The Catholic Church and Liberal Democracy

Bernt Oftestad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351858083
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Roman Catholic Church's critical stance towards liberalism and democracy following the French Revolution and through the 19th century was often entrenched, but the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s saw a shift in the Church's attitude towards democracy. In recent years, a conflict has emerged between Church doctrine and modern liberalism under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. This book is a comprehensive overview of the Catholic Church's relationship to modern liberal democracy, from the end of the 18th century until today. It is a connection that is situated within the context of the history of ideas itself.

1

Introduction

Departure and reorientation

During the last centuries, the confrontation between the Catholic Church and modern culture has characterized religious and social life in the Western world. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the most watershed event for the Church in postwar time, had as its goal to see the Church make a break with this troubled history and come on speaking terms with modern times. Many observers both within and outside of the Church saw this as a historic reorientation.¹ During the council and immediately following, there was a widespread sense in the Church that the attempt had been successful. In his address at the conclusion of the council, Pope Paul VI asserted that the Church had faced down the threats from secularization and this-worldly anti-Church humanism, but without rancor or condemnation. The council had met the modern world as a good Samaritan, had respected its values, and even had lent them its endorsement.²

Nonetheless, during the decades before and the years after the turn of the century, the relationship of the Catholic Church to modern European and North American culture was one of increasing tension and conflict. Deep disagreements came to the fore on central ethical questions, first and foremost on questions regarding the right to life and human dignity, the nature of the family, marriage and sexuality. For liberal forces, the Catholic Church is regarded as one of the greatest hindrances to liberation and progress. The Church, for its part, sees the conflict as fundamentally rooted in the question of human uniqueness and dignity.³

The council fostered a general progressive mentality among many Catholics, especially in Europe and America. Additional reforms were expected which would bring the teaching and practice of the Church closer to modern society and culture with its ideals for individual and social life. Greatest of all were the expectations of changes to the ethics of family and sexuality, as well as a democratizing of the internal affairs of the Church. However, by as early as the late 1960s, there came to pass what many experienced as a setback for the so-called progressive development, when Pope Paul VI in 1968 made it clear that the Church would uphold its traditional view of marriage, which also included the prohibition against artificial contraception.⁴

The postconciliar conflicts raise the question of which theological reorientation the Second Vatican Council represented with regard to the principle conceptualization and evaluation of the Church’s stance toward modern culture. That the council represented a departure is clear. But a Catholic council is unable to be revolutionary, it must preserve continuity with the Tradition of the Church. To be faithful to Tradition and at the same time bring it forward into the present and into the future – this is the characteristic expression of the Catholic idea of a “living” Tradition.⁵ And precisely this idea was an important theme for the council and the popes who governed the Church after the council: Paul VI, Johannes Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Liberal democracy is one of the most important characteristics of modern society. Since the great French Revolution (1789), the Church’s relationship to democracy had been an extremely difficult question. It would be more than 100 years before the Holy See moderated its negative view of the democratic approach to state and society, cautiously opening itself to a different attitude, one of qualified acceptance. If one was to come on speaking terms with modern times, one would have to make peace with democracy, the culture which it presupposes and promotes, and those values upon which it is founded and which it will protect, preeminent among which is the idea of common human rights.⁶

For historians – whatever their professional or ideological loyalties – the Church’s attempt to change its relationship to the modern world is a challenging subject. It is a historical project which requires that one consider developments in the Church for the past 200 years at the very least, as modernity and Enlightenment guided the cultural and political developments in Europe and later in North America. This makes it also necessary to understand the new conceptualization of politics, of state and society, which arose after the Renaissance and the Reformation, and which achieved its definitive breakthrough in the 1700s. Modern democracy has its historic conditions. So also did the Church when after the great French Revolution (1789) it would address this development. In Scripture as well as Tradition lay ideological constraints which shaped the Church’s encounter with the new form of state and society.

Modern democracy

Development of the British state and society – over the course of several hundred years – was an important precondition for modern democracy’s breakthrough in the United States and France toward the end of the 18th century. But democracy can be understood in different ways.⁷ During the 19th century, the democratization of the European states began. A synthesis of liberalism and nationalism would mark the development of 19th-century Europe. Along with national liberation and unity movements (as in Italy) came also democracy. Today democracy has grown beyond the European and North American space and become a government and societal ideal with global reach.⁸

Historical roots

Democracy is historically rooted in the polis of ancient Greece. It is here the precursor to the political-structural pattern of our own present-day democracy is to be found. In Aristotle’s Politics (book III), we find the first theory of democracy.⁹ Its emerging fundamentals are the legislative assembly, the executive council, civil servants/officials and the court. The basis of democracy both then and now is the people/“demos” (in the Greek city these are citizens assembled for an official purpose). It was and is an entirely different political system than the absolute monarchy, dictatorship or aristocratic oligarchy.

How was this form of government handed down in Europe? Neither the Roman empire of antiquity nor the feudal medieval society was politically structured in this way. It has been noted that the Italian city-states of the Renaissance were democratic in their way. Others have contended that the way of life of the seafaring people along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean was a determining precondition for the development of the democratic form of government in parts of Europe.¹⁰ During the Enlightenment of the 18th century, ancient Greco-Roman culture was idealized – and with it the Greek city-state. One speaks of a “classical republicanism”.¹¹ The various conceptions of the historical roots of democracy and its ideological requirements will reveal political-ideological preferences. One indication of this is the differences of opinion which exist about the relationship of Christianity and Christianization to democracy.¹²

Freedom as a right

What does it mean that democracy is liberal? Liberalism is an elastic concept. But there do tend to be certain signs by which it may be recognized: a parliamentary rule based on public and free elections, legally protected freedom of speech, freedom of religion and of assembly, a free market and freedom of commerce, the rule of law and independent courts, frequently a separation of church and state, and of politics and religion, and a belief that free political and economic processes bring progress to society. Liberalism’s core value is freedom.¹³ The concept of freedom has been the subject of reflection since the time of antiquity. Freedom has been defined as political freedom, an inner freedom (to order one’s life according to one’s own convictions and not random impulses or external conditions), or the physical capacity to act as one will. But the simple and fundamental determining factor for freedom is the absence of compulsion. From this starting point, one may distinguish between positive and negative freedom. Negatively described, freedom means freedom from – an absence of something. One is not prevented from doing something one might have done. One is not under compulsion or duress, nor are restrictions imposed against the carrying out of certain acts. Positively described, freedom means the presence of something, something which one has freedom for. One is independent, having an autonomous authority to govern one’s own life. These two aspects of freedom are closely connected but can be distinguished. Nevertheless, freedom from compulsion remains as the fundamental determining factor for freedom.¹⁴

In 1789 the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was passed by revolutionary France’s National Assembly. But already in 1776 the British colonies on the east coast of North America authored their Declaration of Independence, in which they upheld the idea of man’s natural rights. In the modern concept of human rights, which guarantees freedom in both the negative and the positive sense, to enjoy freedom is more than a need, it is a right. Thus, a distinction is maintained between civil society and government, a “vacuum” which is not occupied by power.¹⁵ In 1948 the development of the concept of human rights reached its zenith (at least for the time being), when the United Nations (UN) passed its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.¹⁶ The UN resolution made a powerful impression on the Catholic Church and paved the way for the Second Vatican Council, in terms of reorienting the Church’s relationship to the modern world.¹⁷

The Catholic Church’s relationship to democracy was determined by the developments on the European continent after the Great French Revolution. There was at the same time what can be called an Anglo-American democracy tradition with roots in the political developments in England, and which would come to influence North American democracy. It has been characterized as republican as opposed to liberalist democracy. The crucial difference involves a critique of liberalism’s narrow concept of freedom. In the liberalist view of freedom, emphasis is put on the relationship of the individual to state power. State power threatens the freedom and integrity of the individual. The republican concept of freedom is broader. Freedom is the freedom from the capricious use of power – not merely from its concrete exercise.¹⁸ Republicanism has not had a decisive importance for the Catholic Church’s relationship to democracy, for several reasons, both historical and theoretical. The Church had no direct relations with democracies either in England or in the US. In England the Anglican and other Protestant churches were dominant. Not until the transition to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Europe’s political-theological problem
• 3 Revolution, religion and Church
• 4 A new concept of politics
• 5 The Church’s defense against liberalism and democratization in the 1800s
• 6 Ecclesial powerlessness
• 7 On the way to the Second Vatican Council
• 8 The Second Vatican Council
• 9 Church – freedom – history
• 10 The postconciliar crisis between the Church and liberal democracy
• 11 Pope John Paul II and modern culture
• 12 Benedict XVI – pope of a new millennium
• 13 Pope Francis – and the monism of modernity
• 14 The Church’s encounter with political modernity
• Index