If you have not read this thought provoking posting made on X by Joshua Charles, I strongly suggest you do so. The posting has no name, but I entitled it, “Time-Delayed Revolutionaries: The Paradox of Modern Conservatism.”
Mr. Charles makes a point that our old friend Gary Potter has been making for years:
The reality is that much of modern “conservatism” is simply the slower faction of what is mistakenly called the “Enlightenment,” and its offspring, liberalism, the movement to eliminate divine revelation as a principle of public policy and law, i.e. overthrow Christendom. Both “left” and “right” are often equally agreed in this core principle of liberalism.
Gary frequently spoke in terms of “the right and left wings of our national liberalism,” which leaves many people scratching their heads until they grasp what liberalism is, not as it is commonly understood in modern political parlance, but as it has been condemned by the Church (cf. Liberalism: An Evil Defined). With minuscule exception, what passes for both “liberalism” and “conservatism” in America are essentially liberal in that sense.
There is a true sense of liberty or freedom which the Church holds precious. I tried to summarize it briefly here: Meditations on Freedom. It is very different from liberalism or libertarianism.
The reason our politics are so hellish is because our American liberals reject the natural law with reckless abandon, and our American conservatives pretend to do otherwise, while rejecting it with slightly less reckless abandon. This is why Mr. Charles calls modern American conservatives “time-delayed revolutionaries,” who ultimately “don’t conserve anything.”
Mr. Charles is right that we need a “Spiritual Power” (in the old-fashioned sense, as contrasted with “Temporal Power”) to correct this infernal bent in our politics. This Spiritual Power is the means of our obtaining the grace to be truly free, that is, to exercise our liberty in the pursuit of the good. Without it, corrupt men do not even follow the natural law because their intellects are ignorant of it and their wills warped by malice. In saying this, Mr. Charles is pointing towards the Church’s traditional social teaching.
In short, we need the Catholic faith to save our souls, but even to save our politics. (It was Orestes Brownson — like Mr. Charles, a convert — who said that Catholicity is necessary to sustain popular liberty.) Saving the individual and saving society are interrelated: If we had a society that was governed according to the principles of divine revelation (both the natural law and the supernaturally revealed law), we would have the kind of society that helps rather than hinders the salvation of individuals in so many ways. Among the reasons for this is the point made by Joshua Charles:
… law is one of the key teachers of society, and thus intrinsic to “culture.”
Liberalism, whether right-wing or left-wing, is incapable of helping us to save our souls. Instead, it gives us hell on earth, as the current descent of former Christendom into liberal-democratic despotism is what happens when we reject the Catholicity that built Christendom (cf., the UK).
It is a mercy that God gives us such an image of hell on earth. If we did not get a glimpse of where doing our own will rather than God’s will take us, we might all the easier find ourselves in the real Hell when our Particular Judgment is done.
Authentic Catholic living and the evangelism that spreads it are the answer to our ills, both temporal and spiritual.
