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    The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty
    The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty
    The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty

    By John C. Pinheiro

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    About this ebook

    The question of whether Catholicism is compatible with the American project in liberal democracy remains contentious. Many contemporary Catholic writers and intellectuals answer in the negative. In this volume, Professor John Pinheiro brings historical expertise to the topic, assessing the merits of the American project by focusing on the founding period. He examines the views of the founders and the realities of early American culture in light of the principles of Catholic social teaching and finds no simple answer to the question of Catholic and American compatibility. For the American experiment was not the realization of an ideological agenda; instead, it was the practical outworking of a commitment to protect traditional liberties. These liberties were largely consistent with Catholic doctrine. If the American project is not perfect, neither is it beyond redemption. Pinheiro points out that the task given to Catholics is not to raze the institutions of religious and political liberty but instead to “redeem the time” by embracing good and opposing evil in our own day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherActon Institute
    Release dateJul 19, 2019
    ISBN9781880595138
    The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty

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      Book preview

      The American Experiment in Ordered Liberty - John C. Pinheiro

      Foreword

      The longstanding and much-debated question of whether and to what extent Catholicism is compatible with the American project remains contentious. The question is closely tied to other, not-quite-synonymous ones, which take us beyond the United States to areas of concern to Christians in many national and cultural contexts: Is Catholicism compatible with democracy? Is it compatible with capitalism? With separation of church and state?

      In our own time there is once again a strong movement toward answering such questions in the negative. Unlike previous episodes in American history, much of the push comes not from anti-Catholic bigots who wish to deny papists a place in a Protestant or a secular society, but instead from writers and intellectuals who are themselves Catholics. Disillusioned with the failure of the Church in America to create a vibrant, orthodox, radically Christian faith community, they place blame on the acids of modernity that permeate American culture and on Catholics for failing to recognize and protect themselves from those corrosive influences. We have been too much in the world, they say, and have become of it.

      Insofar as that critique makes the Catholic encounter with American culture, politics, and economy more realistic and more securely grounded in Christian theology and praxis, it is a salutary movement. The temptation to confuse or conflate the City of God and the City of Man is constant, and eternal vigilance is the price of (genuine Christian) liberty.

      But there is also a danger in the tendency to find threat rather than promise in the American project: the possibility of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. The weaknesses in American culture must be weighed against its strengths. A theoretical ideal is not a fair measure of American accomplishments in building a society based on justice, truth, and freedom. It is better to compare the American experiment in ordered liberty with other cultures and nations that have actually existed.

      In this volume, Professor John Pinheiro brings historical expertise to the topic, assessing the merits of the American project by focusing on the founding period. He examines the views of the founders and the realities of early American culture in light of the principles of Catholic social teaching and finds no clear and simple answer to the question of Catholic and American compatibility. What he does conclude, however—and it is important—is that viewing America (or the founding) in ideological terms is a mistake. The American experiment was not at the outset the realization of an ideological agenda; instead, it was the practical outworking of a commitment to protect the liberties to which Americans believed themselves due. These liberties were, at least in large measure, consistent with or even derived from Catholic principles concerning the nature of the human person and social relations.

      If the American project is not perfect, neither is it beyond redemption. Pinheiro points out that the task given to Catholics is not, in a fit of despair, to raze the institutions of religious and political liberty (who knows what might take their place?), but instead to redeem the time by embracing what is good and discouraging what is bad in the current state of affairs. Pinheiro is a wise guide to discerning between the two as Christians—in America and across the world—seek a path forward in charity and truth.

      Kevin Schmiesing

      Acton Institute

      Introduction

      Finding Freedom’s Fulfillment in the Truth

      America, proclaimed Pope St. John Paul II at an American ballpark in 1995, has always wanted to be a land of the free. Today, the challenge facing America is to find freedom’s fulfillment in the truth. In the wake of the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, this question had a particular saliency for Americans in the 1990s. Had they won the Cold War? And if so, what had they won? Was there a purpose, even a providential one, in their victory? This question of freedom in truth and what to do with one’s freedom had long been a special challenge for Catholic Americans. The United States of America was a country born in revolution during the Enlightenment, often speaking the languages of liberalism and Protestant Christianity at the same time. While popes condemned this liberalism, American Protestants argued that Catholics were unable to participate in a democratic polity because their faith was inimical to civil and religious liberty. By its very nature, they argued, Catholicism was incompatible with democracy.¹

      John Paul II was aware of this history when it came to American freedom and the Catholic faith. In his short but profound homily, he pressed further on what he meant by finding freedom’s fulfillment in the truth. The question of this fulfillment had occupied two previous popes, Pius IX and Gregory XVI (both men of the early to mid-nineteenth century), each of whom had in specific contexts condemned liberalism and certain freedoms on which Americans placed great value. Late in the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIII condemned what he called Americanism, a censure that had a greater impact on European Catholics than it did on Catholic Americans. But John Paul had not come to Baltimore to condemn Americans. He had come to challenge them. We must guard the truth that is the condition of authentic freedom, the truth that allows freedom to be fulfilled in goodness.

      To what sort of truth was John Paul referring? The truth, said John Paul, that is intrinsic to human life created in God’s image and likeness, the truth that is written on the human heart, the truth that can be known by reason and can therefore form the basis of a profound and universal dialogue among people about the direction they must give to their lives and their activities. He boiled it down to truths about God and truths about the human person. Sometimes, witnessing to Christ will mean drawing out of a culture the full meaning of its noblest intentions, a fullness that is revealed in Christ. At other times, witnessing to Christ means challenging that culture, especially when the truth about the human person is under assault.²

      The basic question before a democratic society, John Paul went on to say, is how ought we to live together? The question of how one ought to live is among the oldest questions of mankind. Democracy adds to this, John Paul claimed, because we citizens have our own determinative role to play toward the common good. John Paul appealed to President Abraham Lincoln to answer this question about American democracy. During the Civil War, Lincoln had argued that America’s real roots were to be found in the claim that All men are created equal. America did have a founding, thought Lincoln, and its most important founding claim—one that preceded the Articles of Confederation as well as the US Constitution—was to be found in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. G. K. Chesterton argues that Jefferson in the Declaration dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal.… There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.³

      It was in Lincoln’s argument that John Paul found the answer for late twentieth-century American soul-searching. Importantly, this answer turned out to be the same Christian anthropology proposed by the Catholic Church: "President Lincoln’s question is no less a question for the present generation of Americans. Democracy cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the

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