Within Catholic-blog-land, you may have noticed some sudden interest in Lockean political theory and its relation to Catholic social teaching. Having spent several years now studying Locke’s philosophy, I thought I would try my hand at sustaining that interest by way of a multi-part series on Locke’s political theory, devoting concerted attention to its fundamental principles before looking at how it stands in a conflicting relation to the fundamental principles of Catholic moral and social thought. The recent posts on Locke and Catholic social doctrine to which I refer above fail to do the heavy lifting of coming to understand Locke first and foremost. Instead, they trade on certain ambiguities in Lockean texts, prematurely mapping these ambiguities to tenets of Catholic social teaching and mistakenly taking superficial similarities between the two to be genuine agreements. My hope in this on-going series on Locke is to disabuse the authors of these posts, as well as the handful of readers who may buy them, of these misinterpretations.
Why is there confusion over Locke’s political philosophy in the first place? The answer is: John Locke is a more difficult read than one might initially think. Difficult, though not obscure. Of his major, extended writings, only one, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is written in a straightforward way. One can just pick it up and start reading: what you get from start to finish is pure Locke (though this is not to say that Locke could have benefited greatly from an editor!). But such is not the case with works like the Two Treatises on Government and his Oxford lectures on natural law, later organized and published as Questions Concerning the Law of Nature (hereafter cited as LN). The Two Treatises are notoriously difficult to interpret not on account of any shortcomings on Locke’s part, but because of his particular strategy for winning acceptance of basic tenets of liberalism among a 17th century population divided over questions of political legitimacy, divine right, and toleration. For instance, if one were to pick up, say, the First Treatise without a grasp of both its background history and Locke’s intentions in composing it, one might indeed mistake Locke for an powerful advocate of a distinctively Christian theory of political consensus. Of course, such a reading would be a bad misreading. The careful and attentive reader of Locke will spot that the First Treatise and the Second Treatise respectively forward mutually exclusive political theses. Indeed, Locke contradicts in the Second Treatise many points he makes in the First Treatise. But Locke’s inconsistency is only apparent; the First Treatise is not Locke’s political philosophy but instead a refutation of Robert Filmer’s divine right politics by means of Filmer’s own sources (the Christian scriptures and certain assumptions about royal succession). Once Locke exposes the inconsistencies of Filmer’s theory, he advances his own positive political philosophy in the Second Treatise, which flows from his own philosophical empiricism and natural (not biblical or Christian) theology. Similar difficulties arise from reading LN, which employs a dialectical method, forwarding certain theses at the onset before dashing them in later chapters.
As a young convert I was very much intrigued by the ongoing discussion between Richard J. Neuhaus, George Weigel, Michael Novak and Fr. Robert Sirico — and their critics, ranging from David Schindler (editor of Communio) to Tracey Rowland and Alisdair MacIntyre. This has sometimes been described as a debate between ‘Catholic neocons’ and ‘Catholic paleocons’; ‘Whig-Thomists’ vs. ‘Augustinian Thomists’ (the latter by Tracey Roland in a famous two-part interview with Zenit).
The discussion was centered on such questions as:
What are the religious and philosophical foundations of the ‘The American Experiment’?
Is the liberal tradition (understood in the sense of democracy, human rights and the free market) a help or a hindrance to the life of the Church and evangelization?
Is capitalism and the free market compatible with Christian morality and the social teachings of the Catholic Church?
What is the proper role of religion in the public life of America today and how ought we to interpret the ‘separation of Church and State’?
What is the proper understanding of freedom, conscience and religious liberty in Catholic tradition?. . . in other words, the kinds of questions that we at American Catholic are largely preoccupied. To aid in my readings and research on this topic I started a website, “The Church and the Liberal Tradition” and a blog, “Religion and Liberty” which was largely active from 2003-2006.
One of my chief sparring partners online was David Jones, founder of the blog la nouvelle theologie. While my time of late has been preoccupied with readings in other subjects (and other pursuits), David has kept up with new developments in this ongoing discussion. Among them, the recent exchanges between Catholic-traditionalist-turned-libertarian Dr. Thomas Woods and his chief critics, Thomas Storck and Christopher Ferrara (of The Remnant)– about which David would like to offer the following remarks in a guest post:
This article originally appeared on The New Theological Movement written by Reginaldus on July 29, 2010 Anno Domini. Re-posted with permission.
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Luke 12:13-21
The rich man of this Sunday’s Gospel is blessed with a bountiful harvest. Rather than thanking God for this gift, he hoards the grain in his barns – his heart is possessed by his possessions. At the moment of death, the Lord calls him a fool, for he was not rich in what matters to God.
The Fathers of the Church, and St. Thomas Aquinas following them, see in this parable a strong teaching of social justice. Their teachings have in turn been integrated into the Social Doctrine of the Church. Here we will consider St. Thomas’ exposition of the doctrine as well as several important quotations from the Church Fathers.
The common destination of all goods and right to private property
We must first affirm that man has a right to own private property. All men have a natural right to make use of material goods. According to positive human law, men also have a right to private property – this is necessary for the good order of society and the proper care of the goods themselves, it also serves as a means of restraining greed and inciting toward generosity (a man can give alms only if he has some property of his own).
However, it is equally clear in the Church’s Tradition, as expressed by the Fathers of the Church and magisterial teachings, that the right to private property is subordinate to the universal destination of all goods. That is, the right to private property cannot be extended to the point of depriving others of the basic material necessities of life. Every man has the right to the material necessities of life – when he is deprived of these, while another has excess wealth, a grave injustice has occurred.
I have decided to take some time away from my Democratic Party membership- this includes resigning as Vice President of Florida Democrats for Life. I have been a Democrat in spirit from the age of 13, when I took the initiative to volunteer many hours for the 1976 Jimmy Carter presidential campaign.This decision is not a flippant one. I will not trade one major party for another, I am going in an Independent direction and would like to found an American-version, Common Good Party, when time permits.
I am a pretty big fan of the Catholic Worker movement and Dorothy Day. I see strengths in both liberal and conservative tendencies, and find both indications in my reading of the official documents and speeches/letters of our Catholic Hierarchy on political matters.
The following article is one that was published in the Houston Catholic Worker Newspaper back in 2008. The author, Dawn McCarty is a frequent writer and volunteer at the Worker House in Houston. She seems to combine the head and heart in her approach to the issue of illegal Mexican immigration into the U.S. I offer her analysis for your commentary:
“22. Today the picture of development has many overlapping layers. The actors and the causes in both underdevelopment and development are manifold, the faults and the merits are differentiated. This fact should prompt us to liberate ourselves from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways, and it should lead us to examine objectively the full human dimension of the problems.” Pope Benedict XVI Caritas in Veritate Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by MJAndrew 
