Category: Blogposts

Last week, Bishop Robert Barron interviewed D.C. Schindler and integralism was among their topics of conversation. Their discussion of our approach to Catholic political philosophy was revealing in two important ways.

First of all, their interview revealed how much these two formidable thinkers have misunderstood the very terms of the debate. Bishop Barron introduced the topic by noting some might think Schindler “sounds like an integralist,” like someone who “just wants to create one great theocratic society.” These two things are not the same; integralism does not imply theocracy, or the rule of secular society by clerics. While the Vatican City State exists as a theocracy, as did the Papal States when they existed, the hope of the integralist is not to extend such rule throughout the world. In 2024 it should be clearer than it is to some that theocracy is not the only illiberal option for structuring society. Andrew Willard Jones’s Before Church and State, for instance, helps to expand our vision to see that a strict separation of Church and State on the one hand and theocracy on the other are not our only options. The France of Saint Louis which it depicts is an integralist society, not a theocratic one.

Dr. Schindler tries to find a via media between liberalism and integralism. With the integralist, he recognizes that the Church has an authority and a voice in politics and in the structuring of secular society, which liberalism denies. He admits overlap with integralist thinking but finds in it a fundamental problem. Schindler’s version of integralism is one in which the secular society provides “partial human goods,” to be supplemented by the Church’s provision of supernatural goods. He rejects this because as he sees it, spiritual goods are essentially human goods. They are not superadded to the goods which secular society aims to provide. 

At the heart of Schindler’s objection seems to be his view of the interaction between nature and grace, a view he shares with Henri de Lubac and other 20^th-century theologians. Dr. Schindler believes that we humans have even on the natural level a desire for the supernatural, a desire for what only grace provides. This subsumes the realm of the natural into that of the supernatural, and so for Schindler it does not make sense when the integralist distinguishes these two realms in terms of different ends. For him, there is only one end of human life, which is our union with God in glory. 

The integralist follows the teaching of Pope Leo XIII on the natural and supernatural societies in Immortale Dei. As the document makes clear, both the society of the Church and the society of the State are given us by God Himself, both are necessary. Leo also teaches that both of these societies are perfect, that is to say, each of them possesses its proper end together with all the means necessary to reach that end. One cannot be subsumed by the other. The Holy Father wrote of the Church: 

This society is made up of men, just as civil society is, and yet is supernatural and spiritual, on account of the end for which it was founded, and of the means by which it aims at attaining that end. Hence, it is distinguished and differs from civil society, and, what is of highest moment, it is a society chartered as of right divine, perfect in its nature and in its title, to possess in itself and by itself, through the will and loving kindness of its Founder, all needful provision for its maintenance and action. And just as the end at which the Church aims is by far the noblest of ends, so is its authority the most exalted of all authority, nor can it be looked upon as inferior to the civil power, or in any manner dependent upon it.¹ 

Each of these societies, Church and State, has its proper end and all the means necessary to achieve it, the supernatural society of the Church having a supernatural end, the natural society of the State a natural one. For this reason, neither society can be seen to be ordered to merely a partial human good or any set thereof. Each is ordered to human happiness, which is the complete human good. But there exists a twofold end of happiness for man, who exists as it were in two realms, natural and supernatural, to which these societies correspond. 

While our supernatural end is our ultimate end, toward which our temporal end must therefore be ordered, the two cannot be collapsed into one another:

The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right.²

The State “has for its proximate and chief object the well-being of this mortal life,” the Church “the everlasting joys of heaven.”³ This “is the Christian organization of civil society…confirmed by natural reason itself.”⁴ There ought to exist between these two societies not identity, but harmony:

The Church no less than the State itself is a society perfect in its own nature and its own right, and that those who exercise sovereignty ought not so to act as to compel the Church to become subservient or subject to them, or to hamper her liberty in the management of her own affairs, or to despoil her in any way of the other privileges conferred upon her by Jesus Christ. In matters, however, of mixed jurisdiction, it is in the highest degree consonant to nature, as also to the designs of God, that so far from one of the powers separating itself from the other, or still less coming into conflict with it, complete harmony, such as is suited to the end for which each power exists, should be preserved between them.⁵

This harmony brings the two necessary societies into quite close cooperation with one another, so close in fact that Leo XIII speaks of their relationship as that of the soul to the body. Not in such a way that one is subsumed by the other, but that both are fully active in their own realms.

Rather than by inventing sets of human goods, we have always defined integralism in terms of the ends of human life and the perfect societies which are necessary in achieving those ends. We have had such a clear definition of integralism for many years in the Three Sentences:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

This subordination is not one of domination (and therefore theocracy). It is one of cooperation. It is one in which ideally the membership of a secular society and the membership of the Church in that society are coextensive. In such a circumstance, as we see in St. Louis’s France, while the civil leaders have their requisite autonomy, they are nonetheless subject to the munera docendi, regendi, and sanctificandi exercised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The relationship is not one in which the clergy dictate to the civil leaders, but one in which the clergy help to inform them, as the soul in-forms the body. 

Dr. Schindler wants the Church to “allow the integrity of the political sphere” rather than dictating to it. The Church, he says, has no place in making laws for the society of the State, but helps to inform what law ought to be in the secular realm. We do not disagree in the least. The relationship of the ecclesiastical to the secular does not have to be one of power and domination, which again brings us into theocratic territory. Yet the Magisterium and the Code of Canon Law are often quite clear in indicating what the civil law must provide, without dictating it.⁶ They elaborate the requirements of justice and the rights of Christians, and what the State must legislate in order not to run afoul of such requirements.

Integralism is political Catholicism, it is the faith lived out in the world. Our definition of integralism is purposely broad. As long as one gets right the relationship of the two ends of these two necessary societies, one is an integralist, which is to say, one has the only possible Catholic position.⁷ But below this level of general principle, integralism may work itself out in practice in an infinite number of ways, because of the infinite variety of practical circumstances. 

There is no science of the infinite.⁸ It has always been our aim to define the principles, and to let Catholics figure out the practical applications of those principles, much as the Church always does in her social teaching. We may differ on our conclusions at the practical level, but two Catholics in good faith and in good conscience can always differ about such prudential matters. To my mind, if you accept the Three Sentences, you have a place beneath the integralist umbrella. 

It is a wonderful thing that we have many Catholics working to bring about a post-liberal society, an integrally Catholic one. But the theory of any one integralist cannot be equated with integralism as a whole, any more than a particular economic theory espoused by a Catholic could be equated with Catholic economics. 

Second of all, the interview between Bishop Barron and D.C. Schindler reveals the enduring importance of integralism. As His Excellency himself put it, Catholic integralism is “a rising movement today.” That to so many Catholics, liberal and illiberal alike, integralism continues to be such a bête noire, and that so many need to justify their own positions in contraposition to ours (or some imagined version of it), shows that integralism remains a touchstone in this conversation. We thank His Excellency and Dr. Schindler for giving us a place at their table, but ask that they let us speak for ourselves.

1. Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 10. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 13. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 14. ↩︎
4. Ibid., 16. ↩︎
5. Ibid., 35. ↩︎
6. Take, for example, c. 793 §2 on the State’s duty to help parents provide a true, integrally Catholic education for their children: “Parentibus ius est etiam iis fruendi auxiliis a societate civili praestandis, quibus in catholica educatione filiorum procuranda indigeant.” ↩︎
7. Cf. John Joy, “The Teaching of Quanta cura is Definitive: A Reply to Robert T. Miller.” ↩︎
8. Cf. Boethius, De arithmetica, Book I, ch. 1. ↩︎

Matthew B. Crawford has posted some questions for integralists at his Substack Newsletter. His main question seems to be this: Are integralists content with the bureaucratic form of government that has developed in modern states? Or do they want to abolish the modern state? If the former, Crawford is worried that such a form of governance cannot actually help people to become virtuous:

Would this not reproduce the vacant pseudo-citizenship we are permitted under the nudgers’ system of social cybernetics, which treats the human being as inert material to be molded by a new class of Conditioners? However much it is to be guided by Christian ends, the worry is that under this kind of politics, our thumotic capacity for overcoming obstacles, working in concert with our erotic attraction to some ideal, is left moribund and atrophying, just as it is under technocratic progressivism.

It seems to me that Crawford is confusing two questions better kept distinct. The first question is what the relation of spiritual and temporal power ought to be, given the superiority of the former. This is what integralism is about. The second question is about the size and organization of modern political life, and whether that needs to be fundamentally changed to help people develop the virtues. This is a separate, though certainly very important, question.

I would like to elucidate the distinction between the two questions by a comparison of political society to domestic society (the family or household). A domestic society ought, if possible, to be a Catholic household. This means that it sees the duties of religion, the duties of honoring and thanking God, as binding not only its individual members as individuals, but also the whole family as a society. The family ought to give corporate thanks to God. It ought also to recognize and obey the Apostolic Authority of the Church. If, for example, the bishop orders his subjects to fast on a certain day, the family ought to recognize the command of a superior authority and obey it. Obviously, there can be adverse circumstances that render such a Catholic family life impossible. If one of the spouses apostatizes, then the other can worship God as an individual, but not as part of Catholic domestic society. The domestic society in that case is religiously pluralistic, not Catholic, which is an objectively undesirable state of affairs. Such a state of affairs is analogous to that which obtains in political societies which are majority non-Christian, and (since the Reformation) in many nominally Christian ones as well.

The basic truth taught by integralism is that it is better (if possible) for a political society to be a Catholic polity, just as it is better (if possible) for a domestic society to be a Catholic family. Being a Catholic society is what we ought to desire and strive for. Not being a Catholic society is regrettably unavoidable in some circumstances, but one ought to hope for this to be changed by everyone finding their way to the fullness of Catholic truth. Just as the Catholic wife of a non-Catholic husband hopes that her husband will become Catholic, so the Catholic members of a religiously disunified political society hope that their fellow subjects will become Catholics.

Now, obviously, a domestic society can order its common life in many secondary ways that are very important for how effectively it can live a Catholic life. There is, for example, the question of whether the household lives by subsistence farming, or by cash-crops, or by cottage industry, or by the parents working outside the home in the modern capitalist economy. Or the question of whether the children are homeschooled or sent to public or private school, etc. All of these questions are very important to the life of the family, and how they are decided will certainly affect the ability of the family to raise virtuous children. But these questions cannot be collapsed into the question of whether the domestic society is Catholic. The Catholic Church acknowledges that there can be many different ways of ordering a family’s life with respect to the production of goods, the education of the children, etc. Some of these ways might be so undesirable that they should be avoided whenever possible. But in many cases families will be constrained by circumstances. 

It is similar in a political society. There are many ways in which a political society can be organized—from an ancient city, to an ancient empire, to a medieval kingdom, to a medieval Italian city republic, to a modern nation-state, etc. All of these forms of organization have their advantages and disadvantages. How a political society organizes itself will certainly affect the extent to which it can foster virtue in its members. Such organization is a very important matter for the common good, and The Josias has long been interested in such questions. But those questions are not the same as the question of integralism. The Catholic Church recognizes that different forms of organization are possible, and can be legitimate, as long as they are ordered to the common good. We can certainly argue over which form of rule is best for human beings, and which forms are relatively undesirable, but we shouldn’t confuse that question with the question of whether it is desirable for political societies to be Catholic.

But perhaps Crawford would respond that the modern “state” is not a political society in the relevant sense at all. Some have argued (Alasdair MacIntyre springs to mind), that “political society” cannot be univocally said of premodern societies, devoted to the cultivation of virtue, and modern bureaucratic ones in which virtue has supposedly been replaced by social-scientific management. If such arguments are right, then it is an error to consider the modern state as a κοινωνία τέλειος or societas perfecta—a stable union of a plurality of persons in pursuit of the complete common good of human life, arising necessarily from the teleology of human nature. On their view, the modern state would not be like a modern family, founded on the natural union of the sexes, but rather it would be like a pseudo-family founded on homosexual perversion or some other vice contrary to nature. On their view, none of the properties of a true political society could be found in the modern state, any more than the properties of the family are found in an unnatural sexual union. On their view therefore, our aim should not be to improve the modern state, to make it more Catholic and more conducive to virtue, but rather to abolish it. Just as the proper approach to a homosexual relation is not to try to improve it, but rather to dissolve it.

While I acknowledge the strength of the objection just sketched, I think that the conclusion goes too far. It seems to me that it is truer to think of modern states as sick, disordered political communities, that nevertheless do arise from the teleology of man’s political nature, than as complete perversions of that teleology. I think, therefore, that our aim should indeed be to heal, correct, and transform modern states. There are two reasons that lead me to this conclusion. The first is from experience. Anyone who knows good public servants and good politicians knows that their political nature is deeply engaged in their activity, in which they try to serve the societies in which they live. I think, for example, of a young Ukrainian, the nephew of a friend of mine, who cheerfully lost his eyes in defending his country against foreign invasion. He was convinced that the state that he defended, for all its faults, was worth defending, a society that to some degree seeks the common good of its members. Or I think of an Austrian provincial judge of my acquaintance, a just and prudent man, who excels in trying to find just solutions to disputes within the legal framework of the Austrian state. Or I think of two pro-life MPs of my acquaintance, one a Slovak, one an Austrian, both of whom are deeply engaged in the patient labor of correcting unjust laws and better securing the protection of the vulnerable, within the possibilities that the circumstances of their societies allow. Their effectiveness is partly derived from the evident love that they both have for the states that they serve. If they dismissed those states a priori as illegitimate bands of robbers, they would not be able to work within them. This then is the first reason why I think it is truer to say that modern states are faulty political societies, than not political societies at all: the experience of those involved in serving those states in virtuous ways.

The second reason is from the teaching authority of the Church. Modern Catholic Social Teaching has never proceeded from the premise that modern states are simply anti-societies, to which none of the traditional teaching on political authority applies. Rather, those who hold the teaching office in the Church have consistently seen modern states as natural law institutions, flowing from man’s political nature, capable therefore of issuing binding laws and commands. The focus, therefore, has always been on correcting such states, not on destroying them. Pope Leo XIII, for example, in the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes, argues that civil power of various kinds derives its authority from God, and that acceptance of an actually-constituted civil authority—even that of the Third French Republic, so offensive to French Catholics devoted to the ancien régime—is obligatory for Catholics. The efforts of French Catholics should not be to abolish the established civil power, but rather to transform it from within, making its legislation more just and equitable, and bringing it into greater harmony with the authority of the Church.

And here integralism is indeed relevant to the question of the transformation of the modern state. For the most foundational disease afflicting modern states is their refusal to give God His due, by rendering Him corporate thanks, and recognizing the authority of His Church. In this they resemble the pagan empires, which, as St Augustine argues, were not true res publicae, the common goods of peoples joined together by a common sense for what is right (jus), since they did not render God His due (jus), but rather rendered the worship due to Him to false idols. While Augustine perhaps goes to far in claiming that the pagan empires were not res publicae at all, he is certainly right that they were deeply defective societies. And modern “secular” states are caught in a similar trap. Their supposed “neutrality” is really a refusal to give God His due, which inevitably results in false idols being given His place, such as the liberal idols of freedom and equality. Integralism would therefore heal the foundational disease of the sick political societies of our time. The healing ought not to end there, however. Everything else that is wrong with them, that impedes them from fostering true virtue, ought to be healed as well.