Book Review: "America on Trial" by Robert Reilly (Part One)

From Ignatius Press:

The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy.

In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his image on man; the Greek rational order of the world based upon the Reason behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Reason (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These may seem a long way from the American Founding, but Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock. Combined, they mandated the exercise of both freedom and reason.

These concepts were further developed by thinkers in the Middle Ages, who formulated the basic principles of constitutional rule. Why were they later rejected by those claiming the right to absolute rule, then reclaimed by the American Founders, only to be rejected again today? Reilly reveals the underlying drama: the conflict of might makes right versus right makes might. America's decline, he claims, is not to be discovered in the Founding principles, but in their disavowal.

The Catholic World Report published a symposium of reactions to America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, but I encourage you to read the book--like I did--before you read the 13 responses by philosophers, historians, and others. Form your own opinion first on what Reilly has attempted and achieved before being influenced by them. I saw the symposium, scanned the summaries of the responses, and stopped--then went to Eighth Day Books and bought my copy. When I was last in the store Tuesday this week (for a discussion of Book III of Boethius' The Consolations of Philosophy with a group of friends) Warren was sold out, but I'm sure he'll be getting more copies soon.

Robert R. Reilly, whom I saw speak at the Midwest Catholic Family Conference in Wichita  (cancelled this year by COVID of course) a few years ago on his book The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, in this book offers an exploration of the philosophical and intellectual sources that inspired the Founders of the United States of America in their quest for independence from Great Britain and the establishment of a new nation. 

He goes all the way back to the pre-philosophical era, explores Greek philosophy focusing on Aristotle, Jewish monotheism, and the Latin/Roman Catholic synthesis of Greek philosophy and Revelation focusing on St. Thomas Aquinas, and continues his philosophical lessons through to the eighteenth century. 

Aristotle and Aquinas, with their confidence in our ability to reason based on the reality we experience around us are his heroes in these chapters. The Catholic synthesis of Aristotelian metaphysics and Revelation meant that we could, in a limited way of course, try to understand God and His creation with confidence, determine what is good, true, and beautiful, and live according to the Natural Law He created in the world, demonstrating the continuity between His Natural Law and His Revelation. This synthesis, Reilly argues, provided the foundation for the equality of all before the law, Divine and human, and the rights of all of God's creation to justice, including the consent to be governed. 

Along the way he offers an important defense of the Middle Ages, so often misidentified as the age of the "divine right of kings". Although it created many struggles between the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the rulers of countries and empires, Reilly suggests that the "two swords" theory of the Middle Ages created a balance of rights and responsibilities for the ordinary person that a single sword--the state controlling both secular and religious order in each country--takes away. This recalled to my mind how the 17th century courts of the Inquisition were considered more just by those being tried in the Civil in those Catholic countries that still--even though as Reilly later points out, many Catholic rulers adopted the single sword model--maintained some semblance of the "two swords" theory with two Court systems. There was a greater presumption of innocence and a higher standard of proof of guilt in the Church Courts of the Inquisition, such that those accused of secular crimes would fake religious crimes to change the court they would be tried in--the BBC even said so!

Then he demonstrates how William Ockham in philosophy and Martin Luther in theology, through their nominalism and voluntarism, destroyed this synthesis and shifted the basis of knowledge and action from Reason to Will: even God's Reason. Larry P. Arnn of Hillsdale College addresses Reilly's view of Martin Luther in his Preface, counselling Lutherans and other Protestants to respond carefully and charitably, noting that Reilly quotes Martin Luther accurately and judiciously.

Reilly asserts that the English theologian Richard Hooker re-established Aristotelian realism in the (High) Church of England but I found that chapter not as convincing as Reilly intended. Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity did not restore the "two swords" to England--the Church of England was as Erastian after as before--and even if James I praised Hooker's work that king upheld the theory of the Divine Right of Kings and the right of the monarch to rule the Church and the state without the consent of the governed. Yes, Hooker helped restore Natural Law to some extent, but the history of the Church of England demonstrates the limits of his legacy. His section on the relationship of the Church to the State, as Reilly notes in a later chapter, was not published until after both his and James I's deaths, because it was too controversial during that reign.

Reilly adds Thomas Hobbes to his triumvirate of the enemies of Reason and the Natural Law as he examines that gloomy philosopher's Leviathan as an effort to avoid civil war through absolute earthly obedience to the monarch, even above obedience to God. Heaven is no rewarding destination, only enforced peace on earth. The control of the state is necessary to hold in check the common, individual desires of each citizen to keep them from killing each other in the pursuit of worldly goods and security. Like Ockham and Luther, Hobbes deplored the thought and influence of Aristotle.

(Reilly mentions Machiavelli in his discussions of these contrasting views of political authority, but evidently judges him and The Prince to be a little outside the English background of the Founders.)

Juxtaposing James I of England's doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings to arguments by St. Robert Bellarmine and Father Francisco Suarez defending the sovereignty of the people and their right to consent to be governed, echoing Medieval theories. He cites parallel statements of Bellarmine, Suarez, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence on the "Source of Political Power", "Power of the People and the Requirement of Consent", and "Right to Revolution and Self-Determination". Reilly notes that our Founding Fathers weren't citing these arguments because their authors were Catholics (whom most of them detested and feared) but that they acknowledged the truth and effectiveness of these arguments as they were cited in Robert Firmer's defense of the Divine Right of Kings in his attempts to refute them. Lastly, he describes the influence of Algernon Sidney and his Discourses Concerning Government on the Founders, again noting the congruence between the two Jesuit scholastic theologians and Sidney.

The chapter on John Locke ("Problem and Solution") is a crucial one for Reilly's argument as he works to separate Locke's epistemological theories from his political theories. Again, part of his effort is to demonstrate what in Locke's philosophical and political works influenced the Founders. Reilly defends Locke from charges that he valued freedom and liberty only for the sake of hedonistic pleasures and shows that Locke has the common philosophical view of happiness as the fulfillment of Natural Law and Reality. He compares and contrasts Hobbes and Locke to demonstrate that the latter's thoughts are congruent with "orthodox" philosophies of Reality and Natural Law. Locke's epistemological skepticism did not extend to the afterlife, as he hoped for Heaven on his deathbed and wanted the Psalms read to him. That chapter was convincing to me.

I continue this review another day as this post is getting long! Since my background in Philosophy is scanty--one class at WSU that started with the thought of A.J. Ayer and scattered reading on my own--Reilly's systematic review of this history has been thought-provoking and fascinating to me.

Book Review: The Catholic Church, Modernity, and Modern History

From Basic Books:

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism’s dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America’s leading intellectuals

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Church rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism developed intellectual tools capable of rescuing the imperiled modern project.

A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two centuries of profound change in the church and the world, The Irony of Modern Catholic History reveals how Catholicism offers twenty-first century essential truths for our survival and flourishing.

This is a fascinating but ultimately frustrating overview of the history of the Catholic Church from 1789 to 2018. It's fascinating because Weigel interprets Church History from the French Revolution to the McCarrick Scandal to help his readers understand how the Catholic Church has been reacting to the loss of Christian faith in modern society since the late eighteenth century, largely through the projects and efforts of our Popes. From Popes Pius VI and VII's wranglings with the French Revolution and Napoleon, Weigel takes us through the pontificates of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII; then to Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI and the confusion after the Council, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and the project to revive the implementation of the Second Vatican Council in transition to the New Evangelization and the pontificate of  Pope Francis. Its frustrating because of how it seems the Church may be stalled in our efforts to help the modern world--our world--love Jesus and love each other.

Weigel organizes this history as a drama with five Acts and four Entr'Actes. The Acts drive the narrative history forward on stage while the Entr'Actes consider important events and personalities off stage. He provides both narrative drive and cogent analysis with attention to biographical detail.

Act One describes the pontificates of Gregory XVI and Pius IX, including a discussion of the First Vatican Council and Papal Infallibility, as these popes were opposed to many of the hallmarks of modernity and its rejection of Catholic teaching authority, while the first Entr'Acte highlights the contributions of Mohler, Rosmini, Scheeben, Ketteler, and Newman to different responses to the revolutions of the nineteenth century--and the distinctive position of the Catholic Church in the United States of America.

Act Two places Pope Leo XIII at center stage with his efforts to "gingerly" reach out to the modern world, reviving Catholic philosophy and theology through his emphasis on St. Thomas Aquinas and biblical interpretation and proposing some Catholic wisdom for the industrial age and the treatment of workers with dignity (Rerum Novarum); then Pius X comes on stage with his efforts at sacramental renewal and battles with Catholic modernists; World War I and Benedict XV follow, reviving Pope Leo XIII's projects; then Pope Pius XI; and finally Pope Pius XII. Weigel shows great appreciation of three of the latter's encyclicals, Mystici Corporus Christi, Divino Afflante Spiritu, and Mediator Dei, but deprecates Humani Generis.

The second Entr'Acte includes a large cast of theological renewal characters including Guardini, various Thomists (Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, Gilson,), the ressourcement school (Congar, de Lubac), the Catholic personalists (von Hildebrand, Scheler, Mounier), Hans Urs von Balthasar, and John Courtney Murray.

Act Three brings us to Pope John XXIII and what he hoped to achieve with the Second Vatican Council to "embrace modernity", examining Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, and then various documents of the Council, including Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and Dignitatis Humanae. Weigel offers a substantial critique of Gaudium et Spes, pointing out particularly how dated some of its optimism of how well modern democracy and the Catholic Church would be able to get along seems now. So the Entr'Acte, not surprisingly, examines the aftermath of the Council: Pope Paul VI's efforts to implement it, highlighting Evangelii Nuntiandi; Karol Wojtyla's vade mecum Sources of Renewal and his curial retreat Signs of Contradiction; and the theological rivalry between Communio and Concilium.

With Act Four Weigel brings two of his favorite dramatis personae to the stage: the protagonist Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), and in the supporting role, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). If you are familiar with Weigel's great biography of Pope John Paul II you'll find much that you've read about before with a overview of his papacy and his encyclicals. Weigel also offers an analysis of Pope Benedict XVI's four "September Lectures": Regensberg (9/12/2006); Bernardins (9/12/2008); Westminster (9/17/2010); Bundestag (9/22/2011)--all Weigel's commentary is focused on how these two "distinctively modern men" offered modernism some critiques of unresolved issues of reason, freedom, conscience, morality, economy, and society.

The Entr'Acte reviews the problem of implementing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council since it was "the Council without Keys" and the solution to this problem: the Extraordinary Synod of 1985. Weigel sets the stage for the last Act with the Great Millennium of 2000 and New Evangelization. 

So in Act Five, after explaining John Paul II's vision in Novo Millennio Ineunte, Weigel inserts a flashback to Redemptoris Missio, his 1990 encyclical on the Church's permanent missionary mandate. Weigel also examines John Paul's efforts to influence the EU Constitution, which was poised to skip all of its history from 180 to 1596 by avoiding any mention of Christianity. His 2003 General Audiences and the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Europa attempted to remind Europeans of the work of the Church to proclaim the Gospel of Hope in Jesus Christ.

Then Weigel comes to the unsatisfactory denouement: "The Franciscan Stall". He has to end his review of Pope Francis' pontificate with the McCarrick revelations of 2018, but he starts with Evangelli Gaudium, the 2013 apostolic exhortation setting out the Franciscan program of evangelization and the continued spread of the Joy of the Gospel. Then Weigel describes the confusion of the 2014/2015 Synods on the Family and the 2018 Synod on Young People, which both resulted in contradictions of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Dei Verbum) on the deposit of faith; Jesus Christ on marriage, and St. Paul on the worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion with implications of historicism (Church moral and sacramental teaching can change with and adapt to the mores and trends of the world) and a new Gallicanism (what's true in Poland about Catholic teaching might not be true in Germany). Weigel asks how this helps fulfill the efforts of the New Evangelization to spread the Joy of the Gospel to everyone, those who believe, those who've fallen away, and those who've never heard of Jesus.

Then the McCarrick Crisis, with the Vatican displaying the same old modes of "institutional-maintenance and status-quo thinking" with slow responses (not to mention Pope Francis' intransigence regarding the Chilean bishop) demonstrated that Pope Francis, blaming a culture of clericalism, still didn't want to take action in certain cases or be transparent: we've been promised a report for almost two years on how a serial abuser of boys and seminarians became a Cardinal and continued to have influence even after he was supposed to retire from official duties and it hasn't been issued yet. 

So we have to wait for the continuation of Act Five or for Act Six.

In the meantime, Weigel summarizes his argument that the Church has rediscovered itself through contending with the issues of modernism and can offer the modern world some guidelines for reform of its own issues: doubt, the naked will to power, emptiness. Jesus Christ is the answer to every human question, he concludes, and the Catholic Church has, from the Apostles, through the Popes, Bishops, clerics and laity, been offering that answer throughout the ages. We may be stalled as Weigel believes, but we still have a message to share and solutions to propose: "liberating truths about salvation and the ultimate destiny of human beings" through the Person of Jesus Christ.

Except for some glimpses in the Entr'Actes, Weigel's spotlight is on the top of the Church's hierarchy: the Popes, but that makes sense since he is describing the Church's official responses to modernity. He provides a good list of sources. Fascinating but frustrating.

Belloc (and Chesterton) on St. Thomas Aquinas

Remember that Anna Mitchell and I will discuss Belloc's views of Descartes and Pascal this morning around 7:45 a.m. Eastern//6:45 a.m. Central on the Son Rise Morning Show. Listen live here.

In the course of his discussion of Rene Descartes, Belloc mentions that Descartes did not deal with the proof of things outside of ourselves. In doing so, Belloc cites the names of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas:

There is no rational process by which the reality of the external universe can be discovered; all we know is that it can be confidently affirmed. Aristotle, who might be called reason itself; St. Thomas, whose whole process was that of beginning with a doubt, and examining all that there was to be said for that doubt before the denial of it and the corresponding certitude could be arrived at, both postulate this second truth. Not only am I, I, but that which is not myself is just as real as I am, and what is more, can be and is apprehended by myself. 

That is, like all true philosophy, common sense. Your plain man, who is made in the image of God and who, so long as his reason and conscience are not warped, is on the right lines, has no patience with any denial of it. The whole of human society takes it for granted and must take it for granted. The witness in a Court of Justice, the man conducting his own affairs, the simplest activities of daily life, takes for granted as absolutely certain, not only the external universe in which we live, but our own power of apprehending it.

In his 1937 book, The Crisis of [Our] Civilization, based upon his lectures at Fordham University, Belloc explains St. Thomas Aquinas' place in Church History and philosophy:

The XIIIth century was that moment in which the high Middle Ages reached their summit. It was that moment in which the Catholic culture came, in the civic sense of the word “ culture,” to maturity. It was probably the supreme moment of our blood, at any rate one of the very greatest moments. Never had we had such a well-founded society before, never have we since had any society so well founded or so much concerned with justice. A proof, if proof were needed, of the greatness of that time is the scale of the chief public characters, already named: St. Louis the King, Ferdinand of Castile, St. Dominic and St. Francis, with their new orders of friars, Edward I of England, and, in philosophy, which determines all, the towering name of St. Thomas Aquinas. He established during that great time a body of coordinated doctrine and philosophy which no one had yet possessed. The scale of his work is on a par with its cultural value. He seemed to have put his seal upon the civilization which he adorned, and, through his establishment of right reason in philosophy, his marriage of Catholicism with the Aristotelian wisdom, to have set up a structure that would endure for ever and give a norm to our civilization.

In his great study of St. Thomas Aquinas, Belloc's friend G.K. Chesterton describes this "marriage of Catholicism with the Aristotelian wisdom":

The Thomist movement in metaphysics, like the Franciscan movement in morals and manners, was an enlargement and a liberation, it was emphatically a growth of Christian theology from within; it was emphatically not a shrinking of Christian theology under heathen or even human influences. The Franciscan was free to be a friar, instead of being bound to be a monk. But he was more of a Christian, more of a Catholic, even more of an ascetic. So the Thomist was free to be an Aristotelian, instead of being bound to be an Augustinian. But he was even more of a theologian; more of an orthodox theologian; more of a dogmatist, in having recovered through Aristotle the most defiant of all dogmas, the wedding of God with Man and therefore with Matter. Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realise that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the Renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing. In that sense medievalism was not a Renascence, but rather a Nascence. It did not model its temples upon the tombs, or call up dead gods from Hades. It made an architecture as new as modern engineering; indeed it still remains the most modern architecture. Only it was followed at the Renaissance by a more antiquated architecture. In that sense the Renaissance might be called the Relapse. Whatever may be said of the Gothic and the Gospel according to St. Thomas, they were not a Relapse. It was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God who makes all things new. 

 In a word, St. Thomas was making Christendom more Christian in making it more Aristotelian. This is not a paradox but a plain truism, which can only be missed by those who may know what is meant by an Aristotelian, but have simply forgotten what is meant by a Christian. As compared with a Jew, a Moslem, a Buddhist, a Deist, or most obvious alternatives, a Christian means a man who believes that deity or sanctity has attached to matter or entered the world of the senses. Some modern writers, missing this simple point, have even talked as if the acceptance of Aristotle was a sort of concession to the Arabs; like a Modernist vicar making a concession to the Agnostics. They might as well say that the Crusades were a concession to the Arabs as say that Aquinas rescuing Aristotle from Averrhoes was a concession to the Arabs. The Crusaders wanted to recover the place where the body of Christ had been, because they believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a Christian place. St. Thomas wanted to recover what was in essence the body of Christ itself; the sanctified body of the Son of Man which had become a miraculous medium between heaven and earth. And he wanted the body, and all its senses, because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a Christian thing. It might be a humbler or homelier thing than the Platonic mind; that is why it was Christian. St. Thomas was, if you will, taking the lower road when he walked in the steps of Aristotle. So was God, when He worked in the workshop of Joseph.

 

To return to Belloc's views of Descartes and Pascal, Belloc sums them up thus:

. . . these two great men stand for the reaction upon Catholicism as a whole produced by the upheaval of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century — all that confused movement which has been called the twin warring brothers, Reformation and Renaissance. And when we consider all the effect of them, the way in which Descartes has led to sceptical rationalism, Pascal to a contempt for doctrine and a sort of cloud over the mind in which men lost the Faith, the most remarkable thing still is that both men remained firmly of the Faith, lived in it and died in it. They both were living proofs that the Gates of Hell had not prevailed and that the Church had proved its power to survive. 

For my own part the two things that stand out most vividly in the case of either man are these: Of Descartes, that he had the humility, the faith and the devotion to make the pilgrimage to Loretto; of Pascal, the splendour of his death.

The Holy House of Loreto is in Italy and Descartes went there in 1623. Pascal suffered from great pains in his stomach for years. When he died on August 19, 1662 in Paris his last words were: "May God never abandon me."