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The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision legalizing homosexual marriage carries with it many questions varying in nature. One set of questions the ruling brings into high relief for Catholics concerns the relationship of the state-sanctioned civil marriage to sacramental marriage. To what extent (if any) and in what ways should the state regulate marriage, and given other legal practices such as divorce and contraception, does this ruling (or rulings about homosexual marriage in general) change anything significantly?

There are several ways one might answer these questions (for instance, considering and applying natural law), but the first thing faithful Catholics must do is turn to the teachings of the Church in this matter for direction. We are fortunate to live in a time where the Church has given a good deal of pertinent direction for just this sort of situation. We have, among many other resources, three encyclicals in recent history devoted to elucidating the Catholic teachings on marriage or particular aspects of marriage: Arcanum Divinae, Casti Connubii, and Humanae Vitae by Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Paul VI respectively.

Based upon these (Casti Connubii most of all), we Catholics must recognize three things at least which we are bound to hold according to the doctrines of our Faith. First of all, we are bound to defend the proposition that the nature of marriage, both natural and sacramental, is not under the authority of the state. Secondly, the state is obliged to protect and preserve the set-apart character of the family, and this for the sake of the state itself. Thus a civil institution usurping the place of the family is of grave import. Finally, based upon the nature of true marriage, we must recognize the full breadth of the problem presented by the legalization of gay marriage. While the legalization of contraception and divorce diminish our nation’s capability of understanding marriage – and while abortion is a greater evil in itself –the recognition and legalization of homosexual marriage destroys our nation’s capability to understand the nature of marriage. The former errors definitely – when accepted by the culture and sanctioned by law – oppose the ends of marriage, but the latter actively denies the essential nature of the marital union.

The following does not argue to particular remedies or policies that need to be adopted. It is ordered to the Catholic reader who wants to see more precisely, in light of magisterial teaching, what the problems with the ruling are, why they are problems, and the general principles which will underlie any particular remedies

The Nature of Marriage

The Catechism of Trent, using Scripture and St. Augustine as guides, declares that marriage is an institution created by God, not man,[1] and that it is ordered to the goods of offspring, conjugal faith (or spousal fidelity), and the sacrament — the signification of Christ’s love for the Church.[2] The encyclicals we are examining clarify and further define this teaching.

1)   Marriage is instituted by God

Pius XI first notes that this is indeed the Catholic understanding.

[M]atrimony was not instituted or restored by man but by God… This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture; this is the constant tradition of the Universal Church; this the solemn definition of the sacred Council of Trent, which declares and establishes from the words of Holy Writ itself that God is the Author of the perpetual stability of the marriage bond, its unity and its firmness. (Casti, 5)

A few paragraphs later, he states this again while explaining man’s role.

From God comes the very institution of marriage, the ends for which it was instituted, the laws that govern it, the goods[3] that flow from it; while man, through generous surrender of his own person made to another for the whole span of life, becomes, with the help and cooperation of God, the author of each particular marriage, with the duties and goods annexed thereto from divine institution. (Casti, 9)

Marriage is not something man-made; it is not something merely constructed by society for some level of convenience and stability (though it is a principle of stability). Rather, the Creator establishes it, and as such His are the laws that govern its nature even before Christ raises it to the level of a sacrament.

This is not to say, of course, that man’s will is of no consequence whatsoever in marriage. Man’s will is indeed involved through the “generous surrender of his own person to another for the whole span of life.” But this is to be a cooperating author with God in this or that particular marriage, not an originator or definer of marriage compacts. Man’s will is important in the institution of a particular marriage, because he freely must will to enter it, but he has no say over what marriage is and what it is ordered to.[4]

Thus, all marriage, even the natural marriage, is of divine institution, its essence beyond man’s power or authority to define.

2)   Marriage is ordered to Offspring

Of the three aforementioned goods (offspring, spousal fidelity, and the sacrament), the fundamental one is offspring:

[T]he child holds the first place. And indeed the Creator of the human race Himself, Who in His goodness wishes to use men as His helpers in the propagation of life, taught this when, instituting marriage in Paradise, He said to our first parents, and through them to all future spouses: “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.” (Casti, 11)

This good is not to be understood to be completed in procreation, but rather:

[S]omething else must be added, namely the proper education of the offspring. For the most wise God would have failed to make sufficient provision for children that had been born, and so for the whole human race, if He had not given to those to whom He had entrusted the power and right to beget them, the power also and the right to educate them. (Casti, 16)

And thus it is clear that of the goods of marriage the child has priority, and not just the conception of the child, but his perfection as well. Moreover, this perfection is the responsibility of parents. They have the “power” and “right” to be the educators. This is true, again, in even the natural marriage. The perfection of offspring is the first good of any marriage, and the first responsibility of the parents. It is not to the state that we must look for the primary educators of children, but to the parents. This authority is theirs according to the nature of the institution.

3)   Marriage is ordered to spousal fidelity

The second good of marriage is that of the fidelity of the spouses. Again, Pius XI explains:

The second good of matrimony … is the good of conjugal honor which consists in the mutual fidelity of the spouses in fulfilling the marriage contract, so that what belongs to one of the parties by reason of this contract sanctioned by divine law, may not be denied to him or permitted to any third person; nor may there be conceded to one of the parties anything which, being contrary to the rights and laws of God and entirely opposed to matrimonial faith, can never be conceded. Wherefore, conjugal faith, or honor, demands in the first place the complete unity of matrimony which the Creator Himself laid down in the beginning when He wished it to be not otherwise than between one man and one woman. (Casti, 19-20)

Marriage, every marriage, is definitively between one man and one woman; it is therefore both an exclusive union of two spouses, and a union only of man and woman. The pope’s aim in this part of the encyclical[5] is primarily to demonstrate from Scripture and Tradition  that polygamy is not allowed to the Christian – or to the marriage instituted by God and restored by Christ – but he is also stating that one cannot have marriage without the complementarity of man and woman. Other popes repeatedly confirm this point,[6] as does Trent.[7]

Complementarity is important in its own right, inasmuch as it demonstrates that Catholics must indeed defend the truth that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman, of course, but it is also significant in that it denotes the unity of matrimony is first characterized by male-female complementarity.

Paul VI clarifies the nature of this complementarity, by considering the nature of the marital act in particular.

[T]he fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. (Humanae, 12)

The union of husband and wife is a relationship uniquely oriented precisely insofar as it is a union that in its expression, its ‘making manifest’ the nature of the unity in question, renders the two capable of generating life. The unity of spouses is defined according to its natural openness to new life.

Moreover, as Paul is clear to state, this unity is ordered to not just procreation, but “responsible parenthood.” The perfection, not simply the existence, of the child is the end of the union. Paul confirms Pius’ earlier argument; the union of marriage brings with it the responsibility of perfecting offspring.

None of this is to deny that the love of spouses is for the sake of the spouses, or that their unity is not for their own sakes. The popes are adamant that this fidelity is for the sake of the spouses, for they are bound by it “to give one another an unfailing and unselfish help.” (Arcanum, 11) The popes, however, are concerned to make a deeper point. The unity of spouses –which is the good of conjugal fidelity – is in itself an openness to new life. The desire for the good of one’s spouse cannot be intrinsically separated from the good of offspring.[8]

It must here be remarked that infertile spouses, while their situation is deeply regrettable for accidental reasons, still have that unity “written into the actual nature of man and woman.” Infertility, even when it is foreseen, does not alter the nature of man and woman, nor of this man and this woman (husband and wife), and therefore it does not alter the nature of their relationship. (Humanae, 11) It is merely an impediment beyond anyone’s will that makes it impossible for them to conceive. Moreover, since as they are indeed man and woman, their unity can be ordered to the generation of life and therefore its perfection.[9]

Thus, to follow out the popes’ teachings in respect to the second good, we see that it connects to and completes our understanding of the first. The unity of spouses in any marriage is to be understood as that sort of unity that according to its nature renders the agents capable of generating and perfecting new life. The spouses’ love for each other and their conjugal faith is to be understood according to its life-giving and life-perfecting complementarity.

4)   Marriage is ordered to the Sacrament

Finally, marriage is a union ordered to the sacrament of marriage. What does this mean? It means that Catholics must understand even the natural marriage in light of and for the sake of the sacrament whereby the spouses symbolize the union of Christ and His Church.

Pius XI argues this by first clarifying what Augustine (and Trent) mean by saying that ‘the sacrament’ is a good of marriage.

But this accumulation of benefits is completed and, as it were, crowned by that good of Christian marriage which in the words of St. Augustine we have called the sacrament, by which is denoted both the indissolubility of the bond and the raising and hallowing of the contract by Christ Himself, whereby He made it an efficacious sign of grace. (Casti, 31)

This indissolubility, to be clear, is characteristic  of all marriages (even non-sacramental). Pius first notes that there is an inviolable bond which belongs to every marriage:

And this inviolable stability, although not in the same perfect measure in every case, belongs to every true marriage, for the word of the Lord: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” must of necessity include all true marriages without exception. (Casti, 34)

Immediately after this, he points out that the seeming “exceptions” to this permanent character (he is thinking of the Petrine and Pauline Privileges) do not contradict the inviolable stability in the nature of all true marriages:

And if this stability seems to be open to exception, however rare the exception may be, as in the case of certain natural marriages between unbelievers, or amongst Christians in the case of those marriages which though valid have not been consummated, that exception does not depend on the will of men nor on that of any merely human power, but on divine law, of which the only guardian and interpreter is the Church of Christ. However, not even this power can ever affect for any cause whatsoever a Christian marriage which is valid and has been consummated, for as it is plain that here the marriage contract has its full completion, so, by the will of God, there is also the greatest firmness and indissolubility which may not be destroyed by any human authority. (Casti 35)

Hence, even natural marriages cannot be dissolved by any natural authority. Catholics must recognize that the consummated, sacramental marriage is the completion of the marriage contract and is indissoluble simply speaking, but even the natural marriage is unable to be dissolved by any human authority and therefore indissoluble by any natural power.

The indissoluble character of all marriages is explained by the good introduced when Christ raised marriage to the level of a sacrament, since it is in the raising of the institution to the level of a sacrament (and to the “mystical signification of Christian marriage”)” that one sees the “intimate reason” (Casti, 36) in the decree. All true marriages, in other words are in themselves naturally inviolable for the sake of making it a fit institution to bear the sacramental character Christ now bestows upon it in a Christian context.

Thus it is clear that even the natural marriage is in itself inviolable, and Christians must see the good of the sacrament in all marriages. Even the true marriage of unbelievers bears a certain implicit testament to the relationship of Christ and his Church (though it does not symbolize this relationship).

5)   Marriage defined

The four points above set out a definition of marriage that is totally beyond the power/authority of man. Marriage is the naturally indissoluble institution, established by God through the wills of the spouses, wherein a man and a woman are made one in such a way as to render them capable of generating and perfecting life, for the sake of offspring, conjugal fidelity, and the sacrament. Without all these aspects being respected (at least implicitly), there is no marriage, natural or sacramental.

The Authority of the State

6)   The State has no authority over the nature of any true  marriage

It is evident from the above that the nature of marriage is in no way under the authority of man, for it is established by God. Whatever authority man has, it is as a participating agent in God’s plan.

The popes also argue that the authority of the state extends neither over the nature of marriage, nor over rights of individual men and women seeking real marriages. Recall, first of all, that the perpetual bond of any true marriage is beyond the power of civil law. .

[I]n such a marriage, inasmuch as it is a true marriage there must remain and indeed there does remain that perpetual bond which by divine right is so bound up with matrimony from its first institution that it is not subject to any civil power. (Casti, 34)

The perpetual bond of marriage is beyond civil power because it is bound up with the very institution of marriage. The civil power, in other words, does not extend to the nature of the institution of marriage.

Furthermore,

To take away from man the natural and primeval right of marriage, to circumscribe in any way the principal ends of marriage laid down in the beginning by God Himself in the words ‘Increase and multiply,'[8] is beyond the power of any human law.” (Casti, 8)

So also, then, are the ends of marriage – the goods and purposes for which it exists according to the nature of its institution – are similarly beyond the power of the state.

Finally, Pius Xi states that a civil power that seeks to claim authority over the faculty of marriage, is in reality “arrogat[ing] to itself a power over a faculty which it never had and can never legitimately possess.” (Casti, 68)

Thus, the state has no power to define marriage (for it is only God’s to define), it has no power to circumscribe the ends of marriage, and it cannot claim authority over the faculty of marriage.

Therefore, Catholics must recognize that the intrinsic goods of marriage (offspring, spousal fidelity, and the Sacrament) cannot be stripped away from any true marriage and that the state has no power to do so or to re-define the marital union (whether it be the natural or the sacramental union).

7)   The State has authority to act against the vices opposing marriage

Yet, the state does have obligations in regards to this holy institution. For, while it has no power over it or the marriage faculty, it does have authority to preserve and protect society. And the popes clearly argue that marriage and family are the foundation of society.

Just laws must be made for the protection of chastity, for reciprocal conjugal aid, and for similar purposes, and these must be faithfully enforced, because, as history testifies, the prosperity of the State and the temporal happiness of its citizens cannot remain safe and sound where the foundation on which they are established, which is the moral order, is weakened and where the very fountainhead from which the State draws its life, namely, wedlock and the family, is obstructed by the vices of its citizens. (Casti, 123)

Leo XIII also points out that the effects of marriage must be protected, to ensure that no harm comes to the children. (Arcanum, 40) The perfection of offspring is the principle of conjugal unity; it is the responsibility and therefore the right of conjugal pairs to work for that perfection. The very union of marriage is ordered to the upbringing of children, and therefore the formation of citizens. This means the state must take an interest in the safety and security of marriage, if only for the sake of its own stability. It has no authority over the essential nature of marriage, as demonstrated above, so its power lies in protection. The moral law must be promoted, vices must be opposed, especially those vices and anything else that threaten the life of marriage and the family.

Leo XIII further clarifies the basis of the state’s authority in relation to marriage by noting that it consists first and foremost in a state’s recognition of true marriages.

Further, the civil law can deal with and decide those matters alone which in the civil order spring from marriage, and which cannot possibly exist, as is evident, unless there be a true and lawful cause of them, that is to say, the nuptial bond. (Arcanum, 40)

The state is concerned with those aspects of marriage that connect to civil order, but the state must order itself to the nuptial bond as it is in itself; any laws for the sake of civic order must be based upon a recognition of the truth.

In sum, though the state cannot assume authority over the essence of the institution, it must strive to preserve and protect it insofar as it may. The popes urge, first and foremost, that laws be made that protect chastity and aid conjugal fidelity (some easy examples of such laws would be anti-pornographic laws, or laws against prostitution). Furthermore, any legitimate authority the state has in relation to marriage must begin with a recognition (in the laws themselves) of the true nuptial bond.

The Significance of the Legalization of Homosexual ‘Marriage’

In light of these statements and reasons, Catholics must recognize the grave dangers this ruling compounds, and those it introduces.

8)   The state’s legal recognition of homosexual ‘marriage’ confirms and adds to the errors already present in our culture

The state has long been failing in its duty inasmuch as the legalization of such things as divorce, contraception, and abortion solidifies and lends credence to false notions of marriage. Among other moral problems, these notions make it harder for true marriages to be entered into by would-be spouses who are formed according to these errors. The state should be defending the institution precisely against these errors, but we find in our nation the laws rather confirm them. Since the culture of the nation supposes that marriage is what it is not, these would-be spouses’ wills have obstacles to true union. For example, if one goes into a ‘marriage’ with the explicit notion that it is dissolvable, or explicitly intending never to have children, one is not truly married.

For all this, however, a non-believer who goes into a marriage intending it to be for the rest of his life and for the sake of raising children still aims to enter that union which renders him generative and perfective of life. The basic character of marriage is retained in the midst of the errors promoted by divorce and contraception. The non-believer may not fully grasp what he is doing, but he may indeed intend the reality.

The acceptance of homosexual ‘marriage,’ however, compounds and adds to these errors against the holy institution by putting forth the notion that the complementarity of the sexes is not intrinsic to the sexual union. The marital act, and through it the marital union, is stripped of all the intrinsic characteristics that allows for the direct link to acting with God in generating new life, and therefore also the intrinsic responsibility and right for perfecting new life. Thus, not only is marriage seen to be merely a state sanctioned promise of living together and sharing in sexual matters (and other vague ways), but society explicitly loses sight of the sacred, set-apart union responsible for the upbringing of children. The state again fails in its duty to protect marriage by confirming society in this error, and it sets the nation against true marriage in an even more fundamental way by denying the life-giving nature of the marriage union.

The ‘spouses’ (even those who are male-female) set in this false understanding will not be intending to have the sort of union that is the context for the family. They may want a family, but the mutual promise comprising their union will not be defined according to the end of family. The will of man works through his understanding (we can only desire what we in some way know), and thus when one’s understanding of the character of marriage is so flawed as to admit of a relationship totally devoid in itself of openness to new life (and of the perfection of new life), one’s will is severely impeded in making the vows of a true marriage.

Hence, the errors of earlier legalizations are compounded and added to (i.e. a difficulty for would-be spouses to enter into marriage).

9)   The legal recognition of homosexual marriage directly opposes the security of the family

Further, in damaging the notion of marriage so profoundly, the legalization of homosexual marriage directly opposes the correct understanding of the role of husband and wife as parents and primary educators of their children. The popes (as shown above) all point to the connection between the generation and perfection of offspring. Insofar as the perfection of children is the first responsibility of married couples according to the nature of marriage, the state must see itself as secondary to the parents in regards to the education of children, and this because of the nature of the institution of marriage.

Yet, as soon as one denies the essential connection between marriage and the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, there is no longer an intrinsic protection of these rights and responsibilities. As marriage becomes (in the view of the state) an institution without intrinsic connection to the generation and perfection of children, the parents’ role with their children is no longer clear. The state must be concerned with the welfare of children, since children are citizens in need of formation. With a healthy understanding of marriage and the family, the state can recognize its secondary role with respect to children’s formation. But insofar as marriage is no longer considered to be an institution beyond the authority of the state, the state has no clear limits in its authority over the formation of children. The parent is no longer seen as intrinsically the primary educator. (

In brief as society further holds (beyond the errors of divorce and contraception) that the homosexual union is a marital union, it cannot but abandon the most basic good of marriage, namely the generation and perfection of offspring. The essence of marriage, whereby it is the origin of the family, consists in it being the sort of union that renders the spouses capable of generating life. With that generation comes the right and responsibility of raising children as the primary educator. If one denies by law this aspect of marriage, one denies the rights and responsibilities of parents, and directly opposes the security of the family. Consequently, the security of the family is not merely attacked by this law as by previous laws and permissions, but in a real sense destroyed.

Conclusion

This much, then, Catholics must in conscience hold concerning civil and sacramental marriage, and particularly the recent ruling on marriage. (a) The state cannot determine the nature of marriage, and (b) it is in fact bound for its own sake to preserve the institution as inviolate. (c) Finally, the Supreme Court’s decision directly violates the principles enumerated above. It takes an authority not its own, and it acts directly against what is – as indicated by the Church – the very foundation of society and the state. Not only, then, is the truth at stake, but the truth about the first principles of society. Catholics must recognize and work assiduously to combat these errors – they are of enormous significance. The Church’s teaching explicated above does not, perhaps, give us all the precise laws (or remissions of laws) concerning marriage we must promote, but it does give us the general principles according to which we must apply ourselves. And it demonstrates the significance of the evil we are presented with. This recognition must be clarified to our brothers and sisters in Christ, and through them to our nation.

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[1] The Council implies it at the beginning of Session Twenty-Four, and the Catechism of Trent states it explicitly.

[2] This is again, explicitly in the Roman Catechism (the Catechism of Trent).

[3] I use all the English translations taken from the Vatican website.However, I have substituted ‘good’ as a translation of the Latin ‘bonum’, which was rendered in the original with the word ‘blessing’. While I think bonum can be translated as ‘blessing,’ it loses something of the notion of an end, which is fundamental for understanding what the pope will later be talking about.

[4] This does not, by the way, make marriage a non-natural relationship, for it arises out of that love which is “according to nature” and a “naturally indivisible union.” (Arcanum, 9) The union is a “foreshadowing of the Incarnation,” in which there is something “holy and religious…implanted by nature.” (Arcanum, 19) This will be clearer when considering some of Paul VI’s passages later on, but in proving that marriage is instituted by God, the popes are not so much declaring it outside of nature as they are showing that it is part of the fundamental nature of things.

[5] Casti, 20-21.

[6] Arcanum, 5, 9, 24; Humanae, 8-9, 11-12.

[7] Council of Trent, Session 24, Doctrine; Roman Catechism, Definition of Matrimony.

[8] The depth of this conjugal love is infinitely deepened by the sacrament, and it is in the sacrament that one best understands the good of conjugal faith. For, as all the popes point out, the Christian couple image Christ’s relationship to His Body, the Church.[8] Thus, the Christian couple is ordered to the spouses’ mutual salvation, and through that ordination they also intend, not accidentally, the salvation of new life.

[9] It is in these points that one must recognize the essential, natural law problem with homosexual activity.  The agents are attempting to express a unity their act simply and by its ‘nature’ cannot express. There is no impediment, for there is no marital complementarity in the agents. No matter how much one may want it, it is intrinsically absent. Thus, when one also considers the good of children and the perfection of children, it is also clear that a homosexual couple cannot parent. Their relationship cannot be the life-generating unity context that children are to be raised in. The love that members of the same sex can have for each other, while great, cannot be the love of parents.

The 23rd Summer Symposium of The Roman Forum in Gardone, Italy, issued the following statement. We are pleased to publish it here on The Josias, as we share both its analysis of the current crisis, and its conviction that the our response must lie in an integral proclamation of the Catholic Faith, and a vigorous promotion of the Social Kingship of Christ.

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Preamble

Among the Catholic faithful the conviction grows that the ongoing crisis in the Church and the drastic moral decline of our civilization have entered a critical new phase which represents a turning point in the history of the world. Continue reading “The Lake Garda Statement: On the Ecclesial and Civilizational Crisis”

Must the political order be derived from a cosmic model (or, at any rate, from an external, transcendent reference point), or are there valid and effective substitutes? Can unaided humanity, through the mobilization of its faculties, create a sacred, or at least a myth, powerful enough to convey a model? If the answer to these questions is no, we must ask then: Can a community exist without the sacred component, by the mere power of rational decisions and intellectual discourse?

            –Thomas Molnar, Twin Powers: Politics and the Sacred

INTRODUCTION

In the ancient world, legitimate political forms ranged across a wide spectrum in which “rule of the people” was only one of many political forms conducive to the common good—and a very unfavorable one at that. But today, “democracy has become almost a synonym for legitimate government, for the rule of law.”^[1] Pundits declaim that democracy ensures freedom and fair government, while a new colonialism seeks to spread “democratic values” to every corner of the world. If we are clued in to the reductive tendencies of modern thought, we should be wary of such absolute claims. In fact, with a little digging, we discover that the democratic ideology of modernity is built upon a novel philosophy and cosmology. Early moderns like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau sought to replace the worldview of Christian religion with their own, and in the process created new philosophies and myths that still legitimize modern political forms. A democracy bedizened with the false hopes of Enlightenment scripture becomes a Leviathan irreconcilable with church teachings; if it is disengaged from this unfruitful union, however, and defended under the aegis of Catholic Logos theology, it may be the political form most well adapted for securing the common good of modern nations.

We will first explain the nature of government according to the classical and Catholic understanding. Then, we will trace the discarding of this image in the early modern period. Finally, we will suggest how democracy might be disengaged from its current anti-Logos framework and put to good use in a Catholic political order.

I. THE DISCARDED IMAGE: A Logos-Oriented Politics

A. The Classical Cosmos

Edmund Waldstein succinctly explains the classical understanding of law, that discarded image of the cosmos upon which the Catholic Church has largely built its social teaching. Classical Greek thought, as found in Plato and Aristotle, presupposes that there is an “objective good that is knowable by human reason.”^[2] Today the term “objective good” seems to denote a rather vague notion of reason, but it was rather more colorful for the Greeks. In broad terms, it meant nothing less than the total harmonious order of the universe. They saw the “cosmos” as a marvelous hierarchy of things each tending towards the perfection of a unique principle called nature. Nature is the essence of a thing, its ordering principle, the plan or purpose of its birth, unfolding, and consummation. Nature uses its powers to perfect itself in fruitful interaction with other natures. A horse, for example, is born from its mother, grows to maturity by eating grass, propagates its species, and dies: it has fulfilled its nature in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

Man too has a nature struggling to work itself out, and it is a rational nature. Man’s unique identity consists in his ability to know his own objective good and also comprehend something of the order of the cosmos. But there is a problem:

The problem is that there are different powers in the human soul; there are the senses (touch, taste and so one) and then there is reason. The senses know a limited kind of goodness, and from this kind of knowledge come certain passions such as hunger and thirst and lust. Only reason knows the complete good, wherein happiness really lies, and understands it as good.^[3]

In other words, there are competing powers within man, and it is reason’s job to order those powers to man’s true good: man must be educated. Reason must “train the human soul…to help produce a harmony among its different parts….This harmony is called virtue.”^[4]

But Greek virtue was not “moral” in the Kantian sense, a self-actualizing quest for self-mastery. Rather, it presupposed a real participation in the order of the cosmos, an order that not only gives man a static model from which to work out his own perfection. Plato’s world of forms did serve that exemplary function, but in a much more religious sense, the forms were the real source of perfective power. There was a “givenness” about Greek virtue, a sense of being drawn up into a mysterious cosmic dance. As Waldstein explains:

The order of the whole universe is what Charles De Koninck calls “the good of the universe” and “God’s manifestation outside Himself.” Man as the micro-cosmos can reflect this order in his own person through virtue. This is why virtue can be identified with happiness—because virtue is a participation in that order which is the greatest image of the divine beauty and goodness.^[5]

Seen in this light, communion among men is a crucial part of this great order. Since personal virtue is not really individual, but a participation in a cosmic pageant, a virtuous community shows an even greater participation in the cosmic order. This is how Aristotle argues the point:

Even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states.^[6]

St. Thomas Aquinas took up the insights of Plato and Aristotle, and fashioned a Christian notion of the common good. He argued that:

order is what God principally intends in creation: every individual creature reflects some aspect of God’s glory, but it is the order, the harmony, the beauty of their unity, that most perfectly reflects the creator.^[7]

Something in the sum total of perfected beings is also god-like. Waldstein continues:

It is good for man to realize the order of the universe in his own soul but it is more godlike for him to realize it in the state…the community of men reflects God more than an individual man, just as the universe reflects Him more perfectly than any one creature.^[8]

We are finally ready to discuss the role of law. Since the goal of community is to manifest the divine order, law has the principal function of “producing this unity of order, both in the individual soul, and more especially in the community.”^[9] In other words, all law aims at the perfection of man’s nature within the context of a community. It is illegitimate otherwise: “legitimacy on this view does not depend on the ‘consent of the governed’ given through democratic rituals, but rather it depends on the objective good.”^[10]

B. Authority in the Catholic State According to Leo XIII

The discussion must inevitably pass to practical matters, to the forms of government in which this harmonious order can be instantiated. Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclicals provide a coherent Catholic teaching about the nature and forms of political authority, its relation to religious authority, as well as the proper relationship of the citizen to this authority.

It is first to be remarked that Leo is not opposed to any benign form of government in principle:

Catholics, like all other citizens, are free to prefer one form of government to another precisely because no one of these social forms is, in itself, opposed to the principles of sound reason nor to the maxims of Christian doctrine.^[11]

In fact, Leo is largely indifferent to the form or the means by which authority is constituted, so long as the source of authority be rightly conceived:

There is no reason why the Church should not approve of the chief power being held by one man or by more, provided only it be just, and that it tend to the common advantage. Wherefore, so long as justice be respected, the people are not hindered from choosing for themselves that form of government which suits best either their own disposition, or the institutions and customs of their ancestors.^[12]

Leo immediately goes on to explain this right conception of authority:

But, as regards political power, the Church rightly teaches that it comes from God, for it finds this clearly testified in the sacred Scriptures and in the monuments of antiquity; besides, no other doctrine can be conceived which is more agreeable to reason or more in accord with the safety of both princes and peoples.^[13]

The pope does not go on to suggest some sort of divine right of political leadership; rather, he makes a metaphysical argument about the nature of political authority: Man cannot find perfection except in society; thus society is part of nature and willed by God. But every association of man needs a ruling authority, or else there will be mere anarchy. No man has in himself the authority to constrain the will of others; that power resides only in God. Thus, all political power comes from heaven, and “it is necessary that those who exercise it should do it as having received it from God.”^[14] In other words, society is one of the instruments God has ordained for the perfection of man’s nature; over and above individual reason, God constitutes social authority as a necessary means for man’s perfection. Authority, in this view, most emphatically does not arise from the will of the people, even if they are the efficient cause of its peculiar shape. Rather, it is from God and for Him.

From this metaphysical principle, it follows that the social organism must acknowledge its source by offering public worship to the true God:

For men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings.^[15]

In fact, Leo calls it a “public crime to act as though there were no God”; it is “one of [government’s] chief duties to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws.”^[16]

Any wholly natural and metaphysically consistent society, therefore, must acknowledge its dependence on God and explicitly enforce the laws of the Church. To do otherwise is to undermine the very nature of human society. In fact, Leo argues that unless the state acknowledges God, its authority will lack any sure stability.^[17] The doctrine of social contract is bound to lead to contempt for authority and an incessant revolutionary spirit. On the contrary, the Catholic doctrine will cause citizens to love and obey their rulers, and rulers to love and serve their citizens.

To summarize traditional Catholic teaching on the nature of political authority: society is the normal means ordained by God for the perfection of men’s souls, and its right ordering puts it in consonance with the rest of the cosmic order. Thus, authority takes its legitimacy from its place in this divine plan. Legitimate authority acknowledges this dependence on God, and orders the state according to the laws of the true religion.

II. LEVIATHAN: Liberty and Authority in Modern Political Thought

What we have described is the Logos-oriented politics of the classical and Catholic tradition. Government is the art of moving men and communities toward their final end in God, who has instituted governments for this very purpose. For government to work, laws must be drawn in accordance with the objective good, citizens must respect legitimate authority, and the true religion must be enshrined.

Now we must consider modern political philosophy. Modernity prides itself on being objective, practical and this-worldly, but as we examine its roots in the early modern period, we will find that it too rests on hidden, theocratic foundations. Its cosmology is, of course, not so rich as the antique, but it nevertheless exists as an a priori, mythological backdrop to modern political thought. The modern predilection for democracy must be understood as the necessary corollary of an erroneous cosmology that divinizes man.

Continuing trends of late medieval nominalism and humanism, the early moderns developed a novel conception of human freedom that, as Waldstein argues, was “disengaged from the good.” This development had several aspects. The first was philosophical. Late medieval nominalists scorned the delicate synthesis by which Thomas and the ancients had knitted nature to the divine, and offered a radically simplified cosmic image: Essences became disconnected from ends, the symphonic cosmos a mundane world of individual objects moved by the arbitrary will of God. Humanism ushered in the next stage when, poring over rediscovered treasures of pagan literature, they imbibed the classical sensibility to the glories of human accomplishment. They began to exalt what they perceived to be the infinite indeterminacy of the human will, its capacity to achieve nearly anything.^[18]

But if humanism retained some affinity with the old virtue tradition, early moderns who followed the Reformation radicalized the concept of freedom, stripping from it any connection to the good. In the emerging view, man’s dignity consists above all in being unimpeded. Freedom is no longer what is accomplished, but the condition of accomplishment: a radical autonomy, the absence of any restraint on the will.

Another aspect was political. As post-reformation nations were raked with internecine religious conflict, it became convenient to argue

that the objective good for man is too hard to know, too difficult to agree about, that in order to avoid the bloodshed of religious wars, it is necessary to limit politics to the care of a bare minimum of peace necessary to allow for the non-violent coexistence of persons with different views of what the true good is.^[19]

This is the thrust of Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration. ^[20] Whatever theoretical consensus remained to Europeans concerning some common objective good was destroyed in this final political development. From then on, politics decided not to concern itself with religion or any sort of claims about the objective good. Or so it thought. As Michael Hanby has argued in a recent article for First Things, the liberal state makes an implicit metaphysical claim: by denying God any role in the polity, it posits “that a thing’s relation to God, being a creature, makes no difference to its nature or intelligibility. Those are tacked on extrinsically through the free act of the agent.”^[21] In this denial, modernity effects the apotheosis of man in a new mythology.

This apotheosis has a long history, including those steps discussed above, but took a great leap in the Scientific Revolution. Encouraged by pioneers like Francis Bacon and Galileo, early modern thinkers discarded Aristotelian conceptions of the universe for more empirical methods. Most importantly, they redefined motion, the concept underlying all classical cosmology. In classical physics, motion was a interior, teleological phenomenon directing natures toward their final ends; in modern physics, motion becomes a mere external happening, the blind action of material forces whirling objects around per inane quietum. This divorce from final causes leads to a new way of seeing and relating to the natural world. If the old world functioned organically, as a sort of garden of natures growing in participatory being towards fruition in God, the new world is a machine, a collection of empirical objects jostled here and there in space according to fixed laws of nature.^[22] Man is no exception. His natural activity, deprived of a final end in God, becomes the autonomous working of his own nature. Thus, man “attains his end,” or in the new metaphor “functions most efficiently,” when he enjoys that power most characteristic to him, the law of reason.

On this basis of mechanistic physics, early moderns built an edifice of mechanistic politics. Throwing out the organic metaphors, early moderns conceived the state in terms of a vast mechanism of forces checked and balanced against one another. For example, Hobbes’s systematic political treatise Leviathan takes as its theoretical foundation a mechanistic epistemology. In his account, man is not even really free, but like a floundering ship, is carried this way and that by his passions, which are in turn merely determined responses to external stimuli. Like atoms in the void, men bump into each other constantly in a state of incessant war. The only way to peace is for an absolute sovereign to be invested with all power of coercion. Hobbes’ sovereign stands like a lid on a kettle, tasked with keeping the effervescent passions of his people from boiling over into civil war.

Locke’s views are more pertinent to the discussion of democracy. Like Hobbes, he begins by considering a state of nature. Before society, however, man is also in a state of war, (though endowed with a more respectable rational faculty than Hobbes allows). Society is joined not for moral improvement, but for physical protection against predatory raids, and a guarantee of more economic prosperity than was attainable in the state of nature. Locke’s ethos is that of a very reasonable gentleman, and he often seems to invoke some sort of natural law; but he too ultimately deploys mechanist metaphors to explain the working of his system. Explaining the necessity of majority rule, he quite bluntly appeals to the physical principle of inertia according to which the greater force must always yield to the lesser.^[23] Locke’s state too is an engine, and human beings its cogs. And like an engine in a factory, its end is only the production of material prosperity.^[24]

If Locke and Hobbes gave to modern political thought its theoretical matter, Rousseau composed modernity’s mythological form. Surprisingly, underlying the new rationalist philosophy about man’s nature, there stands a veritable myth: the state of nature. This myth, in its various forms, underlies and legitimizes the political project of each of these thinkers.^[25]

According to Rousseau, men were born into a paradisical state of absolute self-sufficiency and contentment. Far from needing the help of other men, he wandered through warm forests eating plentiful food, hardly meeting other men. He was entirely sustained in a tranquil, dispassionate state by what Rousseau calls pity. This pity prevented him from harming other creatures or his fellow man. Only later, by a series of witless concessions of freedom, did mankind form families, cities, and states. Each step towards civilization further enslaved mankind.

But this makes of man a God, casting him in the form of entirely self-sufficient and undetermined rational agent. As James Kalb observes:

To refuse to talk about the transcendent, and view it as wholly out of our reach, seems very cautious and humble. In practice, however, it puts our own thoughts and desires at the center of things, and so puts man in the place of God. If you say we cannot know anything about God, but only our own experience, you will soon say that there is no God, at least for practical purposes, and that we are the ones who give order and meaning to the world. In short, you will say that we are God.^[26]

In Pierre Manent’s analysis, this is the dark myth lurking behind the progress of the democratic spirit: yearning for the pseudo-divine state of our ancestors.

What would sum up in the same or a like way our society and its extraordinary or paradoxical character of dis-society? It would be the notion of the state of nature . . . . How can we be interested in the individual in the state of nature as Rousseau describes, eating acorns and quenching his thirst at the first stream? The animal nonetheless interests us since ultimately this individual is each one of us: he is what we want to be. To put it in a nutshell, the state of nature is defined as a state of independence, liberty, and equality. We want to live independent, free, and equal. In this sense, the state of nature forms our horizon.^[27]

By seeking the ordering principle of society in the beginning, rather than in the end, the state of nature hypothesis inverts the traditional political order. For classical politics, it was not so much where man came from, or how he existed in an indeterminate past, but how he ought to be, and what he could be that mattered. Politics concerned itself about perfecting man’s nature by bringing it to some end. Under the new mythology of autonomous mechanism, man springs forth fully formed from the womb of nature, in need of nothing but safety and fuel to keep his machine going. Since man is born perfect, but unfortunately enslaved in society, modern politics strives to attain as much as possible for its citizens this original Edenic state of total autonomy. As a colleague put it, “Democracy is just the story of people trying to get as far away from each other as possible.”

In light of this analysis, it is clear that modernity, for all its vaunted idealism and its supposed autonomy from history or tradition, is built on hidden theocratic foundations; it merely proposes a new mythology in place of an old one. In Thaddeus Kozinski’s words:

It is not that modern liberal democracy has successfully desacralized politics, but rather has changed the locus of sacralization from cosmic order, divine law, and the Church, to the human person, the sacred freedom of individuals to choose their own sacred allegiances.^[28]

Catholics believe a story: the story about man’s original justice and original sin. The first moderns too believe a story: a new narrative of original justice, this time without original sin. In fact, the sin, in many cases, is precisely the entrance into society. Society itself becomes man’s original sin, the act that separates man from a mythical primeval state of innocence and integrity. For Catholics, man can be saved from his enslavement to sin, but only in the next life, and only if he follows the rule of divine and natural law. Modern politics too has a salvation narrative, but it is this-worldly: man can find “salvation” in the free satisfaction of all his (non-predatory) desires in the democratic state. Modern politics tries to guarantee its citizens as large a share of Original Autonomy as circumstances allow, with the ultimate goal of freeing men as entirely as possible.

In this new mythological account, democracy becomes an indispensible tool for the modern religion. All other forms of government in some way deprive individuals of autonomy, by privileging one class over another, or cleaving to accidental historical arrangements. This is why the first moderns worked hard to eradicate all obstacles to the ascent of democratic forms of government. In the French Revolution, for example, the monarchy, aristocracy, guilds, monasteries, in short all the traditional threads of the fabric of society were rent to make way for the novus ordo.

But the paradox of modern liberty is that man is not deified: he feels himself subsumed into a Leviathan. Since his own autonomous choice is his only claim to self-worth, he is faced with a paradox: either consent to association and lose autonomy, or refuse to consent to anything. As Manent argues:

The dilemma of modern liberty—the dilemma of modern liberty as experienced by the modern individual—could then be roughly formulated in the following way: Either I enter into a community, association, membership, and I transform myself into a part of a whole and lose my liberty, or I do not enter . . . and I do not exercise my freedom. In brief, this is the dilemma of modern liberty: either I am not free, or I am not free.^[29]

Man in modern democracy feels himself swallowed in the unrestrained motion of a majority devoid of a rational end. Government looms as the ambivalent referee of an orgy of blind desires, over a nation “swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.”^[30]

III. TAMING LEVIATHAN: Logos-oriented Democracy

If subsumed into such an anti-Logos modern religion, democracy cannot be reconciled in any way with the Catholic religion. Nevertheless, once these hidden religious foundations are exposed and repudiated, a Catholic is free to weigh democracy as one legitimate form among many others. The encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII clearly teach the conditions in which democracy is a possible form of government for the modern world.

Leo expressly affirms that democracy is a legitimate form of government: “Again, it is not of itself wrong to prefer a democratic form of government, if only the Catholic doctrine be maintained as to the origin and exercise of power.”^[31] Under what conditions, then, would democracy be advantageous? I would argue that democracy is a form uniquely suited to the modern world, as long as it is not pure, and avoids the typical attitudes contrary to Catholic teaching. Leo suggests as much here:

Neither is it blameworthy in itself, in any manner, for the people to have a share, greater or less, in the government: for at certain times, and under certain laws, such participation may not only be of benefit to the citizens, but may even be of obligation.^[32]

To see how this might be so, we must turn to Tocqueville. In the introduction to his Democracy in America, Tocqueville argues convincingly that the tendency toward democracy is “the most continuous, the oldest, and the most permanent fact known in history.”^[33] As civilization increases prosperity,

all processes discovered, all needs that arise, all desires that demand satisfaction bring progress toward universal leveling . . . . When one runs through the pages of our history, one finds so to speak no great events in seven hundred years that have not turned to the profit of equality.^[34]

In light of this “providential fact,”^[35] the duty of those who direct modern society is “to instruct democracy,”^[36] not to oppose it. Unfortunately, because traditional society resisted democratic tendencies, democracy erupted by revolution,^[37] rather than after careful circumspection. I agree with this account, and believe that his trenchant comparison of aristocratic and democratic societies sheds light on several advantages of a democratic polity.

First, democratic society “will be less brilliant, less glorious, less strong, perhaps; but the majority of its citizens will enjoy a more prosperous lot.”^[38] Democracy does not have the glorious potential of aristocracy, but it does improve the lot of the common man.

Second, democracy can enliven the individual citizen by giving him political obligations. In his description of American townships, Tocqueville marvels at the energy of townsmen working for the common good together^[39] while remarking that the citizens of aristocratic countries often feels like a colonist in his own land, “indifferent to the destiny of the place that he inhabits.”^[40]

Nevertheless, while bringing democracy into a Catholic state, several dangers must be avoided. Tocqueville envisions a future society that:

regarding the law as their work, would love and submit to it without trouble; in which the authority of government is respected as necessary, not divine and the love one would bear for a head of state would not be a passion, but a reasoned and tranquil sentiment.^[41]

These observations point to the first difficulty in implementing democracy: the tendency it has to erode respect for authority. Frequent elections, for example, make people think authority does in fact reside in the general will, and does not make for stability and permanence in the legislative body. But this obstacle is not insurmountable, if it is balanced by a strong affirmation of the nature of authority: if the democratic state is ruled by a strong constitution that affirms authority’s origin in God, if it submits itself to the laws of his Church, provides for God’s public worship, and establishes the natural law as the foundation of all law.^[42] Oaths of office must include similar elements. Under such a system of laws, there need be no difficulty in assigning a large share of self-government to the people. Instructed by their laws and the virtuous examples of their leaders, they will seek to build up the kingdom of God by the exercise of their rights. Also, reverence that in aristocracy is attributed to the aristocrat and his family can be transferred to the offices and assemblies themselves. A House or an Executive authority, through a solid history of illustrious leaders, can still command the sort of reverence proper for a God-given authority.

Another difficulty endemic to democracy, even if it establishes respect for its ruling political authority, is the maintenance of the authority of tradition. Care must be taken that the whims of the people do not destroy the religious and cultural foundations of society. There is a democracy of the dead, whose will must be taken into account in elections. Monuments of culture, traditional practices and lore, must not be allowed to be neglected. Of course, there are democratic ways to protect these things: guilds, cultural societies, churches, all can work to maintain tradition as democracy is implemented. In answer to Molnar’s open question, we must affirm with Leo XIII that no society can remain robust without traditional religious foundations.

CONCLUSION

We have shown how democracy, as it exists within the ideological framework given to it by early modern thinkers, cannot be reconciled with Catholic principles. The classical and Catholic worldview holds that no social fabric can be woven without respecting the divine origin of authority and public profession of the true religion. Disengaged from a mechanistic mythology, democracy can be seen in its true light, as a form offering many benefits not found in more aristocratic regimes. Nevertheless, it is prone to self-will, improvidence, and contempt for authority, which must be combated with strong legal and cultural supports to tradition and religion. In the final analysis, the Leonine perspective on democracy can save modern man from the Leviathan, and help him return to the Logos.

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NOTES

^[1] Edmund Waldstein, “The Politics of Nostalgia,” Lecture at the Bratislavske Hanusove Dni, Pistori Palace, Bratislava, 25^th April, 2014, 1.

^[2] Ibid., 3.

^[3] Ibid., 3.

^[4] Ibid., 3.

^[5] Ibid., 4.

^[6] Nichomachean Ethics 1094b, emphasis added.

^[7] Waldstein, 4.

^[8] Ibid., 4.

^[9] Ibid., 5.

^[10] Ibid., 5.

^[11] Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Au Milieu des Sollicitudes (1892), 14.

^[12] Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Diuturnum Illud (1881), 7.

^[13] Ibid., 8

^[14] Ibid., 11.

^[15] Ibid., 6.

^[16] Leo XII, Immortale Dei (1885), 6.

^[17] See, for example, Immortale Dei, 32: “A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated.”

^[18] Concerning humanism, it is important to note that it began as a deeply Catholic movement. Its unofficial manifesto, Mirandola’s De Hominis Dignitate could seem an idolization of human will. But for Pico, man’s perfection is still deeply connected with God and grace.

^[19] Waldstein, 7-8.

^[20] For more on Locke, see “Lock’s Doctrine of Toleration: A Contract with Nothingness” on this site.

^[21] Michael Hanby, “The Civic Project of American Christianity,” on First Things, Feb. 2015. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/02/the-civic-project-of-american-christianity

^[22] It is also ripe for exploitation. Man is no longer the steward of the nature-garden, but a reaper whose powers give him unrestricted domination over the other machines.

^[23] E.g., “For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority. For that which acts any being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it begin necessary to that which is one body to more one way, it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority; or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body…” (John Locke, The Second Treatise on Government, ed. Tom Crawford [New York: Dover Publications, 2002], 44.)

^[24] Of course he gives lip service to the natural and divine laws, but just as he invokes these laws he limits them explicitly to practical measures ensuring preservation.

^[25] There is no difficulty in the myth coming to light after its philosophical and political expressions. Some orthodox Biblical scholars explain the composition of the Genesis myth by later Hebrew prophets as a process of self-reflection projected back in history: “Because the human author was contemplating an object designed to reflect creation, and because he had a supernatural gift of insight into this object, he was able to offer an account of creation based on his reflections about Israel’s history—he gazed into Israel’s institutions and history and there saw mankind’s beginnings.”(Jeremy Holmes, Genesis 1-11 and Science, in SCI 402 Reading Packet, 84) We imagine Rousseau did the same for modernity.

^[26] James Kalb, quoted in Thaddeus Kozinski, The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Can’t Solve It (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013), 229.

^[27] Pierre Manent, A World Beyond Politics?: A Defense of the Nation State (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2006), 137.

^[28] Private manuscript

^[29] Manent, 119.

^[30] From Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”

^[31] Libertas Praestantissimum, 44

^[32] Immortale Dei, 36.

^[33] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 3.

^[34] Ibid., 5.

^[35] Ibid., 6.

^[36] “To instruct democracy, if possible to reanimate its beliefs, to purify its mores, to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of affairs for its inexperience, and knowledge of its true interests for its blind instincts; to adapt its government to time and place; to modify it according to circumstances and men: such is the first duty imposed on those who direct society in our day.” (7)

^[37] “Democracy has therefore been abandoned to its savage instincts; it has grown up like those children who, deprived of paternal care, rear themselves in the streets of our towns and know only society’s vices and miseries.” (7)

^[38] Ibid., 9.

^[39] “The inhabitant applies himself to each of the interests of his country as to his very own. He is glorified in the glory of the nation; in the success that it obtains he believes he recognizes his own work, and he is uplifted by it; he rejoices in the general prosperity from which he profits (90).”

^[40] Ibid., 91.

^[41] Ibid., 9.

^[42] As in the constitution of the Republic of Ireland, so rudely violated of late.

by Gregory de Rivière-Blanche

 The following essay rounds out our series on the question of political legitimacy, taking up the question from a somewhat different angle, with the guidance of St. Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas. —The Editors

The Josias’s ongoing symposium regarding legitimacy has raised several interesting questions about the legitimacy of modern states. One point that has come up repeatedly in the various contributions is whether a Catholic ought to obey an illegitimate government.^[1] In discussing this question, Daniel Lendman has assumed that the illegitimate state is necessarily at variance with the divine will.^[2] For our part, we shall show that, to the contrary, the illegitimate state may be an expression of the divine will as a chastisement sent by God to a sinful people. We suggest, therefore, that the Catholic should consider this point when examining his relationship to an illegitimate government. Continue reading “The Illegitimate State as Chastisement”