Antifascism 103: Chinks in Catholic Armor

I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes except extreme devotion to the Enemy are to be encouraged. … Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. … The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

—C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

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CW: White ethnonationalist/neo-Nazi ideology and language.

This series hasn't yet addressed a different urgent question: why do Catholics keep falling for authoritarian nationalism?

And I do say keep falling; it's been a historical trend for a hundred years minimum. Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, and, yes, Hitler’s Germany were all obtained with either the popular and general support of Catholics, or without effective resistance from them whether grassroots or institutional. Catholics like to cite the strong Catholic presence in the many resistance movements of Europe and the efforts of Bl Pius XII to mediate a peace; and we remember with well-earned pride Catholic heroes of both spiritual and material resistance like St Edith Stein, St Maximilian Kolbe, Hans and Sophie Scholl, Erich Klausener, Charles de Gaulle, St John Paul II, and Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg. But that pride of resistance was earned by them, not ourselves; and we must also blush for the criminal short-sightedness of Franz von Papen, the ineffectual self-interest of Ernst von Weisäcker, and, yes, the errors and miscalculations of Bl Pius XII and of Catholic bishops throughout Europe.

There are several reasons for this vulnerability, and I expect I don't have a handle on all of them. But I believe the following causes contribute:

1. Catholicism has historically been at odds with political Liberalism. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been plagued with wars over religion; taking the Peasants’ Revolt as the first outbreak, and the final defeat of the Catholic Stuart cause in Britain as the last, we could say that wars over which version of Christianity should triumph in Europe lasted, intermittently, from 1524 through 1746: two hundred and twenty-two years. Small wonder that people would want something other than religion to occupy their minds and their passions alike. As Charles Williams caustically remarked: As a virtue toleration does not yet exist, though we once thought it did. Our fathers became bored and miserable and decadent through their incessant killing, and we, the children of that killing, supposed ourselves to be convinced of charity, when, in truth, we only shuddered still at the memory of blood. [1]

The more tolerant forms of Liberalism took root in America, where pluralism was increasingly the ideal; but in Europe, Liberalism came to be defined principally by the French Revolution, whose Voltairean maxim—Écrasez l’infâme—was aimed at the Church's very existence, or at least her existence as an institution of political, social, and cultural importance. Charles Carroll in the United States, or G. K. Chesterton in Great Britain [2], could afford to be tolerant Liberals: the martyrs of Compiègne enjoyed no such luxury. Given the European situation of the papacy, it is no surprise that their outlook on Liberalism should have been, at warmest, suspicious and defensive.

But one of the results of this suspicion has been that many Catholics (especially traditionalists) are, at most, little interested in protecting the structures of any democratic society. The most romantic would like to thoroughly revive the Mediæval order, complete with not only a territorially sovereign Pope but a Holy Roman Emperor in subservience to His Holiness; others, less idealistic but equally convinced that the state should take responsibility for the moral formation of the populace, are content to advocate for a state that is explicitly and officially Catholic, and therefore prepared to abrogate freedoms of the exercise of religion, of speech and the press, and of assembly—not abolishing such things, exactly, but restricting them to religious, political, and ethnic minorities that already exist (and seeing to it that those minorities don’t get any bigger). This would, to their minds, not only effect a far more just and pious society; it would also effect many conversions—and the fact that many of them would be rather insincere conversions would hardly matter, because the sacraments work of their own power rather than through man’s belief in them [3], and people have a very great tendency to become what they are pretending to be besides, so that a Catholic state would in fact be an instrument for saving souls. Traditional-minded Catholics are by no means all of this mindset, but it does exist.

And white nationalism panders to it. Nationalists don’t care about Catholicism, traddie or otherwise, any more than anti-Liberal Catholics care about democracy [4], but nationalism offers these Catholics a lot: a way to be visibly patriotic (and thus mainstream rather than ghettoized) without subscribing to Liberal ideas about what the state is; a role in a movement that professes traditional, family-centered values (the race needs children and values mothers); a position as members of one of the seminal institutions of Western culture; even, maybe, a chance to convert an authoritarian nationalist government, and thus realize their dream of an officially Catholic state.

2. Catholicism and nationalism both recognize the value of culture and heritage. They qualify this recognition, in differing ways: Catholicism does so by subordinating every culture (at least in theory) to divine revelation, while white nationalism does so by first equating culture with race, and then ranking races from best to worst. But they share something that, to be blunt, neither Liberalism nor its godchild the modern Left are very good at recognizing: the beauty and value of the past. A great proportion of Western past, including a lot of our most magnificent and recognized art, is Catholic, which makes Catholic heritage (if not actual Catholic faith) a nice talking point for ethnonationalists who want to coöpt it. Moreover, legitimately Catholic emphases upon tradition and continuity in institutional authority, and upon the legitimate role of culture in how religion is expressed, along with the teaching that states do have a right to preserve their own existence and heritage, are easily manipulated by white nationalist conspiracy theories—especially since Catholics have a long history of troubled relationship with the Jews, often taking the form of blatant anti-Semitism.

It is certainly true that the past must be considered critically, and that is arguably the special talent of the Left. But nobody likes being criticized, even when their critics are not smugly judgmental about it; and smug judgment is arguably the besetting sin of the Left, as it is frequently the besetting sin of anybody who has good reason to be confident in their convictions. And we are so awash in patriotic myth—accurate and fabricated, innocent and corrupt, subtle and overt—that there are things to critique about America at practically every turn. Which then makes it easy for the contemporary fascist to paint all criticisms of America, or of the West, or of those aspects of Catholicism that are susceptible to an ethnonationalist slant, as nothing more than biased, whiny, ungrateful attacks on our whole culture.

3. In the last fifty years, the Republican Party has made a strong and largely successful effort to siphon the Catholic vote away from the Democratic Party. This would be insignificant in itself; except that the GOP, as the conservative voice in American politics, was inevitably going to be where racists threw their caps when civil rights reforms went through in the 50s and 60s. [5] The siphoning happened, of course, due to Roe vs Wade and the subsequent addition of the abortion rights plank to the Democratic platform—since, before then, while abortion had been a topic of political discourse, it hadn’t been a specially partisan issue (much as, say, neither Democrats nor Republicans in our day have taken up a party-wide stance on the independence of Puerto Rico).

The GOP’s decision to paint itself as the pro-life party was a stroke of cynical brilliance: brilliance, because that alone has kept a large proportion of Catholics loyal to them at any cost due to the Church’s insistence that every human being has the right to life, and despite the fact that Catholics were overwhelmingly Democrats before 1973; and cynical, because, while sincere pro-life politicians really have no option but to coöperate with the Republican cause due to the Democrats’ implacable pro-choice stance, pro-choice Republicans are a commonplace, and they can still win Catholic votes because the GOP is always dangling the carrot of maybe-they’ll-go-pro-life-one-day (or at least, the parsnip of they-won’t-introduce-bills-expanding-abortion-rights) in front of them. Cynical, too, because Republicans are reliably opposed to other aspects of a holistically pro-life approach to issues like the death penalty, and because they widely resist laws supporting access to the things that make life possible, like a living wage and universal health care—causes which the Catholic Church has also supported in no uncertain terms.

But all this just sets the stage. The massive shift of Catholics from a staunchly Democratic bloc to one split about evenly with Republicans, means that Catholics of all stripes and especially conservative Catholics have been rubbing shoulders with the racist and ethnonationalist elements that also cling to that party (GOP, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of political clout). Which in turn means that the ethnonationalists have far more opportunity to introduce the Catholics to points 1 and 2 above, as well as point 4 here.

4. The sidelining of traditionalist Catholics within the Church. I am not here saying whether sidelining traddies is good or bad. But I do think it can be said that it’s a fact. Liturgical and pastoral reforms, such as the decisions of the Second Vatican Council largely consisted in, always have their sincere opponents, and the hierarchy is generally ill-at-ease even with the most moderate and conciliatory of them. The self-styled conservatives of the Quartodeciman, Montanist, and Donatist movements all threatened (or were held to threaten) the unity of the Church from the earliest centuries of her existence, and liturgical conflicts contributed not only to the Great Schism of 1054, but to several later fissures within Orthodoxy, and at least one major rift that lead thousands of Eastern Catholics to leave full communion with Rome for the Russian Orthodox Church. It is, therefore, understandable that Catholic bishops of the last fifty years should have been wary of all devotees of the Usus Antiquior, however firm their protestations of Catholic fidelity.

And the brute fact is, not all of them have protested Catholic fidelity with much firmness. Schismatics like the Society of St Pius X, or the authors of the damagingly misinformed and insolent letter being shopped around by LifeSite accusing His Holiness of being a heretic, are only the tip of the iceberg. There are fanatical Latin Massers who deny that the Novus Ordo is a valid Mass, sedevacantists [6] who claim that every Pope since Bl Pius XII has been an impostor, and a veritable conclave of traddies who seem determined to not only excuse but canonize Catholic anti-Semitism and the Feeneyite heresy. Keep that sort of company and a lot of people are going to look at you funny.

If I may make an aside. As an Ordinariate member, I don’t know whether I’m quite eligible to be considered a traddie myself. But for what it’s worth, I certainly prefer the austere beauty of the Tridentine liturgy, even when celebrated poorly, to the typical celebration of the Novus Ordo with sloppy ritual, cartoonish music, and a homily that deserves to be slept through. The point is, I say these things about the traddie element of the Church because I think they need saying, not because I have any pleasure in saying them; and it bothers me that some people enjoy dunking on traddies, who, to do them/us justice, have been much exasperated.

Anyway, the point here is, many traditionalist Catholics feel shouldered aside by the Church as a whole and especially by the hierarchy. And the feeling of being at once deserted and betrayed is ideal soil for white supremacists to sow their tares. The people who are supposed to be helping you preserve this precious and beautiful thing have let you down. You’re the only ones who see it, the only ones who recognize the crisis. And we’re the ones who are on your side, who value what you care about. They treat you like the enemy because they don’t care what happens to this precious heritage; no, worse, they’re in cahoots with people who want to destroy it. We’re the ones you can trust. It’s the same temptation that practically always lures zealous Catholics, when they perceive the brokenness and corruption of the Church they have so long been confessing to be one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic: the temptation to re-apply the terms of the Creed, instead of believing it. Clarity is always easier to live with than mystery; and iniquity is a perennial mystery.

Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list. I’m sure there are other important factors at work here. But I dare say this is quite enough to be going on with.

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[1] The Descent of the Dove, p. 182.

[2] At any rate as of 1829, when Catholics obtained political emancipation in Britain. And though the Tudors (obviously excepting Mary) martyred a great many Catholics, the Stuarts generally preferred to live and let live outside of directly political affairs, as did the Hanovers, so that Catholics were in less danger of losing much by the hands of Liberalism than they otherwise might have done. Moreover, since the established church in England was, well, the Church of England, it was as much in the interest of Catholics as of any other religious minority to support Liberal policies, even if only cynically.

[3] This is actually an extremely ill-formed grasp of how sacraments work, but we can’t stop for a full catechesis in mysteriology right this second. For now, we must be content with this: in six of the sacraments (all but the Eucharist), the disposition of the recipient is one of the determining factors in whether it works: e.g., a person who goes to confession merely to look like a practicing member of the faith, but has no serious belief in Catholic moral or sacramental teaching, may have the words of absolution pronounced over him, but nothing objectively happens.

[4] That is, nationalists as such. There are certainly individual nationalists who care very deeply about Catholicism.

[5] I.e., I am not arguing, and don’t believe, that there’s any intrinsic connection between conservatism (whether as a philosophy or as a habit) and racism, but, in a society with a racist history like ours, people who want to push racist ideology and policy will certain use conservatism to do so. In a society with little or no racist history, people who wanted to push racist ideology and policy would most likely claim to be very modern and fashionable—whatever gets the job done, the job being mainstreaming racism.

[6] From the Latin sedes vacans or ‘empty seat,’ referring to the Holy See. (Incidentally, sedes is also where English gets the ecclesiastical term see for an episcopal seat.)