Postliberal Nationalism
On Independence Day, it is critical to recognize that making America Christian again will be impossible without working with all of our Christian brethren.
Author’s Note: Happy Independence Day from The American Postliberal! What a blessing to be published two Independence Days in a row in this great publication. Last year, I raised the question, “What to a Postliberal is the Fourth of July?” This year, I flip the question on its head: “What is the relationship between postliberalism and nationalism?” With the emergence of Christian nationalism and the postliberal right, Catholic postliberals should look to make common cause with our Christian brethren, bringing our understanding of the faith to bear in an ecumenical coalition for the re-Christianization of America.
Catholics around the world have historically been considered suspect in their political loyalty. In the American context, it was often assumed that the “popery” of Catholics made it impossible for them to be truly American. John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration famously excluded toleration from any church that:
All those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince … Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the Court and the Church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person.
From the early settlement of North America onward, there were manifold instances of anti-Catholic sentiment. This sentiment waned as mores softened in the latter half of the 20th century, however. In a recent tweet, the prominent Christian nationalist author Stephen Wolfe (whom I just spoke with for the ISI podcast on his book, The Case for Christian Nationalism) raised questions in regards to Catholicism and loyalty to America. In his short thread, he argued:
Imagine thinking that “America First” is submitting your conscience to the head of a tiny foreign state.
I mean, go ahead and submit your mind to the dictates of head (sic) of the Vatican state. But you can’t call that “America first.” There is nothing “American” in that.
It is my contention that it need not be this way. Catholics are proud Americans. The rise of a more muscular, unapologetic, traditional Protestant political theology under the banner of “Christian nationalism,” would be a welcome corrective to the “woke” religion that has captured the modern United States. Returning to the historical landscape of American politics and religion need not return to the days of anti-Catholicism, however. Catholics can be America First, and our “submission” to the Roman Pontiff does not jeopardize our relationship to the country.
For starters, it is necessary to clarify a common misconception about the role the Church plays in national politics. While the Roman Pontiff is the head of the Catholic Church and also the secular head of the Vatican State, the day-to-day administration and care of the Church in America is run by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
This is true of many of the other national churches around the world, as well as the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, who have their own governing structure based on their history and traditions, while still being fully in communion with the Catholic Church. The pope, while in charge of the universal Church, relies on and empowers the various bishops to make decisions and interpret Catholic doctrines and practices in light of particular geographical and cultural circumstances.
In America, not only does the entire USCCB govern the American Church, but each bishop also makes decisions for his diocese in light of the particular needs and attitudes of the faithful, and so not even each diocese is likely to look the same, even though Catholics worldwide have beliefs unified through the Body of Christ, of which we are all a part. Thus, the American Church has a distinctly American flavor.
Moreover, Vatican II has affirmed the principle by which this occurs. In Ad Gentes, the Church affirms the particularity of each member in their social and national identity, stating:
For the lay faithful fully belong at one and the same time both to the People of God and to civil society: they belong to the nation in which they were born; they have begun to share in its cultural treasures by means of their education; they are joined to its life by manifold social ties; they are cooperating in its progress by their efforts, each in his own profession; they feel its problems to be their very own, and they are trying to solve them...they must give expression to this newness of life in the social and cultural framework of their own homeland, according to their own national traditions. They must be acquainted with this culture; they must heal it and preserve it; they must develop it in accordance with modern conditions, and finally perfect it in Christ, so that the Faith of Christ and the life of the Church are no longer foreign to the society in which they live, but begin to permeate and to transform it (21).
At the same time, Catholics are united in the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the universal Church. We are united with all other Catholics in a spiritual citizenship and in a common aim of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. However, this universal citizenship in Christ does not abrogate the inherently particular character of our lives. Rather, our Catholic living will mostly be done in the context of our home towns and local embeddedness.
Since Wolfe defines Christian nationalism in basically the same way, we could say that for all intents and practical purposes, we are nationalists. This is especially true as we are in agreement on the policy substances that are traditionally defined as nationalist — tariffs and the suppression of both legal and illegal immigration — recognizing the need to protect the distinctness of the American nation at all costs.
It is also worth looking into the issue of conscience. Do Catholics suffer from “dual loyalty” because we follow the dictates of the Roman pontiff? In a word, no. Rather, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church secures the Christianity needed in political life. This requires further examination regarding how the Catholic lay faithful (we have already discussed the relationship of the Church hierarchy) relate to papal authority and also specifically how the conscience of each individual person is bound.
Aaron Seng has recently taken up the first topic in an article on the question of papal authority and the Tridentine Latin Mass. Asking about the validity of a papal ban of the Latin Mass, Seng asks, “If the pope were to declare such a prohibition (validly or not), would the faithful be obliged in conscience to comply, per the virtue of holy obedience?” The answer for Seng is nuanced, but tells us something important about the nature of authority and its binding of conscience on the lay faithful. The answer draws in part from Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith; the question is asked and answered:
Is any act of disobedience to a command of the pope by itself schismatic?
No. One is not schismatic if he resists a pope or refuses to obey a particular teaching or command of his that is manifestly contrary to natural or divine law, or that would harm or undermine the integrity of the Catholic Faith or the sacredness of the liturgy. In such cases, disobedience and resistance to the pope is permissible and sometimes obligatory.”
At the same time, we must honor the pope, even while not complying. “In them, the faulty commands of superiors — even popes — are held as decrees that must not be obeyed, yet without necessarily vitiating the authority of the superior.” This distinction speaks to two key ideas: 1. That law is an ordinance of reason and 2. Obedience to authority is predicated on respect for the office, and that the man in the office is due respect as its holder, but obedience that binds the conscience is only necessary insofar as the authority acts according to reason.
Wolfe himself suggests much the same thing in his chapter on the right to revolution, where (drawing on Rutherford) he makes the distinction between the civil ruler as ruler and the civil ruler as man. “Obedience,” according to Wolfe, “is due to civil rules when his office in the abstract is one with his person, viz., when he commands what is just. In commanding what is just, the two become one (so to speak), because the person is the necessary agent of the office.” The further implication here is that one can resist a ruler, civil or ecclesiastical, because of injustice while still having respect for the office, or the “king in abstracto.”
We have thus explained when and how the Catholic lay faithful relates to ecclesiastical authority. However, that begs the question of why we assent to the pope to begin with, and allow him to “bind our conscience.”
Many of the American Founders argued that the conscience is inherently free, and thus only reason can command its assent. In Federalist 31, Alexander Hamilton starts by stating that “IN DISQUISITIONS of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind.” In 1785, Hamilton’s eventual Federalist co-author James Madison wrote the famous “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” in which he argued that:
Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.
Madison’s argument was an appeal against civil coercion of the populace in matters of religious belief. During Vatican II, the Church would affirm this type of argument in Dignitatis Humanae, rooting the right to religious freedom in the dignity of man, and in his seeking after truth. The conscience is thus implanted in the hearts of every man by God (Rom. 2:15), and bound by the intellect.
Even given that fact, it does not follow that the conscience is self-forming such that spiritual leadership is unnecessary. Rather, the conscience is in need of formation. We learn throughout our entire lives, which impacts our understanding of what “doing good and avoiding evil,” requires, and which we practice over time. But how do we know what is right, especially in matters of faith and morals? Even more so, in a liberal age, where every order of debauchery reigns freely and is routinely celebrated by the culture and our ruling class, what sources can we look to for a solid foundation?
Christians should look to the Holy Scriptures for such a foundation. The unchanging Word of God will not lead us astray. But the scriptures alone are not enough, not because of any deficiency in scripture itself, but in our understanding. We were not there at the time the scripture was written, and so we may misunderstand what the law and the prophets taught, or what Christ meant at various points. Absent a teaching authority, we may be led astray.
In On the Usefulness of Belief, St. Augustine takes up this same argument, and explains the importance of belief on the basis of authority. As he says, “There are also three things, as it were bordering upon one another, in the minds of men well worth distinguishing; understanding, belief, opinion … What then we understand, we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority; what we have an opinion on, to error.”
For those who understand, they know, or have direct knowledge of, something, where as believers take it on the authority or trustworthiness of some other source who does claim to have that direct experience or knowledge. As Augustine points out, “I believe that very wicked conspirators were formerly put to death by the virtue of Cicero; but this I not only know not, but also I know for certain that I can by no means know.”
Since he did not witness these executions by Cicero, he cannot know that Cicero did it, but he can believe it from sources who claim to have been there or are based on other sources who were there. The “reason” in this case is the question of whether Cicero did in fact put wicked conspirators to death, and only those present can truly know whether that happened; everyone else must believe it.
Christians today were not at the crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus, nor were they at His many miracles and healings. We cannot know empirically if anything in the Bible is true. As fools, we lack wisdom about matters of true religion. Lacking wisdom, Augustine argues, means we cannot find and follow a wise man by ourselves to lead us on the right path, because as fools we cannot recognize wisdom, and thus cannot recognize a wise man. Therefore, God must tell us. For, as Augustine writes, “we cannot deny that between the folly of man, and the most pure Truth of God, the wisdom of man is set, as something in the middle.”
Therefore, Christ came down and became Man so that we might be able to imitate Him in His wisdom. Moreover, he gave us the Catholic Church as an authority for future men to come to believe in Christ. He writes:
When therefore we see so great help of God, so great progress and fruit, shall we doubt to hide ourselves in the bosom of that Church, which even unto the confession of the human race from [the] apostolic chair through successions of Bishops, (heretics in vain lurking around her and being condemned, partly by the judgment of the very people, partly by the weight of councils, partly also by the majesty of miracles,) has held the summit of authority. To be unwilling to grant to her in the first place, is either surely the height of impiety, or is headlong arrogance. For, if there be no sure way unto wisdom and health of souls, unless where faith prepare them for reason, what else is it to be ungrateful for the Divine help and aid, than to wish to resist authority furnished with so great labor? And if every system of teaching, however mean and easy, requires, in order to its being received, a teacher or master, what more full of rash pride, than, in the case of books of divine mysteries, both to be unwilling to learn from such as interpret them, and to wish to condemn them unlearned?
Thus, the power of the Church to bind our conscience stems from their use of reason. This tradition is the continuous handing down of the reason of God and His teaching through the Magisterium, which started with the Apostles and through Apostolic Succession has preserved and developed the True Teachings of Christ. Without this, we would be liable to errors, and so the Catholic Church preserves and secures our faith by imparting the teachings, which bind our conscience.
For purposes of political theology, the authority of the Magisterium helps us come to closure about theology, faith, and morals, and move onto the political questions of just application, which are prudential questions, questions that both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches (Founding Fathers included) affirm is the prerogative and role for the civil authority, rather than the clergy.
From these points, we should conclude that American Catholics can be America First. Catholic patriotism does not require us to dissolve our ties to our fellow man in the name of an abstract “humanity.” Rather, it commends us to care for our fellow man and our nation first while also recognizing the unity of mankind in the Mystical Body of Christ.
Making America Christian again will be impossible without working with all of our Christian brethren. Therefore, let us build towards an ecumenical political coalition worthy of saving all of America, bringing the light of Christ to the entire nation.
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The Establishment Clause leaves no doubt our country was founded on the premise that the state has no authority to establish a religion, force religion or discriminate among citizens because of their religions. We are a free and open society where people are free to choose their faith - whether Christian or not, believer or unbeliever, agnostic or fundamentalist, etc. What's more, true religions do not even need the state. They draw people through love and example. Too often Christians miss the mark. Imposing dogma as an alternative is not only dangerous but guaranteed to fail.