Catholic Post-liberalism and the Left-Right Spectrum
By Wade Lee Hudson
In his review of several books written by Catholic “post-liberals,” Mark Lilla expresses sympathy for their “rejection of the intellectual foundations of modern liberal individualism” and its “idealization of autonomy,” which “has worked as an acid eating away at the deepest cultural foundations inherited from the Christian era” (such as “love your neighbor”).
Lilla writes, “My concern is for the young people drawn to the (Catholic post-liberal) movement today. Their unhappiness with the lonely, superficial, and unstable lives our culture and economy offer them does them credit.”
The Catholic post-liberals believe “the source of their despair is not human existence itself — as (Thomas) Merton and (Paul) Tillich thought — but rather the ‘liberal project of modernity.’”
Lilla believes:
Seen from a certain perspective, the post-liberals do get a number of things right. There is a malaise — call it cultural, call it spiritual, call it psychological — in modern Western societies, reflected above all in the worrisome state of our children, who are ever more depressed and suicidal. And we do lack adequate political concepts and vocabulary for articulating and defending the common good and placing necessary limits on individual autonomy, from gun control to keeping Internet pornography from the young. On this many across the political spectrum could agree. What liberal or progressive today would reject (the) argument that “a just state is a state that has ample authority to protect the vulnerable from the ravages of pandemics, natural disasters, and climate change, and from the underlying structures of corporate power that contribute to these events”? (One author) has a developed Catholic theory of government to explain why that is necessarily the case. Do liberals or progressives have one today? I know I don’t.
One problem is that “Catholic postliberal thinkers opposed to modern liberal individualism are less interested in transforming people’s unhappy lives through the power of the gospel than in jockeying for political power as the vanguard of a conservative revolution.”
Lilla argues:
The great political novelists of the past — Dostoevsky, Conrad, Thomas Mann — created protagonists who make coherent ideological arguments that other characters engage with seriously but that also reveal something significant about their psychological makeup...
They look at us through two different lenses: as inquiring creatures who sometimes find the truth, and as self-deceiving creatures whose searches are willfully incomplete, revealingly repetitive, emotionally charged, and often self-undermining. That is the skill required to begin understanding the leading ideological movements of our time, especially those on the right...
What is striking in their works is that they almost never speak about the power of the Gospel to transform a society and culture from below by first transforming the inner lives of its members. Saving souls is, after all, a retail business, not a wholesale one, and has nothing to do with jockeying for political power in a fallen world. Such ministering requires patience and charity and humility. It means meeting individual people where they are and persuading them that another, better way of living is possible. This is the kind of ministering the postliberals should be engaged in if they are serious about wanting to see Americans abandon their hollow, hedonistic individualism — not hatching plans to infiltrate the Department of Education….
Seen from another perspective, the postliberals offer just one more example of the psychology of self-induced ideological hysteria, which begins with the identification of a genuine problem and quickly mutates into a sense of world-historical crisis and the appointment of oneself and one’s comrades as the select called to strike down the Adversary — quite literally in this case….
But finding the true source of our disquiet is never a simple matter, for young or old. It’s much easier to become enchanted by historical fairy tales and join a partisan political sect promising redemption from the present than it is to reconcile oneself to never being fully reconciled with life or the historical moment, and to turn within...
As long as their focus is on culture wars rather than spreading the Good News, these Catholics will inevitably meet with disappointment in post-Protestant secular America, where even the red-state demos demand access to pornography, abortion, and weed.
Lilla rightly finds fault with “liberal” hyper-individualism. His account of how Catholic “conservatives” criticize this “liberal” rhetoric is telling and suggests possibilities for cross-divide alliances.
His review also raises questions about the validity of the left-right political spectrum.
Left-wing positions generally advocate for government intervention in the economy to protect workers and consumers, equality and social justice, and diplomacy over military intervention.
Right-wing positions generally back limited government intervention in the economy, traditional values and norms, strong national defense, and individual liberty and personal responsibility.
Moderate positions balance elements of both left and right ideologies.
However, it's important to note several limitations of the left-right spectrum. These include its oversimplification of complex political ideologies, its inability to categorize cultural and social dimensions adequately, and its variability over time and from country to country. Witness how “Trumpism” has shaken up political dialogues.
The left-right political spectrum oversimplifies complex beliefs. Most individuals and organizations embrace a diverse mix of different opinions. They may have “liberal” opinions on one issue and “conservative” opinions on another. Labeling one “left” or “right” obscures this complexity.
Moreover, the meaning attached to each label varies over time and from country to country.
The spectrum discounts beliefs that don’t fit neatly, such as libertarianism, anarchism, and communitarianism.
It pushes people to make an either-or choice and encourages them to join a “tribe” to defeat the “enemy.”
It neglects self-interested forces that shape policies independent of any ideology.
Nevertheless, labels are necessary to describe movements. In the political sphere, “compassionate majoritarianism” is an option. This phrase suggests qualified support for policies supported by majorities, so long as they are compassionate — that is, not motivated by motives such as revenge.
In the social sphere, a “holistic democracy movement” might best sum up the need for fundamental reform and mutual empowerment.