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The Catholic Tradition and Modern Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Paul E. Sigmund
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Extract

This article argues that there has been a movement in Catholic political thought from a position of doctrinal neutrality concerning forms of government — provided that they promote the common good — to an endorsement of democracy as the morally superior form of government. It traces the various theoretical and practical elements in the Catholic tradition that have favored or opposed liberal democracy, giving particular attention to the ambiguity of medieval theories, the centralizing and authoritarian tendencies in the early modern period, and the intense hostility of the nineteenth-century popes to French and Italian liberalism. After analyzing the emergence of neo-Thomistic theories of democracy in the twentieth century and their influence on Christian Democratic parties in Europe and Latin America, the article concludes that John XXIII's encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) and the discussion of democracy by the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes (1965) marked the abandonment of earlier opposition to liberal democracy and a decisive commitment to democracy and human rights.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , Fall 1987 , pp. 530 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1987

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References

Notes

1 On the political structure of the early church, see the documents assembled in Shotwell, James T., ed., The See of Peter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).Google Scholar

2 Especially The Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Dionysius was a fifth century neo-Platonist Syrian monk, who was believed to be the “Dionysius the Areopagite” converted in Athens by St. Paul after his speech on the Unknown God (Acts 17:34). See my discussion in Nicholas of Cusa andhdeditvul Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), chap. 3.Google Scholar

3 See the documents in Tierney, Brian, ed., Church and State (1150–1300) (Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964)Google Scholar. On the Conciliar Movement see Tierney, Brian, Foundations of Conciliar Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955)Google Scholar. Oakley, Francis, The Political Thought of Pierre d'Ailly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Sigmund, , Nicholas of CusaGoogle Scholar, chap. 4.

4 See Ullmann, Walter, A History of Medieval Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1975)Google Scholar; and Sigmund, Paul E., ed. and trans., St. Thomas Aquinas, On Ethics and Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).Google Scholar

5 The encyclicals of Gregory XVI and Pius IX are quoted from the English translations collected in Carlen, Claudia, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, (1740–1878) (Raleigh: McGrath Publishers, 1981)Google Scholar. For background reading, the best sources are the writings of Hales, E. E. Y., especially Pio Nono (London: Eyre and Spottis-wood, 1954)Google Scholar; The Catholic Church and the Modern World (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1958)Google Scholar; and Daniel-Rops, H., The Church in an Age of Revolution (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1965)Google Scholar. Excerpts from The Syllabus of Errors (1864) of Pius IX appear in Bettenson, Henry, ed., Documents of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947).Google Scholar

6 Leo XIII's encyclicals are translated in Husslein, Joseph S.J., ed., Social Well-springs, vol. 1 (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishers, 1940).Google Scholar

7 Quoted in Vidler, A., A Century of Social Catholicism (London: SPCK, 1964), p. 138.Google Scholar

8 By 1958 his American experience had led him to extol the most bourgeois liberal of all modern states as the best application of Christian principles, see Reflections on America (New York: Scribner's, 1958).Google Scholar

9 On the development of Maritain's political theory see my article “Maritain on Politics” in Hudson, Deal and Mancini, Matthew, eds., Understanding Maritain (Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. The best introduction to his political thought is Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951)Google Scholar. See also the selections in Evans, Joseph W. and Ward, Leo R., eds., The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain (New York: Scribner's, 1955Google Scholar; paperback ed., Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1965). Like Maritain Rommen believes that democracy is the product of “Christian ideas matured to their full meaning” (State in Catholic Thought, p. 485Google Scholar), but he is more willing to take account of the papacy's hostile attitude toward democracy which he attributes to its concern to defend the Papal States and opposition to internal democratization in the church (p. 489). Thinking apparently of Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Acton, Rommen also notes that “a great many nineteenth-century (Catholic) writers of influence (understand) that freedom and democracy must be valued positively, and can be valued so especially well from the principles ever present in Catholic thought” (p. 492).

10 Quoted in Halecki, Oscar, Pius XII (London: Weidenfeld, 1954), p. 152.Google Scholar

11 John, Pope XXIII, Peace on Earth (Pacem in Terris) (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1963)Google Scholar. All quotations are taken from this translation.

12 Cf. the 1984 summons to Rome of Frei Leonardo Boff because of statements made in his book, Church, Charism, and Power (New York: Crossroad, 1985)Google Scholar regarding the “expropriation of the spiritual means of production by the hierarchy.” It is noteworthy that he was accompanied to Rome by two Brazilian cardinals and (fellow-Franciscans). For a discussion of this and related post-conciliar developments, see my forthcoming study, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution?