Journal of the Plague Year: On Integralism

Political theory is one of those disciplines that takes on a very different valence depending on what is going on in our broader social context.  When I was first introduced to political theory in college, in the halcyon late 90s, it felt a little bit frivolous.  Interesting, at least for me, to be sure, but the idea of debating the foundational principles of different forms of government felt like a truly intellectual exercise in a world where it certainly looked like our form of government was on its way to being universal.  Now, in a time when our system feels like it is cracking and in crisis, political theory feels anything but frivolous.

Crisis is the origin point of the English tradition of "liberal" political theory that became foundational to the American project, more specifically the English Civil War.  The English Civil War was between an explicitly theocratic insurgency opposed by an, while not exactly "tolerant" at least more broad-minded, establishment.  For a brief time, the insurgency achieved its goal and established the officially confessional state, only to collapse into in-fighting and sectarianism.  From this violence and bloodshed and dislocation did the English liberal tradition emerge, with the explicit goal of avoiding further rounds of sectarian blood-letting.  

In doing so, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the rest of them did not embrace the conclusion that their French counterparts did a generation or two later, which was that religion as such was the problem.  Instead, they concluded--and this is especially clear in Locke--that a government explicitly defined in religious terms would inevitably lead to the violence, as it would be positioned to coerce the innermost thoughts and self-identity of people toward whatever the state-approved vision of faith is.  If the state sets about to compel some people to change their core beliefs, then it is inevitable that those being coerced will resist this existential assault.  Compromise with the theocratic state is not possible without repudiating your own personhood and self-identity in a radical way, and so people generally will not.  A theocratic state is by definition, in a radical way, tyrannical, because it must police those things that are most personal to our sense of self.  Or, as the noted political theorist Axl Rose would say three hundred years later in the Guns-N-Roses song Civil War, "You can't trust freedom when it is not in your hand, when everybody's fighting for their Promised Land."  The problem is thus not religion (Locke in particular being, in modern parlance, a "person of faith"), but theocracy.  

All of which segues nicely into today's topic, which is Integralism.  Timothy Troutner in his excellent piece in Commonweal magazine defines Integralism as follows:

In place of liberalism’s supposedly neutral procedural arrangements, integralists hold that a just society should promote a particular, Catholic vision of the “common good.” They do not aim to pursue a Catholic agenda within pluralistic societies that defend religious freedom and other liberal rights, but to dictate the very terms in which the public square is understood. Their ultimate hope is to create “integral” Catholic regimes that “subordinate” temporal government to the spiritual authority of the Church.

Troutner's piece does an excellent job of breaking down the theological problems and deficiencies with the Integralist project, at least as set forth in the text at under review (Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy by Fr. Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister).  I don't have much to add on that front, except to point out that elevating "the family" into a ur-ideological category is a dead give-away that this is a thoroughly modern, as opposed to truly traditional, project.  Instead, I want to focus on the political theory dimension of Integralism.  For all of their disdain for the "liberal" tradition, I have never heard any of the Integralists respond in a substantive way to the core liberal (at least, English liberal) critique of their program--isn't the imposition of the "Catholic vision of the common good" on non-Catholics going to result in unending rounds of bloodshed?  How or why do you think that non-Catholics will accept being stripped of voting rights and citizenship in the new Integralist regime?  How exactly is this going to work except at the point of a gun?

But the problem is even more fundamental, in a sense, than that.  It's pretty easy to see why, to take a single example, the Jewish community would resist being disenfranchised and forced back into the ghetto.  But you also have the problem that the proposed citizens of your new regime, the regular everyday Catholics living in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, have to buy in to the idea that this needs to happen in their name.  And here you confront the unspoken and yet incredibly powerful question that English liberalism has injected into the political discourse--why should I care that my next-door neighbor has different beliefs than I do?  Is the life of the regular Catholic in Columbus, Ohio really made materially, or even spiritually, worse by the fact that their next-door neighbor celebrates Passover as opposed to Easter?  Or by the fact that the neighbors on the other side are two men or two women in a committed relationship?  In what way do I benefit from a government enforces my particular vision of the spiritual life on others?

I don't think the Integralists have an answer to that question either, mostly because I think they think it is an invalid question of a definitional level--ultimately, their only answer is Deus Vult.  But 300 years of people living in a liberal society have demonstrated to those people that tolerance and co-existence is possible, and that difference doesn't actually negatively impact their own faith and their own commitments.  Locke has been proven right, at least in the main, and so it's hard to see many, or even most, Catholics are going to sign up for the Integralist program, especially when it becomes clear that their neighbors are going to be disappeared in the night.

Troutner, correctly, points out that the practical implausibility of the Integralist project should not blind us to its danger.  Integralism is, and will always be, the domain of a relatively small cadre of folks who are profoundly disaffected with their place in the world for a variety of reasons, and who seek a "world turned upside down."  This is, at the end of the day, a power fantasy dressed up in theological clothes, a complex structure that justifies a world view that reduces down to "I should be able to tell other people how they live their lives, because in doing so I have power over them."  Oppression, no matter how many citations to theological documents and how much talk of the "common good" are thrown around, is the point.

In the 00s and into the early 10s, Americans (including me, to be clear) had more or less convinced themselves that this intellectual structure was only a problem when brown-skinned Muslims adopted it.  In the Year of our Lord two thousand and twenty, we can be under no such illusions.  The worst case scenario of Integralism is not the Integralist state (which I do think is impossible), but a trad Catholic version of ISIS, running hither and yon in the quixotic quest to bring about the "social reign of Christ the King."  "And," to borrow from both Marx and internet memes, "then the murders began."  We cannot allow ourselves the comforting fantasy that the crazies who behead people are some unique product of Islam, and that it somehow can't happen in our context.  This is a problem, a real problem, and it must be combatted.

Troutner's piece calls on Integralism to be combatted in the theological and ecclesiastical history sphere.  I would add to that, and suggest that it also be combatted in the political theory sphere, with a robust and uncompromising defense of political liberalism (in the Lockean sense).  Yes, liberalism by definition involves compromise and half-a-loaf outcomes.  We all have a temptation to want to get everything our own way, which leads us to resent the sacrifices liberalism insists we make.  But the alternative to liberalism is being at the receiving end of religiously-motivated oppression, ceaseless social violence, or both.  Political liberalism is not perfect, but it is better than its alternatives, and it works.  To quote the last of the political thinkers in this post, Mick Jagger, "you can't always get what you want; but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."  

Political liberalism is what we need, more now in these times than ever.