Secularism, a Monstrosity
Reflections for the Centenary of the Encyclical on Christ the King
When evoking the legislative attacks that modern democracies have been waging on natural law, we refer above all to the moral law regarding marriage and human life (the lack of any civil value accorded to religious weddings, divorce, the equality granted to legitimate as well as illegitimate children, contraception, abortion, civil contracts or so-called “marriage” between persons of the same sex, surrogacy, euthanasia, etc.). Yet, plunged as we are into a secularization considered to be irreversible, we forget precisely the radical attack on the law inscribed in the human heart: the secularism of the state.
It was mainly this theme, namely “the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities,” that Pius XI addressed a hundred years ago in the encyclical Quas primas on the kingship of Christ (December 11, 1925): it explained in particular how men who legitimately govern the City do so in the name of Jesus Christ and that they must conduct themselves as his representatives, especially by rendering public worship to God in the name of the State which they govern.
This article takes up and develops some of the themes from our introduction to a “centennial edition” of Quas Primas published by L’Homme Nouveau[1].
Christendom, or politics enlightened by Christology
To affirm that politics must be moral is an understatement. In reality, according to the Greeks, especially Aristotle, politics encompasses morality, which is one of its components. Indeed, by virtue of being a member of the polis, man can only lead a morally upright life, in accordance with reason, as a member of this global society, which we would today call the State, which alone possesses everything necessary for the fulfillment of his humanity. The “good life”, living well, which is the proper end, the common good, that this society has as its end to ensure, is achieved through the rules and laws that its magistrates promulgate in order to guide and protect citizens in all aspects of life, by measuring their actions against the criterion of the law of nature inscribed by God in the heart of every man: their role is to lead, one might even say to educate, their subjects through their laws by punishing evil and rewarding goodness (1 Peter 2:13-14 and Romans 13:4-5). This bene vivere, according to the virtues, of which the most important, politically speaking, is justice, thus encompasses family life, education, economic activities, the care for physical and moral well-being, the defense of the City and of its members, the protection of religious life, the entire field of art and aesthetics, etc. Obviously, this politics, which thus constitutes the undergirding order of human activity, has always been ‒ perhaps because of what it represents ‒ the stage on which countless temptations, vices, sins, and acts of violence have been enacted. Christ is King of nations, and the devil is prince of the world, for there are two cities…
The fact remains that the members of this political body are more strongly, or rather more fundamentally, united among themselves than are the members of a family. St. Thomas speaks of “mutual assistance” within the body of the State towards its common good: “[Since the virtuous life is the end of the political body], only those who render mutual assistance to one another in living well form a genuine part of an assembled multitude”[2]. Citizens normally maintain this altruistic relationship known as friendship, which is the foundation, in the natural order, of patriotism.
For, indeed, in this regard we are in the natural order, that of the life which, if it is good, disposes us to receive the supernatural goods dispensed by that other society which is also full, the Church of Jesus Christ, but in the order of the life of sanctifying grace to which man can attain. Hence the role of defenders and protectors of the Church fulfilled (in theory) by princes and magistrates in Christendom, with the two orders, natural and supernatural, however distinct they may be, intertwining as the second rests upon the first.
Natural reason can thus attain the affirmation of St. Paul in Romans 13:1, according to which nulla potestas nisi a Deo, which led all ancient societies to sacralize power: there is no authority except from God. However, the doctrine of Christ the King makes it explicit: nulla potestas nisi a Christo, there is no authority that does not come from Christ. Knowing that Adam, the father of the entire human family, is the archetype of every father, every leader, and a fortiori every ruler, Christ is the new Adam also as King, who in this case fulfills this regency over the poleis.
The encyclical Quas primas developed its theological reasoning as follows: the sovereignty that Christ-Man has over all men and all human societies is, on the one hand, the consequence of the union of Christ’s human nature and of his divine nature in the Person of the Word, that is to say, the hypostatic union; and on the other hand, this sovereignty is his by right of conquest, through his death on the Cross, thanks to which he bought “with a great price” the soul of every man (1 Cor 6:20). This sovereign domain, explained Pius XI, embraces all men without exception, including infidels and Christians separated from communion with him by schism. “Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ.” Therefore, those who legitimately govern peoples, and whose authority thus derives from that of Christ, the Man-God and Redeemer, are endowed with a Christian character that gives full meaning to the divine right of every ruler, this dignity in turn ennobling the duties of the governed.
Those who govern peoples must, as such, render God worship
It was Leo XIII who developed most extensively the doctrine of the religious duties of the State, to which Quas primas gave the final touch. Immortale Dei, in 1885, contained a highly elaborate theological exposition on the political nature of man, the divine right of legitimate governments of the City, whatever the form of those governments, and the religious character, according to the law of nature, of those governments, which must render worship to God and also promote the practice of religion among their subjects: “The State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. […] All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety.”
Furthermore, once the message of the Gospel has been preached to a nation, it is incumbent upon the civil government to recognize the Church as the dispenser of supernatural goods that can lead man to his blessed supernatural end. Its imperative duty will be to protect it and give it all the means to spread, including by contributing as an “outside bishop” to the defense of orthodoxy. Leo XIII, again in Immortale Dei, evoked the ideal of Christendom, whose restauration St. Pius X called for[3], namely, that “time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel”. This era was subverted by “those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law.”
Libertas praestantissimum, three years later, in 1888, contained this fundamental passage linking the obligation of worship to the common good to which the City is ordered: “God it is who has made man for society, and has placed him in the company of others like himself, so that what was wanting to his nature, and beyond his attainment if left to his own resources, he might obtain by association with others. Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. […] Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraved upon it. This religion, therefore, the rulers of the State must preserve and protect, if they would provide ‒ as they should do ‒ with prudence and usefulness for the good of the community.”
This is to be done, of course, with a view to Christendom, which once was to be preserved and now is to be restored. That the government of the City has a duty to render public worship to God, with all that this entails, and that this duty is part of the natural law, was symptomatically disregarded by Jacques Maritain in his second period, that of Integral Humanism[4], a decade after Quas primas. Renouncing the ideal of a “sacred” Christendom, he wanted to promote, in the context of the 1930s, against totalitarianism, a “secular Christendom” identified with a pluralistic democracy in which it would not be the rule of the majority that would be elevated to the supreme rule of good and evil, but “the higher moral law by virtue of which men are bound in conscience to what is right and good”. In other words, a natural Christendom would be established with all men of good will, which would content itself with respect for the natural law, but a natural law stripped of the obligation for the State ‒ which would remain a pluralistic democracy (religious liberty) ‒ to render worship to God.
This is the horizon of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious liberty, as explained in the post-conciliar texts dealing with politics. Thus, the Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on November 24, 2002, presents the non-confessional nature of the State as self-evident: “Promoting the common good of society, according to one’s conscience, has nothing to do with ‘confessionalism’ or religious intolerance” (n. 6). However, the Note states that this political society must respect morality: “For Catholic moral doctrine, the rightful autonomy of the political or civil sphere from that of religion and the Church – but not from that of morality – is a value that has been attained and recognized by the Catholic Church and belongs to the inheritance of contemporary civilization.” Political society must be secular and moral, a morality that is broadly speaking reduced to conjugal morality, referred to as the “pro-life” morality.
Natural law, understood in this manner, is thus stripped of the obligation, incumbent upon the State, to recognize God and can thus go hand in hand with secularism. Admittedly, the term secularism can have a perfectly acceptable meaning, albeit dangerous to use, signifying the autonomy of the Church and the State. But its strict and habitual meaning is the non-confessional nature of the State and, above all, the free circulation of religious error. When Pius XII attempted a risky revival of the term “secularism”, precisely in the sense of distinguishing between the religious and the political, he was careful to point out simultaneously that it was a “secularism” that implied the necessary union of Church and State: “As if such a legitimate and sound secularism of the state were not one of the principles of Catholic doctrine; as if it were not a tradition of the Church to strive continually to keep the two powers distinct, but also always united, according to just principles” (Speech of March 23, 1958). Yet, understood according to the habitual meaning, namely, the principle of the neutrality of the State, secularism is not only unsound, but it is a natural impossibility for a political society worthy of the name: it is a monstrosity.
For in its proper order, the natural order, political society requires the governance of God and of his law, and consequently the recognition of God and of his law. The thought of Maritain, which we have just evoked, greatly inspired Paul VI. The conciliar text on religious liberty thus reflects a dissociation of the definition of man from the society willed by God: the human person, a religious subject in his individual capacity, would be created beyond society, beyond any land; he would certainly always find himself situated in some political community, but fortuitously, this society being by definition neutral.
In fact, this deviation, which affects the understanding of human nature, stems from the individualistic undermining of the traditional City brought about by the French Revolution. The thinker who, in the aftermath of this Revolution and in opposition to it, most insisted upon the necessarily religious character of every political society, without however confounding it with the religious society, i.e. the Church, was Louis de Bonald. According to him, God is present in this polis which was created at the same time as men: “God is the general will that conserves the inner society of the intelligences of which he is a part[5].” This society is indeed necessary, since it is both the means and the end of the moral action of these intelligences, that is, of action in accordance with reason. Understanding the common good that this primordial society ‒ the political society ‒ pursues, namely, to enable its members to live according to the good, also allows us to understand that God and magistrates are its “conservative powers,” according to Bonald’s expression. Not only would it betray its essential duties by turning away from God, but it would also bring about the disintegration of its nature. It would cease to exist as a natural political society to the extent that its neutrality would deprive it of its “general will to exist”.
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The message of Quas Primas was perfectly clear a century ago in a certain number of countries whose destiny it either consolidated or changed, but it seems light years away from the Western society in which we are currently living. So, in this present-day society, what is to be done?, to employ Lenin’s question. What is to be done to live in a modern democracy? What is to be done to prepare for a “way out” of this democracy? While reflecting on this, it might be useful to compare ourselves, all things being equal, with the dissidents of the communist societies before 1989, communism being another form of democracy born of the Revolution. The Czech Vaclav Benda, followed by other dissident thinkers, coined the concept of the “parallel polis”, which involved the creation of political, economic, and information structures parallel to those of the established order, enabling its members to survive and prepare for the replacement of the tyrannical regime in power.
Admittedly, the concept of a “parallel polis” is debatable, insofar as it seeks to organize supposedly autonomous enclaves; (symptomatically, Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option – in French: Comment être chrétien dans un monde qui ne l’est plus ? Le Pari bénédictin, Artège 2027 ‒, praises Benda’s “parallel polis”); yet what is particularly questionable is the ultimately liberal inspiration behind Benda’s project of resistance to communist oppression, which, after the fall of the Berlin wall, led the first generation of Eastern European leaders, Václav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, to see their projects dissolve into liberal democracy. Nevertheless, a culture of dissent, the organization of an expressly non-conformist means of survival, particularly in the fields of education and religion, along with the long-term preparation for a “way out” of the present situation, are modes of action that can be inspired today by the doctrine of Quas primas.
Abbé Claude Barthe
[1] Orders can be placed at: https://hommenouveau.aboshop.fr/common/product-article/740.
[2] De Regno, l. 2, c. 3, in Michel Nodé-Langlois, Penser le politique, Dalloz 2015, p. 100.
[3] With the famous sentence in the letter on the Sillon movement, of August 25, 1910: “We will not build the city other than as God has built it; we will not build society unless the Church lays the foundations and directs the work; no, civilization is no longer to be invented, nor is the new city to be built in the clouds. It has existed, it does exist; it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic city.”
[4] First published in French by the Éditions du Cerf in 1936, then in English by Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1968.
[5] Louis de Bonald, Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux, reproduction Essai, p. 92.