The odds are you have already read about the article by Robert Reich in The American Prospect magazine. (Reich is the former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration and frequent guest on the evening television talk shows.) Reich has been getting considerable heat for his comments from Catholic commentators of a conservative bent.
That Dangerous Christian “Taliban”
I’d like to pile on a bit. Reich deserves the heat. But I would also like to add a qualifier or two. I think some of the criticism of him goes over the top.
First, why does Reich deserve the heat? Because he makes public the hostility toward religion that has been part of liberalism since its origins in Europe in the late 18th century. It was no coincidence that left-wing revolutionaries in France, Spain and Mexico massacred priests and religious once they took to the streets. I can’t fathom his motive, but Reich puts the Left’s motives on the table for all to see:
The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism is not the greatest danger we face.
At first glance, one might think that Reich is talking about Islamic fundamentalists and their jihad against the West. That would be a mistake. Certainly, he opposes Islamic fundamentalism — but for the same reason that he opposes what he calls “America’s religious right,” which he identifies as “mostly right-wing evangelical churches, but also right-wing Southern Baptists, anti-abortion Catholics and even a smattering of extreme pro-Israeli and anti-Arab Jews.”
Traditional Christians stand in the way of the enlightened world of the future that secular leftists plan for us, because, says Reich, they “want to promote the teaching of creationism in public schools, encourage school prayer, support anti-sodomy statutes, ban abortions, bar gay marriage, limit the use of stem cells, reduce access to contraceptives, and advance the idea of America as a ‘Christian nation.’” It has come to this: Adhering to these traditional values is what the Left means when they call us the “American Taliban.” It is good for us to be aware that there are those who harbor such a deep hostility toward us and our beliefs. It can help us bring into focus the maneuvering of the “progressives” in the media, the government and the academy. It is good to know the enemy.
The Church Is No Enemy of Reason
I have been searching the Internet to see if Reich has offered any explanation or apology for his comments. So far, nothing has come up. But here is why I suspect he might be willing to back off a bit in public. This is the qualifier I mentioned above: My hunch is that if someone were to ask Reich if he would describe Christian writers such as C.S. Lewis, Ronald Knox, Jacques Maritain and Christopher Dawson as “the greatest danger we face,” that he would assure us that he was not talking about people like that. I don’t think Reich would put prominent pro-life Catholics such as William F. Buckley, Antonin Scalia, or Paul Johnson in that category either. Nor Pat Buchanan, for that matter. (Nor Sean Hannity: Reich is a frequent quest on Hannity’s television program.)
Am I being overly generous to Reich? I don’t think so. I just can’t picture him playing Madame Lafarge at the foot of a guillotine. I think he would narrow his scope if given the opportunity. But let us not waste time speculating about which practicing Roman Catholics Reich would include in his group that poses “the greatest danger we face.” Perhaps by the time you read this he will make offer some clarifications on his theme. But whether or not that happens, we should make the point that, whatever Reich thinks of us, the Roman Catholic Church is not the enemy of reason, science and logic. Quite the opposite: The Church is the champion of rational inquiry. The Church has long taught that there is no conflict between right reason and the Faith. Truth is truth, and God is truth: This is the essence of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is why Leo XIII proclaimed him a model for Catholic philosophers in 1879 in the encyclical Aeterni Patris.
St. Thomas stresses that man was made by the Creator in His own image and likeness and that our capacity to reason is central to that image and likeness, a spark of the Divine given to us by God to discover the design and purpose of His creation. Reason is the tool used by science to unlock and harness the mysteries of the universe. The Church has nothing to fear from those who use reason to deepen our understanding of how the world works. The more we know of the creation, the more we know of the Creator.
Freedom: It’s Natural and Law
The same is true of human behavior. St. Thomas teaches that right reason will lead us to discover the natural laws that govern human life, both in regard to personal morality and the proper role of the individual in society. It is why we will be judged in the hereafter. Our capacity to reason is why we are expected to be able to know God, to love Him and to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next (in the words of the old Baltimore Catechism). The Church encourages us to use our intellect to probe the proper understanding of topics such as a just war, the propriety of capital punishment, the nature of marriage and sexuality, medical ethics, business ethics, and relations between nations. This is why the leading universities of Europe were founded by the Church’s teaching orders. It is why those teaching orders established the extensive network of universities in the United States. The papal encyclicals rely heavily on human reason to deepen our understanding of all these themes.
To be sure, the Church teaches that it has the right and duty to teach in Jesus’ name; to act as final arbiter in disputes over the correct understanding of the natural law on questions such as abortion and homosexual marriage. Also, the Church teaches that it is the guarantor of revealed truths in the Deposit of Faith that cannot be reached by unaided human reason. But the Church does not call for forced conversions of non-believers. It does not demand that Robert Reich accept our dogmas. (If the Church’s teaching on abortion ever becomes the law of the land in the United States, it will not be through papal edict, but because Catholics, as citizens, entered the public arena to apply right reason to shape public policy on an important matter of conscience, just as Christians did on issues such as racial justice and workers’ rights.)
The Church poses no threat to what Robert Reich wants to read about and discuss in public. Its places no limits on his right to propose reforms that will shape society to his liking. Indeed, the freedom of expression he enjoys and cherishes is a legacy of the Christian West, of the Church’s teaching about the need for society to respect the dignity of the individual in his or her relationship with God. Reich wouldn’t enjoy the First Amendment freedoms he champions if he had been unlucky enough to have been born in a society shaped by animism, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism — and certainly not, if he had been born in one of the totalitarian hell-holes created by secular leftists in the last century in places such as Russia, China, and Cuba.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at [email protected].
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
