Against utopia, for reality

I’ve written before about the difficulty of carrying the Gospel over to political and economic life.

The difficulty seems basic. Jesus had no residence, property, wife, children, gainful employment, or official position. Instead of giving us an example of everyday participation in political and economic life, he spoke of their spiritual dangers.

And political and economic life, along with sex, have mostly had a bad name among the pious. Specially devout people take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Clerics avoid marriage, involvement in the exercise of civil power, and—unless they have special permission—participation in economic life. Other Catholics give their choices a political turn, supporting pacifism and even anarchism, on the grounds that jailing and killing the government’s opponents is un-Christian.

Examples of restraint and self-denial are salutary, and for the most part, these choices seem praiseworthy for those who make them. Even so, we may doubt the value of pacifism and still more anarchism as political positions. Most Catholics live in the world, and accept sex, money, and power, however hazardous they may be, as necessary parts of life. The Old Testament, which still has authority, does the same. So, how Christianity relates to wealth and power is not obvious. (I will put sex aside as involving special considerations.)

The usual view has been that these things are very much prone to abuse, but moderate pursuit of them for legitimate purposes, like providing for a family or some other goal that is at least consistent with the common good, is legitimate and often praiseworthy.

Taking the common good as a standard seems the natural way to bring the Golden Rule into politics and economics. The principle of subsidiarity tells us that attending to particular interests—the interests of our family, community, employer, country, and so on—is legitimate and often a duty. Parents, for example, should especially care for their own children.

Even so, a great many other people are affected by our activity and should also be taken into account in some way. Few of them can be considered with any specificity, and most are hardly known to us at all. Under such circumstances, what principle other than respect for the common good—in its local, national, and ultimately universal forms—is available to bring actions directed in the first instance toward the particular interests for which we are responsible into a general system of common benefit?

But Christ doesn’t speak about such things. Instead of talking about the common good, he gives us striking parables and assertions, some dealing with particular incidents and others with very general principles. These demand soul-searching, but they don’t prescribe specific rules for dealing with concrete situations, since circumstances vary, and infinitely many people and considerations may be involved.

The woman taken in adultery would be a less sympathetic figure if she did the same thing repeatedly, always got off, and was part of an adultery liberation movement that pressured institutions into celebrating conduct like hers and firing people who disapprove. And it would be very wrong for a judge to release the serial killer of 450 people on the grounds that he said he’s sorry and ought to be forgiven seventy times seven times, so he has another 40 to go.

Man is a political animal, and Jesus was not political in the usual sense. Politics involves a system of force, and that does not seem to have interested him. When he said “my kingdom is not of this world,” he was serious; he generally accepted existing law.

That is why Thomas Aquinas, in his systematizing efforts, thought it necessary to supplement the things Jesus said with natural reason and Aristotle. Maybe that is too bad for Saint Thomas and ordinary social and political life. Very few politicians or businessmen get canonized for the way they carried on their ordinary activities. And when the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he evidently thought he was in a position to deliver the kingdoms of the world to whomever he wanted. Jesus, for his part, didn’t say he was wrong.

Even so, it seems to me that for most of us, Thomas Aquinas was right. We don’t all have the same gifts, and it was right for Martha as well as Mary to contribute what they did. It is praiseworthy to look after the practical aspects of a church meeting. Without that, it would be much more difficult for those attending to focus on the spiritual ones.

Since government is necessary, the same principle should apply to people in politics. If so, we need to accept ordinary political activity as legitimate, along with the basic principles of prudence and the common good that should guide it.

Many Catholics find that less than inspirational. They prefer “seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice” to everyday political life with all its limitations and compromises. Even so, they interpret God’s kingdom and justice in a political sense. So they dream of putting politics on a higher level than is possible for a system of force that necessarily acts crudely and ignorantly, and needs to deal effectively with refractory and sometimes downright evil people.

In short, they want to treat the Sermon on the Mount as a set of principles like the Ten Commandments, suitable for direct embodiment in legal rules. We should forgive, so the law should abolish punishments. We shouldn’t throw stones, so the government should shield sexual disorders from social sanctions. And we should give to the poor, so everyone in the world should have an open-ended right to financial support from public funds.

Such demands are often pressed indirectly, through practical obstacles to whatever is at odds with them. However pursued, they don’t advance their stated goals because they try to turn the Gospel into something it isn’t: a direct guide to how to use public force.

The result is that they make violence and injustice worse. Prosecutions go down, and crime goes up. Persecution continues, but the targets are supposed stone-throwers rather than thieves and prostitutes. And the poor remain with us, but their situation cannot be considered realistically because they cannot be viewed as participants in it. The recent BLM movement provides examples of all these things.

More broadly, turning forgiveness and universality into enforceable principles means suppression of traditional family, religious, and cultural arrangements that depend on specific personal responsibilities. These involve particular rights and obligations that are always unequal, and individual blame, which is judgmental and sometimes unfair. That can lead to serious consequences, for example, for women caught committing adultery.

As Jesus showed, these consequences should sometimes be moderated. But moderation is not utopia. The effect of striving for the latter is to replace traditional arrangements that sometimes seem unfair by what seem more equal, universal, and nonjudgmental ones. But these, in the form of commercial relationships and bureaucracy, already seem too prominent today. They have their own faults and bring in their own forms of inequality and compulsion.

So what is gained?

Politics, with its far-reaching effects on our lives, cannot ignore ultimate concerns and realities. So religion cannot be kept out of it. The inspiration of the Gospel has profoundly affected Western politics for the better, for instance, with the long decline and eventual disappearance of slavery.

But identifying the two is no better. Islam has its Shariah—a religious code that aspires to govern all social relations. Christianity doesn’t want that, since it would compromise the distance between grace and fallen nature. There can be no Christian utopianism.

What we are actually faced with—those of us who are not Saint Francis—is the need to live, work, and carry on political and economic life with imperfect knowledge and methods in a radically imperfect world. We should try our best, but the results will always be flawed and makeshift, even assuming the general goodwill that is often lacking.

However important the Gospel may be for politics and social life generally, an attempt to close prematurely the gap between it and actual social life will end badly. If the Gospel forbids the knowing infliction of harm, such attempts are forbidden by the Gospel itself.

You cannot hurry love, and you cannot force charity and grace on an unruly world.