In last week’s column, I suggested that we Catholics have no interest in defending the modern liberal doctrine of “free speech.” In the first instance, a regime of free speech is built upon a moral and political theory that is in tension with — if not contradictory to — Catholic moral theology. In the second place, “free speech” is a myth, both in theory and practice. In theory, free speech is defined by the regime in authority. In practice, no one really takes free speech seriously. We are quite comfortable with all sorts of constraints on speech, as well as legally mandated compelled speech. We Catholics, by subscribing uncritically to a regime of “free speech,” have surrendered any coherent critique of the regime. As such, we have abandoned a robust Catholic moral anthropology that offers an alternative to the pernicious myths of so-called Enlightenment liberalism.
My column received many comments that, broadly speaking, were variations on an objection that goes something like this: “Yes, liberalism has its faults. But I prefer to endure those faults in exchange for the goods that it provides. These goods include protection of personal liberty, equality under law, religious liberty and free elections.” Of course, I am sympathetic to such responses. Who can be against any of those goods? But there are two problems with this kind of response. The first is that liberalism is not the only possible political arrangement that protects these goods. The second is that the liberal expression of these goods corrodes authentic Catholic witness, rooted as it is in a fundamentally anti-Christian moral anthropology.
The liberal vs. the Catholic idea of the human person
Liberalism is the moral theory upon which the United States is founded. Regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum in the U.S., it is all a variation on this foundational political theory. It is a theory that cannot be separated from basic assertions about the human person, which assertions are contrary to Catholic moral theology. While these assertions are many, two in particular stand out. The first is the notion that the human person is fundamentally solitary, and the enemy of all other persons. The second is that the human person is endowed with possessive individual rights to do as he or she pleases, with no constraining principle other than tacit agreement. The story in which these two assertions is rooted is corrosive of authentic Christian doctrine and witness. A Christian can live in a regime built upon this theory. But he cannot endorse it in any way that is consistent with the Christian understanding of the human person.
From the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis, we learn that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God. Inherent in this image is the natural communal nature of the human person. As God himself is three persons in an eternal community of love and friendship, so humankind is created as an expression of that community. “Male and female,” God created the human person, we are told in Genesis 1. Neither is complete without the presence of the other. In Genesis 2, the principle is elaborated. The first human person is not complete until a second human person is created as the companion of the first. The natural state of the human person is not solitary, but communal. The Catholic moral doctrine that names this fundamental principle is “solidarity.” In our very natures, we’re created in and for community.
Liberalism expressly and vigorously denies this. In its purest form, liberalism holds that human beings are in a natural “war of every man against every man,” in which we have the natural right to take whatever we can, without regard to any claims of anyone else. This is the liberal “state of nature.” The only constraint is our implicit agreement not to exercise the fullness of our claims to everything against everyone. It is nothing more than the fiction of a contract: I won’t take your stuff if you won’t take mine. But there is no principle in liberalism that binds the agreement.
How are Catholics to live in a liberal regime?
This liberal theory is sustained by a story that advances and nurtures the legal, political and regulatory institutions from which it flows, and which is jealous of all rivals. Put another way, liberalism tells a story, and it has no room for competing stories. When we Catholics do not merely endorse but even advocate for the story, we contribute to the erosion of our own witness against its falsehood. Purely as an empirical observation, in the U.S. we are witnessing the consequences of both the fiction of possessive individual rights and the lack of principled limits on those rights. The “natural” violence of the state of nature is breaking through the fragile tacit contract.
The four pillars of Catholic social doctrine — human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good — are an alternative to the liberal theory of radical individualism and possessive rights. These principles protect the goods noted above (personal liberty, equality under law, religious liberty and free elections, to name a few), but without the corrosive moral and political theory that underwrites their liberal versions. Human agency, moral freedom, concern for the other, limitations on the power of the state and constraints upon encroaching bureaucratic institutions are all goods that flow from these pillars.
Catholics can live in a liberal regime, just as we can live in any number of other kinds of political arrangements. But we must recognize and articulate the inherent tension this involves. We can live in America, but we cannot endorse the political theory that created it — a political theory that was recognized by its English and American proponents as an incompatible replacement of historic Christianity. We must recognize that liberalism is an opponent to Christian moral theology, not its culmination. To affirm the latter is to contribute to the demise of the faith we claim to share.
