liberal’s God
“will be a God without wrath who brings men without sin into a kingdom without judgment,
through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross”.
In its initial stages it reveals symptoms similar to that
‘loss of taste for spiritual matters’ – the patient loses interest in prayer.
He has a vague uneasiness about the realities of death, judgment, heaven and
hell, but he prefers not to think too much of them”.
In the second stage the patient lies to himself that he
is fine but that all those who have gone before him were sick – those who
believed in such negative things as sin, judgment, in a crucified Christ.
In the final tragic stage of the disease, the patient
becomes delirious and claims that he is god. God means ‘what man is to become’.
Heaven means a universal brotherhood of peace and justice – in this life. Every
traditional theological term is emptied of its original meaning and given a new
meaning. McCabe says that those in the initial stage of the disease can be
cured by 3 doses of prayer a day. But there is little hope short of a miracle
of the recovery of those in the second and third stage of the disease! (48)
We read in Colossians “See to it that no one takes you
captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human
traditions and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ”. (Col
2:8)
Cardinal Ratzinger could have been commenting on this
passage when he wrote:
“We need to rediscover the courage of non conformism in
the face of the trends of the affluent world. Instead of following the spirit
of the times we ourselves must witness that spirit of nonconformity with
evangelical seriousness. He says that we have lost the sense that Christians
cannot live just like ‘everybody else’. Today more than ever he says, the
Christian must be aware that he belongs to a minority and that he is in
opposition to everything that appears good, obvious, logical to the ‘spirit of
the world’ as the New Testament calls it. Among the most urgent tasks facing
Christians is that of regaining the capacity of nonconformism i.e. the capacity
to oppose many developments of the surrounding culture”, Cardinal Ratzinger
maintains. (49)
CONCLUSION:
People reading the above could easily become a bit
despondent but the book I have referred to a few times by Kalb offers solutions
and alternatives to Liberalism. The book is entitled “The Tyranny of
Liberalism: Understanding and overcoming administered freedom, inquisitorial
tolerance and equality by command”. It has stimulating thoughts about engaging,
combating and living with Liberalism but no simplistic seven-step programme.
Some time ago in America and other places ordinary
Christians voted with their feet and decided to pull their children out of
secular humanistic and lukewarm religious schools and home school their own
children.
With millions of people doing this in America and
worldwide I see it as one of the most exciting and countercultural trends in
Christianity today.
Of course it involves sacrifice but there is no true
religion without it. The early church was born in sacrifice : until the peace
of Constantine in 313 A.D. every single pope was martyred for the faith and
Christian parents had their children baptised even though it was a death
sentence. But to gain the pearl of great price it is worth it.
