Unsettled Questions

As Americans struggle through the psychodrama of yet another apocalyptically framed presidential election, it is striking how, while (as usual) superficialities dominate the campaign, the most fundamental questions of American democracy remain unsettled and so are, in some sense, still at issue. In 2024, just shy of 250 years old as a country, the U.S. still cannot come to consensus regarding the most basic questions of modern democratic life, questions which have been at issue since the founding. Such questions include: Who should rule, the majority or the minority? How democratic or oligarchic should our American form of government be? How centralized or localized? How ethnically defined or civically defined should American society be? How religious or secular should society be?

None of these issues are new. Thanks to their classical education, the framers of the Constitution were wary of democracy, which they associated with "mob rule," a degenerate form of government oriented not to the common good but to the interests of the multitude of poor. There were also authentic democratic and radically egalitarian forces present in the British North American colonies, and they also were at work in the revolutionary era. The framers for the most part were men of property, however, whose class interests coincided with their classical education's concerns about the dangers of the excesses of democracy. Hence, their attraction to a "mixed constitution," as modeled philosophically by Aristotle's and Polybius' reflections on the merits of a "mixed constitution," and by early modern republican theory. Thus, the constitution the framers created reflected their understandable and likely laudable preference for a "mixed constitution," adapted to the novel circumstances of what by 18th-century standards was a very large territory - too large for anything resembling direct democracy.

The very large size of the new republic also contributed to the creation of the electoral college, since direct popular election of the president was also deemed impractical, as well as philosophically undesirable. That said, the intentionally anti-democratic electoral college has never really functioned as the pseudo-aristocratic body founders seem to have hoped for. Once a functioning political party system was in place, the practical problem of the country's size was overcome, and the electoral college became in effect a quasi-democratic institution, in that the electors in each state increasingly came to be popularly elected and the vehicles for mechanically registering the result of the popular vote. However, the almost universal practice of electing presidential electors at-large in each state has resulted over time in an increasing distortion of the popular will. Like the Senate, whose principle of state equality is inherently anti-democratic, the growth of the U.S. population, its concentration in urban areas, and the increasing partisan polarization between the underrepresented urban areas and the overrepresented rural areas has resulted in a distortion in representation far in excess of the inevitable distortion in representation which was the case at the founding and for much of American history. 

Thus, the anti-majoritarian bias of our national institutions as designed by the constitution has been aggravated in the case of the electoral college and the Senate, even as American culture has evolved ideologically in a more democratic and egalitarian direction. Likewise, the inherently anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian character of the federal judiciary has been exacerbated by the increase in the judiciary's power and in particular by the arrogation of supreme power by the Supreme Court and the contemporary failure of Congress to limit the Court's jurisdiction or alter the number of justices as Congress routinely used to do in the 19th-century.

Closely connected with our ongoing irresolution regarding majority vs. minority rule and democratic vs. oligarchic rule has been our ongoing struggle to modernize our archaic federal system. Like slavery, which the founders had little choice but to accept in order for the pro-slavery states to join the union, the continued existence and semi-sovereign power within the federal union was unfortunately accepted as a given for the framers. More than 200 year later, however, we are still saddled with an unsatisfactory division of political power between the federal government and the states and a constant tug-of-war between the inevitably growing, centralizing power of the federal government as a democratic majoritarian response to modern life and contemporary needs and the anti-democratic, anti-majoritarian state institutions which historically have hindered the effectiveness of the federal government, most extremely in the form of secession and "states' rights."

Although less of an institutional constitutional conundrum, the tension between an ethnically or racially based national identity and a non-ethnic, non-racial, pluralistic civic identity has likewise long remained unresolved. The idealized image of a pluralistic "nation of immigrants," whether described as a "melting pot" or as a more pluralistic, multi-cultural "mosaic," has long been predominant in our dominant ideology, and has represented an authentic reality for generations of Americans.  But in practice it has also often been opposed by institutionalized racial hierarchies (first slavery, then Jim Crow) and by nativist opposition to immigrants and attempts (e.g., the 19th-century "Know Nothings") to limit immigration and make America an ethno-nationalist state. While sometimes successful (e.g., the 1924 anti-immigrant legislation), such efforts have usually failed in the long-term. Even so, that thread remains a reality in American history, as we see it again playing out in current conflicts over immigration.

Finally, we have never really resolved the role of religion in our pluralistic, increasingly secular society. In 1922, G.K. Chesterton famously referred to America as " nation with the soul of a church." And, at least until recently, the U.S. had been the great exception in regard to the secularization that elsewhere has seemed so inexorably a part of modernity. As Charles Taylor has more recently observed: "the United States is rather striking in this regard. One of the earliest societies to separate Church and State, it is also the Western society with the highest statistics for religious belief and practice" [A Secular Age (Harvard U. Pr., 2007), p. 5]. Long before Taylor, even Karl Marx addressed this apparent paradox of America's civic emancipation from religion coexisting with an obviously very religious society [cf On the Jewish Question, 1843]..

Depending on who is doing the telling, accounts of American origins emphasize either the 17th-century New England Puritans and their commitment to establishing a godly "city on a hill," or the 18th-century revolutionaries and their dabbling in Deism. Of course, both are part of the story. Some of the founders - among them Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine - were Deists or at least flirted with unorthodox religious ideas. On the other hand, at least 60% of the adult white population attended church regularly in colonial America, and John Adams famously said, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In any case, from the Second Great Awakening on, there could be no doubt that America was a religious and Christian nation, indeed for much of that time a Protestant one. This, despite the formal separation of Church and State, which, of course was constitutionally mandated only for the federal government and did not initially apply to the States.

So those who believe that the country has fundamentally changed in its very recent secularizing turn are not wrong. Nor are they wrong necessarily in lamenting that change, which correlates not just with religious loss but with secular woes as well, notably the increasingly isolation of individuals who no longer experience the community which churchgoing provides. The present situation is further complicated by the fact that, certain strains of conservative Christianity - evangelical Protestantism and integralist Catholicism - seem to be in the process of transforming themselves from authentic religious movements to primarily political identities. That means that the ostensible conflict between being a more "religious" society and being a more "secular" society may be less about faith and more about political identity and religion - or irreligion - as a tribal political marker.

All these are some of the most serious and challenging unresolved issues of America past and present, which never quite seem to go away, no matter how much they may masquerade as more explicitly political questions. Our problem, I have often observed whenever the subject of contemporary political polarization comes up, is not that we disagree about things, which is natural and inevitable, but that the particular things which we disagree about are among the most fundamental components of our common life together as a society and a nation among nations.

The Great War (Again)

This summer, it will be 110 years exactly since the seemingly almost accidental outbreak of the First World War ("The Great War"). One might wonder whether, after all this time and all the scholarship "the Great War" has generated, there is still anything left to say. But so catastrophic was that war, that we simply cannot let go of its memory. Understandably so! For not only was the war a civilizational suicide (as Pope Benedict XV rightly characterized it), not only did it destroy the old established order, it also led directly to the Second World War with all its attendant horrors, and (thanks to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which the war facilitated) also led to the Cold War, and indeed to the current configuration of Europe (in which Eastern Europe again resembles Eastern Europe post Brest-Litovsk), and the terrible war taking place at present between Russia and Ukraine.

In On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (tr. Anne Buckley and Caroline Summers, Cambridge University Press, 2022), University of Leeds Professor of Modern European History Holger Afflerbach re-examines the history of the Great War, primarily from the perspective of Germany, highlighting how close the conduct and outcome of that war really was (hence, "On a Knife Edge"), how it could just as well have ended in a draw if the belligerents' leaders had been able and willing to behave differently. It offers all of us who have been so shaped by the tragic outcome of that war an opportunity to reconsider our history, the better to understand the past - and perhaps also the present.

In his Introduction, the author summarizes his aim in the book: "to show that the outcome of the war was for a long period veery widely considered to be open; and that bearing this fact in mind is indispensable to understand the increasing radicalisation of the war, the insuperable obstacles in the way of a compromise peace, the harshness of the victors and the stubborn unwillingness of the vanquished to accept the result." A serious engagement with this book offers some answers to all these questions.

I am not a student of military history, and there is a lot of that in this book (along with much else), but the account never loses the forest for the trees and presents a comprehensive picture of the wartime political and diplomatic situation and of the very fallible behaviors of the belligerents' leaders, both civil and military. Although some were occasionally quite prescient, they were motivated by a variety of considerations - foreknowledge of the future unfortunately not being one of them.

That said, I, for one, was somewhat surprised by the widespread pre-war expectation that modern warfare would be unavoidably apocalyptic and the simultaneous sense that such a war needed to be won. It seems to me striking how similar that sounds to the Cold War world in which I grew up. Fortunately, nuclear deterrence functioned successfully during the Cold War. There was nothing quite comparable in 1914.

Regarding the start of the war, the author highlights the disparity between the immediate causes and the wider issues which eventually moved to the forefront. While I have never shared the view that put all the blame on Germany and assumed that none of the powers anticipated quite what would happen, I was surprised to learn how strongly the Germans believed that they were fighting a largely defensive war. It was the contradiction between this widespread German self-understanding and the military strategy Germany pursued (and how that strategy was interpreted by others) that created one of the many conundrums of the war. On the other hand, both France and Italy had "openly expansionist, nationalistic, and imperialistic agendas."

One of the most significant characteristics of the war was the long-term stalemate on the Western front, which highlighted the difference in experience between ordinary soldiers and the officer corps. Had the war been confined to Europe, stalemate might have prevailed, but, of course, the war was fought elsewhere as well, with more obviously decisive outcomes. The two sides seem also to have had different historical models in mind - the Seven Years War for the Germans, the Napoleonic War and corresponding victory for the British.

A persistent leitmotif in this book is the many missed opportunities to make peace during the course of the conflict. For example, an early, separate peace with Russia might have avoided the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and might easily have led to a draw between the Central Powers and the Western Allies. It is truly striking how many efforts were made during the course of the war to end it - both direct peace offers and offers at mediation. These included the famous peace initiative of Blessed Kaiser Karl I of Austria, the various offers of mediation from the U.S. and the Vatican, and peace initiatives from Germany itself - most famously the invitation to all the Allies to join the peace process at Brest-Litovsk.

"For most of the war, a tie seemed the almost inevitable result of the strategic situation. ... There is much to suggest that if the war had been confined within a European framework, the warring nations' respective advantages and disadvantages would in the end have cancelled one another out and enforced a compromise peace."

Unfortunately, pre-Bolshevik Russia "could not overcome its hesitation to offer a separate peace" and the Western powers did all they could to keep Russia in the war, "an enormously shortsighted strategy on the part of the Entente. and its new ally the USA, and it led Europe into catastrophe." Meanwhile Germany's bungling of its relationship with the U.S. led to American entry into the war, tipping the scale in favor of the Western Allies. This proved doubly tragic. The Allies could not win without the U.S.: "an Entente victory became reliant on the now indispensable assistance of the Americans: this meant that the endurance of any political outcomes would depend on a lasting commitment from the United Sates after the end of the war." (We know how that turned out!) The author notes that one of the ironies of the way the war concluded was that Wilson's idea of "peace without victory" became impossible precisely because of the U.S. military intervention finally tipping the scale in the Entente's favor.

Finally, regarding the internal destabilization of Germany in 1918, there was an (understandable) German misreading of Wilson's priorities. "The Germans had no way of knowing that the question of the monarchy was ultimately of secondary importance to the President and his advisors [who] might even have preferred the Kaiser to remain ... This would have soothed their growing fears that a revolution in Germany would bring the Bolsheviks to power. However, these thoughts remained concealed from the German public, as the wording of Wilson's note was hostile towards the old order." In the end, the fall of the monarchy was the fault of the Kaiser himself. Afflerbach quotes one Social Democrat to the effect that a timely abdication would have "broken the back of the republican movement." Instead, it was the Kaiser's "shameful departure" that the author believes decided the monarchy's fate.

Afflerbach argues in the end that "the patently senseless sacrifice of millions of men in a war that only ended in a draw might have been a better deterrent against a new war than the idea that such a war could be 'won'." Of course, the opposite happened, the war was "won" - patently senselessly - and immediately set the stage for the next war. That is but one of many unfortunate lessons to be learned from Allied intransigence snd German blundering in the First World War.

Jubilee Hope

One of my seminary professors used to refer to hope as the characteristically Christian virtue. This special salience of hope has been highlighted by Pope Francis in his Ascension Thursday Bull of Indiction of the forthcoming Jubilee Year, entitled Spes Non Confundit, which is a quote from Saint Paul, "Hope does not disappoint" (Romans 5:5). The "Ordinary Jubilee" of 2025 will begin with the Opening of the Holy Door at Saint Peter's on Christmas Eve and its final closing on January 6, 2026. A particular feature of this Jubilee Year will be a special celebration in every diocese on the Sunday after Christmas (December 29). A pilgrimage to the local cathedral, the Pope proposes, "can serve to symbolize the journey of hope that, illumined by the word of God, units all the faithful" [Spes Non Confundit, 7].

Hope is clearly the leitmotif of the papal bull and presumably of the observances being planned for the Holy Year. Pope Francis has explicitly identified hope as "the central message of the coming Jubilee," and calls Holy Year pilgrims traveling to Rome "pilgrims of hope" [1]. Spes Non Confundit is a contemporary call-to-action regarding the virtue of hope and also "a virtue closely linked to hope," patience. "In our fast-paced world," warns Pope Francis, "we are used to wanting everything now. We no longer have time simply to be with others; even families find it hard to get together and enjoy one another’s company. Patience has been put to flight by frenetic haste, and this has proved detrimental, since it leads to impatience, anxiety and even gratuitous violence, resulting in more unhappiness and self-centredness" [4].

The part of the Bull which I found most immediately inspiring was the section on Signs of Hope. Here, Pope Francis emphasizes the "need to recognize the immense goodness present in our world, lest we be tempted to think ourselves overwhelmed by evil and violence. The signs of the times, which include the yearning of human hearts in need of God’s saving presence, ought to become signs of hope" [7] One such sign is a desire for peace. Another is "enthusiasm for life and a readiness to share it." Here, he recognizes and warns against "the loss of the desire to transmit life," reflected in a number of countries' "alarming decline of the birthrate." (This is especially a problem, of course, in contemporary Europe, but is also increasingly in evidence here in the U.S.) In contrast, Pope Francis cites "the desire of young people to give birth to new sons and daughters as a sign of the fruitfulness of their love ensures a future for every society. This is a matter of hope: it is born of hope and it generates hope" [8-9].

The Holy Year also calls us "to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind" [10]. Among these, the Pope particularly mentions prisoners, the sick, migrants, and the elderly. Esteem for the elderly, for "their life experiences, their accumulated wisdom and the contribution that they can still make, is incumbent on the Christian community and civil society, which are called to cooperate in strengthening the covenant between generations" [14].

Providentially, the coming Holy Year coincides with a very special anniversary of significance to all Christians, the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which first met on May 20, 325. Pope. Francis rightly recognizes Nicaea as "a milestone in the Church's history," the upcoming anniversary of which "invites Christians to join in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Blessed Trinity and in particular to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 'consubstantial with the Father,'  who revealed to us that mystery of love" [17]. Nicaea also famously addressed the indue of the date of Easter. The Pope notes that 2025 will be one of those years when all Christians will celebrate Easter on the same day.

One important aspect of any Holy Year is. the Jubilee Indulgence. So Pope Francis here takes the opportunity to reflect upon death, "a painful separation from those dearest to us, [which] cannot be mitigated by empty rhetoric" [20], and God's judgement, which brings about "a definitive encounter with the Lord." Relating this to the Jubilee Indulgence Pope Francis continues: "The evil we have done cannot remain hidden; it needs to be purified in order to enable this definitive encounter with God’s love. Here we begin to see the need of our prayers for all those who have ended their earthly pilgrimage, our solidarity in an intercession that is effective by virtue of the communion of the saints, and the shared bond that makes us one in Christ, the firstborn of all creation. The Jubilee indulgence, thanks to the power of prayer, is intended in a particular way for those who have gone before us, so that they may obtain full mercy" [22].

Indulgences remain one of those historically neuralgic issues which unnecessarily separate Christians and cause unfortunate arguments even to this day. What matters most, however, is precisely those aspects which the Pope has emphasized in the essential underlying teaching about the human need for purification from the lasting effects of sin and our solidarity in intercessory prayer. My sense is that we live surrounded by the unfortunate effects of human sinfulness - our own individual sins and those of others - and are all desperately in need of the feeling of forgiveness and experience of mercy which the Jubilee indulgence celebrates. It "is a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God's mercy," the Pope reminds us [23].

Finally, as has increasingly become customary among many modern papal pronouncements, the Bull of Indiction concludes with a meditation on Mary and hope. In her, "we see that hope is not naive optimism but a gift of grace amid the realities of life." Hence, "piety continues to invoke the Blessed Virgin as Stella Maris, a title that bespeaks the sure hope that, amid the tempests of this life, the Mother of God comes to our aid, sustains us and encourages us to persevere in hope and trust" [24].

Photo: Holy Door at Saint Peter's Basilica, which will be solemnly opened by the Pope on Christmas Eve to inaugurate the Ordinary Jubilee year 2025.

Ascension Thursday

 

I woke up this morning to the happy news that “Alternate Side of the Street Parking” is suspended in New York City today. It’s even better in Europe – in the Netherlands and Germany, for example, where this is still a legal public holiday! 

St. Bernard of Clairvaux [1090-1153] is supposed to have described the Ascension as “the consummation and fulfillment of all other festivals, and a happy ending to the whole journey of the Son of God.” But I think we can just as correctly characterize the Ascension as the continuation of that journey – now by means of his Church, through which all of us are now joined together on the same itinerary.

Belief in Jesus’ Ascension is, of course, one of the key components of our Creed, which we recite regularly - if maybe at times a bit absent-mindedly. After professing our faith in Jesus’ resurrection, we add: he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

As the words of the Creed suggest, the Ascension actually involves several things. Most obviously, it expresses the fact that the Risen Christ no longer lives among us on earth in the way that he once did. The Risen Lord lives now the new life of the future, of which his resurrection is a foretaste for us. The New Testament tells us that the Risen Christ presented himself alive to his disciples, appearing to them and speaking about the kingdom of God. After a certain period, those appearances ended. It was time to move on to the next stage in salvation history – our time, the time of the Church, the time appointed for us to Go, and make disciples of all nations.  Historically, therefore, the Ascension refers to the end of that period of the Risen Christ’s appearances to his disciples.

That being the case, one obvious question is: well, where exactly is he now? Again, the Creed contains the answer: he is seated at the right hand of the Father. Of course, as Son of God, the Divine Word, has always been with the Father. Theologically speaking, what the Ascension celebrates is that his human body (and thus our shared human nature) is now with God. 

In Jerusalem, in the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, pilgrims get to see a footprint-like depression in the rock, which purports to be the exact spot from which the Risen Lord ascended to heaven – a bit fanciful, perhaps, as if Jesus sprang upward with such force as to leave a physical impression in the rock. The footprint may well be fanciful, but it does highlight the point that it was Jesus’ human body (and thus our shared human nature) that ascended – and that is now with God.

Thus, the Ascension anticipates what the resurrection has made it possible for us all to hope for. In the words of the liturgy: where he has gone, we hope to follow.

Meanwhile, in this interim between Easter and the end, though absent, he is still with us, as the Gospel says, confirming his word through accompanying signs [Mark 16:20].

Hence, his instruction to his disciples: to wait for the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father.

As individual disciples and as a Church community, we too are invited – in this interval time between Ascension and the end – to recognize and respond to the Holy Spirit’s action in each of our lives and in our life together as God’s People. 

Homily for Ascension Thursday, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, May 9, 2024.

Photo: The Ascension, watercolor ceiling painting, early 20th century, at Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN.

Lost In Ideology (The Book)

 

"Whenever we inhabit such siloed towers and make no effort to leave them - not even in the imagination and through dialogue - we do not understand the point of view of our neighbours who are aloft in a nearby tower of their own." So writes Political Scientist Jason Blakely near the end of his Lost In Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life (Agenda, 2024). Our "experience of being disconnected from an alien culture is now nearly universal in our society, as we struggle to understand not a foreign tribe but our own neighbours, fellow citizens, colleagues and family members." In Blakely's masterful analysis of contemporary ideologies, we see reflected much of our own present political experience, through the competing worldviews which map our perception of human nature and society and the purpose of politics.

Blakely's procedure in this book is to treat several major (and less major) ideological traditions, attempting in each case to achieve what sociologist Clifford Geertz called a "thick description," an account "nuanced enough to be recognized by its own adherent as faithful to it." 

An important premise of his study is that "ideological maps," as he calls them, "conjure forth and help build social reality." Thus, "ideological means and symbols" become "embedded in practices, institutions, laws, economies, regimes, and forms of self." One becomes "lost in ideology" whenever "everything in a social world reflect it back as natural." So, for example, the familiar Louis Hartz thesis linking Lockean liberalism and the American way of life is to be interpreted "as an artifact of liberal ideology itself." Thus, "where natural-rights liberals like Locke claimed to simply describe a state of nature, they in fact helped create a world in which such things as rights and liberal postulates appeared natural and commonsensical."  Likewise, for the utilitarian variation of liberal theory, such a political culture produces "people who have a utilitarian conception of their own pleasures and pains," a "self-confirming" psychological theory.

Blakely starts with classical liberalism - both in its Lockean and utilitarian formulations - as the ideology most widely associated with the American founding. He complements classical liberalism, however, with two other ideologies also associated with the U.S. from its founding. the first is the tradition of "civic republicanism" - a more anciently rooted tradition of political thought than classical liberalism, which fosters "a communal and participatory form of democracy," which "continued to inspire heterodox politics on both the left and the right." This alternative to classical liberalism was associated by Alexis de Tocqueville with Puritan New England. "Unlike natural-rights liberalism, civic republicans ascribe freedom not primarily to autonomous individuals but to the entire community and specifically cities.  Such freedom is a cooperative accomplishment and not a natural, individualistic given."

Both classical liberalism and civic republicanism have long been acknowledged and celebrated in the history of American political thought. But Blakely also calls attention to a third claimant, "White supremacist ideology," which he suggests "represents a possible rival mutation and abuse" of Enlightenment rationalism and scientism. Analogous to the construction of other ideologies, e.g., natural rights, White supremacy did not discover "the factual basis of race," but rather helped to "create it as a sociopolitical category." He highlights the historical importance of John C. Calhoun, not only for his theory of "concurrent majorities," but also as "an important source of the argument that the conflict between the North and the South was a dispute over state versus federal rights and not the abolition of slavery."

The second part of the book explores "the hyperpolarization of left and right, including progressive liberalism, right libertarianism, conservatism, fascism, socialism and communism." The first two are twentieth-century variations on classical liberalism. The left variant, progressivism, "pursues individual liberty but in a way that experiments with new practices and allows for communal cooperation and a greater role for government." This "progressive ideological map led to the construction of the New Deal welfare state as well as a political culture emphasizing social solidarity." at its extreme, it tends toward "a political ethos of ceaseless modernization" and risks assuming politics to be "developmentally linear," such that progressivism erroneously seems to progressives to be self-evident. Opposing progressive liberalism, "neoliberalism advances a species of right-wing libertarianism that asserts individual autonomy and anti-statism but targeted at the realms of economics and wealth distribution" In contrast to progressive libertarianism in the areas of traditional morality, "neoliberals assume that to survive in the competitive world of markets, individuals and families are best served by moralities or personal responsibility, frugality, sobriety and self-control." these two competing variants of liberalism are easily recognizable as mapping onto the ideologies most popularly associated with the our two political parties for much of the post-war period.

According to the normative (e.g., Louis Hartz liberal)  interpretation of American history, apart from the southern exception in its racial hierarchy, ther is no true conservative tradition of American thought. In fact, to a considerable extent American conservatism is a twentieth-century invention. To find a true conservative tradition, one must go back to Europe. Accordingly, the author considers the legacy of Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France "remains a fountainhead for nearly all forms of this ideology."Such traditionalistic conservatism favors limited government not because of liberal principles, "but because no one person can or should be trusted with a power that exceeds then infinitely." Conservatism opposes "the degradation of tradition by the modern world. Disenchantment and alienation are experienced by conservatives as products of secularization and radical innovation."  Conservatism struggles with the internal dilemma that, while hoping  for a "return or revival of a sacralized past," it has "an underlying sense in which truly premodern, traditional political belonging is no longer available even on conservatism's own terms."

I think this section is particularly relevant for Roman Catholics, because so much of historic Catholic political thinking - at least until relatively recently - resonated with this conservative tradition. In the U.S., of course, conservatism was fused by mid-20th-century thinkers like William Buckley with the very untraditional, quite unconservative "libertarianism of Wall Street elites, entrepreneurs and economists." The Cold War was the catalyst for this peculiar alliance. Absent the Cold War, the alliance has proved much more fragile, and "one way to understand twenty-first century upheavals on the American right is precisely to see that religious conservatives no longer think of capitalist markets as straightforwardly an ally to their politics."

Fascism is a particularly difficult ideology to analyze "as it appears disguised and diluted by more familiar ideological traditions." But Blakely recognizes a feature which is, I think, central fascism and fascist-like contemporary phenomena: "Fascists tell stories about a world gone catastrophically wrong," and they "believe in the need to liquidate existing institutions and leadership." Something else that is very characteristic of fascism and fascist-adjacent movements is the discarding of Judeo-Christian "compassion and mercy as signs of weakness and morbidity" and the aestheticizing of "violence, masculinity, military-ready bodies, weaponry, marshal uniforms, camouflage, and so forth." We don't have to look too far today to find these features alive and well in our midst. Blakely's treatment of MAGA ideology in relation to the fascist paradigm highlights, for example, "the injection of fascist motifs into Christianity" and it "takeover of traditional Christian imagery."

From conservatism, the book moves to socialism, which "expanded the emancipatory projects of the Enlightenment beyond liberalism and individualistic rights." Marxism, the author argues, "is liberalism's ideological alter ego. It appears a rival claimant to rational universalism touting its own competing account of liberty, equality and enlightenment." But "a cultural view of ideology makes clear that there is nothing automatic or structurally fated about revolution," and Blakely highlights how democratic socialists need "to forge alliances across different sectors of society," and how this form of socialism has "retained liberalism's emphasis on political compromise as well as respect for individual rights of assembly, speech, voting, and so on."

The third section of the book considesr newer, "liquid" ideologies "that scramble the  whole notion of a clean split between left versus right, such as nationalism, multiculturalism, feminism and ecologism." It concludes with a discussion of how to argue critically about ideologies.

Lost In Ideology is a perceptive introduction to the principal currents of contemporary political thought that should be a useful resource for anyone struggling to comprehend competing versions of political discourse, which increasingly simply talk past one another uncomprehendingly. accessible to the ordinary reader and intellectually comprehensive at the same time, it should help everyone to make sense not only of the strengths and weaknesses of his or her own ideology but also its relationship place to other ideologies currently on offer on the wider spectrum of contemporary American political thought

Expanding the Church's Horizon

 

One of the distinctive features of the Easter season is the daily reading of the Acts of the Apostles, which takes us back to the earliest Christian communities and their unique experience of the ongoing presence of the Risen Christ in their midst. Reading Acts, we get to experience vicariously the inspiring internal life of those apostolic Christian communities, living their own kingdom as a religious alternative to the empire in which they remained enmeshed.

 

I felt some of that inspiration during last month’s Paulist Summit on Polarization, ambitiously subtitled Bridging the Divide, Seeking Reconciliation. Participants included Paulists and Paulist Associates, academics, Catholic media figures, and others involved in various initiatives directly or indirectly aspiring to reduce the toxic affective polarization which is poisoning secular society and infecting even our life together as Church. The conference created opportunities for us to learn about how we experience one another and how to navigate through and around our differences, the obstacles which the ways we experience our differences create that hinder opportunities for conversation, and the human and religious resources we can draw upon to attempt those challenging conversations. The weekend was a powerful experience of Christian community, not unlike (it seemed to me) the communal reinforcement and encouragement those early Christians must have experienced in their local Churches. 

 

Primarily, however, Acts recounts the Church’s growth and expansion from a small group huddled together in one room in Jerusalem to larger and increasingly more diverse communities throughout the Mediterranean world. It’s the wonderful story of how, transformed by the Risen Christ’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit into a missionary movement that spread from Jerusalem to Rome, the Church changed from a small Jewish sect into a world-wide Church with a universal mission.

 

To us, who already know the story, all that seems obvious and inevitable. For the first Christians, however, it must have seemed like one new learning experience after another. Today’s 1st reading [Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48]recounts one pivotal point in that process. Peter, as the official leader of the community, had visited the disciples in a town called Joppa (near today’s Tel Aviv). While there, he had a dream of various animals and heard a voice tell him to eat them. When he responded that he had never eaten non-kosher meat, he was told, What God has made clean, you are not to call profane - another example of something the meaning of which may seem obvious to us, but which at the time must have seemed completely perplexing. Meanwhile, as Peter pondered this perplexing dream, emissaries from a Roman centurion, Cornelius, came and asked Peter to accompany them back to Caesarea, which he promptly did. That is where today’s reading picks up the story.

 

Cornelius was a Roman pagan, an uncircumcised Gentile! Normally, no devout Jew would enter his house, but these were not normal times. Already “prepped” by his perplexing dream, Peter crossed that boundary, and proclaimed the Good News of Jesus to a house full of Gentiles. Suddenly what had happened to the original disciples on Pentecost happened to Cornelius and his household – a “Pentecost for pagans,” as it has been called.  So, Peter asked, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”

 

Thus began the momentous change that enabled Christianity to spread throughout the wider world. I say “began,” because, of course, the full implications of something so unexpected took time to sink in. Had Cornelius become a Jew and then acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would have been like the other early Christians, who were, of course, also Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah. Cornelius, however, did not become a Jew. He “jumped the line,” so to speak, directly into Christianity. Eventually, the Church would have to debate whether this was proper, and Peter would cite this transformational event as the key to understanding God’s will for his Church – that it be the vehicle for conversion and repentance for all, without exception and without restriction.

It was God who took the initiative in all this – directing Cornelius to invite Peter, prepping Peter with his dream, and then dramatically demonstrating God’s plan to include the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit. For his part, Peter, as the official leader of the Church, recognized God’s action and accepted its implications, baptizing the first Gentile Christians and incorporating them into the community.

 

This story speaks volumes about the very nature of the Church – not just the first century Church of the apostles, but the global Church of the twenty-first century, which is, if anything, more diverse than ever before. The Church is not a club, a fraternal association, a social networking group, or even a prayer group, though it may have elements of all those things. As Pope Pius XI put it, almost a century ago: “The Church has no other reason for its existence than to extend over the earth the kingdom of Christ and so to render people sharers of his saving redemption.” 

 

As a practical matter, of course, we experience the Church largely locally, as part of a locally defined parish community that nourishes and supports us in our faith. It brings us together to hear the Good News that makes our lives different from what they would otherwise have been. It brings us together to respond to that Good News with worship and prayer, support for one another, and service to others in the day-in, day-out dying and rising that defines a disciple’s life. 

 

But it doesn’t stop there. In the movie Civil War, there is a strange interlude when the journalists drive through a town that seems to be pointedly ignoring the civil war being fought all around them, weirdly separated from the experiences and concerns of their fellow citizens. The Church does not enjoy that option, but rather has been appointed, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel [John 15:9-17] to go and bear fruit that will remain.

 

The parish is never just about itself, but in some sense is challenged take in the entire world, today’s world - to expand our horizon, just as the apostolic Church had its horizon expanded, to understand our own local experience of Church as one with that of the young, emerging Church in Africa, the aging Church in Europe, and the even more ancient Churches in India and the Middle East, along with newer Catholic Churches in Asia and elsewhere, to understand how our own middle-aged American Church is being rejuvenated and revitalized by many new immigrants, and in other unexpected ways, to understand our own local experience of Church in the wider terms of God’s great plan for the salvation of the world.

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, May 5, 2024.

 

1968 Redivivus?

Campus violence is in the news, all over the news. Of course, most young people of college age are not students at four-year colleges or universities. And most of those who are do not attend elite institutions like Columbia. Even so, the media has focused intensely on this issue. And many of those who think or write about what is happening on our campuses cannot resist recalling 1968.

I was 20 years old in 1968, now widely regarded as the most tumultuous year in modern American history, and I remember it well. That miserable year began with the Tet Offensive at the end of January, then Eugene McCarthy's surprisingly good showing in New Hampshire in March, which provoked RFK's entry into the presidential race and LBJ's unexpected withdrawal. In early April, Martin Luther King was killed, and cities erupted in riots.  Then, later in April, Columbia University suddenly experienced a week of campus disorder, which presaged a pattern of campus disorders that would characterize 1969 and 1970 (including as I well remember at my own City College campus one subway stop north of Columbia). In June, RFK was assassinated. Then, in August, the Democratic Convention in Chicago was disastrously overshadowed by unprecedented street violence, all of which combined, unsurprisingly, to elect Richard Nixon in November of that year.

In 1968, the U.S. was mired in a losing war in Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans were being killed. The LBJ-haters, who disrupted campus life and then brought their hatred of him and the Kennedy-Johnson Administration's war to the convention, undoubtedly had a variety of motivations - among them in at least some cases actual support for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Whatever their motivations, the one clear consequence was the election of Richard Nixon, who gave us another four years of war, Republicans on the Supreme Court, and eventually Watergate. What a proud roster of accomplishment!

And now we appear to be at it again! The U.S. is not actually at war this time, but our ally Israel is. The Biden-haters, who are currently disrupting campus life, again undoubtedly have a variety of motivations - some of them genuine humanitarianism but among them in at least some cases expressions of outright anti-semitism and support for Hamas. Whatever their motivations, the one most plausible political consequence will likely be the election of Donald Trump, which promises at least another four years of "American carnage," and maybe MAGA Forever!

Meanwhile pundits and professors are falling all over themselves to defend free expression and the right of student activists to protest on campus. One wonders if the object of the protesters' hatred were some group other than Jews whether as many pundits and professors would be so libertarian - or whether they might instead revert to the (until recently) obsession at many universities with censoring hate speech and guaranteeing "safe spaces" for students. 

Of course, freedom of expression is an important American value, and students should have ample opportunities to participate in peaceful protests which are non-violent and do not disrupt other students' rights to receive an education and participate in campus life. That said, college and university students do not obviously enjoy any particular privileges in this matter, more than the rights to free expression and peaceful protest enjoyed by other, ordinary citizens in other public and private places. This latter point is often lost amid laments about the role of the police. There is, in fact, a reasonable and legitimate argument to be raised regarding the over-militarization of contemporary policing. That said, being a student at an elite institution should not, a priori, exempt one from legitimate policing activity, to which other, ordinary citizens are also subject. It is not "academic freedom" to block access to public spaces, classrooms, and libraries and to threaten Jewish students with the result that they are afraid to access those spaces (thereby losing their "academic freedom").

One side story in this larger saga, which has received much less attention, is what this tragic turn of events reveals about the current state of higher education in the U.S. - especially at elite institutions. As one who spent several formative years at an elite institution of higher education, on the margins of and aspiring to become a part of that academic world, I am increasingly saddened by what seems to have befallen the collective life of the academic community.  What would it take for faculty to reclaim their role and recommit their institutions to become again genuinely intellectual communities committed to a more coherent educational purpose?

That is all another issue for another day, however.  Likewise, the war in the Middle East is obviously an important issue that deserves political discussion and debate. A terrible atrocity was committed by Hamas. on October 7. Since then, thousands of Gazans - many of them presumably civilians - have died, been injured, made homeless by the subsequent war, while some 132 Israelis remain hostages of Hamas seven months into this conflict. Like the wider war, the underlying Jewish-Arab conflict of which this is a part, the issues seem so intractable. That said, it is incumbent upon the Biden Administration to be as pro-active as possible in facilitating a settlement, however limited and temporary. 

Meanwhile, however, I have little doubt that the primary accomplishment of the Biden-hating campus demonstrators - especially if they continue and take their street show to Chicago - will be helping Donald Trump get elected, much as their predecessors in 1968 helped guarantee Richard Nixon's election. 

Photo: Columbia University, NY Times.

The 1960s In a New (and Loving) Key

 

Historian and Pulitzer-Prize winner, Doris Kearns Goodwin has been around and producing great books since I was in grad school. Her latest is a bit different and somewhat special. In An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s (Simon and Schuster, 2024) she is still doing history, but within the context and through the unique lens of her marriage to "Camelot" veteran Richard Goodwin, her husband of 42 years. The book takes the form of a recollection of the written memories in archival boxes of her and her husband's personal and political experiences, primarily during the eventful decade of the 1960s, with some reflections on their earlier pre-political lives and the post-political trajectory of their married life together.

Richard "Dick" Goodwin (1931-2018) liked the portrayal of him in the movie Quiz Show: "I'm he moral center of the story. I'm portrayed but a young good-looking guy. And I get to sum it all up with the last line, 'I thought we were going to get television. The truth is, television is going to get us'." (That would prove prescience in many respects.)

Yet, already while interviewing contestants in the late 1950s Quiz Show scandal, Dick Goodwin was already heading toward his life-defining work as an aide and speechwriter first for John F. Kennedy, then for his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and then, after having been so much a part of the start of the Great Society, leaving he White House and becoming an anti-war activist and an aide and speechwriter first for Eugene McCarthy, and then for Robert F. Kennedy (and then McCarthy again). 

Most of the book is about Goodwin's work with those four men and his role in helping shape the liberal accomplishments and the eventually catastrophic liberal losses of the 1960s. For those of us who lived through that tumultuous time (and may have our own complicated memories to unpack), Goodwin's recollections recall the aspirations and disappointments with which we are so familiar and with which we are still living today. They also fill in the historical record with interesting personal anecdotes that personalize the story and highlight how that history was very much neither happenstance nor the working out of inexorable historical forces, but the unique intersection of distinctive personalities with the needs of a society in the grip of generational and cultural change. 

Even remembering the intense emotions of the era and the negative polarization its politics produced, one cannot fail to be struck by the intensity of Goodwin's involvement first in the New Frontier and then in the politics of producing the Great Society. The latter was rooted in the conviction that "Johnson's domestic agenda spoke directly to our daily lives," but was followed so soon by what his wife would call his "spiteful, personal vendetta against Johnson." Indeed, so much of the story of the 60s as recalled here can be categorized as a sad story of spiteful personal vendettas - most notably RFK and Kennedy loyalists spiteful personal vendetta against LBJ, but also the hostility between the McCarthy and Kennedy wings of the anti-war Democrats. Not only did those personal vendettas damage the people involved and undo the aspirations of the Great Society, but they set the stage for the more negative and destructive political dysfunction of subsequent decades.

Doris Kearns Goodwin met her husband in the 1970s, in the afterglow of the 60s and Goodwin's era of influence. Younger than he, she had participated in the earlier events of the 1960s at what might be called the street level. But her service as a White House Fellow and the friendship she formed with President Johnson became her ticket to academic renown, with her first book Lyndon Johnson's and the American Dream. From there she would go on to write acclaimed books about Lincoln, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. It is interesting to observe how her academic engagement with those heroic figures and her personal engagement with Johnson helped steer her toward a more balanced perspective on the 60s.

It is the fashion nowadays to compare our problematic present not to the 1960s but to the mid-19th-century run-up to the Civil War. Drawing on her knowledge of Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin recalls how the young Lincoln "was troubled by the mood of the country, a tendency to substitute passion for judgment, to engage in mob action in disregard of laws." Lincoln worried that the "living history" of the revolutionary era "was fading, along with the founding generation itself." For Goodwin, "Lincoln's words took on a powerful resonance," as she realized that "some sixty years after the changes and. upheavals of the Sixties have begun to fade, been half-forgotten or become misunderstood," this project might add their voices "to the task of restoring a "living history' of that decade, allowing us to see what opportunities were seized, what mistakes were made, what chances were lost, and what light might be cast on our own fractured time."

One of the particular beauties of this book is how it integrates the personal with the political and the past with the present. It is an account of a married couple in their old age (he in his 80s, she in her 70s) reflecting back on the history they had originally lived separately and in which both played active parts. It is an amazing insight into how we all may remember our past in old age and be nourished even now by those memories, both positive and negative. It reminds us of the vision of history-shaping public service and the animating power of a life lived in public service. And, of course, it is an even moire poignant reminder of the pre-eminence of love in life, of the primary importance of marriage and family, even within a life blessed by opportunities for historically significant political participation.

Jesus and the Powers

 

N.T. Wright, a retired Bishop of the Church of England, is an eminent and well-known scripture scholar and theologian. In this latest book, Jesus and the Poers: Christian Political Wirness in a Age of Totalitarian Terror and and Dysfunctional Democracies (2024), he and his co-author, Australian theologian Michael Bird, seek to address in straightforward, non-technical language the perennial question of the Christian commitment to politics and government, a question that has acquired increased salience in a post-Christendom world, in which the once widely acclaimed alternative of liberal democracy has become increasingly problematic. Indeed, for these authors, this presetn decade may "be the most precarious and perilous time in human history since the 1930s."

The authors stress something that many modern progressives insouciantly seem to be increasingly eager to forget, namely that both the Latin West and the Greek East were and have continued to be "shaped by a Christian vision of God's love for the world and the place of Christian virtues in societies where few restraints on evil and exploitation existed." This is an inescapable historical fact, but it is also much more than that. It is of the very nature of Jesus' kingdom, which, while completely unlike the kingdoms of this world, "is still for this world, for the benefit and blessing of this world, for the redemption and rescue of this world."

The theological claim is that "the Creator intends his world to be run through obedient human beings." God, the authors insist, "intends that humans should share in running his world, and should be held accountable." Thus, "because we believe that Jesus is King and his kingly power is operative among us," Christians "cannot retreat to the attic of spiritual affairs, not when there is a gospel to proclaim and ahurting world crying out for healing and hope."

In this post-Christendom context, the author's preference is clearly for a form of liberal democracy, a form of political arrangement which seems to have lost a lot of its former luster and appears increasingly threatened. The authors aregue that "in a world with a human propensity for evil, greed and injustice, liberal democracy stands as the least worst option for human governance." It is, they stress, "neither a necessary not a sufficient conditon for a just society, but it can be an enabling condition for a just society."

In a world in which no political axiom can any longer be taken for granted, the authors offer a valuable religious argument for invigorating liberal democracy. This is especially timely when the ideas that have underpinned liberal democracies find themselves challenged not just by populist authoritarianism but by explicitly religious versions such as messianic imperialism (e.g, Russia) and a revived Catholic integralism.

Wonders Never Cease

This weekend, I have been attending a conference on overcoming toxic political polarization, "Bridging the Divide, Seeking Reconciliation," organized by the Paulist Fathers. Perhaps that is what is disposing me to be more charitable to someone I would normally be less inclined say a kind word about, namely the present (perhaps temporary) Speaker of the House, MAGA right-winger Mike Johnson. But the main reason must be that, for whatever reason or reasons, the Speaker suddenly seems to be sounding like an old-fashioned politician, like (dare I say?) a 20th-century "Reagan Republican." Perhaps the Speaker's rediscovery of reality reflects, as some pundits have suggested, the fact that he now has access to high-level Intelligence about the international situation. Whatever the reason, having weirdly and pointlessly delayed needed aid to Ukraine for months since President Biden requested it. the Speaker now endorses such aid and is taking the necessary steps to move that aid forward through the absurd and arcane procedures of the House. To advance the legislation to its final (hopefully successful) outcome, the Speaker has needed - and has received - the votes of  Democrats in the House.

In our ailing, if not terminally ill, political culture, this may be one of the rare occasions when democracy wins, when the will of the majority of elected representatives (reflecting a majority in the country at large) get to pass something necessary and good, despite the usually successful obstruction by a minority of the members. Adjusting the gender to the present House membership, this has up until now been a clear case of what Woodrow Wilson lamented in 1917, when he spoke of "A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, [who] have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

Of course, in this case, today's "little group of willful men" and women primarily represent the isolationist and self-serving opinion of one person, the MAGA Republican former (and would-be future) President Donald Trump. There has, alas, always been an isolationist tendency in American culture. There have always been Americans who, for whatever reason, fall for destructive rhetoric like Trump's persistent complaint that our European allies have not spent enough of their money on Ukraine and that, therefore, the U.S. is being taken advantage of. 

So democracy wins also - and maybe even more importantly - in Ukraine, where that beleaguered country may yet be able to hold back the advancing forces of imperialist Russian tyranny. A Ukrainian collapse would move the front-line for civilization's defense dangerously to the border of Poland, to the very border of NATO.

Back to America, it still remains to be seen what this may portend for congressional ability to function, as it was once intended to function, now in these waning months of this present congressional term.

That said, it is good for the country that Democrats are rewarding the Speaker for his rediscovery of reality and his unexpectedly responsible behavior. The prophet Ezekiel famously said: if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. Whether the Speaker still keeps his gavel despite the MAGA minority's inevitable fulminations and motions to vacate the Chair, still remains to be seen. At the moment, however, this seems like a win for democratic governance at home and democratic survival in Ukraine. That deserves to be celebrated - as does the surprising Speaker of the House himself.

Orestes Brownson

 

"Heartily, deeply did I ever reciprocate Dr. Brownson's affection, and the long and eventful years have but strengthened more and more my love for him and my admiration for his genius - convictions and emotions which have drawn from me in these articles my feeble attempt to estimate his providential mission and to introduce my countrymen to the study of his works" [Isaac Hecker, "Dr. Brownson and Catholicity," Catholic World, 46, (1887), p. 235].

Largely forgotten among contemporary American Catholics, but someone whoi deserves to be remembered and appreciated even still, Orestes Brownson was born in 1803 and died on this date in 1876. He had already established himself as a leading American intellectual, a philosopher, and a social theorist, as well as Unitarian clergyman, well before his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1844, after which he became perhaps the most prominent lay Catholic voice in the United States Church. He contributed to the Transcendentalist critique of Unitarian empiricism, articulating an alternative idealist philosophical perspective that would continue to inform his mature thought as a Catholic. Although he would later vote for Lincoln, Brownson began as a Jacksonian Democrat, with genuinely radical social and economic theories Both religiously and politically, Brownson was an important early influence on the young Isaac Hecker (1819-1888). At the end of his life, Hecker remained supportive of Brownson's earlier social and political ideas. "The ominous outlook of popular politics at the present moment plainly shows that legislation such as we then proposed, and such as was then within he easy reach of State and national authority would have forestalled difficulties whose settlement at this day threatens a dangerous disturbance of pubic order." ["Dr. Brownson and the Workingman's Party Fifty Years Ago," Catholic World, 45, (1887), pp. 207-208.]

Concerning Brownson's religious conversion to Catholicism, Hecker in that same article [p. 207] wrote "it was a glory and a triumph for the Catholic Church to obtain the conversion of such a man and to hold that free soul in most contented allegiance till the hour of death."

The youthful and then life-long friendship between Brownson and Hecker was of great significance for both of them in their respective spiritual journeys and, by extension, for the 19th-century American Catholic Church. Brownson met the Hecker Brothers in New York City in 1841 and quickly became a kind of mentor to the young Isaac Hecker, eventually steering him to Brook Farm, the contemporary communal experiment Brownson valued most highly.  The younger and less well educated of the two, Hecker at the outset of their friendship was definitely a disciple of Brownson. As Brownson's biographer has highlighted, however, "the disciple had something to teach the master, and Brownson knew it. Reading his correspondence with Hecker during this period gives one the impression that it was Hecker who brought the personal to the fore in Brownson. Brownson was drawn to that which he criticized in Hecker and knew, instinctively, that Hecker possessed something that he did not. Brownson was attracted to the difference.” [Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 138.]

Indeed, Isaac Hecker's first book, Questions of the Soul, written as a Redemptorist missionary priest in 1855, which attempted to demonstrate the positive aspects of Catholicism as the response to the deepest questions and desires of the human soul, seemed to liberate Brownson from his immediate post-conversion commitment to a more polemical approach to apologetics. To quote Carey again: Brownson’s review of Hecker’s book “demonstrated a thoroughly positive assessment of Hecker’s achievement, and an acknowledgment that his own previous polemical style of apologetics was neither effective nor what the times demanded. … Hecker’s book clearly awakened Brownson to the defects in his own previous approach.”

Brownson's writings during that period represented an attempt to craft a genuinely Catholic conception of politics and society, in contrast to the perennial tendency to accommodate to American reality by treating politics as largely autonomous. That concern perdured as a priority for Brownson, who in October 1870 wrote: “Even our Republic goes the way of all the earth, and our Catholic population hardly seem aware of their mission as Catholics. Outside of the Sanctuary they are hardly distinguishable in their social and political action from non-Catholics.” 

Ultimately, he understood that mission as being "to Catholicize America, not Americanize Catholicity.” On the other hand, his intense ultramontanism did not turn into integralism. Rather, he understood that European political conservatism was likely a losing cause with which the Church should not be identified. In particular, Brownson recognized that those who supported the absolute continuation of the Papal States against Italian national aspirations, which were inexorably leading to the unification of Italy, were wrongly identifying a particular political goal with the Church’s fundamental interests. 

Both Brownson and Hecker had been influenced by the 19th-century German Catholic theologian Johann Adam Moehler (1796-1838) who had emphasized the Church as the continuation of Christ's incarnation in a visible structure. Both believed that neither Calvinism, Unitarianism, nor Transcendentalism could appeal long-term to the more moderate American mentality, although of the two Brownson was more sensitive to the demographic realities of American Protestantism  and demonstrated a far greater appreciation of non-New England-based religion (e.g., Evangelicalism and Methodism) than Hecker did.

Although Hecker and Brownson began to diverge somewhat in their views in their later years, they remained friends, and Hecker never ceased to admire Brownson's accomplishments. Hecker considered Brownson's primary work of political theory, The American Republic (1865), to be "the greatest work yet written in America on general politics." ["Dr. Brownson in Boston," Catholic World, 45 (1887), p. 466.]

A decade after Brownson's death, Hecker expressed his support for a movement to erect a monument to Brownson in New York's Central Park, but added: "The best monument to Dr. Brownson's greatness is his works. ... They ought to be in every American library of any character." ["Dr. Brownson and the Workingman's Party Fifty Years Ago," Catholic World, 45, (1887), p. 200.]

Photo: Orestes Brownson, Portrait by G.P.A. Healy, 1863. 

A bust of Brownson was in fact commissioned in the 1890s by the Catholic Club of New York for its building on Central Park South. When that building was demolished, Brownson's bust was moved to Riverside Drive and 104th Street. In the 1930s, however, it was overturned by vandals and put in storage. In 1941 Father Robert Gannon, SJ, the President for Fordham University (1936-1949), acquired the bust from the Parks Department for its placement on the Fordham campus in the Bronx, where it remains atop a high granite pedestal. (Brownson was awarded Fordham's first honorary degree in 1856.).