The Failure of Christian Democracy

 From Charles Coulombe at The European Conservative:

The explosion of infanticide, euthanasia, and gender confusion that has engulfed the West in the past five decades was neither originated nor (save in Ireland) sanctioned by the majority of the people of the formerly Christian world. In most jurisdictions it was imposed by judicial and occasionally by parliamentary fiat—and the reaction of the various Churches has ranged from flaccid disapproval to avid acceptance. Nevertheless, to the believing Christian, murder of the unborn, the elderly, and the infirm on the one hand and overturning of both marriage and sexuality itself can never be other than sins—crying out to Heaven for vengeance, in biblical terms. Never can such a one be content with a State that does not stop at merely tolerating such things, but actually promotes them as equal to or better than the things established by God. 

With the approval of the majority of the Hungarian electorate (there’s that democracy thing) Fidesz has done the unforgivable—it has attempted with some success to live up to what the originators of Christian Democracy stood for as regards social issues. Worse, it has clipped the wings of the judiciary, which in modern times is used to exercising absolute control over “democratic” countries. The judiciary has been the primary agency by which the aforementioned evils have been imposed. 

It is easy to understand why the EPP leadership would be scandalised by all this. There is nothing so appalling as someone else living up to the beliefs what one claims to hold and thereby exposing one’s hypocrisy. Despite the EPP’s literature’s lovely references to Europe’s Christian roots, culture, and values, the leadership has made no attempt to implement those values in EU legislation and bureaucratic decisions; instead, the leaders condemn those who do.

To be fair, the EPP are far from alone in their flight from Christianity. In 1999, the Christian Democrat International (comprising CD parties from Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere) changed its name to “Center Democrat International.” In 2002, the Belgian Francophone Christian Social Party abandoned its formative principles to become the Humanist Democratic Center. Their Flemish counterparts retain the “Christian” label. Although some of their member parties have been infected with Liberation Theology, the Latin American Christian Democrat Organisation of America also holds on to the name.

To understand just how far mainstream Christian Democracy has failed and what a glorious heritage its leaders have turned their backs on, one must grasp where it came from and how it got here. Its origins lie in the reaction to the mad, brutal French Revolution on the part of thinkers and political figures all over Europe, from Ireland’s Edmund Burke to Russia’s Alexander I. In that company are such names as de Maistre, Chateaubriand, Gentz, Haller, von Baader, and on and on—and obviously many in that list hail from the Conservative wing of the Romantic movement. As the 19th century wore on, Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike were confronted by the monstrous twin offspring of the Industrial Revolution: centralising classical Liberalism and collectivising Socialism. As with the French Revolution, both of these cloaked their real intentions—conscious or otherwise—in lovely talk. The language of classical Liberalism still beguiles many on the Right and Left, and today we see more and more young folk inclining towards the soft words of Socialism. But the result of these two movements proves to be the same as that of the French Revolution: the destruction of Europe’s life-giving religious and cultural traditions, and their replacement with a weird dehumanization, at once radically individualistic and completely herd-like. 

There were reactions to all of these: the Legitimists, Carlists, and Miguelists unsuccessfully combatted liberalism in France, Spain, and Portugal, while Austria and her allies opposed the centralising (and recently liberalized) Monarchies of Prussia and Sardinia in Central Europe. The Catholic Church and many of her children addressed the burgeoning social question in Catholic countries, as did the Dutch Neo-Calvinists. Scandinavia and Prussia saw Conservative parties wrestle with the same issues, while for the same reason the British Tories produced at different times during the century such concerned spin-offs as Young England and the Third Party. Russia’s Slavophiles attempted to do the same from an Orthodox point of view, eventually producing and being transcended by such figures as Soloviev and Bulgakov. 

To the degree that there could be political consensus among such disparate folk, it was roughly fourfold: Altar—that is to say, the country’s dominant Church acting as the source of authority and legitimacy, as well as guiding public morality; Throne—an executive Monarchy grounded in the country’s religion and national tradition, endowed with sufficient power to maintain equilibrium in the state and check its politicians’ excesses; Local Liberties—the autonomous life and self-rule of cities and provinces, or what we would to-day call “Subsidiarity;” and Class Cooperation—each social class fulfilling its proper role toward each other and society in general out of mutual love and loyalty, or what is now referred to as Solidarity.

In Catholic countries, the result of all of this was the formation of a network of Catholic parties who drew their inspiration from the Church’s social teaching as outlined above. Too often, however, these four ideals did not sit comfortably together, as in France (to take just one example). Desirous of maintaining the Church’s Concordat with France’s increasingly anticlerical Third Republic, Leo XIII called upon French Catholics to abandon the second point, while holding on to all the rest—especially the idea of the Catholic confessional State. This had the unhappy effect of splitting the Church in that country and pitting its foremost activists against each other. Eventually the Republic did void the Concordat, seized the Church’s property, expelled the religious orders, and in general acted piggishly toward the Church until her children were needed as cannon fodder in the First World War.

That war was a travesty, slaughtering millions and ending the existence of three major confessional Monarchies (Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany). But, in a strange reversal, it also ushered in a golden age of Catholic political thought and action. More Catholic parties—often under the direct leadership of priests—sprung up. From Great Britain’s Guild Socialism, Ruralism, and Distributism, to Catholic Germany’s Solidarism, to the Catholic Corporatism attempted in Austria, Lithuania, Portugal, and elsewhere, a whole family of Catholic economic ideas emerged. Overseeing the whole was Pope Pius XI, particularly with his social encyclicals Quas Primas and Quadragesimo Anno. Skilled as he was with theory, the Pontiff sometimes mishandled concrete situations, as with the Cristeros in Mexico and the Action Francais (with the latter of which kerfuffles, so reminiscent of Leo’s Ralliement, being put to rights immediately upon his accession by Pius XII).

For a brief moment, modern Catholics had more or less reliable political leadership, upon whom they could depend to eventually make a right decision. The subtleties of the interwar era, so well personified by the struggle over Action Francais, pointed out a problem for socially minded Catholics and non-Catholic Christians alike. On the one hand, Maurras, despite being an unbeliever (until his conversion a few years before his death), saw Catholicism as essential to France’s well-being and glory, and so had many Catholic followers; but Pius XI feared that this reduced the Faith’s importance to being merely a religious sanction for national idolatry.

The interwar period also saw the birth of many other ideologies in response to Communism and the economic collapse. How congruent with the Faith were they? The fertile mix of cultural, social, and political ideas in the German “Conservative Revolution” attracted many devout Catholics and Protestants alike (such as Stauffenberg and Jünger); it also appealed to various Neo-Pagans and other—ah—interesting types. What united them was a deep desire for a new order that would encompass all the best of European tradition and bring it into the modern world. But what would that look like? How would one get there? And what to make of Fascism, National Socialism, and the other new cognate ideologies in every European country and Latin America that claimed to be able to accomplish the longed-for synthesis of old and new? (Read more.)

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