Updated: Did Leo XIII's "rights" & common good ambiguities lead to the Francis/Leo push for infinite "human dignity", illegal immigration, blessings for "same-sex couples" & monadic individualism according to prominent philosophers?
"According political philosopher and theologian Father Ernest Fortin, the concept of the monadic individual is the defining blueprint of modern rights. Fortin famously wrote that 'the modern rights doctrine in its original and still most powerful form amounts to nothing less than a proclamation of the sovereignty of the monadic individual.'" - Google AI
"According to French political philosopher Pierre Manent, the monadic individual is an isolated, asocial, and apolitical figure produced by modern democratic individualism and the unbridled expansion of human rights. Rather than viewing human beings as naturally relational political animals, modern democratic ideology treats the individual as a self-contained unit whose bonds and obligations are valid only if voluntarily chosen." - Google AI
"In Kries’s judgment, 'Sacred and Inviolable: Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights,' 'is probably the most important of Fortin’s many essays [on Catholic social thought], at least from the standpoint of the church, for if taken seriously it would force the church to reconsider in a radical way her whole posture toward modernity and her entire way of thinking about modern times (ibid., 130)." [https://voegelinview.com/leo-strauss-and-his-catholic-readers/]
Fr. Ernest Fortin, who was a prominent scholar of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, thought that Pope Leo XIII by adopting the language of saying that "rights" were "sacred and inviolable" unintentionally let the modern "monadic individual" through the back door.
Leo's writings diluted the Thomistic concept of the common good, reducing it to a mere checklist of conditions required to guarantee "rights" and apparently opened up the Church to monadic individualism according to Fortin's "Sacred and Inviolable: Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights":
Astonishingly, no one at the time seems to have noticed that this notion of private property as a natural and imprescriptible right had only recently been imported into Catholic theology, in all probability by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio... Prior to that time [of Leo XIII] it was understood that according to natural law the earth originally belonged to everyone and that its subsequent division, dictated in large measure by reasons of expediency, was a matter of human or positive law.
... A telltale sign of the encyclical's departure from the Church's longstanding teaching on this point is its failure to include any reference to the key notion of ius gentium...
... The trouble is that the encyclical speaks in the same way of rights, which, as we have seen, it likewise labels "sacred,"53 and to which in other instances it seems to accord a certain priority over duties. It mentions rights roughly twice as often as it does duties and usually ahead of duties when the two appear together.54 Elsewhere, it asserts that rights become "stronger" (ualidiora) when considered in connection with duties, thereby implying that they are already strong apart from any relation to duties (no. 12). It calls self-preservation a duty in one place and a natural right in another, again without specifying whether it is first a duty and then a right or vice versa (nos. 7 and 44). On one occasion, what the Bible expresses in the form of a commandment it inexplicably translates into the language of rights. Thus, the injunction to "increase and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) becomes the "natural and primeval right to marry" (ius coniugii naturale oc primigenum; no. 12). In a text devoted to moral matters, details of this sort are not without significance. Wittingly or unwittingly, the message conveyed is that at the very least rights are to be placed on more or less the same footing as duties. It is not an unimportant message.
One runs into similar ambiguities when one tries to combine prepolitical rights with the notion of the common good. The modern rights doctrine in its original and still most powerful form amounts to nothing less than a proclamation of the sovereignty of the monadic individual. The common good, on the other hand, presupposes the subordination of the individual to the community to the extent that, lacking self-sufficiency, he is dependent on it for the attainment of his end or perfection. If in some respects he transcends civil society, it is not qua individual but qua member of another society, called by Augustine the "city of God," whose good surpasses that of any temporal society. Thomas Aquinas's often repeated dictum still holds: the good of the whole takes precedence over the good of the part.
Leo had good reason to decry the individualism of the age, but in the long run his case against it was bound to be weakened by his acquiescence, however cautious, in the principle that anchors modern individualism at its deepest level, the inviolability of natural rights. What we are left with is a diluted version of rights as well as a diluted version of the common good, which will soon be conceived as nothing more than the sum of the conditions required to insure the free exercise of one's individual rights. The common good ceases to be the proper (albeit not the private) good of the individual members of society, as Thomas thought it was and as it must be if it is to be truly common; it becomes an alien good, for which there is no natural inclination to sacrifice oneself. The logical outcome is the characteristically modern phenomenon known since Rousseau as the "bourgeois," the man who lives for himself in the midst of people on whom he depends for his well-being and in whom he must therefore pretend to be interested— in other words, the man who distinguishes his own good from the common good, as opposed to the citizen, who identifies the two.
The difference between the two positions comes out most clearly when one considers the encyclical's assertion that the individual is "older" (senior) than civil society and endowed by nature with the right to life and the protection of his body "prior to his entry into any civil society."56 Such is not the view put forward by Thomas, who saw no reason to disagree with Aristotle's statement that civil society is prior to the individual.57 For him, there was never a moment when the human being was not subject to a higher authority and hence in principle a member of a community governed by that higher authority. The Garden of Eden bears no similarity whatsoever to what the early modern political theorists called the "state of nature," by which they meant essentially the Hobbesian "war of every man against every man" or, in Locke's polite reformulation of the same doctrine, a state in which every individual, having the "executive power of the law of nature," was free to take the law in his own hands and do whatever he personally deemed necessary to insure his self-preservation.58 The original natural rights theory is of a piece with this teaching and unintelligible without it...
... I began by suggesting that the teaching and the language oí Rerum novarum stem from two distinct traditions, one premodern and the other modern. The first is teleological and stresses duties. It holds that human beings are naturally political and directed to some preestablished end in the attainment of which they find their perfection or happiness. The second is nonteleological and stresses rights. It denies that there is any supreme good to which human beings are ordered by nature and views them from the standpoint of their beginning or the passions by which most of them are habitually moved, namely, the desire for security, comfort, pleasure, and the various amenities of life. For the same reason, it denies that they are natural parts of a larger whole whose common good is superior to the private good of its individual parts.60 In the course of the discussion, I pointed to some of the difficulties involved in any attempt to blend the two approaches. At this juncture, two alternatives come to sight. The combination can take the form of an eclectic compromise that remains on the plane of the original positions and splits the difference between them, or it can take the form of a genuine synthesis, effected on the basis of a principle that transcends the plane of the original position...
... [Pius XI's] Quadragesimo anno... corrected some of the inaccuracies that had crept into Leo's text, such as the assertion that labor is the only source of property. It introduced... the Taparellian notion of "social justice," which Leo had rejected because of its nonThomistic pedigree...
... Little wonder that Leo's theologians, some of whom had been disciples and colleagues of Taparelli, should have had so much trouble separating the wheat from the chaff or distinguishing between what was or was not compatible with standard Catholic doctrine. To sum up, the problem with Rerum novarum is that it lives in two worlds between which it cannot choose and which it is unable to harmonize completely." [https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/53.2.1.pdf]
Renowned political philosopher Pierre Manent in his scholarship presents how the humanitarianism of Francis and Leo sever us from the common good of families and societies which should ultimately be directed to loving God above all things and working for the salvation of ourselves and others.
Manet has argued that Francis's focus on universal borderless rights threatens to replace authentic Christian faith with a abstract secular humanitarianism. He contents that the Leo/Francis interpretation of the Good Samaritan in Fratelli Tutt is a quasi-humanitarian secular parable, whereas the Samaritan fundamentally represents Jesus Christ healing a mortally wounded humanity.
Sadly, he thinks abstract "human dignity" humanitarianism replaces acting moral people choosing the good with abstract, disembodied individuals choosing subjective desires unrelated to anything, but themselves and the ideological abstractions of so-called universal "rights".
He makes the case that individual "rights" and "human dignity" are artificially constructed to protect supposed subjective "rights" and self-interest where the individual is defined by himself and his desires rather than his relationship with others and God or by what they he owes to others and God.
The pushers of rights language seem to see "human dignity" as self-relation narcissism with the self according to Manent despite sometimes using religious language to couch or soften their message. Seemingly obscuring the real agenda underneath complex religious jargon and reinterpreted biblical parables.
For the Francis/Leo Vatican it appears that "Human dignity" ceases to be about fulfilling one's obligations to God and His created order (reality) or to the family as well as to the community. It seems to reappear as the monadic individual's "right" to the pursuit of happiness in a closed-loop narcissistic "self-relation" affirming the individual's concupiscence (that is ones sinful fallen nature desires).
LifeSite News gives an example this current Vatican mindset:
Courage International said that 'it is a great sadness and an additional wound to our members to have this false and unjust depiction in a Vatican document.'
The Courage International Apostolate, which for decades has helped Catholic men and women with same-sex attraction live chastely, issued a stern public response to the synod report that questioned that nature of homosexuality is sinful, accusing the authors of “calumny” for its depiction of the apostolate.
The report suggested a reframing of homosexuality, endorsing testimony without qualification that “sin, at its root, does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship” but in “a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfilment.”
Citing a single testimony describing “problematic membership” in the group, the Vatican-commissioned Study Group 9 report characterized Courage’s approach as “reparative therapy” and condemned it for having “the effect of separating faith and sexuality.”
[... ]
“Why would the Synod of Bishops publish interviews with men who reject Catholic teaching on the nature of marriage, inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit, as part of its effort to discern the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church today?” asked Fr. Gerald E. Murray writing at The Catholic Thing on Saturday.
“The Synod has become the Holy See’s officially sponsored agent of destruction of Catholic doctrine. [https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/courage-international-courage-calls-vaticans-pro-lgbt-synodal-report-both-calumny-and-detraction/]
Why have the Francis and Leo Vatican seemed obsessed with the blessing of homosexuals? Why might the Vatican want to bless persons who define their individual identity with sinful desires and the right to self-preservation in their sin? Manet explains:
[N]ew order... deduce all of society’s rules from the individual’s relation to himself. This self-relation refuses the introduction of any human law that might inform, regulate, or elevate it. Because the individual alone possesses the authority of nature, it is the sovereign self who rules over the law...
... This view is the source of the 2013 French law that made marriage available to same-sex couples... Those dismissed as “conservatives” are told: if you want to base the law on a natural tendency, you cannot exclude same-sex couples from the benefit of the same law. Once again, the argument is based exclusively on the natural inclinations of individuals as individuals...
... If society is not natural, then its conservation or reproduction cannot by themselves justify or motivate the foundational law of human communities. In sum, for us, the common good does not exist in such a way as to justify the law’s positive concern for its preservation or continuation. Only the individual’s self-preservation (or his “will” or “autonomy”) can be the source of what is right by law because only the bare individual is truly natural. [https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/why-natural-law//]
Likewise, Manet appears to say the new illegal immigration humanitarianism seems to give the narcissistic "sovereign self" migrants no natural law obligations or respect for others, for communities or for the countries they enter:
[W]e have been led to see migratory movements as the most significant phenomenon of the present world... They represent the movement from the particular to the general, or to the “universal,” as we now prefer to say... migrations are thought to be the carriers of the new justice, and migrants, as a distinct human group, symbolize in our eyes the union of force and justice, a privilege that had always been reserved to self-governing peoples organized politically into communities of citizens.
The phenomenon that I have just briefly described makes no sense unless it is linked with the idea that is the leitmotif of my argument, the idea of justice that sees its principle entirely in the self-relation of the individual human being... since it is no longer either tempered or counterbalanced by any principle of association, or any articulation of the civic common good. If there is no justice but that of the general, of humanity in general, that is, of the individual set in his unassailable self-relation, then the individual who presents himself at the border, or who crosses the border, in the name of his humanity understood as indistinguishable from that of any other, and who thus represents all of humanity—this individual is the carrier of a right that can prevail in opposition to the will of any political body.
The political body then appears as a mere particular association, one ultimately lacking moral legitimacy. The puny individual, who in many cases has already crossed so many borders, is seen to represent humanity in toto, while the political body, within the borders it claims to defend, is only a circumscription of humanity, a fraction that separates itself—particularly if it refuses access to the human being who presents himself in the name of human rights.
It is not too difficult to understand the logic of the argument, or how it is that the legitimacy of the general has moved from the democratic political body—from the general will or the common good—to the individual qua individual, as simply a member of humanity in general... the representative regime in the framework of the nation—and which had derived such pride from this effort—emptied themselves so abruptly of their sense of self and their confidence in their legitimate rights, to the point of seeing in the self-regard of the political community a kind of crime against humanity. [https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/why-natural-law/]
Notes:
- (1) "Taparelli has a good claim to being the father of Catholic social teaching. One of his students was the Jesuit Matteo Liberatore, who wrote the first draft of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes), the first papal statement on “the social question.” Leo himself, as we have noted, had been a student of Taparelli’s, his collaborator at the Civiltà Cattolica, and seems to have been influenced by him. [First pope to use term "social justice" was Pius XI and the pope of the Cristero "Mexican Massacre"] Pius XI used to recommend the study of Taparelli’s works in conversations with his friends and colleague." [https://isi.org/the-origins-of-social-justice/]
- (2) "To this concept of human rights though has been added the concept of social justice, “which makes its first appearance in an official church document with Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno.” Indeed, “the first author to use the term is thought to be the Roman Catholic theologian Taparelli d’Azeglio, who devotes a chapter to it in his Theoretical Essay on Natural Right Based on Facts, an immensely popular work that originally appeared in 1840 and that set the tone for much of what transpired in the field of moral theology during the second half of the nineteenth century.”
Interestingly, “Taparelli himself shows no awareness of the novelty of the expression and seems to have assumed that its meaning was self-evident.”224 Regardless of the meaning of “social justice,” Fortin does not believe it to be self evident. He goes so far as to say that the term “social justice” appeared in the intellectual conversation “as if parachuted from heaven.” Indeed, Fortin paints Taparelli as a relatively muddled thinker, though through little fault of his own. He notes his appointment to a position of moral theology without previous academic experience, and his reliance on a Protestant jurist Burlamaqui. “To make matters worse, the French Revolution had severely disrupted university education throughout Europe and caused a 224 Ibid., 233. 84 break in a badly battered Scholastic tradition that had somehow succeeded in maintaining itself up to that time.”225
Still, we are stuck with the term, and so Fortin attempts to decipher its meaning. “Social justice, in contradistinction to either legal or distributive justice, does not refer to any special disposition of the soul and hence cannot properly be regarded as a virtue. Its subject is not the individual human being but a mysterious society named ‘X,’ which is said to be unintentionally responsible for the condition of its members and in particular for the lot of the poor among them.”
The term, according to Fortin, makes sense only “within the context of the new political theories of the seventeenth century, the thrust of which was to shift the focus of attention from virtue or moral character to the reordering of our social structures in such a way as to insure the security and freedom of the atomic individuals who choose to enter into society or accept to remain in it.”
He argues that the term is connected with the Rousseauian attempt to “ground politics in something more fundamental than the desire for self-preservation, namely freedom.”226 While recognizing the goals of the term, Fortin argues that the need for a distinct “social” justice is questionable in view of the social nature of justice by definition.227 Admitting the need for such a term could lead one along the following line of thought: If society and its accidental structures are the primary cause of the corruption of human beings and the evils attendant upon it, they must be 225 Ibid. 226 Ibid., 234. 227 Ibid. 85 changed.
Social reform takes precedence over personal reform; it constitutes the first and perhaps the only moral imperative. Better institutions will give us better human beings and not vice versa. Under such circumstances, the pre-modern emphasis on education and moral character as the true causes of happiness of both the individual and the community could safely be laid aside. The only true evil is social evil, just as the only sin is social sin.228 An historical shift has occurred, according to Fortin, away from the view that “education and moral character” enabled the achievement of happiness, and towards the view that social sin and social evils were the real causes of unhappiness, especially of unjust suffering, and that structures and institutions, rather than individuals, needed to be changed.
Having satisfactorily dealt with the origins of the terms social justice, and contrasted it with the natural law, Fortin moves on to a discussion of modern and contemporary views of the natural law. He begins by listing thinkers who have attempted “to demonstrate, not only the compatibility, but the direct continuity between the view of justice embodied in the natural law theory and its modern alternative,” listing Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray, along with John Finnis and Felicien Rousseau as such thinkers.
Indeed, Fortin singles out Felicien Rousseau (F. Rousseau) as describing the natural law “as nothing more than an earlier version of the modern ‘rights’ theory, shorn of its individualism.” Fortin expresses an extraordinary skepticism at such an argument, accusing F. Rousseau of blatantly misconstruing Thomas Aquinas. Thomas 228 Ibid., 235. 86 never spoke of inalienable rights; “in the Thomistic scheme, rights were contingent on the performance of prior duties. Far from being inalienable, they could be forfeited and were so forfeited by criminals who could then be deprived of their liberty and even put to death.” Thus, “the typical Hobbesian dilemma of the convict whom the state has the right to execute and who has the right to kill his executioner belongs exclusively to the world of modern thought.”229 Here we pause simply to note the absence of such a dilemma in contemporary liberal thought, and posit that perhaps this Hobbesian dilemma belongs exclusively to the world of Hobbesian thought, and has little to do with natural rights. [https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/2113d1ab-ce8a-4acd-988a-3ffe87daf172/content]
- (3) Admittedly, social justice can be somewhat of a nebulous concept to define even in recent history. Much of the criteria for the definition involves context, parties in the discussion, and the overall hermeneutics of the terms. Catholic theologian and Boston University Professor Ernest Fortin is one who points out the confusion of the term “social justice” and also provides a helpful historical survey from a theological perspective:
As nearly as I can make out, social justice, in contradistinction to either legal or distributive justice, does not refer to any special disposition of the soul and hence cannot properly be regarded as a virtue. Its subject is not the individual human being but a mysterious “X” named society, which is said to be unintentionally responsible for the condition of its members and in particular for the lot of the poor among them.[4]
Fortin explains how the concept makes sense only within the context of the new political theories of the 1600s. Enlightenment political theories move attention away from virtue to newly imagined social structures that centered around the individual. Up until this time, political theories emphasized the individual’s role as a virtuous person as a member of the society. Social justice uses the language of natural rights theories, but stops short of the fullness of those theories, to “equalize social conditions” between individuals and parties.[5] The issue is that equalizing conditions necessarily diminishes personal responsibility and character.
Fortin goes on to note that Rousseau (1712-1778) essentially reformulated the human problem in terms of the distinction between nature and history, though historically such problems had been couched in terms of body and soul. Fortin reasons that the consequences for this reformulation are thus: “If society and its accidental structures are the primary cause of the corruption of human beings and the evils attendant upon it, they must be changed. Social reform takes precedence over personal reform; it constitutes the first and perhaps the only moral imperative.”[6]
Fortin believes that the first use of the term “social justice,” used in its modern sense, was by an Italian Jesuit named Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio in a work entitled Theoretical Essay on Natural Right from an Historical Standpoint (1840-1843). Taparelli attempts to import the Enlightenment term “natural rights” into Catholic social theology by linking it to a new concept that he terms “social justice.” [https://www.drpagebrooks.com/post/rehashing-hash-tags-an-evangelical-approach-to-social-justice]
- (4)
... "Leo’s successors might have rapidly scrubbed away his excessive rhetoric away, if the nascent social teaching had been understood as an always and necessarily imperfect response to current issues. However, the popes, like many students of this teaching, have tended to sacralise all papal writings, including ones that are particularly likely to be distorted by the controversies and ideas of the moment. As a result of this exaggerated respect, it has taken more than a century of backtracking and equivocation before could Francis boldly declare that, “The principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods, and thus the right of everyone to their use, is a golden rule of social conduct” (Laudato Si’ 93)...
... Francis and his immediate predecessors have all seemed to assume that private property is a clear and distinct idea, something independent of the particular societies in which it is found. In that assumption, they are implicitly accepting Locke’s absurd way of thinking." [https://edwardhadas.substack.com/p/property-in-rerum-novarum-and-in?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share]
- (4)
Abp Lefebvre on Mexican Massacre because of the Cristeros' "Rash Obedience" to "Pope Pius XI...influence[d]...[by] Progressives": "[S]alvation of souls—over blind submission"
Mexico, 1931: The Vatican and the “just war”
Is it right for a Christian to take up arms against a government that persecutes the Church? Two years before the end of the Cristera War in Mexico, Cardinals Pacelli, Gasparri, and Boggiani discussed the subject at the Secretary of State
"Aquinas, and the whole theological tradition insist that laws which harm the common good should not be obeyed." - Rash Obedience: a Virtue in a time of Crisis, Joseph Shaw, PhD [https://onepeterfive.com/obedience-disobedience-rash/]
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in a 1982 conference gave a summation of the Catholic Mexican disaster that happened apparently because of the Cristeros' "Rash Obedience" to "Pope Pius XI himself fell under the influence of the progressives":
"Pope Pius XI [who] himself fell under the influence of the progressives who were already present in Rome. For we see a distinct difference from the Popes before and after. But nevertheless Pope Pius XI at the same time wrote some magnificent encyclicals. He was not a liberal. “Divini Redemptoris,” his encyclical against Communism was magnificent. So also was his encyclical on Christ the King, which established the feast of Christ The King and proclaimed the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. His encyclical on Christian Education is absolutely admirable and remains today a fundamental document for those who defend Catholic schools."
"If on the level of doctrine Pope Pius XI was an admirable man, he was weak in the order of practical action. He was easily influenced. It is thus that he was very strongly influenced at the time of the Mexican Civil War and gave the Cristeros, who were in the process of defending the Catholic religion and fighting for Christ the King, the order to have confidence in the government and to put down their arms. As soon as they had put down their arms they were all massacred. This horrifying massacre is still remembered today in Mexico. Pope Pius XI placed confidence in the government who deceived him. Afterwards, he was visibly very upset. He could not imagine how a government, which had promised to treat with honor those who defended their Faith, could have then gone on to massacre them. Thus thousands of Mexicans were killed on account of their Faith." (Christian Order June-July 2023, page 42)
- The Critique: Rousseau argued that Locke’s society was just a trick played by the rich to protect their property, turning citizens into mere bourgeois (private individuals out for themselves). [1, 2]
- The Patch: Instead of a contract that protects your private rights, Rousseau argued you must alienate all your rights to the community. This creates the "General Will." [1, 2]
- The State Expansion: By replacing personal, traditional virtue with devotion to the state, the state became the moral guide. If an individual's private will disagreed with the General Will, Rousseau famously declared they must be "forced to be free." This laid the philosophical groundwork for modern collectivism. [1, 2]
- Ernest Fortin connects these patches to the loss of natural law. This goes straight to the theological and philosophical root of the problem you laid out.Fortin, as a political philosopher and Catholic theologian, argued that the modern crisis of the expanding state is the direct result of a "metaphysical downgrade" that happened when Locke and Hobbes redefined natural law. [1]1. The Pre-Modern Standard: Objective Natural LawTo understand what was lost, Fortin points back to the classical and medieval tradition (think Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas).
- The Old View: Natural law was an objective moral order built into the universe by God. It dictated how humans ought to behave to achieve their highest potential (virtue).
- The Mechanism: This law was discovered by reason and enforced primarily by internal conscience, religious communities, and social habits. Because individuals felt bound to a higher moral law, society had a self-regulating mechanism. The state's role was minimal because the moral fabric was strong.
2. The Hobbesian/Lockean Shift: From Duties to RightsFortin argues that Hobbes and Locke effectively inverted this structure. They decoupled natural law from teleology (the idea that humans have a higher purpose or ultimate good).- The New View: They transformed "natural law" from a list of moral duties into a list of individual rights (survival, liberty, property). [1, 2]
- The Consequence: Instead of looking up at an objective moral standard to guide their character, individuals were told to look inward at their own desires and rights. Virtue was no longer the goal; self-preservation and comfort were. [1]
3. Fortin’s Diagnosis: The Vulnerability of "Rights"This is where Fortin’s critique connects directly to your point about the state expanding to patch the damage.Fortin observed that a society built entirely on "rights" without a corresponding foundation of objective virtue is inherently unstable. Rights naturally conflict. My right to property might clash with your right to survival; my liberty might infringe on your comfort.Without an agreed-upon objective natural law to adjudicate these conflicts, there is no moral authority left to appeal to.4. The Final Patch: Positive Law and State MightBecause subjective rights cannot self-regulate, the state has to step in to prevent absolute chaos. It does this by replacing Natural Law with Positive Law (laws written by governments). [1][Loss of Objective Natural Law] ➔ [Conflicting Subjective Rights] ➔ [State Step-in via Positive Law]Since the state can no longer appeal to a shared understanding of what is "virtuous" or "good," it must rely on sheer administrative power, regulations, and legal penalties to keep people in line. The state doesn't make citizens good; it just makes them compliant. In Fortin's view, the modern bureaucratic state is the heavy-handed substitute for the lost moral consensus of ancient natural law. - John Rist’s critique highlights a profound irony: the modern papacy has adopted the bureaucratic and voluntaristic framework of the [Hobbesian] Leviathan state to maintain authority, thereby undermining its own claim to absolute, transcendent truth. By transforming the office of the Pope from a guardian of tradition into an absolute monarch who can alter liturgy and doctrine by administrative decree, the Church inadvertently validates a "might makes right" philosophy.This creates several deep theological and structural tensions within modern Catholicism:1. The Shift from Guarding to Creating
- Traditional View: The Pope is historically understood as a servant of tradition (traditio), bound to hand down what he received. [1]
- Hobbesian View: The modern papacy functions voluntaristically—meaning authority is driven by the will of the ruler rather than an objective, unchanging cosmic order.
- The Result: Liturgy, discipline, and moral emphasis become products of policy and bureaucratic management rather than organic developments.
2. Legalism and the Bureaucratic MachineRist argues that this shift accelerates in the post-conciliar era. When the preservation of faith relies on central administrative decrees rather than shared, inherited tradition, the Church begins to look like a modern nation-state. Law becomes valid simply because it was properly enacted by the sovereign, not because it reflects an immutable truth.3. The Secularization of Church AuthorityIf a new Pope can radically shift moral emphasis or suppress ancient liturgical rites by a stroke of a pen, the office risks losing its supernatural mystique. It begins to look like a secular political office where a change in administration means a change in platform. This inadvertently teaches the faithful that power, position, and political maneuvering dictate truth within the Church.
- The Problem with Modern Morality: Modernity treats moral rules as abstract commands that restrict our freedom. This creates a pendulum swing between lawless individualism and oppressive state regulation.
- The Thomistic Solution: MacIntyre argues for a return to the Thomistic concept of teleology and the virtues. In Thomism, a virtue is not a boring rule; it is an internal quality that makes a human being excellent at being human, just as an acorn's purpose is to become a oak tree. [1]
- The Practical Application: MacIntyre’s Thomism requires rebuilding "communities of practice" (schools, farms, local clinics, parishes) where people share a common conception of the human good. In these spaces, authority is not bureaucratic; it is the natural authority of a master teaching an apprentice. By mastering internal virtues, communities self-govern, starving the modern administrative state of its excuse to intervene.
- The Critique of the Reform Papacy: Rist argues that the modern papacy has ironically adopted the bureaucratic and voluntaristic methods of the Hobbesian state. By treating the Pope as an absolute monarch who can change traditions, liturgy, and moral emphasis by administrative decree (what he sees as a feature of the post-conciliar era), the Church validates the very "might makes right" philosophy it is supposed to fight.
- Rist's Solution: The papacy must undergo a metaphysical re-anchoring. The Pope must stop acting like a modern CEO or bureaucratic manager and return to being a strict guardian of an unchangeable, transcendent, objective deposit of faith. True moral authority cannot be manufactured by committee or pastoral "reforms"; it must be anchored in an immutable God. Only a Church that submits its own office to an unchanging Divine Law can offer a real alternative to the shifting sands of secular positive law.
| Thinker / Authority | The Core Mechanism of the Solution | How It Defeats the Clumsy State |
|---|---|---|
| MacIntyre’s Thomism | Reclaiming teleology and objective human excellence within localized, apprentice-style communities. | Replaces top-down bureaucratic control with internal, character-driven self-regulation. |
| Rist on the Papacy | Stripping the Papacy of modern bureaucratic voluntarism; returning to immutable moral realism. | Re-establishes a truly objective, unchangeable moral anchor that no secular ruler can alter. |
| Ernest Fortin | Dismantling the language of subjective "human rights" in favor of classical natural law duties. | Stops the legalistic gridlock of competing rights that forces the state to act as an aggressive umpire. |
| Thomas Fleming | Radical parochialism; prioritizing blood, soil, family, and local neighbors over abstract globalism. | Rebuilds the primary tribal and familial safety nets, making the welfare state completely obsolete. |
| Pierre Manent | Re-bounding politics within the sovereign nation-state against faceless globalization. | Forces citizens to engage in real, high-stakes civic action rather than submitting to unelected global courts. |
| Robert Kraynak | Submitting secular democracy to a hierarchical, constitutional Christian order. | Reintroduces natural hierarchy and spiritual honor, giving citizens something higher than the self to look up to. |
| Pope Pius X | The explicit, legal, and spiritual Social Kingship of Christ over all nations. | Restores the Catholic Church as the ultimate moral guide of laws, aligning human law directly with Divine Law. |
[THE LOCALIST APPROACH] [THE INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH]
MacIntyre's Thomistic enclaves 🎦 VS 🎦 Pius X's Social Kingship
Fleming's tribal parochialism Kraynak's Christian [Mixed constitutional/republican/monarchical] Monarchy
Manent's Sovereign Nation
- The Localists (MacIntyre, Fleming): They believe the modern state is a lost cause. The solution is to withdraw into small, intentional Thomistic or familial redoubts to survive the collapse of the empire. [1]
- The Institutionalists (Manent, Kraynak, Pius X, Rist): They argue that local enclaves are too weak to survive modern totalitarian bureaucracy. The solution must be a counter-offensive: reclaiming big political and spiritual forms—the sovereign nation, the traditional monarchy, or a strictly dogmatic Papacy—to wield real authority against the liberal vacuum.
- The Practice: In these Scottish villages, the entire economy, social calendar, and survival centered around deep-sea fishing. Fishing wasn't just a generic "job" to make money; it was a craft passed down from generation to generation. [1, 2]
- The Internal Goods: To pull a boat of fish out of the freezing North Sea, you cannot rely on bureaucratic regulations or individualistic self-interest. You need courage, justice, and absolute trust. If one crew member is selfish or cowardly, everyone dies. Therefore, the "practice" itself forced the community to cultivate internal character.
- Natural Authority: Authority wasn't given to someone because they passed a civil service exam or held a state bureaucratic title. Authority belonged to the skipper—the master craftsman who had proven his excellence, prudence, and courage at sea. [1]
- Self-Regulation: If a young fisherman shirked his duties, he wasn't fined by a distant administrative agency. He faced the immediate, social consequence of letting down his family and neighbors. Conscience and community norms kept the peace. [1]
- Economic Solidarity: When commercial markets tried to pit individual fishermen against one another by forcing them to compete for prices, the communities formed local co-operatives. They refused to maximize individual profits at the expense of their neighbors' survival.
- Moral Independence: When the state tried to replace traditional, community-enforced codes of behavior with state schools and secularized legal systems, the villages held fast to their local Kirk (church) traditions. They recognized that their local religious and familial ties were a higher authority than the distant decrees of Westminster. [1, 2]
[State/Market Pressure] ➔ Tries to turn citizens into atomized, competitive consumers.
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[Thomistic Resistance] ➔ Communities use shared, rigorous "practices" to force cooperation.
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[The Result] ➔ Internal virtue grows so strong that top-down laws become unnecessary.
I ask all The Catholic Monitor readers to also pray for the end of this war. Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTube: ...Read more Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTubeFranklin & Graham calls on Christians to pray for 'end to the bloodshed' ahead of Trump-Putin summit...7mo
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Conclave Notes:
-- Open letter urges Pope Leo XIV to correct ‘scandalous incoherence’ in Amoris Laetitia...[Wow! Even notorious Popesplainer Fr.] Harrison warns that Pope Francis taught a ‘dangerous self-contradiction’ on Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried,’ petitioning Pope Leo to correct the record. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/08/open-letter-urges-pope-leo-xiv-to.html]
-- Are the Cardinals who will participate in the upcoming conclave authentically appointed & morally justified in voting, or will the shadow of Francis's possible illegitimacy cast itself over the next papacy? [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/are-cardinals-who-will-participate-in.html]
-- 5 Dubia Questions for 1P5's Steve Skojec & All faithful Catholics especially Francis is definitely Pope Cardinals, Bishops & pundits [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/06/5-dubia-questions-for-steve-skojec.html]
Francis Notes:
l– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1
– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the [J6] DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
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