Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society
Issue Number Nine
Introduction
Anonymous: Towards an Islamic Theology of Liberation
Boris Gubman: The Enlightenment Problem in G. Fedotov's Philosophy of History
Anthony Mansueto: The Current Crisis in the Catholic Church
Introduction
In this issue of Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society we continue our analysis of the
ongoing struggle over the political valence of the salvation religions. Our lead article,
published anonymously at the request of the author, who fears retribution, analyzes the
work of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a Sudanese theologian who was executed by the
Sudanese government for challenging the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Taha
argued for a sharp distinction between the revelations received by Mohammed in
Mecca and those received later at Medina. The first advance a compelling vision of
a humanity created in the image of God, and struggling to realize the divine perfection
to which it has been called by the cultivation of individual excellence and social justice.
Acting on this message in the present period, Taha argues, means building a socialist
society. The second, or Meccan revelation, on the other hand, was chiefly concerned
with the problem of state-building at Mecca. The commandments contained in this
revelation --including those relating to Holy War and the subordination of women-- are
thus no longer binding. Taha offers us real hope that the Islamic world --once the site
of a vigorous and progressive civilization-- is gradually developing authentic alternatives
to neoliberal disintegration and fundamentalist reaction.
Boris Gubman's article on G. Fedotov's philosophy of history provides readers with
a unique insight into a distinctively Russian philosophical tradition --one which is in
dialogue with Europe, but which seeks its own path towards the development of human
social capacities.
My own article analyzes the current crisis in the Catholic Church. I trace the deep
roots of Catholicism in the archaic cult of the Magna Mater and the philosophical
tradition which emerged from that cult, in Judaism, and in the Roman system. Drawing
on and synthesizing the contributions of these traditions, Catholicism created a powerful
vision of humanity as a real participation in the life of God --a vision which has made
the Church a potent force in struggles against the market system and its ideological
distillates, Protestantism and liberalism. I show that both the liberationist left and the
right-wing Communio party in power in the Vatican share a common Paulinism or
Augustinianism, product of the penetration of market relations into every sphere of
social life, which is basically foreign to Catholicism, and which erodes the progressive
potential of the Catholic tradition. At the heart of this Pauline/Augustinian problematic
is the notion that human beings are hopelessly evil, doomed to an endless cycle of
ignorance, pride, and greed, unless saved by the merits of another ... the crucified
Christ of the Pauline corpus. If the Church is to conserve its distinctively Catholic
character and recover and realize its progressive potential, then it must break sharply
with all Christological claims, and proclaim clearly that salvation or wholeness comes
only through the development of human social capacities and thus through participation
in the cosmohistorical evolutionary process.
Towards an Islamic Theology of Liberation
Anonymous
Does the work of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha announce the birth of an Islamic
theology of liberation? In any case, reading this major work by a Sudanese sheik (The
Second Message of Islam, Al Risala Al Tania Min El Islam, Khartoum 1971) cannot
leave one indifferent. The deep convictions of this believing Moslem, his mastery of
theology, and the power of his argument in favor of a radically new interpretation of
his faith, in open rupture with the dominant fundamentalist creed, testify to the
importance of this contribution to Islamic renewal which, in many respects, recalls the
Christian theology of liberation.
Taha finds in Islam two messages from God (in Arabic Risala), one immediate (the
first Risala in Islamic terms) the other ultimate (the "second" Risala). To understand
the second Risala clarifies the debate, permits us to understand the first, and see why
the dominant Islam is content with it.
True faith is impossible without adherence to the second Risala, which can be
summed up in a single phrase: humanity was created in the image of God. Because
of this we are free, responsible, and perfectible. The lives of individuals are a constant
struggle to realize divine perfection, though there is always the possibility of distancing
ourselves from God. The life of societies as well has no meaning other than their
struggle to progress in the direction of perfection.
Taha deduces from this message a radical conclusion: the ideal society, which must
be the objective of all social struggles, that which creates the most favorable conditions
for individuals to develop towards God, that without which faith will always remain the
victim of the limits which society imposes on the flourishing of responsible individual
freedom, cannot be other than a society which is socialist and democratic.
Socialism, according to Taha (who uses the Arabic term Ishtirakiya) is synonymous
with equal access to all of the material riches which human genius can create. It is thus
actually more like the concept of communism (in Arabic shiyuiya) than like the
experience and programs of historic socialism in the modern period. For, according
to Taha, in so far as these social conditions are not created, individuals remain
imprisoned by the egoistic compulsions which limit their ability to realize their potential
to grow towards God.
Taha also discusses the relationship between humanity and nature in terms of the
second or ultimate message of Islam. Nature is as much a divine creation as humanity,
which forms an integral part of nature. Nature is not, therefore, a collection of things
placed at the disposition of humanity. We can not grow towards divine perfection
unless we establish with nature a real equilibrium, deepening our knowledge of the
universe as an organized totality. This rule thus defines both the end of and the
conditions for the organization of production.
In its turn, socialism (or communism) has no meaning unless it is democratic, that
is to say, in Taha's terms, unless it is founded on the absolute liberty of individuals.
For this liberty is the condition for responsibility, the guarantee that the choices that
individuals are led to make in each instant, in all their relationships, can lead them
towards (or away) from God.
Taha distinguishes the project which he defends in the name of Islam from that of
the historic socialism of the modern period. The Soviet model, among others,
according to him, rested on the egoistical compulsions of individuals --a characteristic
which Soviet society shared with modern capitalist societies. The contempt for
democracy in the Soviet Union came, Taha argues, from this contradiction between the
end which it proclaims (socialism as the abolition of injustice) and its materialistic
philosophy, which ultimately forced the party to have recourse to the manipulation of
individual egoism. But if faith cannot flourish in the modern world (including the
Islamic countries), it certainly couldn't flourish in any of the earlier systems (including,
once again, in Islamic territory) because the injustice created by this recourse to
individual egoism perpetuates itself. Without true faith, socialism is impossible.
So goes the "second" or ultimate message of Islam in the theology which Taha
proposes. This message Islam shares with all of humanity's other forms of religious
expression. For Islam thus conceived has always existed. It is not to be dated from
the Koranic revelation. It is the "religion of God," that is to say it has existed in all
times, and is expressed in, among other things, the Jewish, Christian, and other
revelations.
But the "religion of God" (Islam), while it has known earlier expressions, is also
present in the Koranic revelation, which contains, alongside the "ultimate" message, a
more immediate and conjunctural one. For God is always present. He intervenes in the
lives of both individual human beings and the lives of societies. He sends messages,
commandments which address the people in language they are able to understand at any
given moment. These messages, which are conjunctural, help individuals and societies
to correct themselves, to take one small step (but not necessarily anything more) on the
road towards God. This is why they can seem contradictory, if one takes them literally
and gives them an absolute significance which they don't have.
In the Koranic revelation, as in the Tradition (the Sunna), it is thus necessary to
distinguish between the ultimate message and the conjunctural commandments. In his
careful, scholarly textual analysis, Taha argues that the ultimate message occupies a
dominant place at the beginning of the Revelation, in the Meccan suras. Here the
Revelation concerns itself not with the development of society but only with the essence
of the faith (the human being, free and responsible, was created in the image of the one
all powerful God). On the contrary, the opportunity having offered itself to organize
a slightly better society than that which existed in the Arabia of the day, at Medina,
around the Prophet, a society capable of taking a few steps on the road towards God,
God did not hesitate to intervene to help humanity in structuring it. Taha argues that
the commandments made to this society should thus be read as conjunctural, not as the
final image of the ideal society, the realization of the absolute. In this context Taha
treats eight distinct questions which Moslems generally consider to be regulated by the
Law (the Sharia') as it was expressed in the Medina community:
1) Holy War (the Jihad),
2) slavery (Al Riq),
3) capitalism (Al Rismalia) --one can read this as the question of economic
management of society by means of private property and licit commerce,
4) the inequality of men and women,
5) polygamy,
6) divorce and repudiation (Al Talaq),
7) the veiling of women (Al Hijab), and
8) the separation of men and women in social life.
By means of a careful analysis of sacred texts, Taha defends his theology, putting
the accent on all of the nuances which demonstrate, according to his reading, the
conjunctural character of the solutions brought by the law in its time and place. Each
of the chapters concerning these eight questions carry a title in the same from ... Holy
War is not fundamental in Islam, Polygamy is not fundamental in Islam etc. ...
Unfortunately Moslems, like many other peoples, were satisfied with the immediate
message and its commandments. In putting the accent on obedience to these, they
spared themselves the far more difficult task of progressing along the road indicated by
the ultimate message --the road towards God. They ritualized and dogmatized religion.
This satisfied the reactionary forces of domination and exploitation. Taha concludes
with severity: they have not created an Islamic community (muslimoun) but only a
community of believers (muiminun).
Taha tried to preach actively against the conservative, ritualistic, formalist
interpretation of Islam, which respects only the immediate message, and for an
interpretation which put an accent on the ultimate message, calling people to action for
the transformation of society in a direction favorable to the development of faith. He
did this through his writings and through his words, and he organized around himself
a body of militant students dedicated to his vision.
This was his crime, in the eyes of the politicians who, behind the mask of political
Islam, reject democracy, give aid and comfort to capitalism, taking absolute power, and
reducing their people to moral slavery. He was condemned to death by the "tribunals"
of the Islamic Brotherhood, under the direction of the imposter Tourabi. He was hung
--at the age of 70. His books have been forbidden and burned.
translated from the original French by Anthony Mansueto
The Enlightenment Problem
in G. Fedotov's Philosophy of History
Boris Gubman
Philosophy of history has always been a focus of attention for Russian thinkers of
the 19th and 20th centuries. This special interest is due to the marginal situation of
Russia, located as it is in both Europe and Asia. Discussing the destiny o the country,
almost all Russian thinkers took the Enlightenment as a point of departure for the
development of their philosophical vision of history. The well-known debate between
Westernizers and Slavonophiles was stimulated by the controversy concerning the
Enlightenment legacy, and this theme was critical in the subsequent evolution of
Russian philosophy of history. G. Fedotov (1886-1951) created his own original
version of the philosophy of history which was influenced by the spirit of the
Enlightenment, but he also offered a profound criticism of its negative contents in the
light of the experience of the last three centuries. His understanding of the meaning
of the Enlightenment is based not only on an analysis of European history, but also on
an interpretation of the Russian cultural tradition.
I. Kant believe that the Enlightenment is expressed in the process of the continuous
free perfection of human reason used as a tool of historical progress (Kant 1966). The
tragic experience of the twentieth century brought under suspicion the ability of reason
to produce an adequate picture of reality and guide humanity on the way of progressive
self-perfection. Russian thinkers who had to leave the country after the Bolshevik
revolution had an even more intense feeling of the crisis of the Enlightenment hope in
the final triumph of reason, freedom and progress. At the same time, some of them
were inclined to look at the Enlightenment as a period teaching us a good lesson of the
value of human personality and freedom. G. Fedotov was among those who treasure
the legacy of the Enlightenment tradition and tried to reconsider it in the Christian
perspective.
Fedotov's vision of the Enlightenment should be understood within the context of
his religious philosophy of history. Like Solovyev and Berdyaev, he look at history as
the domain of the mutual creative cooperation of God and man. The participation of
God in the historical process is not al all limiting to the activity of a human being,
because the longing for the Absolute is the final spring of creativity for individuals.
It is evident that this theme demands special philosophical and theological interpretation.
Therefore, Fedotov thought it necessary to understand history from the point of view
of the activity of the Holy Spirit. The emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in
history permits Fedotov to create an ecumenical vision of the development of mankind -
- the Holy Spirit is eternally present in nature and revealed through the variety of
different cultures.
Fedotov's use of the concept of the Holy Spirit as a moving force in nature and
culture draws on the works of Nietzsche and Bergson. He wrote that the Holy Spirit
is revealed in organic nature as "elan vital" (Fedotov, 1973). History is the field of
realization of human creativity and freedom. The Holy Spirit is present in all cultures
before the coming of Christ. Nietzsche spoke about Apollonean and Dionysian
foundations of culture, whereas Fedotov thought it more correct to interpret this
question in the perspective of a dialectical confrontation between Logos and Spirit --
on the one hand the rational, scientific capacities, and on the other, the image-based
intuitive, artistic ones. Fedotov believed in the unity of sacred and secular history, the
City of God and the City of Man, in the existence of the immanent meaning of
mankind's development that is in full accord with Divine providence and eschatology.
His vision of history resembles very much its contemporary analogues in Catholic and
Protestant thought regarding a culture-centered interpretation of history. No wonder
the ideas of Fire and Berdyaev became the influential factors forming Fedotov's
approach to history.
Christian universalism, understanding history on a global scale as a process of
divinization, did not prevent Fedotov from attentive consideration of particular
civilizations. Each civilization is endowed with original, immanent forces of
development. Such an approach could easily reflect the influence of Spengler and
Toynbee. Basing his generalizations on considerable empirical material, Fedotov
argued that each civilization consists of the following subsystems: technological and
economic, social, political, and spiritual. The development of the social whole of each
individual civilization is determined in the last instance by spiritual-cultural factors, but
the dysfunctions in the individual spheres are damaging to the totality of the social
body. Fedotov studied very carefully the social strata of different societies and the
dynamics of their relations. The development of an individual society depends to a
great extent on the relations between the people and creative elite working out value
orientations.
History, according to Fedotov, should be understood in the perspective of its
humanistic meaning, from the point of view of freedom that could be reached within
the limits of this or that period of time. This philosophical premise reveals that his
views are deeply rooted in the tradition of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. At
the same time, Fedotov is not willing to follow Hegel strictly, who believed in the
necessary progressive movement of mankind to a greater degree of freedom. The
experience of our century creates the atmosphere of disbelief in the automatic triumph
of freedom, but as a liberal thinker, Fedotov is ready to fight for it. In this respect,
he is quite close to Croce and Collingwood, who thought that freedom is the goal of
historical development which is never reached in perfect form. Like these two
thinkers, he understood freedom as the greatest achievement of mankind that must be
defended, because it is easy to lose this precious fruit of previous development. And
even more than that, in the bloom of historically known civilizations, only the West
generated freedom in the true meaning of this word. Revising the Enlightenment belief
in the power of reason as a driving force of social progress, Fedotov preserves its
nucleus as a basis for his vision of history.
Developing his version of philosophy of history, Fedotov is interested in the
concrete dynamics of the search for freedom in the West. For this reason, he is trying
to find a notion of freedom which can be constructively applied to the understanding
of Western history. This is not the general philosophical notion of the freedom of the
will. It is also far removed from the dynamics of freedom of social creativity and
destructiveness which was experienced by young fascists placing their wills at the
disposal of the leader of the nation. Following the Enlightenment tradition, Fedotov
coined his own definition of freedom: "Freedom, according to this understanding,
means the border line for the power of the state which is defined by inalienable rights
of the person." (Fedotov 1992a) This freedom is always given in a relative form, but
it demands certain absolute foundations, the loss of which might be dangerous for
humanity.
Freedom in history is revealed in two ways -- as freedom of persuasion and
freedom of the body. The first one is expressed in the spheres of religion, morality,
science, politics, etc., and is genetically related to the freedom of faith. The second
one means the defense of a personality and its property from arbitrary intrusion of the
state.
As a religious thinker, Fedotov claims that the first steps to freedom were made in
the Middle Ages. Contrary to the traditional Enlightenment position, he is persuaded
that in this epoch the arbitrary decisions of the state were curbed by the resistance of
the Church and feudal lords. He wrote that "the very fact of the church-state dualism
limited the power of the state, creating the sphere of personal freedom." (Fedotov
1992a) The Magna Carta of 1214 became the symbol of political autonomy for the
feudal aristocracy, the sign of independence of society as such from the power of the
king. "What was the privilege of hundreds of families in the course of centuries spread
over thousands and millions and became the inalienable right of each citizen. In
Western democracies, the power of the nobility was not abolished, but the people
inherited its privileges." (Fedotov 1992a)
The first transition on the way from the Middle Ages to modernity, according to
Fedotov, considerably narrowed the sphere of freedom. The appearance of tyranny in
Italy and absolutism in Europe could be considered as the final end of the Renaissance
process. Medieval freedoms were forgotten together with the birth off centralized
states. There was a decline of the authority of parliaments, the pluralism of power as
the main condition of freedom disappeared, but at the same time there was a gradual
growth of the force of bureaucracy and the army. Losing its universalist aspirations,
the Church was no longer limiting the desire of the secular power to manipulate the
soul and body of citizens. This is the reason for Fedotov to call the Reformation the
most important event in the fight for freedom. He understood perfectly well that the
Protestants were quite cruel with their opponents, but the freedom to interpret the Bible
and pluralism of denominations were for him a considerable victory of freedom.
Making freedom secular, the Enlightenment gave it a new dimension. "If we don't
pay attention to the peculiarities of the French Enlightenment and instead take in the
whole two last centuries in Europe with their fight for freedom, the triumph of freedom
and its decline, we will see two powerful forces that created freedom and betray it now:
science and capitalism." (Fedotov 1992a) Science was a kind of a refuge from religious
fanaticism. Modern science needed freedom, and its ability to overcome illusory
dogmas popularized the ideas of scholars. At the same time, there is a rise of freedom
of business activity which does not need the protection of the state. Fedotov believed
that the powerful impulse of freedom generated in this sphere quite rapidly spread over
others -- politics, everyday life, family, education, public morality, etc. he thought that
conformity-producing elements in the culture of this period were minimized, although
in reality European rights and liberties could not be divorced from the multiplicity of
the mechanisms of coercion of the disciplinary society. Like many other Russian
thinkers of European orientation, Fedotov is interested in Western liberties and
sometimes forgets about the disciplinary-coercive components that accompanied them.
Nevertheless, some negative moments of the freedoms of this period do not escape his
attention: freed of belief was transformed into freedom of nonbelief, liberalism
discredited the state, etc. In the last instance, freedom of this period finds its
expression in England which practically realized the liberal principles proclaimed by
Locke, Bentham, Mill, and Spencer, and taught them to continental Europe.
The limits of the modern understanding of freedom, according to Fedotov, were
revealed in the 20th century. It appears that science is completely unable to respond
to the most crucial questions concerning the meaning of human existence. The scientist
is no longer a prophet, and the quest for useful technology has displaced the search for
truth. As a result there comes an irrationalism expressed in the new philosophy,
psychology, and art. Fedotov thought that economic liberalism, the free play of
productive forces, which have gigantic potential, revealed destructive tendencies, and
stimulated the search for state regulation that limited freedom. he argued that the limits
of the Enlightenment vision of history are evident in the light of Christianity, but his
personalist approach to freedom is far from being orthodox. Enlightenment ideas are
present in his Christian personalist interpretation of history, in his understanding of
freedom, and in his Christian-socialist ideal of the future.
Fedotov puts the question thus: "To respond to the question about the destiny of
freedom in Russia is equal to the decision to include Russia in the circle of peoples of
Western culture: to this extent the notion of this culture coincides in its scope with
freedom. If not the West, then this means the East? But if the East, in what sense the
East?" (Fedotov 1992b) The East for Russia, as he pointed out, is not only the variety
of non-Christian cultures, but also the Byzantine tradition that gave it Orthodox
Christianity. The Western influence came to Russia not only through Europe, but also
through Byzantium as the legacy of the Greek and Roman world. Therefore, one could
rightly claim that both the Eastern and the Western influence spread over Kievan Rus
with the Byzantine tradition and Orthodox Christianity. The balance between the
Western European influence and the Asian one is considered by Fedotov as the basis
for Russia's search for self-identity.
Discussing the history of the Kievan Rus, Fedotov follows the line of interpretation
that was proposed in the writing of B. Kluchevsky who believed that it belonged to
Europe. He argued that the Kievan Rus had the same set of premises that facilitated
the appearance of the first fruits of freedom in the West. Although they inherited the
tradition of Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine empire, Byzantinism never
triumphed in its social and cultural life. "Byzantinism excludes any opportunity of the
birth of freedom. We should be happy that it did not become a part of the life of
Kievan society where social conditions for its coming were lacking." (Fedotov 1992b)
Fedotov claims that the Kievan Rus did not know the power of an emperor or even of
a grand prince, and the state was not even trying to suppress the Church. The head of
the Church lived far away in the Byzantine empire. There were no attempts at this
period of time to make state power sacred. The Church performed its moral duty and
was above the state. Kievan princes did not possess full power and therefore shared
power with the top level nobility, the military, and a people's council -- the veche.
There existed a certain unity of the Kievan Rus with the Latin world. Poland,
Hungary, Czechia, Germany and the Scandinavia countries were often allies of the Rus
and the heads of these states were relatives of the Russian nobility. The Kievan Rus,
according to Fedotov, had no less premises for the triumph of political and personal
freedom than the West, but they found no support in the sphere of law. He is right in
his evaluation of the weakness of legal standards protecting political and personal
freedoms among the Kievan Rus. The main misfortune of the Old Rus was the absence
of state unity that made it a victim of the Tartar-Mongols.
Two centuries of Tartar invasion did not mean the end of Russian freedom, which
perished, rather, under the rule of Moscow tzars who followed the pattern of behavior
of Tartar khans. "Not from outside, but from within the Tatar force started to possess
the soul of Russia, penetrating into its flesh and blood." (Fedotov 1992b) The fall of
Tartar rule was accompanied by another process of the acceptance of the political
stereotypes prevailing in the invaders' society by the Moscow tzars. Fedotov accused
the Moscow rulers of extreme cruelty in assembling and unifying different Russian
lands. The tzars wanted to rule over not free people, but slaves. And even the Church
obeyed the will of the monarch: metropolitans were appointed and dismissed at the will
of the tzar. All the groups of society were chained to the state with their services and
duties. Serfdom of peasants became widespread when it was disappearing from the
arena of history in the West. The monster of the Moscow state, according to Fedotov,
was able to become stronger only by draining all resources from society, cultivating
extreme and universal strain, and using iron discipline. Inspired by the Enlightenment
idea of freedom, Fedotov is not inclined to shift the responsibility from people making
their choice in favor of the national power and rejecting freedom.
Europe becomes even a more serious problem for Russia since Peter the Great who
created the empire. Fedotov rightly noted that the majority of Russians -- the
peasantry, inhabitants of big cities, merchants and priests -- continued to live in the
climate of the Moscow kingdom, whereas only the narrow elitist circle felt devoted to
Western culture. The Enlightenment spirit came to the Russian empire with the
intelligentsia, and the existence of the Kievan-Felt tradition facilitated the assimilation
of Western influences. With European culture, freedom comes to Russia -- first in
everyday life and then in political life. Fedotov argued that freedom of everyday life
spread more rapidly than in the political arena, and it belonged to educated people. As
in China, one could get the status of a nobleman together with education. The destiny
of political freedom was much worse.
Fedotov saw the driving force of the development of imperial Russia in the relations
between the power of the tzar, the intelligentsia, and the masses of people. His
analysis is very closes to the logic of Berdyaev's thought. He considers the intellectual
strata of the nobility to be able to put pressure on the tzar to get a greater amount of
freedom. "The dramatic character of the Russian political situation could be expressed
in the following formula: political freedom in Russia could be the privilege of the
nobility and groups oriented to Europe (the intelligentsia). The people did not need it,
because the autocracy was understood as the best protection from the oppressive moves
of the nobility. Freeing peasants was not in itself the solution of the question, because
millions of uneducated peasants, sharing medieval conditions of life and consciousness,
would not be able, as citizens, to create a new Russia following the European pattern."
(Fedotov 1992b) The alliance of the monarchy and the nobility, with the nobility
gradually gaining freedom, was disrupted by the French revolution and its Russian
counterpart -- the rebellion of the Decembrists. Since that time, according to Fedotov,
the ideas of political freedom were supported by the people far removed from the
sphere of power and creating not political programs, but ideologies for this reason. He
thought that neither Russian liberals nor socialists oriented to the West were able to feel
the national soil. The first generation of Slavonophiles was trying to assimilate
liberalism within the traditionally Russian institutions (zemsky sobor, village commune,
etc.), but it suffered from their misunderstanding and generated later political
conservatism. Fedotov was aware that it was possible to wait for the fruits of European
freedom neither on the foundation of the Moscow tradition, nor on the basis of
revolutionary political radicalism.
The populist movement and revolutionary Marxism are evaluated by Fedotov as
damaging the transition of Russia to the horizons of European freedom. Pre-
revolutionary Russia was quite close to European standards, but the October coup
brought an end to all the efforts of liberal intellectuals. "Fifty more years and the final
European renewal off Russia down to the deepest layers could have become fact... But
these fifty years were not given to Russia." (Fedotov 1992b) The Moscow revolt,
uniting in itself resentment of the Enlightenment with class hatred, triumphed over the
transition to Europe.
With the coming of Communist rule to Russia, its modernization was used as a tool
to support the totalitarian state. Fedotov definitely understood the paradox of
development of the country; the fruits of human rationality finding their expression in
science and technology were used for the benefit of the monstrous party-state. The
Enlightenment belief in the power of reason and linear progress was distorted by the
desire of Communist leaders to totally control society, abolishing any move to freedom.
Fedotov understood perfectly well that the social and cultural foundations of
modernization of the European type were incompatible with the totalitarian mechanism.
But forming an anti-liberal man, the totalitarian mechanism reproduced on a large scale
Soviet intellectuals nourished by European education and dissatisfied with totalitarian
rule. With this contradiction in mind, one should come to the conclusion that the
totalitarian Communist system is doomed by history.
Long before Perestroika, Fedotov foresaw the end of the USSR and predicted the
contemporary problems that became evident after its dissolution. Accentuating the
importance of the idea of freedom, he always expressed his sympathy with liberalism,
but thought its program to be too European for Russia. For this reason, he believed
that Russians would be more ready to accept his Christian-Socialist ideal of the future,
formulated in a dialogue with E. Mounier and other representatives of the French
personalist movement.
The contradiction between the positive attitude to the ideas of the Enlightenment and
the understanding of their limits, is the hallmark of Fedotov's Christian philosophy of
history and his ideal for the future. As a follower of the Age of Reason, he saw the
world and Russian history in the light of the development off human rational ability and
the permanent desire to progressively achieve freedom. At the same time, Fedotov was
quite sure that the automatic progressive triumph of freedom was impossible. There
is need of a constant fight for freedom that should be guided by joint efforts of reason
and faith. Reason alone deprived of religious values appears to be blind, and the
irrational is a certain stimulus of the rational activity of humanity and its desire for
freedom. The providential and eschatological vision of history could be reconciled,
according to Fedotov, with the idea of a constant human effort to establish rational
order in the universe and to achieve freedom.
Bibliography
Fedotov, G. O Syvatom Dukhe v prirode i kulture. In: Rossiya, Evropa i mi. Paris:
Ymca-Press, 1973, t. 2.
Fedotov, G. Rozdenje svobodi. In: Sudba i grekhi Rossii. St. Petersburg: Sofia,
1992, v.2.
Fedotov, G. Rossiya i svoboda. In: Sudba i grekhi Rossii. St. Petersburg: Sofia,
1992, v.2.
Kant, I. Otvet na vopros: chto takoe Prosveshenie. In: Sochinenya v shesti tomakh.
M.: Mysl, 1966, t.6.
The Current Crisis in the Catholic Church
Anthony Mansueto
It is by now a commonplace that the Catholic Church is in the midst of a profound
crisis, and that nothing less than the very identity of the institution is at stake. But the
real nature of this crisis is, for the most part, seriously misunderstood. Popular
commentary on both the right and left depicts the church as divided between
"progressives" seeking a church more clearly aligned with the poor and oppressed,
more internally democratic, and more open to leadership by women and married men,
and "conservatives" anxious to conserve the Catholic tradition. And to be sure, there
certainly are struggles between such self-styled progressives and conservatives in the
Catholic Church today. But this way of looking at the conflict is rooted in a profound
misunderstanding of what is really essential in the Catholic tradition ÄÄand of the
historic contributions and as yet unrealized latent potential of Catholicism as a force for
social progress.
Catholicism represents a unique synthesis of some of humanity's most creative
traditions ÄÄthe ancient cult of the Magna Mater (Great Mother) and its rationalized
"high" form, the philosophical tradition; Judaism; and the administrative and legal
system developed by the Roman Empire. This tradition has conserved for nearly two
millennia humanity's archaic insight into the relational, self-organizing, teleological
character of the universe, its groundedness in and ordering to God, and into humanity's
fundamental goodness and vitally creative role in the cosmohistorical evolutionary
process. And it has developed and conserved, at least in rudimentary and contradictory
form, the kind of institutional apparatus which is necessary in order to make this vision
an effective force in the development of human society.
At present, however, this is all in jeopardy because of resurgent neo-Augustinianism
shared by both the left and right wings of the Catholic church. This Augustinian current
has, to be sure, always been present in our midst, but throughout most of our history
it has been subordinated to more progressive, generally Thomistic, problematics. This
resurgence of Augustinianism is, we will show, a reflex of the penetration of market
relations into every sphere of human life, something which has the effect of gradually
eroding the social fabric and undermining humanity's grasp of both the cosmos and of
its own cosmic vocation.
We face a pitched battle to reclaim and revitalize the authentic Catholic tradition,
and to develop it as a resource in the struggle for a new, postmarket order which can
once again unleash the development of human social capacities.
We begin with an analysis of the origins and development of the Catholic tradition.
We then proceed to show how the Church became infected with the Augustinian virus,
and how it has spread and gradually gained hegemony. We conclude with some
strategic directions for the struggle to reclaim, revitalize, and develop the Catholic
tradition.
The name "Catholic" means universal, and Catholicism is, first and foremost, an
expression of humanity's archaic drive towards totality and perfection. But like all
attempts at universality, the Catholic tradition is rooted in very specific historical
conditions, and if we are to understand what is essential in the tradition we must
understand these roots. The first, and in many ways the most important source of the
Catholic tradition is the historic religion of the peoples of Old Europe and the
Mediterranean Basin ÄÄthe cult of the Magna Mater. This is an ancient cult, with
roots deep in the period archaeologists call the Neolithic. This was the period when
humanity was first learning to cultivate plants and cooperate with other animals, when
we began to live in tightly knit village communities ÄÄwhen we began to study the
motions of the stars and of the seasons, the growth of the plants and the behavior of the
animals. Neolithic society was profoundly communitarian in character ÄÄthe land
was owned, and often worked, in common and the village community provided a
mechanism for setting aside part of the surplus product to support artistic creativity,
scientific investigation, and philosophical and religious reflection. And Neolithic
society also appears to have been predominantly matriarchal ÄÄat least in the sense
that women controlled and cultivated the principal material resource ÄÄthe land
(Stone 1976, Engels 1884/1948).
The horticultural technology of this period was based on the careful cultivation of
each individual plant, and where animals were raised, of each individual animal. There
was no tearing of the soil and scattering of seeds broadside, which were then left to
fend for themselves. So humanity developed a profound awareness of the self-
organizing character of matter ÄÄthe tendency of all systems to drive towards higher
degrees of differentiation and integration. And the experience of life in the village
community created the basis in experience for understanding the universe as an
organized totality. Thus the origin of the Hellenic word kosmos which originally meant
"right order for the community," in the sense of the traditional pattern of village life,
and the Slavic mir, which means "village" "peace," and "universe." The result was a
period of enormous social progress. Most of the important scientific and technological
developments prior to the industrial revolution actually took place prior to 3000 B.C.E.,
during the later Neolithic (Childe 1951, Lerner 1991).
The cult of the Magna Mater articulated this intuitive grasp of the universe as an
organized totality. Indeed, the word matter derives from the Latin materia, which
contains the root mater, "mother." The Great Mother is a symbolic expression of the
creative self-organizing power of matter itself, which needs no form imposed upon it
from the outside, and which therefore, is both eternally fertile and ever virgin.
Later, as warlord states emerged which conquered the village communities,
extracting rents, taxes, and forced labor, progress ground to a halt. The entire social
surplus product was devoted to warfare and luxury consumption, with little or nothing
left over to support science, technological innovation, or the conservation of the social
fabric. But the cult of the Magna Mater persisted, as a reminder of the harmony which
had been lost, and beacon of hope for a better future. The peasantry kept alive the myth
of Pluto and Persephone: Persephone the Goddess of the ripened grain, Pluto god of
wealth and the lord of the underworld because he was the protector of the underground
storehouses where the landlords hoarded the grain they had stolen from the peasantry.
And Demeter, mother of Persephone, what is her response to the rape and kidnapping
of her daughter by this landlord god? A kind of cosmic agrarian strike ÄÄa cessation
of all growth and development until her daughter is returned to her.
While the peasants worshiped the Goddess as Demeter, the craftsmen and
intelligentsia of the cities worshiped her as Isis, the great Cosmic Librarian, and later
as Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom, and the patron of the civilizing arts. Indeed, it
would not be too much to say that the entire philosophical tradition represents a kind
of rationalization of the cult of the Magna Mater, an attempt on the part of the
intelligentsia of the increasingly fragmented and chaotic world of the warlord states to
find the organizing principle of the universe, to unlock the perfect pattern of creation
and thus make the world whole again. This was the aim of the entire Socratic tradition,
beginning with the master himself, who reminded his people that justice was not just
the will of the stronger but the harmony between the parts which makes the whole
strong, through Plato who mapped out the path of the dialectic and taught us to ascend
intellectually to the Beautiful, the True, the Good and the One, and Aristotle, who
demonstrated that the universe is held together not by the decrees of a cosmic
sovereign, but by the Good which, because of its incredible beauty, draws all things to
itself.
It is this cult of the Magna Mater, in both its popular and "high," philosophical
forms which the Catholic tradition embraced when it embraced Mary as the theotokos
or God-bearer. Indeed, a few ambiguous texts in the New Testament notwithstanding,
it would not be too much to say that the doctrine of the Incarnation itself is largely an
artifact of the Catholic embrace of the Great Mother: for Mary to be God-bearer, Jesus
had to be divine. And the capacity to generate God is, of course, superior to Godhood
itself ÄÄespecially the rather ambiguous "divinity" with which Jesus has historically
been endowed in a tradition which has always been objectively monophysite. There
can, in any case, be no doubt that it was the drive to grant Mary the title theotokos
which motivated the great Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the late
imperial period.
And what does Catholicism find when it encounters other societies, which do not
have their origins in Old Europe or the Mediterranean Basin? The Totonac Tonantzi,
"Our Lady Mother," from whom the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe emerged, the
Keres Sussistinako, Thinking Woman, whose mind is the perfect matter of creation,
who thought outward, giving birth to the "hard beings" who make up the universe
ÄÄand countless other cults of the Goddess. Indeed, the cult of the Magna Mater
might well be regarded as the universal religion of archaic humanity. Catholicism has
been able to stake a credible claim to universality not because it has conquered the
world for Christ (when to the extent it has done this, it has always ceased to be itself
and become a force for backwardness, reaction, and destruction) but because it already
includes within itself this venerable tradition, so that the peoples of the earth have found
in the Church a ready reflection of their own oldest and deepest convictions.
Catholicism is not, to be sure, only the cult of the Great Mother. There is a second,
and equally important element in our heritage: the tradition of Judaism and above all
of the Pharisees. Like most of the salvation religions, Judaism emerged out of the
struggles of the peasantry, the crafts people, and the intelligentsia against the predations
of the warlord states. For a while Israel was able to turn back the tide of the
encroaching empires and carve out a kind of liberated zone in which humanity could
once again grow and flourish. The result was the planet's first true iron age civilization
(Gottwald 1979). Soon, however, the tide returned and nearly swept the tiny Jewish
state off the face of the earth. But still the people resisted. Priestly groups
concentrated on the temple cult as a center for the conservation of Jewish identity. The
monarchy, and later messianic movements, focused on armed struggle to defend and/or
liberate the land of Israel. Prophetic circles reminded people of the revolutionary
origins of their society and called them to ever higher levels of organization. All of
these trends contributed to the survival and development of Judaism, but none, in the
end, was sufficient by itself to make Judaism the potent force for social progress which
it was to become.
In order to understand the power of fully developed Judaism it is necessary to
understand the Pharisaic tradition. Where other trends looked to protect and conserve
the land, the identity, and the traditions of Israel, the Pharisees sought to actually build
a civilization informed by Jewish values ÄÄand make this civilization a center for the
transformation of human society as a whole.
The Pharisaic strategy focused on the reorganization of Jewish life in such a way as
to shift the religious center of gravity from the temple to everyday life, and from ritual
observance to ethical conduct, while preserving the ritual law as a mark of Jewish
national identity. While the Pharisees did not reject the temple cult or the purity code
as such, they did reject the idea that holiness was purely or primarily the result of cultic
observance, and that it thus belonged primarily or exclusively to the priestly caste
which controlled the temple. This involved two critical innovations. First of all, the
Pharisees developed the notion of an "oral Torah." As John Pawlikowski has pointed
out (1982: 82) the development of the oral tradition was an attempt to give as much
specificity to the rather general ethical imperatives of the written law, as the priestly
caste had given to the ritual codes.
Second, the Pharisees began to create a new institutional structure, centered on the
synagogue and the rabbinate, alongside the temple and the priesthood, which served to
reinforce the new emphasis on ethical conduct as the center of religious life. In a very
real sense, the rabbinate institutionalized the prophetic function, albeit in the "ordinary"
form of a teaching office, making prophetic insight an integral dimension of the day to
day life of the Jewish people. The synagogue, by the same token "focused around the
congregation as community." Services in the synagogue centered not around prayer or
worship, but around "homilies on contemporary demands of the Torah (Pawlikowski
1982)."
Pharisaism, in other words, represented an extraordinarily high level of religious
rationalization, and a major step forward for humanity in the development of a rational
strategy for the reorganization of human society. Where the priestly movements
focused on conserving the temple cult and the messianic movements focused on the
armed struggle for national liberation, risking the danger of transforming Israel into a
nation which was free, but otherwise little different from the surrounding peoples, the
Pharisees understood that the original insight of YahwismÄÄthat human beings
participate most fully in the life of God through ethical conductÄÄcould be realized
only in the context of an ethical civilization. They thus sought to provide ethical
guidance to Jews who carried out the will of God by exercising their creativity and
initiative in every sphere of human social life. In large part due to their efforts the
Jews have served ever since as a kind of leaven for every civilization with which they
have come into contact.
Jesus himself must be understood as first and foremost a figure within, or at least
at the margins of, the Pharisaic movement. John Pawlikowski and others have
documented in considerable detail the clear roots in the Pharisaic tradition of much of
what Jesus taught and did. First of all Jesus was clearly a teacher of the oral Torah
"reinterpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in ... line with the social setting in which he
found himself." Furthermore, the general pattern of his ministry "with its emphasis on
teaching and healing" is characteristic of the rabbinic pattern for the period. "He
likewise seems to have participated in Pharisaic-type fellowship meals, instituting the
Christian Eucharist at the final one he attended (Pawlikowski 1982: 92-93)."
The content of Jesus' teaching also shows significant Pharisaic influence. Jesus'
answers to the questions posed to him while teaching in the temple (Mark 12:13-34),
and particularly the question concerning the great commandment, put him more or less
squarely in the Pharisaic camp. Like the Pharisees Jesus regarded the imperative to
love of God and neighbor (12:28-34) as the greatest of the commandments, he upheld
a belief in the Resurrection (12:18-27), and (like many Pharisees) he equivocated when
asked whether or not Jews ought to pay tribute to Caesar (12:133-18). The prayer
which Jesus taught to his disciplesÄÄelements of which are preserved in the so-called
"Lord's Prayer" (Matt 6:9-13, Luke 11:1-4)ÄÄ also contains several characteristic
Pharisaic elementsÄÄa sense of intimacy with God, who is addressed as "Father," a
desire for the coming of the Kingdom, for the accomplishment of God's will on earth,
a sense of the importance of forgiveness, etc.
In embracing Jesus, therefore, even the rather distorted Jesus which emerges from
the Gospels, the Catholic tradition embraces Judaism generally and Pharisaism in
particular. This means embrace not only of the general insight that God is met in the
struggle to build a society which unleashes human creative potential, but also the more
specific activities of building and exercising the power necessary to create such a
society, of developing a ritual life which conserves community and tradition rather than
mystifying and intimidating, and the work of interpreting and applying divine law to
concrete situations.
The third source of the Catholic tradition is the Roman Imperial administration. It
may perhaps seem strange, particularly given our harsh judgement on the ancient
warlord states, to identify the Roman system as something essential to the Catholic
tradition and as an enduring force for social progress. Certainly it was not so in the
hands of the Romans themselves. On the contrary Rome, like all of the other warlord
states, strangled the societies it conquered and held back the progress of human
civilization for hundreds of years. Wouldn't it be better just to slough off this old skin
and build new structures modelled on the rabbinate or for that matter on Wiccan
covens? Yet the system of imperial administration cannot be wholly identified with the
warlord state. State structures have a dual origin, partly in the activity of conquest and
exploitation unleashed by the invention of bronze and iron weaponry, but partly also
in the dynamic of rationalized centralization and allocation of resources which was in
fact invented by the village community and which was already being practiced on an
ever larger scale before the emergence of warfare. It was this rationalized
centralization and allocation of resources which made possible the development of
complex irrigation systems, networks of roads, granaries ÄÄand eventually the
emergence of temple complexes with their observatories and schools which contributed
so much to the progress of human civilization.
The Roman Empire was the heir to this ambiguous legacy, which it systematized and
codified, creating a mechanism for taxation, transportation, and communication, the
global reach of which was limited only by the low level of the available technology.
They used this system, to be sure, largely to exploit the lands they conquered and to
create staging grounds for still greater conquests, but the fact remains that it had
progressive potential as well. A global state or quasi-state gives those who possess it
the capacity to centralize resources for investment in the development of human social
capacities, as well as the diplomatic standing to intervene in global politics on behalf
of justice and, where necessary, to raise and deploy armies on behalf of this same
cause.
It was this progressive potential which the Catholic Church unleashed when it
embraced the Roman system, and put it in the service of a theology born of the
marriage between Judaism and philosophy. The Church took from the ancient cult of
the Magna Mater both the intact social fabric of the village communities and the insight
which they had achieved into the underlying organization of the cosmos. For the
Catholic peasantry this tradition was conserved in the form of Marian devotion, for the
intelligentsia in the form of philosophia. It took from Judaism a confidence in
humanity's ability to know and do the will of God ÄÄnot simply on an individual but
ultimately on a civilizational scale. And it took from the Romans an institutional
apparatus capable of making its values effective on a planet overrun by warlords and
profiteers.
The collapse of the Roman Empire broke the yoke which burdened the peoples of
Europe and the Mediterranean basin, making possible important innovations in
agricultural technology and unleashing a rapid growth in agrarian productivity. The
cultivation of previously vacant land, the rapid proliferation and expansion of towns and
cities, the development of new methods of extracting and centralizing surplus, and the
establishment of the planet's first independent scholarly and scientific centers, the
universities, gradually created within humanity a sense that it was, in fact, an authentic
and even an important participant in God's plan for the universe (Anderson 1974).
The Catholic Church played a critical role in these developments. Not only did the
church centralize and allocate resources for human development, while the secular
warlords were busy fighting over which villages they could tax. The church also
endowed the human civilizational project with theological significance, proclaiming it
a real, if only partial and finite, participation in the life of God. When Pope Innocent
III claimed for himself "authority over nations and kingdoms to uproot and pull down,
to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1:10)," he effectively
institutionalized the ancient prophetic function, the work of critically assessing the
development of human society from the standpoint of its impact on humanity's larger
spiritual vocation, and where necessary, intervening to reorganize the social order. The
implication was that the organization of human society affects the realization of God's
plan for the universe, that the human civilizational project has real cosmic significance.
The Catholic Church was the first human institution to set itself above and outside the
organization of any particular society, and to claim the authority to judge and
reorganize the social order on the basis of transhistorical criteria.
Nowhere does this synthesis achieve a more complete expression than in the
philosophical and theological system developed by Thomas Aquinas. According to
Aquinas there is an eternal law which exists in God as a kind of exemplar for the
cosmos as a whole. Human beings, endowed as we are with reason, are able not only
to achieve knowledge that this eternal law exists, but also to grasp a certain portion of
itÄÄthe part Aquinas referred to as the natural law. This natural law provides a guide
to virtuous human conduct and serves as the basis for the development of human laws,
which are essentially applications of natural law to particular situations, based on a
prudential estimate of particular conditions (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II: 90, 91,
93, 94, 95, 99).
Human beings, created in the image of God, are naturally good, and are capable of
participating, at least in a limited way, in the divine life regulated by the eternal law.
If we are incapable of achieving salvationÄÄi.e. full participation in the life of
GodÄÄby our own powers, this is only because as finite beings we cannot grasp the
infinite goodness, truth, and beauty of God in its essence, and thus cannot love God as
God really deserves to be loved. (Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Third Book,
Chapter II). Thus the necessity of revelation, which makes known the divine law; the
incarnation, by which God joins the divine nature to the human and infuses it with
supernatural capacities which permit us to participate fully in a life which would
otherwise be beyond us; and the church, which mediates supernatural grace to the
individual believer through the sacramental system. Humanity, as essentially social
being, is redeemed through participation in community. Aquinas thus not only creates
significant space for theologically meaningful participation in the human civilizational
project. He expands our understanding of that project so that it becomes, fully and
explicitly, a real participation in the life of God. The fullness of salvation, involving
as it does participation in the eternal life of an infinite God, by its very nature
transcends anything which can be accomplished within the confines of a finite social
historical project. But all human endeavors, at least in so far as they develop the social
capacities of humanity, are at least a partial participation in this same divine life.
There are, to be sure limitations. Thomism clearly reflects the still very low level
of development of human organizing capacities. Aquinas' conception of natural law is
static, based as it is on the science of his day, which was limited to arithmetic, algebra,
geometry, (Ptolemaic) astronomy, (Aristotelian) physics, music, and anatomy. Prior
to the democratic revolutions, a science of history, and thus an understanding of the
natural law as the self-reorganizing logic of matter, was not yet possible. More
broadly, Aquinas fails to resolve in a fully satisfactory way the contradiction between
matter and form which lies at the heart of the Hellenic philosophical tradition. The
sharp distinction between matter and form, nature and grace, finite human and infinite
divine life is a kind of theological reflex of the enduring contradictions between women
and men, and between the peasantry, on the one hand, which participates only
indirectly in the human civilizational project (by producing food), and the clergy, which
moves in the realm of the universal. And the Christian residues within the Thomistic
system meant that Aquinas himself was not immune to antisemitism.
But on the whole the progress is enormous. By endowing human labor, human
political organization, and human scientific research with real theological significance,
Thomism helped create the conditions for the industrial, democratic, and scientific
revolutions. A Thomistic theology enriched by the experience of these revolutions
might have had far more understanding of the self-organizing character of matter itself,
something which would have gradually softened the form/matter dualism.
At this point we must ask ourselves why the Catholic tradition, given its potent
intellectual, pastoral, and political resources, was not able to guide humanity towards
the construction of a civilization which authentically unleashed the development of
human social capacities. Why, in other words, did the Catholic civilization of the so-
called "Middle Ages" issue not in synergism but rather in feudal decadence, and in the
eventual triumph of capitalism? The answer to this question lies in a process which had
its source back in the early Iron Age states of the Mediterranean Basin, and which
gradually gained strength until it overwhelmed both the communitarian and tributary
traditions around the time of the Protestant Reformation. I am referring to the
emergence of markets. Beginning around 700 B.C.E. the emergence of specialized
agriculture (grain, oil, wine, fruits ...) led to the gradual development of a system of
petty commodity production throughout the Mediterranean Basin. It was the production
of grain, oil, and wine for the market which drove the slave systems of Ancient Greece
and Rome and the transformation of the Hellenic and Italic city states from peasant
communes into imperial metropoles (Anderson 1974).
As we have argued in other contexts (Mansueto 1995), market relations have a
profound, deforming effect on the human psyche. People begin to perceive the
universe as a whole on the model of the market itself ÄÄas a system of only
externally related atoms, or else as a system of abstract quantities (prices) which can
be described only by mathematical formalisms. This system, furthermore, like the
marketplace itself, seems to be governed by forces beyond our understanding and
control ÄÄor at least radically indifferent to any merely human purpose. And people
who live by profiting at the expense of others, or at least by a ruthless pursuit of their
own interests, cannot help but regard humanity as radically depraved, or at least
hopelessly egoistic.
Already in Greece this system began to produce ideological distortions: the atomism
of the Epicureans, the speculative rationalism of the Pythagoreans. Even thinkers who
clearly form part of the philosophical tradition, such as Plato, suffered from this
distorting dynamic. Witness Plato's pessimism about the material universe, the notion
that matter resists form, a kind of foreshadowing of the nineteenth century "prophecies"
of the entropic heat death of the universe. But it is only with Paul of Tarsus that we see
the emergence of a mass socioreligious movement driven by market-based ideology.
Unlike all of the other streams which flowed into the Catholic tradition, Pauline
Christianity has its roots in the largely commercial world of the great cities of the
Roman Empire, among the broad middle strata who were at once profiting from the
expanded opportunities presented by the emerging "world" market, and increasingly
isolated and alienated as the social fabric which held human society together and
endowed life with meaning gradually came apart at the seams.
What Paul offered the alienated urban masses of the Empire was a doctrine which
at once articulated their sense, not yet wholly effaced, of the ultimately law-like
character of the universe and its governance by a sovereign God who guaranteed its
meaning, but at the same time ratified their conviction of their own moral depravity and
utter helplessness in the face of their own egoism, while providing a strategy for
salvation which put the burden of change on another ÄÄi.e. on the crucified Christ
whose suffering atoned for their sins and whose righteousness substituted for their own.
The world was irretrievably in bondage to the forces of darkness, whose "law" worked
nothing but destruction, but those who believe would be rescued from perdition and go
to meet their lord in the air.
Augustine, writing as the empire finally collapsed, took this doctrine and joined to
it a deformed variant of Platonic philosophy. The supreme Good consists in order. The
universe has become disordered because human beings have willfully turned away from
the Creator towards creatures, introducing into the world a dynamic of disintegration
which will ultimately prove fatal. States arise when those who love intermediate goods
such as power and honor conquer those who are mired in a love of sensual pleasure,
establishing a kind of rough justice and a limited, temporal order. But salvation is
possible only through divine grace which reorders our loves and thus rejoins us to God
who is the principle and proper end of all things. But the cosmos itself is passing away.
We should note here that for Augustine order replaces organization as the supreme
Good. This should not surprise us, for the market still permits perceptions of a sort
of order: the law-like relations between quantities or between the only externally related
atoms which make up the alienated "universe" of the market system. What it does not
permit is perception of purpose, and especially the discovering of the ultimate purpose,
the Final Cause ÄÄGod HerselfÄÄ in the complex interconnections of the material
world. And since we cannot really know the first principle in itself, we can be ordered
to it only affectively, through love ... a love which, not knowing its object, can only
be masochistic submission.
Now Pauline/Augustinian Christianity constituted a potent force in Late Antiquity
when the "world" market of the Mediterranean Basin was still intact and when
pessimism regarding human nature and human civilization seemed justified by the
almost incomprehensible collapse of the planet's greatest power to date. But as the
Catholic civilization of the middle ages gradually gained strength, Augustinianism was
eclipsed, or rather hegemonized by resurgent Aristotelian philosophy and, at the
popular level, by the cult of the Magna Mater, now reborn as the cult of the Virgin
Mother. Indeed, the triumph of Aristotle and of the Magna Mater would have been
complete, and Augustinianism reduced to at most a kind of undercurrent in the Catholic
tradition had it not been for the resurgence of market relations beginning in the twelfth
century. But just as Aquinas was effecting the philosophical synthesis which might
have guided humanity, or at least Europe, along a nonmarket road towards synergism,
the revival of trade began to reintroduce the whole alienated dynamic which had
crippled the archaic civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin. And with the resurgent
market came a resurgent Augustinianism.
Now the clearest expressions of this resurgent Augustinianism were, of course
Protestant, with the Lutheran and Calvinist tendencies within the Reformation divided
largely over the question of just how far divine grace can actually reorder our loves and
thus render possible a Christian civilization. Luther was rather pessimistic on this
point, like Augustine himself but perhaps more so, and thus defines the standpoint
which we will call the Augustinian right. Calvin, on the other hand, and especially the
Puritan branch of the Reformed tradition was far more optimistic on this point and set
about attempting to create a system of Holy Commonwealths. This conviction that it
is possible to actually build a just society, but only on the basis of divine grace, we call
left-wing Augustinianism.
Neo-Augustinianism, however, also had a rather considerable effect within the
Catholic Church. Long before the Reformation, the Franciscan order played out its
own version of the struggle between the Augustinian right and the Augustinian left in
the controversy over poverty. And even as Thomism became the dominant
philosophical and theological force within the Catholic Church, it was deformed in an
Augustinian direction. This was especially true within the Jesuit order, whose leading
intellectual light, Francisco Suarez, introduced into Thomism an essentially Augustinian
doctrine of the will (Treloar 1991: 387), and among the French and German
theologians who gradually replaced Aquinas with Descartes and Leibniz as the principal
philosophers of the Catholic Church.
For a long time, however, Aquinas retained his hegemony, and the Catholic response
to the market order was shaped largely in Thomistic terms. This was true both during
the long period when the Church made an alliance with the feudal landed elites against
the emerging bourgeoisie, and during the great era of Social Catholicism from 1890 up
through the Second Vatican Council, when the Church allied itselfÄÄhowever
ambiguouslyÄÄ with antimarket forces.
A correct understanding of the current crisis in the Catholic Church must begin from
a recognition that since the Council, Thomism has lost the upper hand to a resurgent
neo-Augustinianism which dominates both the left and the right wings of the Church,
and which threatens to undermine once and for all the distinctiveness and integrity of
the Catholic tradition.
The documents of the Council itself are philosophically ambiguous. On the one
hand, they seem if anything to deepen and extend Aquinas' basically optimistic view
of human nature and of humanity's vocation in the cosmos.
God did not create man for life in isolation, but for the formation of social unity. So also
it has pleased God to make men whole and save them not merely as individuals, without
any mutual bonds, but by making them into a single people...
This communitarian character is developed and consummated in the work of Jesus Christ
... In His preaching He clearly taught the sons of God to treat one another as brothers ...
He founded after his death and resurrection a new brotherly community composed of all
those who receive Him in faith and in love.
This solidarity must be constantly increased until that day on which it will be brought to
perfection. Then, saved by grace, men will offer flawless glory to God as a family beloved
of God and of Christ their Brother (Vatican II: Gaudium et Spes 32).
The vision here is one of a humanity which, created in the image of a triune God, is
essentially social in nature, developing its capacity for solidarity throughout the course of
one single history, a solidarity which is consummated in the work of Christ, and brought
to perfection in the Kingdom of God. In the place of the old dualistic theology with its sharp
distinction between the finite human, secular, lay, realm on the one hand, and the divine,
sacred, clerical, sacramental realm on the other, we see a unified process of divineÄhuman
activity pointing towards an Omega point which transcends history only in the sense of being
beyond our finite human comprehension. Everything we do, however, which authentically
builds up solidarity, is a real contribution to the building of the Kingdom, and not merely
a finite, non-salvific participation in building the true city of human laws.
At the same time, the conciliar documents tend to neglect philosophical foundations
generally in favor of scriptural arguments, and often, if not always, show signs of a
creeping Christocentrism ÄÄsomething which has always been foreign to the Catholic
tradition.
In the wake of the council, the Church was searching for pastoral methods which would
bring this theological reformation to the people, and transform the church into an effective
force for the all-sided development of human social capacities. Two principal alternatives
emerged. Some argued for what amounted to a strengthening of the Church's alliance with
the poor and the working classesÄÄthe so-called preferential option for the poorÄÄeven
if this meant collaboration or alliance with the communist left. The so-called "liberation
theology" is the principal product of this strategy. OthersÄÄmembers of the Communio
groupÄÄ argued for a strategic alliance with capital in order to combat communism, which
they regarded as the Church's principal competitor for the allegiance of the masses, and for
a vigorous struggle against secularization. Both strategies, it should be remembered,
however, operated within the context of the conciliar theology, and of a larger commitment
to the re-establishment of Catholic hegemony.
Participation in popular struggles tended to produce a "leftist" or "liberationist"
interpretation of the conciliar theology. Partly this resulted from the application of historical
materialist sociology in the social-analytic stage of the "see/judge/act" process. Increasingly,
leaders and participants in the base communities alike began to understand that realization
of the historic aims of Social Catholicism were impossible within the context of a market
driven global economy. The political aims of Catholic organizers began to drift leftward
until they were indistinguishable from those of secular socialists.
There were important changes at the more specifically theological level as well.
Interpretation of the scriptures and the tradition in the light of the experience of the base
communities, sometimes with the assistance of analytic tools derived from historical
materialism, produced a new reading of the conciliar theology, one which gave not only the
human civilizational project generally, but the struggle for social justice in particular, a
central place, even the central place, in the emerging theological problematic. Unlike
Christian Democratic theory, liberation theology stresses that there is only one history, in
which the salvation proclaimed by the Gospel, and the struggle for a just society are
integrally bound up together (Segundo 1985, Boff 1986).
Taken together, the new social analysis and the new theology pointed towards a new
strategic direction. Even before the council Social Catholics had been willing to engage in
dialogue with socialists and communists, and even to enter in alliance with them in the
struggle against fascism. Such alliances had, however, always been tactical in character, and
"dialogue" usually took the form of a sharp, if not always fruitless, ideological struggle
around key philosophical questions. And Christian Democratic theory had always attempted
to sharply distinguish between its own "third way" and the programs of liberal capitalism
and atheistic communism, even when the programs put forward by Christian Democratic
parties looked rather like a moderate social democratic reformism. Liberation theologians,
on the other hand, began increasingly to reject talk of such a "third way" out of hand, and
argued for a more or less unambiguous strategic alliance with secular socialists.
It would be a serious mistake to underestimate the progressive potential of this alliance,
which is still not entirely spent. Throughout the period between 1968 and 1989 the Catholic
left helped to deliver the mass base which made the Latin American left such a powerful
force for social progress. And the alliance with the left served the Church well. By showing
that it comprehends the underlying cause of the social disintegration affecting the planet, the
Church has maintained its credibility among the masses and positioned itself effectively to
carry out the critically important task of conserving humanity's faith in and relationship to
the cosmic order. Most important, however, has been the cultural milieu created by the
collaboration between Catholics and Communists. This milieu contains many of the elements
necessary to a new synthesis which transcends the limitations of both objective idealism and
dialectical materialism, a synthesis which is already present in poetic form in the work of
Ernesto Cardenal.
There were, however, serious limitations to the concordat negotiated between the secular
and religious left. The most serious of these limitations derives from the fact that in the
absence of principled struggle, none of the internal contradictions of either liberation
theology or secular socialism were addressed. Because of this, the synergistic synthesis
which existed in potentia in the Christian-Marxist dialogue was never really worked out. A
discussion of the limitations of secular socialism will have to await another context. But we
will do well to say a few words about the problems of liberation theology.
Liberation theology betrays a tendency towards neo-Augustinianism which calls seriously
into question its long range commitment to the development of human social capacities and
to the progress of the human civilizational project. This is apparent from the way liberation
theologians ground their fundamentally progressive claim regarding the unity of human
history and salvation history.
God makes history. Why? Because by becoming one with the lot that every person has in
history (Gaudium et Spes 22) he converts history, seemingly profane history ... into the
road by which the individual has access to transcendence and therefore salvation (Gaudium
et Spes 22) ... The historical work of all people will lead, by the grace of God to
eschatological metahistory (Segundo 1985:69).
Segundo grounds the meaningfulness of human history not in the creation, and thus in the
immanent teleology of human nature, as did the Thomist tradition, but rather in the
incarnation.
There is, furthermore, a tendency in liberation theology to mystify the salvific character
of the historical process. If, on the one hand, human history itself is salvific, and if, on the
other hand, faith in the crucified messiah reveals to us something unique about the salvific
character of this history, then we are forced almost ineluctably to conclude that the salvific
character of history derives from human suffering, and specifically from the suffering of the
poor and the oppressed, who as it were continue the crucifixion. Thus liberation theology
speaks of the revolutionary role not of the working class (which is revolutionary first and
foremost in virtue of its creative power) or of the peasantry (which is revolutionary because
of the window on the cosmic order provided by the experience of life in the village
community) but rather of the "poor" who are revolutionary because they suffer.
Furthermore, from this perspective, revolutionary virtue reaches its highest level of
development not in the philosopher, pastor, or organizer, who develop human capacities,
but rather in the revolutionary hero or martyr who risks, and perhaps sacrifices, his life for
the revolution.
It should come as no surprise if the practical implementation of this theology has yielded
highly ambiguous results. The Catholic left has been most effective in struggles against
brutal regimes in which the demand for revolutionary self-sacrifice was at a premium. It has
been much less effective in mobilizing the energy of the people in advanced capitalist
societies where the main task is one of reawakening the creative energies of the working
class and catalyzing discontent with the hegemonic consumerism.
As liberation theology gradually gained influence in the Catholic Church during the 1960s
and 1970s, a right opposition emerged which argued that communism remained the Church's
principal adversary, and that while building or rebuilding a base among the poor of the
Third World generally, and Latin America in particular, was vitally important, this work
must be carried out within the context of a geopolitical alliance with the bourgeois states of
the West, and an intense ideological struggle against dialectical materialism, feminism, and
other forms of secularism. This is the course preferred by the present pontiff and by the
international theological movement organized around the journal Communio.
The theological key to Communio-theology can be found in Love Alone, a small book
published more than twenty-five years ago by one of the trend's most creative theologians,
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1968). Von Balthasar distinguishes between three approaches to
theological reflection: the cosmological, the anthropological and the "aesthetic." The
cosmological approach is the method of traditional Catholic theology, which used the
concepts of Greek philosophy, Platonic or Aristotelian, as a criterion for the interpretation
of the scriptures and the teachings of the church. Thus, in cosmological theology, the
doctrine of God or the Trinity is explained in terms of philosophical categories of being,
essence, person, etc. The anthropological approach is the method of most modern theology,
which takes its categories from modern philosophy, or, by extension, from the social
sciences, and interprets the tradition in terms of these categories. According to this
perspective God is the perfectly good will of the liberals, the "ground of authentic being"
of the existentialists, ÄÄor the liberator of the oppressed.
The difficulty of both of these approaches, von Balthasar argues, is that they reduce God,
and thus divine love, to a postulate of human reason, something understandable, and in a
sense necessary in human terms ÄÄsomething other than the fully free and unmerited love
through which God reveals himself to us in the scriptures.
Christianity is destroyed if it lets itself be reduced to a transcendental presupposition of
man's self-understanding, whether in thought or in life, in knowledge or in action
(1968:43) ... The moment I think that I have understood the love of another person for me
ÄÄfor instance on the basis of laws of human nature, or because of something in meÄÄ
then this love is radically misused and inadequate, and there is no possibility of a
response. True love is always incomprehensible, and only so is it gratuitous. (1968:44).
This is a critical point. What von Balthasar is suggesting is that any attempt to understand
revelation in terms of rational, human criteria, be they Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomist,
Kantian, Existentialist, or Marxist, has the result of reducing the love which is revelation
to merely a necessary, and in some sense merited reflection of our own human nature, or
of the structure of being in general. To put this in another way, the communio created by
divine love becomes simply a community of mutual interdependence, in which cooperation
is rationally comprehensible on the basis of definite natural or social laws, and the ultimate
purpose of which is the satisfaction of individual desires ÄÄrather than a communion based
on self-sacrificial love which is spontaneous, gratuitous, and incomprehensible in terms of
anything which we know about human nature. Such a rational harmony does not really
overcome the egoism of the individual, and thus is not genuinely or fully redeeming in
character. It is this danger which makes von Balthasar and Ratzinger so cautious about any
rationalistic hermeneutic. Dialectical and historical materialism is simply the most radical
variant of the rationalism they seek to combat. Their structures would apply as fully to
Rahner as they do to Segundo or the Boffs, and, perhaps, more fully than they do to
Guttierez.
Communio-theologians, furthermore, understand love first and foremost as self-sacrifice,
modeled on the substitutionary work of Jesus on the cross.
The sign of Christ can only be deciphered if His human love and surrender `even unto
death' is read as the manifestation of absolute love ... His task, in love is to allow the sins
of the world to enter into Him who is `dispossessed' out of love of God ÄÄto become
the `lamb of God who bears the guilt of the world (1 John 1:29) and my sins ... This is
the dogma ÄÄthe dogma of vicarious suffering, of bearing the guilt of others' which in
the last analysis determines whether a theology is anthropological or christocentric ... For
it is precisely with this act that really unaccountable, inconceivable love begins and ends;
a love moreover which qua love is self evidently divine (1968:81-82).
Von Balthasar has, in other words, utterly and completely abandoned the Catholic
tradition in favor of something like a sacramentalized and clericalized Lutheranism. It
should thus come as no surprise that von Balthasar and his comrades in the Communio
movement should adopt a typically Lutheran stand towards the market system, subjecting
economic individualism to constant moral denunciations while opting for a de-facto
geopolitical alliance with the bourgeois states of Europe and North America. Indeed,
through the efforts of Karol Woytila, Communio played a critical role in providing
organizational and ideological support to the anticommunist opposition in Central and
Eastern EuropeÄÄparticularly in Poland. In this way they helped to demolish over seventy
years of socialist construction, which had built up the planet's premiere technological,
artistic, scientific, and philosophical apparatus. This anticommunist campaign has been
accompanied by a frontal assault on the womens' movement, which Communio seems to
regard as fully as dangerous as communism.
This latter point merits further comment. We have already seen, in the first chapter, that
the ancient cult of the Magna Mater, and other forms of goddess worship, were intimately
bound up with the conviction that matter itself is self-organizingÄÄand thus not in need
of "formation," much less "redemption" from without. Feminist philosopher Mary Daly
(1984) points out that Christianity has, historically, adopted two distinct strategies in relation
to survivals of this cult. Protestant theologians have historically attempted to repress the cult
altogether in the interests of safeguarding an extreme doctrine of divine transcendence.
Catholic theologians, on the other hand attempted to co-opt the cult, in the form of Marian
devotion, as a way of integrating peasant communities into the Church. More recently, the
Church has used Marian devotion as a means of countering socialist immanentism. It is no
coincidence that major Marian dogmas were proclaimed in the wake of the revolution of
1848 (the Immaculate Conception), and the Communist victories in Eastern Europe in the
immediate postwar period (the Assumption), or that Marian apparitions (Fatima,
Medjugorge) have figured prominently in anticommunist campaigns.
The Vatican recognizes in the women's movement its most potent adversary, for it is
ultimately the women's movement, even more so than communism, which is in a position
to expose the profound contradiction between the historic Catholic insights into the self-
organizing dynamic immanent in matter, heir of the philosophical tradition and ultimately
of the cult of the Magna Mater, and patriarchal and idealist theologies which regard matter
as the passive recipient of form, and humanity as merely a receptacle for infused divine
grace, and more especially between the historic Catholic teachings regarding the underlying
goodness of creation and of human nature, and the whole Pauline/Augustinian problematic
centered on sin and redemption through divine self-sacrificeÄÄa problematic which is
emphasized by the Communio trend, but which is evident in liberation theology as well.
It should be apparent at this point why Catholicism, despite all its very many real
strengths, has thus far failed to realize its full potential as a force for social progress.
Historically Catholicism has conserved important elements of the archaic philosophical
synthesis: recognition of the cosmos as an organized totality in which humanity plays a
meaningful, even creative role. At the popular level these elements were reflected in the
persistence of the ancient cult of the Magna Mater, albeit in rather distorted Marian form.
It has joined to these insights the transformative dynamism of the Jewish, and specifically
the Pharisaic tradition, and a powerful if often ambiguous institutional apparatus inherited
from the Roman Empire. It is from these forces that Catholicism derives its civilization-
building potency ÄÄand its power to resist the corrosive effects of the market system. At
the same time, the Pauline/Augustinian theological problematic which has invaded and
gradually hegemonized Catholicism as a result of the penetration of market forces, with its
insistence on divine transcendence and the inert passivity of matter, the sinfulness of
humanity, and salvation through divine self-sacrifice, remains in fundamental contradiction
with these progressive elements. And yet it is precisely the Augustinian theological
problematic which provides the rationale for both the "left-wing" liberation theology and the
rightist Communio trend. Even as these two theological currents battle each other they are,
without knowing it, working together to destroy the Catholic tradition.
What, if anything, can we do to conserve and develop the tradition and once again
unleash its progressive potential? The answer is really quite simple. First and foremost we
must reclaim our tradition. This ought not to mean a slavish imitation of earlier Thomism.
Thomism like all historical products is limited and finite and has in some ways been
rendered obsolete by our superior grasp of the cosmohistorical evolutionary process and
humanity's critical role therein. And the spirit of Thomism was, in any case, always one
of innovation, not deference to authority. But we do need to go back and clarify the
authentic roots of the Catholic tradition, carefully distinguishing between the progressive
elements drawn from the philosophical tradition and the cult of the Magna Mater, from
Judaism, and from the Roman system, and the reactionary, alienated, acosmic theology
promoted by Paul, Augustine, and their successors. And we need to pass that tradition on
to the next generation, so that it is not lost in the profound confusion and disorientation of
the present period. This means respecting the popular religion of the Catholic people,
especially their devotion to Mary, which conserves, albeit in often distorted form the ancient
cult of the Magna Mater, original font of the philosophical tradition. It means deepening our
knowledge of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rusd, Amalric of Bena and David of
Dinant, Albertus Magnus and all of the other thinkers whose ideas flowed into the Thomistic
synthesis.
We must, furthermore, rectify our relations with Judaism, recognizing that the real,
historical Jesus (the only one worth embracing) was essentially a minor Pharisaic teacher,
while the crucified and risen Lord of Pauline Christianity is nothing more than a fantasy of
the aliented urban masses of the late Empire, and the Incarnate Word simply a desperate
attempt on the part of a patriarchal clerical elite to salvage something from the profoundly
gynocentric and materialist doctrine of the God-Bearer. This means rejecting, clearly and
explicitly, both the divinity and the messiah-ship of Jesus, who was neither God nor Christ
but simply the historically contingent channel through which we gentiles came to the Law.
The fact is that the principal Christological dogmas are in profound contradiction with the
larger body of the Catholic tradition, and introduce into it both logical incoherence and
religious deformations.
And we must, finally, own the Roman system for what it is: a highly ambiguous, but
tremendously useful apparatus for centralizing and allocating resources, and for building and
exercising power on a global scale. It is fine ÄÄindeed absolutely necessaryÄÄ to
criticize the hierarchy's exclusion of women and married men, and to question both the
theological and the strategic judgements of its current leaders, but those who would destroy
the hierarchy, or deprive the Catholic Church of its remaining temporal authority give aid
and comfort to the warlords of our day ÄÄthe great rentier capitalists who claim the right
to consume what ought to be invested in human development, together with their allies in
the bourgeois states.
Embracing our own heritage necessarily means rejecting traditions which are hostile to
our own. This means, chiefly, Protestantism and the liberalism which flows out of it. To
be Catholic is first and foremost to believe that the universe is a relational, self-organizing,
teleological system, ordered to God, in whose life we participate through our labor, and who
we can truly know on the basis of our rational faculties ÄÄand to believe that however far
we stray from this sacred vocation, we never lose our essentially rational, social character,
which is the image of God within us. And to believe this is to hold Protestantism and
liberalism to be in error. The Catholic Church must reject Christian ecumenism as
something dangerous to its very identity, and direct its main intellectual energies to the
struggle against Protestantism and liberalism in every form.
This does not, however, mean that Catholics should look inward, and refuse dialogue
with other traditions. On the contrary, to be Catholic means to be universal, and this
requires an openness to every tradition which participates in humanity's drive towards
totality and perfection. The truth is that we Catholics have far more in common with Jews,
with nonfundamentalist Moslems, and with Confucians, Taoists, or Hopis than we do with
Protestants. And we have even more in common with the traditions against which the party
currently in power in the Vatican has decided to aim the main blow: feminism and
dialectical materialism. What feminism offers is a clear understanding of the roots of the
Catholic tradition, or at least one source of the Catholic tradition, in the ancient cult of the
Magna Mater, as well as the tools for exposing the patriarchal distortions which affect even
the more progressive, Thomistic formulations of the tradition. Dialectical materialism offers
an insight into the self-organizing character of matter which confirms the results of feminist
theology. It also offers an analysis of the alienating impact of the market system.
Catholicism, on the other hand, provides the logically prior organizing principle, the
unmoved mover, without which dialectical materialism is philosophically incoherent and
degenerates inevitably into Stalinist authoritarianism or postmodernist nihilism, and it
reminds both dialectical materialism and feminism that the Good which draws all things to
itself transcends our finite human capacities, and thus calls us to be truly and fully human,
but also and always something more, something we cannot name yet, which will be
disclosed fully in the distant future when, lured by the incredible beauty of God, we know
and do and become what now we cannot even imagine.
Dialogue of this kind points, of course, to the very synergistic synthesis which we have
been working out in the pages of this journal and in our recently published work Towards
Synergism ÄÄto the realization of cosmos as relational, self-organizing, teleological, and
ordered to God. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that the potential for something
like this kind of synthesis, which was latent in the Catholic/Communist dialogue and
cooperation of the popular front period and the postconciliar years was derailed, partly of
course by the dumb atheism of the Kremlin, but partly also by the resurgent Augustinianism
of the liberation theologians who were largely responsible for this collaboration. Together
the Vatican and the Kremlin could have led this planet decisively away from the market
system and towards something infinitely richer and more productive. The result would
hardly have been a final synthesis. The self-organizing character of matter itself forbids
that. But it would have been a tremendous step forward. But that possibility has been
foregone and we must now labor from a much weaker position than we might otherwise
have enjoyed, gradually working out the next steps in the human civilizational project. The
defeats of the past two decades notwithstanding, I am confident that we will discover and
take those steps, and I am confident that the Catholic tradition will survive its current crisis
and make important contributions to that synthesis.
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