Dubya and Catholic Social Teaching

By FRANKLIN FOER

Is George W. Bush an unwitting papist? You wouldn't think so, given his infamous flirtation with anti-Catholic bigot Bob
Jones--not to mention his very public born-again evangelicalism and his coterie of evangelical advisers. But Bush's big idea, compassionate conservatism, owes a great deal to Catholicism. Intellectual genealogies of the Bush campaign usually trace back to Marvin Olasky, the evangelical University of Texas academic who wrote the 1992 book The Tragedy of American Compassion. But Olasky's big idea--junking the welfare state in favor of moralistic charities--didn't come out of nowhere. It has strong roots in Catholic neoconservative doctrine, most importantly in the work of two intellectuals, Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak, who hatched the idea as a way to reconcile their two historically hostile loves: Catholic faith and faith in the free market.

Their primary tool has been the Catholic concept of "subsidiarity"--the idea that social problems are best understood and solved by the organizations and people closest to them. (When Bush met Catholic leaders last September, he acknowledged compassionate conservatism's debt to subsidiarity, though he mispronounced it "supsidiary.") Subsidiarity became an important part of Catholic doctrine with Pope Pius XI's 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.

Pius hadn't intended to presage Barry Goldwater. He'd meant to triangulate, to split the difference between the twin evils of soulless laissez-faire capitalism and soulless socialism. Like all calls for a third way, the church was vague about how much state intervention it would tolerate. But it probably wanted a fair amount. At least, that was the interpretation of both liberal welfare staters like Franklin Roosevelt and corporatists like Benito Mussolini. In fact, in a 1932 speech, FDR pointed to the encyclical to justify intervention in the market, which he described in clearly Catholic language as "social justice through social action."

His statist strain is still potent in Catholic politics. You can see it in Europe's Christian Democratic parties, which have traditionally eschewed Republican-style libertarianism. You can see it in America's Catholic bishops (with their thundering invocations of government responsibility to the poor), in America's Catholic liberals (the Kennedys, House Minority Whip David Bonior, or TipO'Neill), and even in some Catholic conservatives (Pat Buchanan). But, in the last 25 years, Catholic neocons have tried to nudge the statists aside and reconcile papal social teachings with the unfettered market. They have lobbied the Vatican through an international coterie of like-minded cardinals and intellectuals. (Although, truth be told, the pope remains the world's most prominent critic of corporate capitalism.) And they have churned out reams of essays and books to prove the harmony of Catholicism and capitalism. Novak, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has written a theological justification of the corporation and a shelf of books championing classical liberalism. As Neuhaus, editor of the influential journal First Things, puts it, "Capitalism is the economic corollary of the Christian understanding of man's nature and destiny."

Like all authentic neocons, Neuhaus and Novak started on the left. As a Lutheran priest (who later converted), Neuhaus headlined anti-war rallies and toiled in ghetto parishes. Novak, a sociologist who studied white ethnics, shelled for Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign. But both were ticked off by liberalism's dalliance with liberation theology and the nuclear freeze. Fuming at the left, they went down the Bristol path, becoming fierce opponents of the welfare state and brash proponents of the private sector.

But, unlike the mostly secular Jews who traveled the same ideological road, Neuhaus and Novak saw their project as theological as well as political. To reconcile their capitalist faith in self-interest with Catholicism's abnegation of self-interest, Neuhaus and Novak have not only highlighted subsidiarity, they have redefined Pius's concept of it--removing any statist inflection and making it a devolutionary doctrine. Rhetorically, subsidiarity latches them to the Catholic tradition of social justice and gives them cover when their left-wing Catholic brethren accuse them of callously betraying the catechism with their hostility to government expenditures. There's no need for the sclerotic welfare state, Novak has argued, when "the creative impulse is located in the people at the grass roots who no longer trust big government." In neocon hands, subsidiarity is a moral argument that state and local government (instead of the feds) and local community groups (instead of government at all) best serve the poor.

For Republicans, frequently accused of callousness themselves, the rhetoric serves the same purpose: It helps them deflect charges that they're indifferent to the plight of the poor. Speechwriter Peggy Noonan, a Catholic, tried to work Neuhaus and Novak's notions into President Bush's repertoire. (Remember "A thousand points of light"?)

And it's no coincidence that George W., who faces even greater pressure to shake his party's reputation for coldhearted libertarianism, has incorporated neocon Catholic language into his campaign. In his first major stump speech last July, Bush invoked "solidarity" and the "common good," two phrases central to Catholic thought, while proposing to spend a small fortune on faith-based charities.

Of course, the Bush campaign has also called on secular-minded advisers, most notably James Q. Wilson of "broken windows" fame. But clear ties bind Bush and his proposals to the Catholic neocons. In meetings with Neuhaus, Deal Hudson (editor of the conservative Catholic journal Crisis), and Catholic criminologist John DiIulio, Bush has received tutorials on Catholic social teachings. His speechwriter Mike Gerson, an evangelical, has consumed the works of Neuhaus, Novak, and their comrade George Weigel. And even Olasky says the campaign agenda has its roots in subsidiarity: "Catholic social teachings and subsidiarity have been a strong strain in the shaping of compassionate conservatism.... It has provided a structural framework."

One reason it's so easy for evangelicals to adopt the teachings of Catholic intellectuals is that neocon Catholics have always made a big deal of their ecumenism, especially toward evangelicals. In 1994, First Things published a declaration titled "Evangelicals and Catholics Together." Signed by Neuhaus, Pat Robertson, and Chuck Colson, it stated that "there has been in recent years a growing convergence and cooperation between Evangelicals and Catholics" and that "we will do all in our power to resist proposals for euthanasia, eugenics, and population control that ... betray the moral truths of our constitutional order." After the Bob Jones episode, Neuhaus went so far as to deflect attention from Jones and blame the "anti-Catholic and anti-evangelical prejudices entrenched among those who, in a moment of partisan contortion, expressed such touching concern about alleged anti-Catholicism in the current presidential race."

But evangelical reliance on Catholics isn't simply a function of goodwill; it's a function of need. Because of their conscious disengagement from public life, from the Scopes trial to the 1970s, as well as their often anti-intellectual focus on biblical literalism, American evangelicals have not developed nearly as vibrant a public intellectual tradition as Catholics have. This reliance extends beyond subsidiarity per se. On abortion, for instance, evangelicals, including Bush, now subscribe to the argument that the state should "expand the circle of freedom" and "protect the weakest member of society"--an argument
about solidarity initially developed by Neuhaus.

Catholic neocons, hoping for a long-term alliance with evangelicals built around their core ideas, are thrilled at their intellectual influence within the Bush campaign. But the central test of that alliance is neither intellectual nor theological but electoral. The campaign, which in the weeks following the Bob Jones debacle put a priest onstage with Bush at every possible opportunity, clearly has more than a theoretical interest in Neuhaus and Novak's work. Even before Bob Jones, Bush Svengali Karl Rove said churchgoing Catholics would be this year's soccer moms--the essential swing voters to whom rhetoric must be tailored. Crisis's Hudson vets important speeches. And Bush has explicitly rejected the "leave us alone" libertarianism that is thought to drive away the socially conservative Catholics who voted for Ronald Reagan but against Bob Dole. If George W. wins in November, expect Catholic social doctrine to make a prominent appearance in his State of the Union address. If he loses, subsidiarity's theoretical elegance won't matter. It will be thrown out the window and replaced with some updated version of the more relativistic Rockefeller Republicanism that, if it has religious roots at all, finds them in mainline Protestantism.

And if that fails? Perhaps Buddhism has an untapped neoconservative strain.

Recently: Benjamin Soskis argued that the Catholic/evangelical coalition was a myth. Jacob Heilbrunn traced the origins of the neocon/theocon rift. Franklin Foer explored the cultural rift between Christian and Jewish neocons. He last wrote for TNR about wayward media critic Howard Kurtz.

BraveNews World
Email Webmaster
Staff Info