The political-economic liberalism of my father's generation(1945-65) was solidly Catholic. It's primary concerns (the rights of workers against capitalists; the care of the poor and disadvantaged, including in other countries; the emergent civil rights movement) firmly aligned with Catholic social teaching. The entire culture passionately endorsed the traditional family, with as many kids as possible, in a rich ethnic Catholicism. It embraced a vigorous patriotism, having just sacrificed to defeat German and Japanese expansion, which entailed a fierce religiosity in defiance of atheistic, imperialistic Communism. This was not the liberalism of individualism, of resentment of authority and tradition, of personal license; it was solidarity in family, faith, trade union, and country. This powerful edifice (Catholic faith, patriotism, labor movement, Democratic Party) collapsed, spectacularly, like the walls of Jerico, in 1968.
This Fall was triggered by the acceptance of two coniving lies: that of Marx that all of social life is violence, the dominance of the weak by the strong, war always and everywhere; and that of Freud (or his followers) that the repressive superego is dominant over the innocent erotic yearnings of the childlike Id. The synthesis of the two is the work of the Frankfurt School: both build upon an atheistic nihilism and assume a chaotic universe of unending violence: interiorly within the psyche itself and externally between the master and the slave. This was the work of Marcuse, Reich, Fromn, the New Left and the hippies and the yuppies, Black Liberation, feminism, gay rights, and the decade of the 1970 and afterwards.
These two falsehoods are appealing as there is some truth in them. Power dynamics are in play in all areas of human interaction; it is part of original sin. Dominance and submission happens between classes, genders, races, ethnic groups, nations, empires, families, siblings and friends. But this is not the total and final picture. Likewise, wholesome sexuality has certainly in the past been suppressed by fear, shame and guilt aligned with unhealthy religiosityAgain: that is not the entire story. It is ironic that just as an emergent post-modernity was about to declare the end of all mega-narratives, the Cultural Left became intoxicated with this dual narrative of dominance and oppression as explanatory of everything.
It bears mentioning also, here, that John Paul II emerged as pope, at the very end of the catastrophic 1970s, with the definitive response to both narratives with his catechesis of the human body and his social teaching.
If Cultural Liberalism is a contradition of the communal, populist, pious liberalism of my youth, it was an intensification of the trajectory of classical enlightenment liberalism: liberation of the autonomous, uprooted individual from the shackles of the repressive, reactionary, superstitious, legalistic, religious past. The core of this liberalism: hatred of the Father. Patriarchy is the constitutive negative image of this religion: oppression of women by men, children by elders, eros by law, reason by superstition, freedom by authority, poor by rich, and black by white. The original Fall, when Eve inbibed the Satanic lie "that the Father is not to be trusted" is reenacted with catastrophic global consequences. For underlying it is, of course, a rejection of the loving Creator by resentful, jealous creatures. That classical liberalism took several forms: the economic liberalism (RNC) of the successful and affluent that idolized entrepreneurship, free markets and trade, expansive corporate captialism; and the contrary political liberalism (DNC) which mobilized an expansive government in defense of the powerless; and cultural liberalism which favored sexual liberation. By the late 1960s, a strange and unexpected political regestaulting occurred: economic liberalism alligned itself to cultural conservatism in reaction to the marriage of political and cultural liberalism. The working class, ethnic Catholic found himself without a home: entirely excommunicated from the anti-family party of abortion and sexual license, he could not entirely embrace the party of big money and libertarianism either. The party of Ronald Regan, while pro-life, pro-family, anti-communist, and pro-religion, remained alligned with corporate affluence and implicitly hostile to the subsidiarity of smaller communities that support the family.
With that background, we might now take a new look at Donald Trump from the point of view of Catholic politics. A year into the Biden regime and a year away from Trump's nauseating Twitter obsession, we have some distance and can evaluate what he offered. For our purposes here, I will not regard his vile personal behavior which firmly disqualified him from my vote in both elections. But focusing strictly on policy, he presents a promising new Catholic paradign for politics. He failed to deliver on all he promised; and he was toxic in so many ways (xenophobia, misogynistic, polarizing, unpredictable and incompetent by virtue of narcissism). But in his fundamental policy positions, he proposed a new conservative (culturally), populist (economically) Republican Party that aligns closely with (not all, to be sure) Catholic concerns.
He combined Republican conservativsm's defense of life, family and religious freedom (what is best about that party) while rejecting economic liberalism (free markets, trade) with its implicit individualism. In theory (though not in practice) he absorbed into his party the traditional Democrat concern for the working and poor classes. His consistent and firm defense of life and religious freedom, in his court selections and other decisions, was marvelous from a Catholic perspective. Not so much was his economic populism: his tax plan benefited the rich. Indeed, there is a litany of criticism that can be leveled against him. But in broad outline, he offered a populist, conservative alternative to the decadent indulgence of the Left and the affluent indifference of the Right. What I am advocating is a Never-Trump, (Trumpian?) Catholic-friendly Conservative Populism.
Personal Postscript: I am eternally grateful for my 1968: happily ensconced in college seminary with good friends and plenty of books I ventured to Cuernavaca, Mexico, that summer to study conversational Spanish at CIDOC, the think-tank of then-Monsignor Ivan Illich. I fell under the spell of this brilliant, eccentric, iconoclastic, Catholic mystic. He was far more radical than anything in the Catholic Left or the movements of the 1960s: a medievalist, he rejected modernity in toto...technology, bureaucracy, the clericalism of the Catholic Church. But underlying this was a deep, Catholic love for Christ and the Church. This appealed to my young, idealistic heart. I imbibed his suspicion of modernity and I think this helped to protect my heart and mind and keep me "in the world but not of the world." More deeply, I emulated his striking love for the Gospel and the Church. That very summer he was disciplined by the Vatican and later left the priesthood to pursue his vocation, keeping always his celibacy and prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. God bless Ivan Illich!
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