The organic conservative is a small part of a much greater whole: a living, breathing, growing, moving, intentional organism or personality. The human person is created by the tri-personal, communal God not to be an autonomous, lonely monad but to be in COMMUNION with God and other persons in a dazzling universe of communal-personal-organisms: Church, family, nation, tribe, school, team, union, political party, tradition, corporation and club. Furthermore, each of these "communio's", imaging the Eternal Event of Love, is itself not static, closed, or monotonous; but Eventful, Dramatic, Ecstatic, Serendipitous.
Let's contrast this with other types of conservatives.
The Strict Traditionalist replicates in every generation the pattern received from the past. Most traditional societies...primitive, ancient, and medieval...are such. With the current rate of technological/cultural change and our keen awareness of history this option is not available except to such outlier communities like the Amish and Hasidic Jews.
The Status Quo conservative wants to maintain the current distribution of wealth, power, status and privilege. Traditional Republican economics, normally referred to as "conservative" but now called "neo-liberal," in its defense of small government, low taxes, and minimal regulation is a classic example. The convoluted Donald Trump leads a populist revolt against the conservative establishment and the liberal elites but in his tax plan privileged the wealthy like himself. In that policy he exemplifies the status quo conservative.
A Reactionary Conservative wants to return to some earlier golden period before the fall from grace. Here again Trump is instructive. He calls us to "make America great again." This is very vague. His opponents find this to be racist: there is little hard, real evidence for that. As a fellow "boomer" I know intuitively what he wants. He has no deliberate policy, strategy or vision. He is nostalgic for the post-war era in which we were raised: thriving economy, world dominance, "Father Knows Best," Norman Vincent Peale and Bishop Fulton Sheen and Thomas Merton and Billy Graham, Elvis Presley, Ike, cultural unity and monotony, Davey Crockett, Ozzie and Harriet, a nation united against a clear enemy, gratitude for relief from the Depression and War, and boundless confidence and optimism. Of course for many things were not then as good as this narrative of nostalgia would have it. We have in this world no lasting city. We cannot return to the 1950s.
Organic conservativism is dynamic, intentional, alive, active, dramatic and eventful. But as it changes it maintains an interior integrity, identity, and form. Imagine you see your cousin, now 17 years old, after a 5 year separation. You were last together at the age of 12. The reunion is a wondrous encounter: the very same person but so different in looks, voice, demeanor, intellect, etc. He/she is the same but different. There is change and growth but within a continuity of identity and form. Ideally, he/she is more him/herself: stronger, smarter, happier, more attractive, competent, confident, and holy.
So it is with a community, organization, or institution that is organically conservative: it retains a continuity of personality but changes in a direction as to become more fully itself: the Church more holy, the family more thriving, the school more wise, the team more competitive, the tribe more prosperous and fruitful.
Clearly, the Catholic Church is quintessentially such a conservative, but dynamic, organism. Her identity, form or essence was given definitively, substantially by the life-death-rising-ascending-Spirit-sending Event of Jesus Christ. But she is not static or stuck; she is not strictly traditional, or status-quo-defending, or reactionary. She does not even seek to return to the Apostolic age, as do so many reformers who despise the actual, concrete, living Church and her splendid but flawed history.
Living in an age of rapid, profound change, we as Catholics need to distinguish between changes that are organic-wholesome-fruitful and those which are disruptive-destructive-sterile. In the next few letters I want to look back and identify both types of changes that have happened in my lifetime.
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