Conservative Catholics are involved in a fascinating and heated debate with each other. The debate is about the compatibility (or not) with America as they sometimes style it or liberal democracy as they sometimes conceive of it. One group traceable to John Courtney Murray sometimes called older, orthodox, accommodationist, or neo-conservative maintains that Catholicism is fully compatible with American style democracy. Their position is that the American Constitution is founded on natural law/natural rights principles and is opposed to a relativistic view. Their quest is to fill in the neutrality of liberal democracy, to return us to limited government, laissez faire economics, and a strong foreign policy. They are pro-life, pro-family, and supportive of traditional marriage.
The so-called radical school denies the compatibility of Catholicism and liberal democracy. It rejects the individualism, the excesses of capitalism, and the imperial tendencies while sharing the pro-life, pro-family, and traditional marriage views of the other conservatives.
Catholic conservatives are on the defensive. It should be obvious to a stone that gay rights are here to stay and that those who fight against it will be marginalized. Both groups are right to worry that relativism, individualism, and pure selfishness are too prominent in American culture (though blaming these tendencies on “liberalism” strikes at a straw man). The conservative radicals join the political left, not to mention Pope Francis, in worrying about the hedonism, materialism, exploitation, and imperialism embedded in capitalist culture. It is helpful that many traditional Catholics (liberal on most economic issues- conservative on many social issues – this is why they do not like being called conservatives) have something to share with the political left and speak out in articulate ways about these issues.
Both groups of conservatives seem to believe that liberal Catholicism is doomed. It is a strange time to believe that. After all, the current Pope does not stress social issues and has even invited an open debate about the issues that concern liberal Catholics. Moreover, there is a smugness about this in comparing liberal Catholics to liberal Protestants which they also see as terminally ill. In fact, 60% of Anglo-Americans born in the Catholic Church are no longer Catholics and a surprisingly strong percentage of those who have left are not liberal. Indeed, the decline among Anglo-Catholics is about the same as that of liberal Protestants. As is well known the size of the American Catholic Church has been supported by Latino immigration and that group tends to be more conservative on social issues. So the American church looks to become more conservative than it is today (though it is hard to predict how much the church overall will move in response to the culture).
Nonetheless, on most social issues favored by conservatives, they are right to fear that they have lost a substantial part of the culture war. They probably will have some room for maneuver on abortion for some time. But consider the rest of the views: pre-marital sex, masturbation, divorce, contraceptives, same sex relations and the like. According to Catholic doctrine, doctrine strongly held by the conservatives, these are always wrong. The conservatives are right to worry that they are on the margin of American culture. Indeed, despite the doctrine, the conservatives are far from being a majority, not even in their own church – and it’s a good thing too.
For an excellent introduction to the debate among Catholic conservatives, see http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ghosts-chuck-colson-richard-john-neuhaus-first-things/
Comments