The leftism of the Catholic Church, and why people don’t see it

Ed West writing in the Telegraph makes an important observation heard all too infrequently in mainstream discussion, that the Catholic Church, far from being conservative or reactionary as it is generally believed to be, is, on all issues but sex, very left wing. “On economics, crime and foreign relations the Vatican is way to the Left of any mainstream British political party,” West says. However, West fails to explain why the Church is falsely seen as reactionary. The reason is that, from the left’s point of view, the questions of sex, of traditional morality, and ultimately of God, are the decisive questions. It is for the same reason that William Jennings Bryan, the father of the modern Democratic party, is treated as a villain or, at best, as a non-person by today’s Democrats. Though he spent his entire career championing the common man and the expansion of the state for social-welfare and egalitarian purposes (an agenda first put into effect by Franklin Roosevelt several years after Bryan’s death), Bryan was a religious Christian, a conservative on morality, and a staunch opponent of Darwinism with its materialistic, reductive view of man. And the left cannot forgive him for that.

The lesson is that the war against God and moral truth is more fundamental to the left than the campaign for economic equality and security.

Here is West’s article.:

Why Catholics love to be kicked around by Ed Balls
Mar 19, 2009

Proof that Catholicism really is a masochist’s religion with this week’s Total Politics survey of religious affiliation and politics. Whereas Anglicans still favour the Tory Party over Labour, by 32 per cent to 23, Catholics stand by the son of the manse, with 29 per cent of those surveyed still supporting the party, and another 8 per cent supporting the even more anti-Catholic Liberal Democrats.

People who characterise the Catholic Church as this great force of reaction forget that, away from the subject of sex, it is fairly Left-wing. On economics, crime and foreign relations the Vatican is way to the Left of any mainstream British political party. The hierarchy in England and Wales, the “Magic Circle” as my colleague Damian Thompson calls them, are Lefties to a man. Take off their dog collars and caps, and many of the bishops could easily pass for bureaucrats tackling child poverty, social jwustice or carbon reduction on behalf of the Department of Nagging, Snooping and Social Engineering.

Traditionally English Catholics were disproportionately poor and Irish, two groups who do not normally vote for the man with the blue rosette. That great champion of the poor, Cardinal Manning (whose popularity with Irish dockers was so great that his funeral was the second largest, after Wellington’s, of the 19th century) began a tradition of red Catholicism, or at least opposition to the Tory party, that has lasted to this day.

Most of the Catholic hierarchy cheered Tony Blair’s election victory, not realising that they were getting the first really radical secular Government in British history. Labour may have ditched Marx but it has also ditched Methodism, and within its ranks are many strident anti-Christians who think Catholicism the most perverted strain of a reactionary cult, and who want to drive religion out of every area of life.

Under Labour we have had the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the incredibly illiberal and cruel Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (better known as the gay adoption law) and frequent attacks by that privately educated thug Ed Balls on church schools. And every time the Government puts the boot in, the Catholic Church says, “more sir, more”. Forget the Opus Dei cilice—having Ed Balls kick you in the goolies is far more satisfying for liberal Catholics.

[ 18 comments ]

March 21

William Vogt writes:

The Catholic Church is not leftist. Essentially alone among Western institutions, the Church resisted both Socialism (beginning in the 19th Century and continuing down to the present) and Nazism. So, on the two great leftist threats to the West of the last century and a half, the Church was right where many others were wrong. For example, in Germany, neither the Nazis nor the Communists had much support in Catholic areas. The totalitarians were popular in the Lutheran parts of the country. [LA replies: Of course the Church opposed the left, and even liberalism, in the 19th and early 20th century. The subject here is the post Vatican II Church.]

And little has changed since. [LA replies: Evidently Mr. Vogt has not heard of Vatican II and everything it has brought.] A great threat to the West today is the hollowing out of Western identity and the consequent sapping of the West’s will to live and to live by its historical values. The present and preceding Pope have called this threat the “dictatorship of relativism.” The substantive agreement between your ideas and theirs here seem pretty large to me. To take one example, the Pope campaigned to have the EU constitution contain a statement confirming Europe’s Christian heritage. He failed, of course. [LA replies: I beg to differ. That request by the Pope amounted to asking a secularist, leftist, quasi-totalitarian pig to put on Christian lipstick, under the assumption that the lipstick would make it Christian, and therefore ok. The Pope was basically saying that the evil, anti-human EU would be fine by him, so long as it paid lip service to Christianity. This did not speak well of him.]

What you (or Mr West) seem to be reacting to is the Church’s social gospel, its just war theology, and the low quality of the Bishops of the developed world. Like the Church’s response to socialism, the Church’s social gospel is old. The Church has always taught that rulers are responsible to seek the well-being of their subjects and has usually judged that this involves some level of social welfare spending. A regulatory state providing support for the poor is not leftist. If you are against these things, it is because your traditionalism is imperfect——-these things are, in fact, a traditional part of Western governance, going back at least as far as the Romans. I am not, of course, claiming that the current extent of the social welfare state either in the US or EU are optimal or required by Catholic theology.

The just war theology is also old. Clearly, that theology finds many wars immoral, including the Iraq War. I assume this is what Mr West is talking about when he finds the Church’s views on foreign policy leftist. Surely one can find the Iraq War unjust without being leftist.

On the quality of the Bishops, the Church suffered through two less-than-ideal Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI. These two sat in the See of Peter from 1958 to 1978. Because Popes, for the most part these days, appoint Bishops, because Bishops serve until age 75, and because Bishops have influence over the next generation(s) of Bishops in various ways, the appointments of these two Popes will continue to have influence in the Church for some time. The British Bishops are notoriously “wet.” Bad personnel decisions have bad consequences, but they have not changed the underlying character of the Church, nor have they changed her history.

Finally, on the left-leaningness of the Church in Britain. The Church in Britain has been persecuted for around five hundred years, sometimes viciously, sometimes mildly. This persecution largely came from the British establishment. Naturally Catholics there have not been big fans of the Tories and have often been fans of anti-establishment parties. And, as you have mentioned yourself, it is far from clear that the Tories are better than Labor anyway in terms of preserving Western culture.

The left correctly identifies the Church as its enemy. You incorrectly identify the Church as leftist.

LA replies:

You are imagining what you think are my criticisms of the Church and responding to them. I haven’t said anything about the social gospel or just war theology. To get an idea of my views on the Church, see my article, How liberal Christianity promotes open borders and one-worldism, where I discuss the modern Church’s cult of man. See my article on John Paul II, Is the Pope a neocon? (Here is an earlier, shorter version of that article.) See The proof that Pope John Paul II was calling for open borders. See this entry which contains a collection of my entries on the previous pope and the present pope.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 20, 2009 01:38 PM | Send