Some Answers From the Integralists

P. Edmund answers questions about integralism which is an attempt to articulate a truly Catholic political stance from which to approach the present order of society and promote justice, right, virtue, freedom, and the common good.

 From The Josias

By P. Edmund Waldstein, OCist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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