Tea at Trianon: Liberal and Conservative

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Liberal and Conservative

Two words Catholics need to stop using. Either you are a Catholic, or you are not. To quote author Emily Stimpson:

No matter what the politicians say, no one political party is the standard bearer for the Catholic Faith. Both, in some way, are at odds with Church teaching. Forgetting that is a shortcut to cafeteria Catholicism. It encourages people to think they can disregard some of the Church’s doctrines simply because their preferred political party says they can.

And they can’t. That’s not how it works. Shocking though this may be, the DNC and RNC are not divinely appointed arbiters of the moral universe. If we’re Catholic, we’re supposed to believe that job has long been taken by the Church. So, it’s her voice, not MSNBC’s or Fox News’, to which we should be listening.

Last but not least (really, most of all), attaching words like “liberal” and “conservative” to the Catholic Faith skews people’s understanding of the nature of the Faith itself.

Let’s take a trip to the dictionary. For all its various meanings, the word “liberal” fundamentally means “one who liberalizes.” And one who liberalizes is one who seeks to “reform something and make it less strict.” Likewise, the word “conservative” denotes “one who conserves.” And one who conserves is one who “keeps something from harm, loss, or decay.”

In other words, attaching the terms “liberal” and “conservative” to “Catholic,” implies that Catholic doctrine has the potential to decay or be reformed. It also reinforces the notion that the essentials of Church teaching are as debatable as the details of Paul Ryan’s budget. Which they’re not.

Yes, of course, there’s development in Church teaching. As the years pass and man applies his mind to the Deposit of Faith, our understanding of Revelation can deepen. It can become more nuanced.

But it can’t change. The fundamentals remain, always and everywhere, the same.

The Church, as the saying goes, is not a democracy. It’s not a body politic, and ascribing political terms to various stripes of Catholics feeds the wrong-headed notion that one day the Church is going to say, “Aw shucks, post-modern world, you’re so right: women priests, gay marriage, and free contraception for all is totally the way to go. What were we thinking?

So, back to me. What am I? Conservative or liberal?

Neither. I’m not a conservative Catholic. I’m not a liberal Catholic. I’m just Catholic. If the Church teaches it, I believe it. If she says to do something, I do it. (Read more.)