Anti-Ideals, Anti-Theologies

The current intellectual, social, and political situation has been catastrophic for the Church. It is increasingly bad for secular society, where it is radicalizing divisions and degrading living conditions, especially for the less successful.

(Onur/Unsplash.com)

Last month I suggested that there is no Catholic social ideal, at least not in any very concrete sense. The situation is somewhat like that regarding theologies and philosophies: some are better, more helpful, or more suited to the times than others, but a Catholic doesn’t have to accept any particular one of them.

Even so, some are ruled out altogether. Pantheism and naturalism, the view that God is nature or that nature is all there is, are anti-Catholic. State socialism and strict libertarianism are similarly at odds with Catholic social teaching when viewed as ideals, although particular libertarian or socialist policies may sometimes be justified.

Catholicism values reason highly, and never makes arbitrary assertions. So if a view dealing with the things of this world is fundamentally at odds with the Faith, it’s going to be at odds with natural law and reason as well. In our time such views usually take the form of secular ideologies that promise hope and change but deliver an anti-utopia. Such views can reasonably be called anti-ideals.

Thought works its way toward overall coherence, so if you’re insistently wrong on one basic point the effects creep into all aspects of how you view things. If you hold to a political anti-ideal you’ll likely also accept an anti-theology—a hardcore socialist or Mussolini-style fascist, for example, is unlikely to be theologically orthodox or even take the Faith seriously. The same holds for other combinations: a religious error like subjectivism naturally leads to political errors like secular progressivism and the philosophically irrationalist view that 2+2 can equal 5.

All of which is a problem, because public life and high-end thought today are dominated by anti-ideals and anti-philosophies. The thought of those now counted as experts is dominated by naturalism, the view that only natural forces and laws operate in the world, and mainstream public life by technocracy, the view that the purpose of social order is maximum preference satisfaction consistent with efficiency, stability, and manageability.

These views are focused, narrow, and effective as immediate means of power. They are also intolerant. They’re good for winning wars or producing lots of consumer goods, but ruthlessly exclude alternatives as aside the point and not worth considering. People who hold them know what makes sense to them but find other views comprehensible only by reference to stupidity or moral vice.

That is why the editorial board of the New York Times—an institution that articulates and largely determines mainstream understandings of public affairs—feel justified in simply asserting that “President Trump’s assault on the birth control mandate is … filled with spite, based on falsehoods and fueled by vindictiveness toward his predecessor.” Without evidence or argument these experienced, responsible, and extremely well-connected journalists feel able to assert that support for conscientious objection rights for people who decline to take a purely technological view of sex can only be based on stupidity and wickedness. After all, what other possibility is there when the technological viewpoint is the only one that makes sense?

Under such circumstances, participation in day-to-day mainstream public life means going along with understandings and ways of doing things that are radically anti-Catholic and indeed anti-human. But our actions and associations most often determine our attitudes and beliefs. It’s hard to keep the critical distance that allows independent judgment in the day-to-day struggles of public life. So full mainstream political participation today is very likely to mean abandoning the Faith in its integrity. We see that all around us: how many prominent Catholic political leaders are orthodox?

The desire to get things done is seductive. For example, labor unions and health care for all seem eminently Catholic causes. New treatments extend life and cure disease, but often drive medical costs beyond the resources of families and voluntary or cooperative arrangements. And globalism, feminism, mass immigration, and the creeping totalitarianism of corporate life have profoundly weakened the position of working people.

It seems that something needs to be done. So why not join in coalitions that seem likely to do so? Obamacare and the labor union movement appear to be obvious ways to broaden availability of medical care and promote security and adequate income for a great many working people. Such benefits may well seem sufficient to overcome serious objections, since no actual system of things is perfect.

So we shouldn’t be surprised, for example, that Catholic sisters and others involved in healthcare were instrumental to the passage of Obamacare, and many Catholics consider right to work laws, whose emphasis on negative freedom of association reduces union power, patently anti-Catholic for that reason.

But the significance and effect of any policy depends on the system of which it is part. Both the union movement and the push for universal health care are enlisted today in support of efforts to organize basic aspects of life on anti-utopian lines. American unionism now means support for the entire left-wing social agenda. And the mainstream view today is that “health care” includes contraception and abortion as fundamental components. In the name of individual autonomy—implicitly but more importantly, for the sake of efficiency—it will increasingly include “assisted suicide” that need not even be voluntary.

These connections are far from accidental. Labor unions are part of the broad secular progressive coalition that aims at a comprehensively administered social order. The economic interests of public sector unions, which are the heart of American unionism, favor transferring family, community, and private functions to government—which is the effect of all social reforms that now count as progressive. And a comprehensive government system for health care makes the definition and administration of human well-being a managerial problem for a technocratic ruling class, to be dealt with in accordance with efficiency and the interests and outlook of that class.

Under such circumstance, can it be right for Catholics to support comprehensive government provision of health care or restricting the independence of American workers with regard to labor unions? Promotion of some good ends can’t justify support for policies, organizations, and movements that treat promotion of serious evils as central to their mission.

The current intellectual, social, and political situation has been catastrophic for the Church. It is increasingly bad for secular society, where it is radicalizing divisions and degrading living conditions, especially for the less successful. The proper response is not to go with the flow and compromise basic principle for the sake of comfort, social respectability, and the hope of making marginal improvements as part of the dominant team. We need to maintain our independence and offer fundamental alternatives instead of joining in constructing what is more and more clearly an anti-utopia.

The most important thing Catholics can do as citizens today is broaden the range of concerns taken seriously in public life beyond utility, equality, and efficiency. Joining coalitions with people who categorically reject our concerns won’t help us do that. Instead, we need to understand our own views, present them clearly, continuously, and forcefully, and find ways outside established structures to further them.


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About James Kalb 148 Articles
James Kalb is a lawyer, independent scholar, and Catholic convert who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of The Tyranny of Liberalism(ISI Books, 2008), Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Angelico Press, 2013), and, most recently, The Decomposition of Man: Identity, Technocracy, and the Church (Angelico Press, 2023).

7 Comments

  1. …and then you come up against the church’s new found position that everyone is entitle to believe whatever they want and to act according to their own conscience and all of a sudden….pro-abortion laws and contraception mandates make perfect catholic sense…. and catholic institutions honor pro-abortion politicians and catholic bishops give them communion.

    You have to fix the rot in the church, before you can fix the rot in society. Pope “who am i to judge” might be a good place to start.

    • I think we agree on your point, but I will phrase it a slightly different way:

      “The current intellectual, social, and political situation has been catastrophic for the Church.”

      Catastrophic for the Church because the Church helped to create the problem.

  2. I fully agree with Kalb that the faithful “need to understand our own views, present them clearly, continuously, and forcefully, and find ways outside established structures to further them”. The quandary is the faithful are confused like sheep scattered without leadership, without an inspirational spiritual leadership either form local pastors or the universal Pastor. In that Pat is absolutely correct. Persons on this website and others like are aware but they are a segment. The best approach to the conundrum is not what forums we attach to. Rather it is the age old tested means of prayer and sacrifice including witness when opportune.

    • Feminism means:

      1. More workers, so more competition among workers, so worse bargaining position.

      2. No expectation of a family wage. Feminism says “free to be you and me.” That means workers are simply individuals, and who they feel obligations to is their business.

      3. Weaker human ties. That’s not so bad if you have money and position, but it makes life much harder if you don’t. Look at marriage and illegitimacy rates among not-so-successful people. There’s a lot of suffering there. (Charles Murray goes into that in his Coming Apart.)

      4. Professionals marry professionals, proletarians marry less and have unstable marriages, so class differences become more extreme and the working class becomes less able to support each other and assert itself.

  3. Had the Church worthies stuck to preaching on moral issues from a strictly religious position instead of wading into the political realm, they would not now be marginalized by these same politicians. Unfortunately their desire to act beyond their competence has brought on these conditions that are now rather late to correct. One is again reminded that when you take the king’s shilling you are obliged to dance the king’s tune.

  4. Reason is highly valued in the Catholic Church; but of itself, it has no redemptive power. It may bring us to an intellectual belief in God, but it does not bring us to trust in God. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. Scripture tells us how God wants us to relate to Him.

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