Conservative Ecumenism?

Mr Coulombe has written a powerful essay calling on conservatives of all denominations to cooperate to roll back the Revolutionary tide. 

From The European Conservative

By Charles Coulombe, MA

Reconciliation to the highest degree possible between Conservative Christians is essential.

Never did they [his ancestors] carry the standard of Christ’s Cross against his most violent enemies with a more cheerful spirit than I will use and endeavour, that the peace and unity of the Christian Commonwealth, which hath been so long banished, may be brought back, returning, as it were, from captivity or the grave; for, since the subtlety and malice of the father of discords hath sown the seeds of such unhappy differences among those who profess the Christian religion this measure I deem most necessary … Wherefore by your Holiness be persuaded that I am and ever shall be of such moderation as to keep aloof, as far as possible, from every undertaking, which may testify any hatred towards the Roman Catholic religion; nay, rather I will seize all opportunities by a gentle and generous mode of conduct, to remove all sinister suspicions entirely; so that, as we all confess one undivided Trinity, and one Christ Crucified, we may be banded together unanimously into one faith. That I may accomplish this, I will reckon as trifling all my labours and vigilance, and even the hazards of kingdom and life itself.

—King Charles I, letter to Pope Gregory XV, April 20, 1623

There are certainly non-religious or even Atheist individuals who consider themselves Conservative or right-wing. Bolingbroke comes to mind, and the United States in the early 20th century produced such examples of the type as Mencken, Santayana, and Lovecraft. But they are relatively rare, and always under the subtle pressure of the Deity—even Charles Maurras converted at the end, thanks to the Carmelites of Lisieux. Most of the breed tend to take their religion very seriously.

But, of course, taking religion seriously means taking seriously the differences of other religions compared to one’s own. Beginning in the 19th century—especially as more and more intellectuals began to see a rift between religion (of any kind) and science—some bright folk began to see the need to cooperate over religious boundaries against common foes. This might be imagined in terms of cooperation between Protestants of different denominations, which idea produced the so-called ‘Social Gospel.’ Or it might include all beliefs, as with the unique 1893 assemblage dubbed ‘The World’s Parliament of Religions’ in Chicago.

The Ecumenical Movement had its origins in the on-the-ground collaboration between members of different faiths on both sides during World War I. In 1937, the World Council of Churches (WCC) was founded, with most canonical Orthodox Churches and certain elements of most of the various Protestant families as members. There is also a network of similar national councils. Local Catholic churches are members of some of these national councils. Behind this reality lie some important facts.

The state Protestant churches of northern Europe and their children, the ‘mainstream’ Protestant churches in the United States and elsewhere, simultaneously began a long march away from Christian revelation and toward left-wing politics. This, in turn, led to a number of structural ruptures within their ranks as different groups discovered one issue after another to be intolerable, and so left the parent group to found their own. These small fragments hold jealously on to whatever the beliefs of the parent organisation were, while those main parent bodies continue to drift.

But one of the things these bodies have tended to leave behind—alongside belief in the inerrancy of Scripture, the uniqueness of and need for salvation through Christ, predestination (if Calvinist), justification through faith alone (if Lutheran), a solely male ministry, marriage being solely between a man and a woman, and so on—is hatred for Catholicism. At the same time, since the tacit post-Vatican II abandonment of the necessity of the Catholic Church for Salvation, the liturgical implosion, and the dropping of the ideal of the Catholic Confessional State, much of the Catholic leadership is far more friendly to such Protestant bodies—not least because they admire their doctrinal flexibility. At the time of writing, a number of Catholic bishops are attempting to imitate that quality. This has been aided very much by the current Pontiff, whose critics accuse him of attempting to remake the Church in his own image and according to his own whims. In this, he has unconsciously embodied the non-Catholic stereotype of the Roman Pontiff as a tyrant who may change the Faith at will.

Although paradoxically involved in such ventures as the WCC and the corresponding national groups, the Orthodox Church has maintained a splendid doctrinal and sacramental isolation. But just as the current Pontificate appears to be a fulfilment of the Orthodox caricature of the Papacy, so too does the insoluble schism between Constantinople and Moscow, and the choosing of sides between the various Orthodox jurisdictions seem to confirm the Catholic view of Orthodoxy as spiritual anarchy. Moreover, the various Orthodox bodies are being subjected to the same stresses as Western Christians, as shown by Greece’s recent adoption of same-sex ‘marriage.’

Consequently, faithful and believing Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and Protestants regard anything smacking of ‘Ecumenism’ with deep suspicion. There may be limited cooperation on specific political issues (such as abortion). But does adhering to the Faith of our Fathers not mean that we must live our religion as deeply as we can, ignoring all others? Is not the dream of a reunited body of Christians something like the European Union—an abomination best left to the Left? By no means—indeed, quite the contrary.

There are several phenomena from the past several years that bode well for the future. One is the revival in Protestant countries of pilgrimages to various Mediaeval shrines. This is something Catholics should encourage. So too with the growing popularity of the Traditional Mass in Scandinavia and North Germany. Indeed, the widespread growth of interest in the Traditional Rites of the Latin Church, despite the attempts of the elderly hierarchy to squelch them, is intensely gratifying. The spread of the Ordinariates and the various Eastern Catholic Rites is gratifying as well. One should also pray for High Church movements in the ecclesiastical groups produced by the Protestant Revolt.

Furthermore, we should study the history of times and places where Christians cooperated, from the First Crusade to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Great Turkish War, and the Napoleonic Wars. Anti-revolutionary and Conservative writers like Maistre, Figgis, Groen van Prinsterer, Solovyov, and so very many others of each Creed can and should be studied. They all have written things worth reading; even if we do not entirely agree, there is something worth appreciating in the works of each author.

In the interests of transparency, this writer is a cradle Catholic of the Traditionalist persuasion; although never leaving the Church, through accidents of life he is also a canonical member of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter—the North American example of the Anglican Ordinariates within the Church, founded at the behest of Benedict XVI. He is ultramontane enough to venerate the memory of the Pontifical Zouaves and to believe the loss of the Papal States a huge loss to both the Church and State, but this does not blind him to the dark side of the Papacy, from Liberius to the present, via Sergius III and Julius III. He believes completely in the four creeds—Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian, and Tridentine—and loves all of the Church’s liturgical rites, East and West alike.

That being said, it seems that reconciliation to the highest degree possible between Conservative Christians is essential. All who claim to believe that Christ is the indispensable Saviour of Mankind, True God and True Man, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and Legitimate Heir of the Davidic Kingship are obligated to try to follow His teaching. Of course, it is precisely the differences in understanding those teachings that have resulted in the varying groups that call themselves Christian. But all agree that Jesus wished for His disciples “that they may all be one.” If we truly wish to follow Him, then His wishes ought to be our commands. Yet this unity must be based upon Truth, not merely upon feeling. We must first look at what truths we—or at least most of us—hold in common.

First, and most importantly of all, it is upon this very Kingship of Christ that authentic unity must depend. At a very low minimum, we must work to see that the laws of our respective lands do not violate the clear moral teachings of Christ. Necessarily, that puts us in opposition to most of the regimes that desecrate the planet to-day, but so be it. Beyond that, however, there are basic elements of Christianity that run through the Traditional European Right like a bloodstream.

The first of these elements is Monarchy, which, in the pre-revolutionary conception, needs to be participating in the Kingship of Christ, with the Coronations and other Court rituals reflecting that reality and reminding the current wearer of the Crown of the obligations he bears. The Monarch whose quote opened this article, Charles I of the Three Kingdoms, was Anglican but certainly also very pro-Catholic. Beyond that, he did indeed take his religious role seriously. Murdered by Cromwell’s Parliament, it is interesting to note that this first ‘Royal Martyr’ of modern times was the direct ancestor of the second, Louis XVI, and of both Blessed Karl and Servant of God Zita of Austria-Hungary. Through his sister Elizabeth, Charles was also several times great uncle to Tsar Nicholas II. It is interesting to see that we have a sort of functional Ecumenism in the veneration given these figures by the members of their respective Communions. In the case of Charles I, given that his negotiations with Rome for reunion were among the ‘crimes’ that cost him his life, he might well be seen as a sort of protomartyr for the Ordinariates.

But beyond individual national Monarchies, there is the question of Europe as a whole—of the Christian imperial idea—as expressed in different ways by Catholic and Orthodox theologians ever since AD 380, when Theodosius the Great made Baptism the rite of entrance into Roman citizenship. This is an area in which East and West traditionally paralleled each other, as one can see in both the pre-1954 Latin Rites for Holy Week and also the Byzantine Liturgy of St. Basil. Certainly, however, the Orthodox have kept a rather better memory of the idea: as late as 1815, Tsar Alexander I tried to revive it in concert with his brother monarchs in the Holy Alliance. It is an idea that we Western Europeans might explore once more. Fr. Aidan Nichols has observed that such a notion was needed to ‘ensoul’ the European Union:

Let us dare to exercise a Christian political imagination on an as yet unspecifiable future. The articulation of the foundational natural and Judaeo-Christian norms of a really united Europe, for instance, would most appropriately be made by such a crown, whose legal and customary relations with the national peoples would be modelled on the best aspects of historic practice in the (Western) Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine ‘Commonwealth.’

If the Orthodox have retained a better idea of the Empire than we have as Catholics, then it is because both the Protestant Revolt and the French and subsequent revolutions have deprived most of us of an understanding of the place in society that the Church should occupy. Oddly enough, it is fairly well maintained in the established and formerly established Churches of northern Europe. Having taken the place that the Catholic Church held prior to the 16th-century rupture, their parishes are the centre of each city, town, and village. Their bishops crowned—or crown—the local sovereign and sat in the local parliament. Every level of society is attended by religious ceremony. No matter how grotesque these arrangements have been rendered in specific cases by the aforementioned doctrinal collapse, it remains that these bodies have retained a better idea than many of us Catholics, who have come to see the revolutionary rupture between Church and State as a positive good.

But if the Orthodox have retained a better idea, what do we, as Catholics, bring to the table? The answer is the Papacy (for all that the current Pontiff seems to many to be playing Archbishop of Canterbury to the Davos crowd) as the centre of ecclesiastical unity, with resulting ecclesiastical independence. This allows the Church to provide not merely support for society as a whole, along with divine sanction for emperors and kings, but also to be the effective conscience of all. Obviously, these currents brought conflict in the past and played a part in the splintering of the faith. But like the relationship between the sexes, these things are meant to exist in creative tension, despite the difficulties that fallen nature ensures shall arise. They were the lifeblood of the Christendom that was, and, unless Doomsday comes first, they shall be the lifebloom of Christendom to come.