Independence Day has come and gone, but the “postliberalism” debate goes on — as well it should, argues Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who offers a neat summary of the key issue:
What principles should guide public life and political institutions in an age when many people have lost confidence in the moral and social assumptions that have shaped the modern?
There is a tendency among postliberals to place human freedom on the side of a “social assumption” rather than a “principle.” This is partly due to a conflation of the Founders’ conception of “liberty” with the modern idea of “freedom.” Although the latter — in the words of Patrick Deneen — may be “pure and unmitigated,” the former is certainly not.
One can argue that the latter has clouded the former since the American founding in 1776, but the argument that the former had infected the latter at its root is less persuasive.
That makes Pope Leo XIV’s semiquincentennial congratulatory letter to “all Americans” all the more vital insofar as one of its main objectives is to reassert “freedom” as a principle. Having written scores of these letters for Popes Benedict XVI and Francis at the Vatican Secretariat of State, I couldn’t help but notice its distinctive length and tone. It surpasses the mere gesture of goodwill typical of such missives, and stands out as one of the finest syntheses of Catholic social teaching on religious liberty, human dignity and democratic self-government in recent times.
Quite simply, it places freedom at the service of service, and it does so by safeguarding it as intrinsic to human nature.
Religious liberty, Leo writes, “has long been central to the American promise” since it protects “individual dignity.” The Pontiff thus reiterates the Catholic principle that we reveal our human dignity most distinctly through the exercise of our free will in accord with the truth and a well-formed conscience.
The political corollary to this is that religious assent cannot be coerced. The American founders were resolved to ensure it never would be. Their conviction was based on more than the abundant empirical evidence arising from the religious violence of the Tudor era, the English Civil War and the Jacobite uprisings.
The framers were pragmatic, but their belief in human freedom was — dare I say — dogmatic. They were persuaded by the Bible that liberty is a divinely bestowed gift to be used responsibly in accord with truth. That itself is “self-evident” and stands in no need of demonstration. Put more bluntly, the existence of human freedom does not depend on the government conceding it. It rather underlies the very possibility of self-government, the existence of which itself depends on the responsible exercise of human freedom.
Again and again, due to the fragility of a free democratic republic, Americans are tempted to place the value of freedom into doubt. Many postliberals seem to have given in to this temptation or are on the brink of doing so.
James Patterson and Thomas Howes tell this story convincingly in Why Postliberalism Failed. That’s not to say the temptation isn’t warranted. All of us can come up with good reasons for wanting to curb individual liberties.
Take flag burning. After a 1989 Supreme Court decision in which Justice Antonin Scalia sided with the majority in acknowledging Gregory Lee Johnson’s right to burn the American flag at a public rally in Texas, the stalwart judge confessed he “hated” the result. “I would send that guy to jail so fast if I were king,” he said. Yet Scalia knew well that he was not king and that the country he served would never have a king. So, he dutifully reasoned on the basis of constitutional law and ruled that burning an American flag is protected by the First Amendment.
The “protection” that religious freedom accords to human dignity also imposes an enormous responsibility on everyone, including Catholics. This is the heart of Pope Leo’s message. We don’t just “take” the divinely-granted liberty protected by our Constitution; we rather employ it, because that same freedom enjoins a duty upon us. We put that freedom to work for the sake of God’s Kingdom. Cardinal Timothy Dolan articulates this beautifully in this short video:
Relying on his predecessor Leo XIII’s encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (1890), the American pope exhorts Catholics “to imbue every dimension of their existence with the charity of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:14), living out the Gospel in the circumstances of daily life,” including “service in the areas of education, the preferential care of the poor, healthcare, and basic social services.”
If you teach in a Catholic school, you are not only serving your Church but your country. Equally true if you are a doctor or nurse in a Catholic hospital or a counselor at a pregnancy resource center. Even catechists — insofar as they prepare young people to lead upright Christian lives that will contribute to the good of society — are serving their country. Don’t let radical secularists or even cowering Catholics convince you otherwise.
“Faith,” continues Pope Leo, “far from standing in opposition to the responsibilities of citizenship, lends new vigor to the pursuit of justice, peace, and the common good.”
This semiquincentennial of American freedom presents the perfect opportunity to take up the duties enjoined by religious liberty. Among such duties is the defense of human life, which “includes welcoming, protecting, and assisting immigrants,” for “receiving them with compassion and generosity is not only an act of charity, but also a recognition of the dignity that belongs to every human person.”
That’s the same dignity religious liberty is ordered toward protecting, which, in turn, is the same religious liberty that allows you to go to Mass on Sunday.
Fire engines, ambulances and police cars are vital symbols in every Fourth of July parade. Why? Because they quintessentially represent the ultimate purpose of freedom. The divinely bestowed liberty acknowledged by our Declaration of Independence and the basic rights protected by our Constitution are duty-bound: They make it possible for all of us to serve. Freedom is not only a blessing but an imperative for those of us who take up the Great Commission to spread the Good News.
Freedom, suggests Pope Leo, is not only “promised” by our Declaration of Independence, but itself holds out a promise: the promise that we are free to commit ourselves to promoting “justice, opportunity, and democracy.” The future success of America does not depend on how much freedom the government decides to afford us, but on the extent to which we embrace the freedom God has given us to serve our fellow citizens. If we accept the constitutionally protected freedom that allows us to go to Mass on Sunday, we are bound to put that freedom to the work enjoined by “Ite, Missa est” — “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”
Self-government is our work. Liberty is not. We have the latter from God to dispose us for the former.
That is why the late Jesuit Father James Schall argued that “revelation leads to the completion and fulfillment of political philosophy, not in any necessary or artificial way, but as an intelligible response to valid questions posed in the discipline itself.”
So, if we accept as a valid question posed by political philosophy — “Why should a government protect religious liberty?” — there is no more intelligible response than, “So we can serve God and our fellow men.”
Daniel B. Gallagher is a lecturer in philosophy and literature at Ralston College. He worked for a decade at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State under Popes Benedict XVI and Francis.