Linker & Douthat, pt. 2

Continuing the online debate over at the New Republic, and responding to Ross Douthat's opening post (about which I blogged here), Damon Linker writes:

. . .  Is my opposition to theoconservative ideology not better understood as opposition to orthodox Catholicism? Can you [i.e., Douthat] and Neuhaus, as Catholics, be good citizens of a liberal polity like the United States?

My answer is simple: Of course you can--on one condition. Like every other citizen, you must be willing to accept what I call "the liberal bargain." In my book, I describe this bargain as the act of believers giving up their "ambition to political rule in the name of their faith" in exchange for the freedom to worship God however they wish, without state interference. What does this mean, in practical terms? It means that your belief in what the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches is irrelevant, politically speaking. It simply shouldn't matter whether or not you think that justice has a divine underpinning, anymore than it should matter whether you prefer Jane Austen to Dostoevsky. In a word, liberal politics presumes that it's possible and desirable for political life to be decoupled from theological questions and disputes.

It seems to me that "liberal politics" presumes no such thing.  Or, if it does, it is kidding itself.  "Political life" is simply too big, and too many "questions" are, in the end, "theological," for the two to be entirely "decoupled."  To be clear:  Of course "church" and "state" should be separate, and state coercion should not be employed in order to coerce religious exercise or observance.  But, in Linker's view, it appears the "liberal bargain" is far more comprehensive, and rules out, say, voting for a minimum-wage increase because one thinks such a vote is demanded by a meaningful commitment to the preferential option for the poor.

But there is a complication: What if a faith forbids its adherents to accept the liberal bargain?  What if it explicitly refuses to permit believers to decouple their political and religious convictions? What if it demands unity--unity in the name of one set of non-negotiable theological truths? Such a religion may be incompatible with liberalism. Whether Islam is inherently illiberal in precisely this way is one of the most pressing questions confronting the Western world today.

And Catholicism? Since Vatican II--and especially since the start of Pope John Paul II's pontificate--the Catholic Church has staked out a novel position on these matters. Like most anti-liberal faiths, it has demanded a unity between politics and religion.

Huh?  This is, well, wrong.  See, e.g., Deus caritas est par. 28(a):  "Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God (cf. Mt 22:21), in other words, the distinction between Church and State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy of the temporal sphere.[19] The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated.:

But it has also maintained that Catholic moral teaching is perfectly compatible with liberalism--indeed, that it is the only solid and sure foundation for liberalism. By contrast, liberalism without Catholicism is, in John Paul's arresting phrase, "thinly disguised totalitarianism."

Catholicism does not so much reject what liberalism affirms as it denies the validity of the distinctions liberalism typically assumes--distinctions between private and public, secular and sacred, reason and revelation. In place of these distinctions, the Church proposes a higher synthesis, all the while claiming that such a synthesis produces a purified liberal politics. This is pretty much what the theocons propose for the United States.

I tend to think that this way of thinking about political life obscures far more than it clarifies. It thus also leads certain Catholics to misunderstand the character of modern politics--in particular, the possibilities it opens up and those it forecloses. Does that make me anti-Catholic? I look forward to hearing your answer to this question.

Me, too.