By JUDE DOUGHERTY
The future of Europe as we have known it depends in a large measure on the resurgence of Christianity. The influx of immigrants from the Middle East, largely Muslim, has threatened to undermine the common culture of most European nations. Muslims are convinced, given the democratic conditions that prevail in Western nations, that within in a generation their numbers will enable them through the ballot box to peacefully assume rule of the Continent.
We all know or should know that beliefs matter, that religion matters, and that ideas have consequences. One has only to read the daily newspaper to realize that Islam is unalterably opposed to Christianity. The Islamic immigrant who refuses to assimilate and demands accommodation and exception to the common law of the host nation is acting in accord with his faith. Europeans living in the light of virtue defined in its Christian past have welcomed the alien immigrant without consideration of the cultural consequences of that decision. Sadly, the Islamic immigrant is likely to be more convinced of his values than the Western intellectual who professes “the values we hold dear.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But are they? Authoritative Islamic spokesmen, including important philosophers and theologians in Islam’s past, would not agree. Apart from that, even under the best political regimes men may be equal before the law, but not in any other respect. There are few natural rights. Most so-called “rights” are political rights held within a constitutional order. God-given rights are few. The infant has a right to life, sustenance, and other care that the parents are obliged to provide. Beyond that, one must look to the community and legislatively given rights.
To think about God and the grounding of rights, one has to have the relevant intellectual equipment. Common sense is not enough, for when challenged common sense is likely to need considerable learning to defend what seems obvious to most. Within Western culture, as with other cultures, there is a kind of communal wisdom, including religion, that is passed from one generation to another.
If the basis of religion is denied, if there is no known evidence for affirming the existence of God and this becomes culturally acknowledged, religion should disappear. Evidence suggests that this is happening in what was formally called “Christendom.”
At the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, a debate between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is worth revisiting. Nine of the thirteen colonies had established churches, but in the new republic, as proclaimed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof.”
Jefferson argued that the state should give no special, aid, support, or privilege to any religion. The state should predicate no laws or policies on explicitly religious grounds. No form of Christianity or Christianity itself should be supported by the state to the exclusion of other religions. All forms of Christianity should assume their own defense on equal footing with the faith of Jews and Mohammedans. Their survival must depend on the cogency of their word.
John Adams, for his part, recognized that every civil society must countenance a plurality of forms of religious association and practice. The notion that it is possible for the state to coerce all persons into adherence to a common public religion is for Adams a “philosophical fiction.” The maintenance of religious pluralism is essential for the protection of religion itself and other forms of liberty. Adams nevertheless thought it necessary to acknowledge a “public religion.” Every polity must establish by law some form of public religion, some image and ideal of itself, some common values and beliefs to undergird and support the plurality of religions.
The notion that the state and society can remain neutral and purged of any religion is, for Adams, unthinkable. Absent a commonly adopted set of values, politicians will inevitably set out their private convictions as public ones. In Adams’ view, the creed of this public religion is honesty, diligence, obedience, moral virtue, and love of God, neighbor, and self. Its expression, he says, is to be found in the Bible, the Constitution, and the memorials of patriots.
Adams has merely relegated the problem to a deeper level. In the late 18th century, Adams could take the elements of his creed for granted, but in the present century any systematic formulation of the virtues he took for granted is apt to meet resistance. The natural law philosophy of Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Scholastics, which directly or indirectly prevailed in the early years of the American republic, has long been eclipsed by the crass materialism regnant in the academy and in the popular press.
Without an acknowledgment of God’s existence, can we still look to nature’s order to support our understanding of law, justice, and consent?
When Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) addressed the modernist denial of purpose in nature, he held that God’s existence can be rationally demonstrated. The Catholic faith, he affirmed, is not a gratuitous leap into the dark.
Pius, in accord with the fathers of the Church, held that Greek intelligence prepares the way for the rational acceptance of the faith, such that divine Revelation was considered by the early fathers to be in continuum with what was previously known. He could affirm, “Christ came into the world when the intellect of the West was prepared to receive the truths of the Gospel.”
One cannot fault Adams’ desire for a “public creed” or the features he identified, but he has finessed its rational basis. Absent recognition of a God-given natural order, the values he holds dear become gratuitous affirmations. The public is left without a star to its wandering bark.
Fortunately the natural law outlook, although supported only by a minority steeped in the classical tradition, is not without influence within a large segment of the population. Its value may consist primarily in its support of what may be called the “horse sense” of the common people, who, while they may not participate in the dialogues of the academicians, know right from wrong and the consequences of questionable policies hastily adopted in the present.
They remain jealous of their freedoms and are increasingly distrustful of elites willing to abandon the inherited culture to accommodate alien claims.
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(Jude P. Dougherty is the author of a newly published work entitled Briefly Considered [St. Augustine’s Press, November 2015].)
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