Class, Caste, and Hierarchy

My college friend Tim recommended Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, suggesting that the USA and the Catholic Church are both caste systems. I disagree. Let's contrast class, caste and hierarchy.

Class

Every developed society has classes; it is inevitable. The one absolute effort to create a really classless society, Mao's Cultural Revolution in China, 1966-76, competes with Hitler and Stalin as the greatest human calamity of the 20th century. Class society as we encounter it is in part an expression of human sin: the urge to dominate, control, possess. But it is not inherently so. Its essential form is positive: it allows the complexity, diversity, and richness of civilization.

A wholesome class society will have: a just distribution of responsibilities, influence and benefits; mutuality in respect in spite of inevitable clashes of interest; some flexibility in movement between classes; countervailing dynamics of power so none dominate; and a widely accepted religious consensus in tension with freedoms.

An example of such a society is feudal 13th century Europe. Serfs were the bottom of society but they were not slaves. They were protected from Vikings and Visigoths by the knights who gave their lives in combat. They were served by the clergy, who by and large lived celibately and obediently. Monks prayed in monasteries and developed culture and agriculture; Friars wandered around, living poverty, preaching the Gospel. Various orders of women religious lived their own lives, largely free of men. Craftsmen in their guilds had their distinctive, rich cultures and freedoms. The nobility, along with clergy, resisted an expansive royalty (e.g. Magna Carta, England, 1215). Church and State endlessly fought each other for power and prerogatives. It was not a utopia, not a "Camelot." Plenty of sin. But it was a rich, diverse, thriving, complicated universe respectful of the rights of the different groupings.

Another example of a relatively healthy class society is the USA 1945-65. The power of rich, capitalist, often WASP Republicans was countervailed and sometimes trumped by the largely ethnic, Catholic working class: politically in the Democratic Party, economically by the unions, culturally by the Churches. The black family was making great strides economically and religiously (intact father/mother families); women were largely happy to have their men home safe from war and getting lots of overtime; Puerto Ricans were streaming out of their island to NYC for opportunities; the financial gap between capital and labor was narrow as suburban neighborhoods gathered businessmen, lawyers, doctors, factory workers and truck drivers all together on the same block. This was not a utopia or a "Camelot." Plenty of sin. But it was a thriving society, with a huge pie to share, and a congenial, ecumenical, Protestant-but-Catholic-friendly, increasingly anti-racist, anti-communist consensus.

Now, 60 years later, our classes have moved more towards a caste configuration. Our meritocracy allows the most talented and ambitious from all groups to rise to the top. An obsessional anti-racism at the upper echelons has marginalized residues of racism and ethnic prejudice. Sexual identity politics, the ideology of the affluent, has elevated the status of transgressive groups. But the great misfortune is the shrinking of the middle class, the diminishment of the unions,  the persistence of a multi-racial Culture of Poverty, and the division into two societies, largely around education. One group is able to access education/connection/opportunity and flourish. The other half is far more impoverished than their union member parents and vulnerable to family chaos, addictions and deaths of despair.

Isabel Wilkerson's view of our "caste" society is diametrically opposed to the reality I see. She says that the dominant class, Trump voters, are overwhelmingly white and male. I see the Trump phenomenon as the rage of the lower class, disparaged by cosmopolitan elites and deprived of the manufacturing base that sustained an earlier prosperity. I see the upper tier of society as increasingly feminine as women are outperforming men in the academy and a crisis of masculinity has now become a pandemic, especially among the poor. I see the rich and the poor class both as colorless, embracing all groups in a class divide based on merit.

Wilkerson describes a caste system in which she, a black and a woman, is at the bottom. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner; a best-selling author; taught at Princeton. She would see me myself, an old, white man, at the top of the pyramid of power. Her income and wealth may be 10 times greater than mine. I am happy with my place in the scheme of things; but she is far, far above me in the pecking order. As a woke, black, Ivy-league-connected woman, she is at the very pinnacle of privilege and power, along with Oprah (who endorsed the book) and Michele (who would surely be the most popular potential presidential candidate from either party.)

Nevertheless, our society remains largely diverse, robust, and free. Yuval Levin has pointed out that neither the Right nor the Left are able to dominate this fractured, huge society so both sides usually see themselves as losing the Culture War. There remain a mesmerizing variety of interest groups...religious, ethnic, economic, regional...which compete and constrain each other in a manner that allows a fair degree of freedom. Not a utopia; not a "Camelot."

Caste

Wilkerson rightly identifies Nazi Germany, Hindu India, and our anti-bellum/Jim Crow South as caste systems.  Three aspects stand out:

1. An extreme inequality in distribution of goods.

2. A rigidity that prohibits movement between groups.

3. A religious sense of purity that sees the underclass as contaminated.

Let's see if the USA in 2023 is such a system.

My view is that inequality of opportunity and result has worsened since 1965. The wealth/income gap between the lower and upper levels has greatly increased. The class divide has worsened. But I would still not go so far as to see a caste system.

Our meritocratic society is extremely mobile: people are constantly moving up and down the ladder of affluence and influence. Those with less talent, ambition and connections become "losers" and suffer loss of dignity, simmering rage and despair. The smart, energetic and competent become "winners" and enjoy inflated self esteem, status, and material abundance. It awakens anxiety in the upper tiers and the aspiring middle classes who worry that their children will not attend the best schools and get good jobs. This is not, in my mind, an entirely healthy society. But it is NOT a caste society.

Wilkerson gives vile examples of the "contamination" concept: a swimming pool had to be drained because a single black child swam in it. This is, on the face of it, social psychosis, insanity. She, along with her entire coterie, is kicking a horse that died fifty years ago.   Our liberal elite are anti-racist in a self-congratulatory, boastful, self-serving manner. Yet they shamelessly manifest their contempt for the "deplorables" of their cosmos: Trump voters, rednecks, proud boys, Orthodox Jews, anti-vaxxers, traditional Evangelicals and Catholics, gun lovers, uneducated evolution-and-global-warming deniers. 

She constructs in her book an imaginary caste system, perhaps, to camouflage  her real position at the top of a viciously unjust political/cultural order.

Hierarchy

Etymologically, "hier" means "sacred, holy, supernatural" and "arch" means rule. So the word means: "rule by the holy, sacred, supernatural." 

This is entirely different from the accepted understanding of hierarchy as a social order of rankings, top to bottom, with power and privilege concentrated at the top. To the liberal, secular, democratic mind, hierarchy is always oppression of the lower by the upper. The accusation that Catholicism is a caste system suggests a now-secularized version of the classic Protestant contempt for the Catholic clerical-sacramental economy. In a world without the supernatural, however, it expresses the autonomy and resentment of the Sovereign Self who bows to nothing and no one.

For the Catholic, "hierarchy" is a sacred, precious, tender Word. It indicates that the Eternal, the heavenly, has come to us, here on earth, in a fleshly, concrete, systematic, institutional manner.

At a priestly ordination, we wait in line for the first blessing of the priest and then kiss his hands. Because these very human hands will bring us the very Body of Christ. Because this flawed, sinful man will absolve our sins. 

In the Catholic cosmos, Mary reigns as Queen of heaven and earth. She is superior to angels, devils, kings, popes, saints and sinners. She was a poor, humble female from a conquered people. Tradition has it that Lucifer and his legions revolted rather than defer to such a creature. Every free creature faces the same decision: revolt or surrender.

The entire hierarchy exists to serve the ever-embodied Christ who finds his highest expression in the Sacred Host: small, thin, weightless, tasteless, quiet, hidden in the tabernacle and mostly ignored.

The slander against our hierarchy is that it is powerful, arrogant, mostly white men trying to control others' lives. Consider the reality. Priests give up marriage, family, descendants and sexual expression. They pledge obedience to another. They make almost no money. (The just resigned President of Seton Hall University here in NJ was making $1.7 million annually. If a priest takes the job, in accord with the by-laws, he may make $21,000.) In todays progressive society, they are largely despised as retrograde, superstitious and associated with pedophilia. 

The word "catholic" means "universal or inclusive of all." And so we are compelled to reach out an bring into our bosom those of every race, nation, ethnicity. Today is the feast of St. Peter Clavier, a Spaniard who met the slave boats in Cartagena,, Columbia, with food, water, medicine, catechesis and baptism. He is said to have welcomed into the Church over 300,000 of these suffering Africans. That is the Catholic hierarchy.

The Church is composed of distinct "orders" which serve each other. This is different from classes or castes. The most obvious is the apostolic orders of deacon, priest, bishop. From the beginning these were structured by poverty, chastity and obedience: the very opposites of power, privilege, comfort. Obviously, our actual priests fall short of the ideal; but the form is clear and pure and the opposite of a caste.

Among the first "orders" to emerge organically in the Church were virgins and widows. Spontaneously, in patriarchal Rome, young women were grasped by the love of Christ and passionately surrendered themselves to virginity, prayer, and service to the poor. Many gave their lives as martyrs. Eventually these holy urges found expression in religious orders where women lived mostly in freedom from men. Likewise, "widows" were early recognized as a sacred order, women deprived of husbands and income, in need of charitable assistance, who are close to heaven in their prayer and holiness. Even today, in black evangelicalism, the "Church Mother" is recognized and respected, if informally and spontaneously. In Catholic parishes as well we see that it is mostly women who fill the Churches and staff volunteer programs. 

We see here a complex, rich, thriving society of interlocking orders: the masculine (imaging the Groom) priesthood, monks, friars, hermits, cloistered and active orders of nuns, consecrated virgins, lay institutes, brothers, various lay associations/movements, and of course the fundamental "base Church" of the family. Each has its specific tasks, powers, charisms, privileges. The Pope himself is no absolute monarch but oriented to service of the entire Church and fidelity to the received Tradition. Even Pope Francis with his incoherent, irritated discontent with the Church he received has not significantly challenged any fundamental Church doctrine, not contraception, not masculine priests, not homosexuality.

We Need More Hierarchy

We need, at every level of human life, to be under the influence of God, the Eternal, the heavenly.  We need more "rule by the Sacred." In the created realm we need to open ourselves to the resonances from heaven in the True, the Good and the Beautiful

Let us contrast power with authority. Power is the capacity to force someone, externally, as in police action, warfare and power politics. As in power tools.  It is extrinsic, not interior. It has its proper place in things; but it is overrated.

Authority is not coercion. It is the radiance of an interior Good, Truth or Beauty that attracts the heart, intellect and will in freedom. As such, it is influential. Why do we go to a Taylor Swift concert? We are not compelled. We are drawn by the loveliness of her music, voice, performance and style. Why do we devour books in our spare time? We are not compelled. We are driven by a craving to know Reality, to be engaged by Truth. Why do we admire Mother Teresa and other saints? We are not compelled. We delight in her generosity, freedom, goodness. 

So we see that "authoritative" is opposed to "authoritarian." The former attracts from a radiance of interior goodness; the later coerces through violence. The hierarchical economy of the Catholic Church is authoritative in its appeal to human freedom. The caste society is violence of the above to the below. They are polar opposites.

I do not want my children to be "empowered women" or "powerful men." Of course I want them to have interior fortitude; proper self-esteem; and energetic, assertive generosity. I want them to be receptive of the Good/True/Beautiful in the ever-surprising, dramatic events of life and to radiate that and influence many for the good.

USA 2023 is not a caste system. It is fractured, polarized, adrift. It has lost its roots in religion. "Religion" etymologically drives from "bond" so it indicates our bonding with God and each other. We have sundered these bonds diabolically (etymology of "diabolical" is to break apart) on behalf of the sterile, despairing, secular isolation of individualism, narcissism, and the therapeutic. 

We do not need a Darwinian evolution of science/technology deeper into nihilism. We do not need the sexual liberation of Marcuse, Reich, militant feminism and the LGBTQ crusade. We do not need a power take over in the Marxist dialectic of Alinsky, identity politics, CRT, and the hard Left.

We need to open our hearts, intellects, wills, and every social organism to the re-enchantment of the cosmos which can be precisely dated: the Immaculate Conception of Mary. At that precise moment, the heavenly indwelt the earthly in a definitive, permanent, pure fashion. At that moment the Holy Spirit, already anticipating the redemptive Passover of the Son, indwelt a minute, feminine, human creature to prepare a home for God himself. From that seed an endless, indeed eternal surge of grace, live and love flow. Since then we live under the maternal Queenship of Mary (a matriarchy) who collaborates with her son, Christ our King, under the fatherhood of God the Father (patriarchy.)

We cannot adequately give thanks, praise, and exultation for this Splendid Kingdom, for this Rule by the Holy!