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Independence Day and the principles of Catholic social teaching

A life well-lived requires, first of all, a recognition of our dependence on each other.

(Image: Aaron Burden/Unsplash.com)

July is the first full month of summer, a time for lazy hazy days of going on vacation, cooling off, doing nothing. For historians, it is the month when things really start to heat up, the month of the two great revolutions that have shaped the politics of the modern West. On July 14, the French celebrate Bastille Day to commemorate the storming of a royal prison that came to symbolize the destruction of the French monarchy. On July 4, Americans celebrate Independence Day to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, by which British colonists rejected their allegiance to the British monarchy.

Catholics tend to be ambivalent toward, if not hostile to, the French Revolution, in large part because the assault on the monarchy extended to an assault on the Church. American Catholics tend to have little to no reservations about celebrating the American Revolution.

As a person of Irish descent, I am happy to join in the celebration of anything that sticks it to the Brits. As a Catholic, I should be more ambivalent. Thomas Aquinas may have offered some rationale for rebellion against unjust authority, but the Church recognized King George as a legitimate ruler. At any rate, the Catholics who supported independence, most notably the Carroll family of Maryland, did so not for any distinctly Catholic reasons but based on their understanding of British and Enlightenment political traditions as interpreted by the patriot movement within the overwhelmingly Protestant British colonies.

Most scandalous of all, the Carrolls threw their lot in with the patriot cause in the hope that the new nation would institute religious toleration, which they believed would ease the plight of the Catholic minority: this at a time when no pope would affirm religious toleration as a positive good. Patriotic Catholics continue to evade, ignore or excuse this disconnect between Catholic teaching in 1776 and the American Founding. I suspect no historical argument would shake their faith in a Founding made safe for Catholicism.

However, I wish here to assess the historical meanings of independence from the perspective of Catholic social ideals, particularly the ideal of the Church as the Body of Christ and society as the Body Politic. These ideals, which long pre-date the modern social teaching tradition inaugurated by Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, assume that community precedes and constitutes individual personhood. Nothing could be further from the social contract traditions that have shaped modern politics, including the political history of the United States.

The founders of this tradition, including Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, disagree on many things but all agree that man is first and foremost, by nature, an individual. Existing freely in the state of nature, individuals come together and, by consent, create society for the purpose of maximizing individual freedom. To be sure, this tradition was but one that shaped the thinking of the American Founders. The history of the British colonies stood as a refutation of the fantasy of some pre-political state of nature; older, still living British political traditions tempered the radical individualism implicit in social contract theory. Yet, with political independence came a weakening of the ties to older, more communal traditions. Independence from Britain soon raised the question of the meaning of independence within America. American history has offered a variety of answers to this question.

Left-liberal historians are quick to point out that the freedom and equality associated with independence were for white men only. This is only partly true. It would be more accurate to say that the Founders understood freedom and equality as reserved for men of a certain amount of property, who in late-colonial America just happened to be white. The emphasis on racial and gender exclusion has obscured the more basic exclusion of class. The Founders believed that political equality was meaningless without some general economic equality. Political actors could only act responsibly if they were economically independent and self-sufficient; otherwise, they would be vulnerable to bribes or other forms of control by the economically powerful. Such corruption would undermine public virtue, which would in turn undermine the republic itself. The first response to this dilemma was to limit political power to those with enough economic power (understood in terms of landed property) to remain immune to bribery or economic coercion. Let us call this the classical republican response.

The second response was to expand political power while at the same time to maximize the distribution of productive property. Let us call this the democratic response. Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder that he was, imagined an America peopled by sturdy, independent yeoman farmers, each supporting himself and his family on a plot of land sufficient to ensure basic subsistence, with a small surplus to bring to market to secure those few necessities the farmer could not produce for himself; any prosperity beyond this would lead to luxury, another sure-fire corruptor of public virtue. A growing population living within a finite amount of land threatened the realization of this vision of widespread independence. At the Peace of Paris that concluded the Revolutionary War, the United States had received all that Indian territory west to the Mississippi River, in effect doubling the size of the young nation. Jefferson still feared it would not be enough to ensure is yeoman farmer ideal. As president, he authorized the Louisiana Purchase (1803), covering much of the territory from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, doubling the size of the nation once again. Still, there never seemed to be enough land for everybody to feel safe and secure in their independence.

There were reasons for farmers to feel insecure, but they had less to do with the amount of land than the way it was settled and how the agricultural economy developed. The comparatively small ratio of people-to-land in the Midwest and the government’s commitment to incentivizing large-scale commercial farming ensured the decline of commercially viable, small-scale farming in the East. Jefferson’s dream lived on in the settlement trans-Mississippi west and found its clearest legislative expression in the Homestead Act of 1862. This act of Congress granted to citizens and noncitizens alike (yes, noncitizens!) 160 acres of public domain land, each on the condition that they develop the land into a viable, working farm. This idea of an independent homestead on the frontier retains a powerful hold on the American imagination, as witnessed by the continued popularity of the Little House books. Anyone who reads between the lines of those books knows that Pa Ingalls never did achieve the independence he sought through farming and often had to work for wages in a lumbermill to provide for his family.

The Homestead Act failed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the dream of independence itself. Jefferson’s equation of land and independence proved illusory. Sustainable independence requires tools, seeds, animals, food, clothing, shelter and enough reserve supplies, either in cash or materials, to survive until the first harvest. Weather, locusts, and above all the aridity of the land in the Far West often meant that the first harvest was a failure. Cut off from broader social networks of support, most of these farmers forfeited their land, which speculators and large-scale “bonanza” farmers then bought up, creating the agri-business that feeds most Americans today. The would-be sturdy, independent yeoman farmer then either hired on as an employee of some corporate agriculture firm or left farm life to work as an employee of an industrial corporation in a city. By the standard of the yeoman farmer, a wage worker was little more than a “wage slave” because he depended on another man to provide for himself and his family. That is, the wage worker lacked independence.

Ironically, the people that came closest to achieving something like independence through agriculture were those who rejected the extreme forms of independence that proved the ruin of so many American farmers. These people were groups that in one way or another were at a distance from mainstream America. In the Upper Midwest, Scandinavian and German Lutherans succeeded as farmers largely by settling as whole communities; with safety in numbers, they were better able to survive the difficulties that would accompany the early years of settlement even with the best possible advanced preparation. In the Far West, the most successful group proved to be the Mormons. Persecution back East drove them to Utah but also helped them to develop the intensely strong communal ties necessary to survive in an arid, seemingly barren land. Mormon families cooperated with each other, limiting their farm size and sharing water access. Though Mormons would go on to achieve success in the more individualist fields of business and the professions, the state of Utah can boast one of the lowest rates of economic inequality and highest rates of income mobility in large part due to the immense private welfare system organized through the Church of Latter-Day Saints. That is, their communal traditions survived long after they were necessary for basic communal survival.

Americans no doubt have a soft spot for community. As a soft spot, it only sharpens our awareness of the hard spot by which we judge ourselves and guide our society. If that hard spot has a name, it is “independence.” The Declaration of Independence made clear our separation from England; operating within American society, the ideal of independence has too often made clear Americans’ separation from each other. Independence from England did not lead inevitably to a competitive individualism that sets fellow citizens against each other and then celebrates the last man standing; it did follow that path historically. Our public memory tends to conflate the victory of the few with that of the many. A Ford autoworker with a good-paying factory job in the 1950s might not understand how a worker from the 1850s would see him as a wage slave; he certainly would not shed any tears for the competitors Henry Ford defeated on his way to the top. Life was good. Until it wasn’t. During the 1980s, the executives at Ford and other auto manufacturers had no qualms about shipping jobs overseas, where they would not have to provide workers with the wages and benefits that made life good for American workers in the 1950s.

Recent years have seen a political revolt of the rustbelt, looking back on the good times, feeling robbed, betrayed, and in the great tradition of Independence Day, tending to blame an oppressive government. These angry rebels look back on a past in which they sense they were free and independent and wish to have that freedom and independence again.

The rustbelt was betrayed. One culprit is certainly globalism, promoted by elites in both the private and the public sector. Yet it was also betrayed by its own aspirations, a desire to cash in on the big postwar boom, to get as much as it could out of the system, to make enough money to at least feel independent. This is what popes since Leo XIII have identified as the great occasion of sin created by modern affluence.

American history provides alternative models for a more modest understanding of prosperity in keeping with Catholic social principles. We may even find these models in non-Catholic communities, such as those achieved by Lutherans in the rural Midwest and Mormons in Utah. As we celebrate our nation’s independence from England, let us recall that a life well-lived requires, first of all, a recognition of our dependence on each other.

(Editor’s note: This essay was originally posted on July 4, 2022, as a “The Past Present” column, in slightly different form.)


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About Dr. Christopher Shannon 24 Articles
Dr. Christopher Shannon is a member of the History Department at Christendom College, where he interprets the narrative of Christian history from its foundations in the Old Testament and its heroic beginnings in the Church of the Martyrs, down through the ages to the challenges of the post-modern world. His books include Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social Thought (Johns Hopkins, 1996), Bowery to Broadway: The American Irish in Classic Hollywood Cinema (University of Scranton Press, 2010), and with Christopher O. Blum, The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition and the Renewal of Catholic History (Christendom Press, 2014). His book American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey through Catholic Life in a New World was published in June 2022 by Ignatius Press.

16 Comments

  1. “Thomas Aquinas may have offered some rationale for rebellion against unjust authority, but the Church recognized King George as a legitimate ruler. ”

    The Church is more than its bishops, and the bishops have no monopoly on judging whether a ruler is legitimate or not.

    As for the desire for prosperity, Roman Catholic immigrants have been driven by this as much as escaping persecution, etc. What is going to create community? Not lecturing by an academic, but actual leadership that first focuses on fraternity.

  2. Correction: it’s called Catholic Social Teachings, not ideals or principles as this author paints it. It’s teaching, meaning it has been consistently and systematically taught for over a hundred years flowing from a deepened understanding of Jesus’ and biblical teachings and how they correlate with present day realities that Catholics face individually and collectively that call for active engagement with society guided by Catholic faith. As teaching, it calls for a committed and concrete response upon Catholics. Unlike principles or ideals about which one can only speculate and meditate of which this article is a very good example, the Social Teachings of the Church unfortunate remains correctly as it is often called: “a best kept secret” because it is not received, studied, prayed over, and out of it actively care for the community’s societal good. A good example to think about is how many Catholics let themselves be guided by the Social Teachings of the Church rather than partisan ideology in voting for candidates and parties during elections?

    • One only “speculates” about principles? Huh. In fact, the word “principle” has quite a lot to do with “doctrine” and foundational beliefs.

      Meanwhile, the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine uses the word “principle/s” some 78 times. For example:

      Besides the principles that must guide the building of a society worthy of man, the Church’s social doctrine also indicates fundamental values. The relationship between principles and values is undoubtedly one of reciprocity, in that social values are an expression of appreciation to be attributed to those specific aspects of moral good that these principles foster, serving as points of reference for the proper structuring and ordered leading of life in society. These values require, therefore, both the practice of the fundamental principles of social life and the personal exercise of virtue, hence of those moral attitudes that correspond to these very values. (#197)_

  3. #1. Yet another good example of communitarian living are the Amish.

    #2. To further exacerbate the atomization among people are the widespread use of technology and social media : Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc. As I mentioned to my wife yesterday, no one seems to use the phone to “reach out and touch someone” anymore; a text message suffices! We call them cell “phones” but few seem to use them as such…too much contact, I suppose. We should pat ourselves on the back for the level of independence we’ve attained.

  4. Catholicism of late has become the stupid man’s religion, and this is nowhere more in evidence than in “conservative” Catholic political writing. “Doctor” Shannon here repeats the tired non-sequitor that George III and the British Parliament had a natural and God-given right to rule the colonies against their inhabitants’ wills. This is not, in fact, traditional Catholic teaching at all, and the institutional Church’s “recognition” of “legitimate” regimes has always been based on realpolitik, not abstract theories of legitimacy. Saint Paul recognized the emperor Nero’s dominium because it was the de facto political reality and there was no point in trying to overthrow it, not because the Apostle wished to impress upon Christians the theory that literal might makes right, i.e., that the way one becomes a legitimate ruler is by out-terrorizing, out-murdering, and out-pillaging your competitors, such that anyone who is IN FACT in power is so BY RIGHT. By Dr. Shannon’s neo-traditionalist anti-logic, the very fact that the American patriots succeeded in securing their independence (and that their new government gained papal recognition) is proof that it was divinely ordained. By casting aspersions on the American Founding, “Doctor” Shannon is casting aspersions on God Himself, Who, according to the neo-trad reading of Romans 13, delegated His very authority to the new American government — because, after all, de facto rule is inherently legitimate! What was true of King George before the War of Independence must be true of the American government after it: Ordained of God!

    Of course, this stupid neo-trad understanding of dominium involves God in a contradiction: Anyone who actually rules is, for that reason, divinely ordained, and so to resist him is to resist God, UNLESS the rebellion is successful. In *that* event, God was on the side of the rebels after all. So following the rebels is rebellion against God, until the rebels succeed in beating God’s anointed; then, God changes His mind and it now becomes rebellion against Him to continue to support the dude you initially claimed was His divinely ordained minister. . . . And yet, the neo-trad still wants us to fault the rebels, if the person they deposed was a king — even more bizarre in the instant case, given that George III owed his rule to a rebellion against an anointed Catholic monarchy that the neo-trads would have us believe was the one divinely appointed.

    Confused yet? You’re not alone. The neo-trads have no coherent account of how one man acquires morally legitimate rulership over another. All they can fall back on — all they ever literally fall back on — are stupid cliches about how “pope so-n-so recognized so-n-so as ruler,” as if that means *anything* to an orthodox Catholic. The popes are not God. They are not the authors of our natural rights, and they have no power over them. If the pope “acknowledges” the rights of a tyrant, that just means the pope is an aider of tyranny, and to be resisted as such, by any and all means at the disposal of righteous people.

      • LOL. Personally attacking a person by proclaiming that his opinion is “truly stupid.”

        “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

        • Did you happen to read the post? It’s actually both stupid and insane, like when you posited that execution is an option when excommunication doesn’t work a few weeks ago. People in glass houses…

      • I have no clue whether this Shannon fellow is a neo-trad, but this particular talking point — that the American founding was illegitimate or morally dubious from a Catholic perspective, was in fact an anti-Christian “Enlightenment” project, and was, from a Catholic point of view, an illegitimate rebellion against a Church-sanctioned regime — is a distinct invention of twenty-first-century neo-traditionalist internet comboxes. This critique escaped the attention of literally every Catholic writer and observer, from 1776 until fifteen minutes ago. And for good reason: It’s a profoundly stupid critique, as I demonstrated above.

  5. History is full of what-ifs…
    What if Franklin’s Albany Plan of 1754 had more votes? The colonies could have been united earlier, and (!) this also could have been the beginning of what later became the British Commonwealth–quite possibly without escalating into a War for Independence.
    Or, what if in the preceding century the colonial charters under the King had not been obsolesced by an upstart Parliament which then imposed taxes without consent?
    How much of last-minute colonial discontent was fanned by the Quebec Act of 1774 whereby Britain recognized Catholic stuff in Canada to the extent of religious freedom, decent employment and even jobs in the government? Can’t have any of that seeping down into the Congregational and Anglican colonies!

    Which is to say, a lot of grief can be avoided if small steps toward a more harmonious future are not so easily discounted and derailed. But we drive by the rea-view mirror and the victors write history, and we then even imagine a sort of trajectory absent its pivotal turning points. The myth of inevitable Progress. St. Augustine offered a more sweeping overview than Aquinas, an overview more suitable for times of turmoil than for settled times of synthesis—something to the effect that our “only excuse for what we do is that there has been an infinite series of plunders, iniquities behind ours” (these words are from Dino Bigongiari, 1950ish Columbia University professor).

    Looking to the future, then, does Augustinian theology—such as produced “The City of God” after the plunder of Rome in A.D. 410—best characterize our situation today in what used to be a settled and coherent “Western Civilization”?

    For Christians, are these Apostolic times?

  6. Interesting article that covers a lot of ground, but there are many facets of the American story that should be remembered. Here are a few that comes to mind.
    First, the American Revolution was won with a huge help from France, the French Navy as I remember bottled up the British at Yorktown, resulting in a key British loss that led to the victory. Second while the article rightly brings up slavery that was not abolished at the time, but American Revolution and the follow on Constitution set the process in place, at a high cost, to end slavery. America is not perfect by far but it did end slavery. I always find it interesting that leftist like to criticize the revolution for not solving slavery, while supporting the extermination of black babies through abortion. Third the American Revolution was achieved as a result of unique figures in History, with George Washington being the standout, he was a gift from God. America would simply not exist without him and the supporting cast. Another interesting facet of the British, it was the British that in effect established, with the help of the Magna Carta, legislative bodies like the parliament that limited the British Monarchy. This self governing concept was in effect in America before the Revolution due to British governance approach. To end this set of commentary it must be noted are so many important parts of America story, it is complicated and often not good, but American should understand the whole picture and the gift we have, before the leftist destroy.

    • Excellent points. Two follow-up comments, on the French armada at Yorktown and on the Magna Carta…
      FIRST, the armada was a financial drain on the French crown, and in this way probably contributed to its weakness behind the French Revolution of 1789–which is categorically different than the more surgical colonial War for Independence, and which even today leaves its mark around the world on anti-religious/radical secularism.
      SECOND, the principal author of the 1215 Magna Carta was Stephen Langton–a Catholic archbishop! The intricacy of Church-State disentanglement involved papal financial expectation from England (to help prevent the Hohenstaufen dynasty from taking Sicily), threats of interdict and invasion, and the fact that King John had made England a papal fief and then that Langton’s pope (Innocent III) at first opposed the Magna Carta (as having been extracted under duress by the barons, whom he excommunicated) and under oath (which the pope regarded as invalid without his sanction). A revised version was produced in 1225, again with Langton’s leadership, and was signed by a mix, culturally, of bishops, abbots, barons and earls.

    • Well, Britain ended slavery first and freed thousands of American slaves following the revolution. One of those slaves had belonged to George Washington.
      I’m very grateful we eventually figured out abolition also but we weren’t exactly ahead of the curve. At least in the West. The Ottomans, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia didn’t officially abolish slavery until the 20th century. And of course it still lingers in some form under the radar.

  7. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. (Lincoln)

    In MI they are now telling us the auto companies are eventually going 100% EV (unaffordable and dangerous), with direct involvement from the CCP, while the other major players in the world add coal plants. Chase the government dollar while recently announcing white collar layoffs after begging for engineers the last two decades. The plight of the average person/(aka deplorables) is being ignored by Uncle Sam in the name of politics.

    As far as the supply chain Ross Perot was right about the effect of the jobs going overseas.

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