Ethnicity, class, and sex are always with us.
Members of different societies develop differences in habits, attitudes, and loyalties that grow into cultural and eventually ethnic distinctions. A complex society includes activities whose demands, qualifications, and prominence lead to differences in standing and reward. And our physical constitution, with its psychological consequences, points to differing roles for men and women in procreation and family life.
So these basic human distinctions have to do with functional differences that aren’t going away: among people originating in different societies, among people with different positions in the social order, and between people with different reproductive roles.
Some speak of a single world society that would make us all one, but that seems unlikely. Life is too complicated, and people want something of their own that is more distinct, local, and immediate. The “One World” ideal is more technological than human, and life just doesn’t work that way.
But what to do about the differences? Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female. His purpose, though, was not to abolish race, class, and gender as social categories but to say that our unity in Christ is more basic. Similarly, we can say that in Christ there is neither head surgeon nor scrub nurse—they too are one. That does not mean Christianity calls for radical democracy in the operating room.
Men and women thus have somewhat different roles, and so, it seems, did Philemon and Onesimus. The gospel makes room, as it must, for normal social functioning and thus for social distinctions that can matter a great deal. The need for a pope means Francis and I have very different standing in the Church, and even Catholics devoted to current understandings of social justice consider that entirely appropriate. Even so, we are equally members of the one body, and all Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.
So the matter is complicated, and denunciations of racism, sexism, and privilege in favor of equality and inclusion have limited value. They often put people at odds with each other while keeping them from finding humane mitigations for unavoidable tendencies that indeed disadvantage some people. They also lead to endless hypocrisy, since people who have climbed to positions of influence obviously don’t support any very strong form of equality.
I’ve recently discussed some of the complications related to sex and ethnicity. This time I’ll discuss class.
It has always been with us, and so has class conflict: Marx was right to that extent. But there has also been class cooperation and mutual good will. The latter haven’t been based entirely on fraud, any more than the inclination of most people today to trust the experts and accept the workings of the system is entirely based on fraud.
Man is a social and rational animal, and social distinctions are necessary. However pervasive human weakness and corruption may be, the desire to give them a justification and live up to that justification is therefore real. Both today’s experts and politicians and yesterday’s kings and noblemen have had conceptions of duty, public role, and the public good that required them, however flawed their performance, to rise above personal and class interest.
The specific justifications have of course changed. In the old days people thought it was sensible to have a king, a man divinely anointed and above class and faction, decide things. Today they defer to claims of special knowledge and popular representation, and in America they think that the most basic social decisions should be made by an unelected committee mostly composed of the graduates of two New England law schools.
The specific nature of class differences has also changed somewhat. In some ways the burdens of class have softened. Formal distinctions, such as noble, freeman, and serf, have receded in importance. And there is much less brute want at the bottom.
But in other ways the tendency toward a more technological organization of society has radicalized distinctions and made them more crude. There are greater differences in wealth than in the recent past. There are also fewer informal bonds between the classes. That means less sense of noblesse oblige on the part of the upper classes and less sense of participation on the part of ordinary people. Hence, among other things, the recent decline in patriotism.
In part those changes are due to globalization, which puts all the world’s resources at the disposal of people at the top while making American workers compete with those in Bangladesh. In part they are due to electronic communications and data processing, which reduce the role of stable human connections. And in part they are due to the decay of cultural and spiritual ties among the people, a tendency driven by developments that include the rise of social media, which encourage social and psychological fragmentation, and mass immigration, which disrupts local networks of solidarity.
Few Americans who are well established in this country care much about the well-being of the Guatemalan villagers our rulers import to serve as cheap and compliant labor, or about the economically struggling people—often black—whom they compete with and replace. If well-situated Americans actually cared about people on the margins they would take seriously the effect of mass immigration on fellow citizens who are struggling economically.
Nor does “white privilege” seem to do much for those who could use a boost, the downwardly mobile white people Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have referred to as bitter clingers and irredeemable deplorables for failure to keep up with the times.
The growing indifference or contempt for those seen as social and economic inferiors has a variety of sources, but a major one is the decline of what was once a broadly shared culture. That culture was generally European and Christian, largely British and Protestant in flavor, and interpreted its history through the story of discovery, settlement, the colonial period, westward expansion, and growing democracy and prosperity, along with assimilation of immigrants and growing national unity and power.
As such, it had vices as well as virtues, much like every culture, but it gave people of different classes something in common. Professionals, managers, and ordinary workers all went to church on Sunday, got married and mostly stayed that way, and had children, who commonly went to the same schools and joined the same scout troops, where they pledged allegiance to the same flag, listened to the same bible readings, and were largely educated in the same generally middlebrow culture.
Today, all that is gone. Respectable up-to-date people respond by pointing out the flaws of the past. Some of the flaws were real, others are thought to include cultural coherence as such, since that is now considered racist, sexist, and phobic in various ways. But when the people who run our country reject its history and heroes, along with their fellow citizens who remain attached to them, what remains to make us a society rather than an aggregate of antagonisms? Is technocratic globalism, together with enforced common belief that Admiral Levine is a woman, really going to bring us together?
As always, the question is what to do about the situation in which we find ourselves, where class as always remains but the conditions for solidarity among classes grow ever more precarious.
For Catholics the obvious answer is to become more Catholic, and propose the truth about God, man, and the world as the one possible basis—now more than ever—for a tolerable social order. That would require not only conversion, of ourselves first of all, but the realism about human nature and society that has normally been part of Catholic social thought but seems to have declined in an age of pervasive ideological fantasy.
But that cannot be the whole answer. Catholicism can help many different cultures thrive, and that flexibility means that by itself it doesn’t solve our current problem of growing cultural incoherence. Still, it can facilitate a solution through its understanding of human nature and the common good, and its provision of a larger perspective within which all such issues fall into place. And that would be a very large contribution.
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Kalb writes of “basic human distinctions have to do with functional differences that aren’t going away.”
QUESTION: What happens if we shed the lens of Western experience and acknowledge a clearer distinction between functional differences. e.g., classes, and non-Western “communal” categories such as culture, language, race, locality and ethnicity. Does the Western experience eventually dissolve non-Western categories, or not?
MYOPIA: The post-Enlightenment premise of a progressively rationalized “society” is an artifact of Western political and economic evolution, all stemming still from a coherent Christian and Classical start point. Big names behind this sociology are Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Emile Durkheim, and others. Not so sure about the replacement of “primordial solidarity” by “functional solidarity” is another school of thought: Samuel Huntington, Karl Deutsch, Reinhard Bendix, S.N. Eisenstadt, Joseph La Polambara, and others.
So, if communal identity persists or is even sharpened (! today known at all levels as part of “identity politics”), then what should we expect to see from the perennial Catholic Church—whose witnessing and mission keys off of the Incarnation of the Triune One (!) into the center of all sliced-and-diced human history?
VATICAN STRATEGY: Is it enough, or even perceptive, to float along with a word processor intent on “harmonizing polarities”? Dignitatis Vitae does exhibit more refreshing depth than we have seen recently, as in otherwise the possibly superficial “fraternity” project. Is fraternity really possible without the self-disclosure of a Triune God, in an always fallen world?
Transnational Islam, particularly, is still a communal artifact, a cultural amalgam seemingly impervious to sustained consideration of Faith & Reason. Instead, a pre-modern, communal, fideistic and fatalistic megatribe, with only an embryonic and deformed concept of the universal Natural Law (fitra). Today propped up by Western oil revenue and weaponry, but still consisting of sectarian factions that would be at war with each other if not hovering, instead, over an amnesiac West that has forgotten the reason behind, and full meaning of “transcendent” human dignity.
AT THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY (histories), in addition to citing the 1948 U.N. Charter of Human Rights, Dignitatis Vitae might also have included at least a footnote on the German constitution (the Basic Law of 1948) recognizing our inborn and universal Natural Law (awakened by the recent horror of the Holocaust). But, even here, the postmodern anti-culture (noted by Dignitatis Vitae) of abortion, euthanasia, and gender theory is fully infiltrated—the mentality of relativism even has its claws in parts of der Synodale Weg…
Of the Church, speaking to politicized and communal identities within BOTH the post-Western world and pre-modern communal groupings of the non-West—why isn’t the fly in the ointment (double entendre intended) of Fiducia Supplicans rescinded, consistent with what Dignitatis Vitae says of persons, not “irregular couples”? And, in 12,700 words could Dignitatis Vitae itself have gone yet a step further in its proclamation of the basis for Catholic Social (societal) Teaching? With the reality of “sin” slipped-in more than only twice, and more prominently?
THAT IS, in addition to what is well-said about the upside of “unconditional” respect, also this succinct non-harmonization of polarities, somewhere: “…the commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 52).
“Commandment”? With Dignitatis Vitae, the “transcendent” dignity of the human person is unconditional because it is radically more than sociological, or progressive, or either functional or communal.
The influence of the secular finance world, along with relaxation of rules like annulment, and of course the disclosure of the the awful management of wayward sexual predators in church communities has diminished the need for the church in the public’s eye. Hence, the effect on local and national cultures is diminished. An individual’s/family’s cash flow needs in the last 60 years has become cornerstone to many lives versus volunteering for church or other community needs. We see it reflected in our youth especially abandoning the Faith. It might not be they don’t believe they just don’t feel the need for it and want to spend their free time on other pursuits; wanting ‘to help out’ is not really a prevailing attitude. “Shacking up” now has almost no social stigma and planned babies out of wedlock don’t even raise an eyebrow. I don’t pretend to have the answers to these vexing cultural conundrums. Imagine most of us see them in our families and communities.
“Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female. His purpose, though, was not to abolish race, class, and gender as social categories but to say that our unity in Christ is more basic.”
Our Unity In Christ is grounded in our Call To Holiness, our Call To Perfect Complementary Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Salvational Love.
We are, as Catholics, Called to begin and end with Holiness, to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, to overcome any disordered inclination and become transformed through our acceptance of Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy, available to all who desire to repent and believe The Good News.
We can know through both Faith and reason, that confusion is not from The Holy Ghost, but from those who desire to deny that sin is sin. The devil is always in those details, “ye can be like gods, declaring what is good and what is evil”.
To deny The Unity of The Holy Ghost, is to deny The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Love, Father, Son, And Holy Ghost.
While at the end of the Day, it is still a Great Mystery, it is no Mystery that we can know through both Faith and reason,:
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved. “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Strike The Shepherd, scatter the sheep.”
In this case , by striking the Papacy, The Veil has been lifted, exposing The Great Apostasy of those who deny our Call to Holiness , because they desire to render onto Caesar or themselves, what Has Always And Will Always Belong To God, The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), in order to create a god in their own image and deny the essence of Perfect Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Salvational Love.
Jorge Bergoglio cannot possibly be a successor of Peter, a Vicar of Christ, for he denies our Call to Holiness, is a Call to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, and desire to overcome our disordered inclinations and become transformed through our acceptance of Salvational Love, God’s Gift of Grace and Mercy, available to all who desire to repent and believe The Good News:
“He Is Risen”!
“Canon 188 §4 states that among the actions which automatically (ipso facto) cause any cleric to lose his office, even without any declaration on the part of a superior, is that of “defect[ing] publicly from the Catholic faith” (” A fide catholica publice defecerit“).
“Today, all of that is gone.” Indeed it is. Sadly, and with no positive improvement to the nation or it’s citizens. The question to ask ourselves is if the country is a better place to live for it’s citizens, now that a minority leftist group of self serving whiners and gripers and flat out pervs are unfortunately making all the decisions about the country and it’s culture. That includes but is not limited to giving the OK to sexually mutilating children under the guise of helping them, destroying our history and removing the statues which praise it, removing religion and religious standards of behavior from the public square, and inundating the nation with ill-educated, poverty-stricken people from across the globe to become our burden and further distort our national identity in the future. It includes govt officials and parroting media talking heads who REALLY believe the biggest danger to the country ( insert laugh here if you can) is Christian white folks, or as they call them, “white supremacists”. This crazed bunch believe their most important job is to jail elderly grandmothers who wandered through the capitol on J6. Their indoctrinated and PARTISAN jurors back them up. It includes people who have weaponized the most powerful arms of govt against it’s own citizens, while throwing a willful blind eye to terrorists crossing our borders, which they refuse to seal. Who find it necessary to send 15 heavily armed trucks filled with agents to arrest a pro-lifer at home amongst his 7 children. It includes throwing allies who were brutally attacked under the bus to access the votes of those skin-crawling types chanting for the nation’s death. It includes allowing our soldiers to be killed and injured for the same reason, making us look dangerously weak in the eyes of major enemies. It means remaking a nation once cohesive in spite of differences in race and religion in the mold of the rest of the dysfunctional hate-filled and poverty-stricken world. They do this by throwing out the welcome mat for millions of people who do not share our vision of self reliance, community or value on freedoms such as speech and tolerance of religion. Self inflicted wounds by selfish voters who cannot see past their own nose and self-interest. I am hoping for better results. this next election. But only cautiously hopeful. Because in the words of a famous comedian ” you can’t fix stupid.” I pray for this result every day at Mass. You reap what you sow, folks.
LJ, there are in fact folks who come here for the wrong reasons and our asylum system is not working in a serious way. Pretty much anyone without a record of previous illegal entry can ask for asylum at our borders.
But most of our ancestors were also poor and uneducated. At least mine were. And if your ancestors were Catholic, they were additionally unwanted.
I don’t care where immigration comes from but mass immigration can become a real problem if immigrants do not embrace a Judeo Christian culture. That doesn’t describe Latin American immigrants but these days folks are showing up from regions that experience terrorism and sectarian violence.And sadly, they or perhaps their children can become radicalized. We saw that in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Immigration is a good thing but our immigration system is broken.
With your exhausting examples, sounds like you have it fully understood. Now fix it.
This is an opinion piece.
If you listen to Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover institute, America as a cohesive nation established on principles of an ordered constitutional republic is disintegrating because of “well situated people” whose liberal standards serve their own interests. James Kalb articulates it well, “If well-situated Americans actually cared about people on the margins they would take seriously the effect of mass immigration on fellow citizens who are struggling economically”.
Our American Catholic Church represented by the USCCB follows suit with Pope Francis on open border world wide migration [I use the term applied to range animals because that’s what it resembles although the migrants are victims of nations that wish to be rid of their unskilled poor and an America prepared to exploit them] support a policy that will end in its complete collapse. Mass migration across our southern border works to meet the goal of the Left to inundate conservative voting States into becoming liberal, thus assuring perpetual access to power. Like Saul Alinsky and his deep seated influence on the minds of American hierarchy it will be used for ulterior motives, the Catholic Church a useful pawn destined for destruction. What will save us Lord? At this stage nothing less than a miraculous turnaround. Kalb envision the Catholic Church as part of the solution. We can hope.