Since the death of Pope John Paul II, much nonsense has been spoken about the nature of his teachings, both by his detractors and his admirers. It has become a cliché among the former to hold that his body of doctrine was “contradictory” or “paradoxical,” insofar as he was “conservative” where theology and sexual morality are concerned but “liberal” on economics and capital punishment. The standard retort of his defenders, which seems to be hardening into something of a counter-cliché, is that the consistency of his views can be seen when one understands that they transcended the liberal/conservative divide. In my view, both sides are mistaken. While some elements of the pope’s teaching might give at least a superficial appearance of liberalism, the core of what he taught neither straddled nor transcended the liberal/conservative divide. It was simply and undeniably conservative, and consistently so.
The first thing to understand about the pope – be he this pope or any other pope – is that the core of his teaching is never really “his” in the first place, but is simply the official and traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which it is his duty to preserve and propagate. Every single pope from St. Peter onward has believed and taught exactly what John Paul II did about abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, contraception, divorce, premarital sex, and all the other “controversial” but entirely unoriginal elements of the pope’s presentation of Catholic theology and sexual morality. Journalists who discuss these matters as if they were merely John Paul II’s personal “views” are either ignorant or dishonest. What such people fail to appreciate is that at the very heart of the Catholic understanding of the papacy is that it has as its raison d’etre the preservation of the moral and theological doctrines passed down from the Apostles. The papacy, that is to say, is an inherently conservative institution.
This is one reason why it is fatuous to pretend that the pope’s teaching was “neither conservative nor liberal.” Another reason has to do with the nature of conservatism and liberalism themselves. Conservatism as an articulated moral and political philosophy arose precisely in reaction against various Enlightenment-era attempts to undermine the Christian moral heritage of Western civilization, rooted in the Bible and in natural law. Liberalism, by contrast, has always been concerned with overthrowing traditional institutions and thereby “liberating” individuals from the moral and social constraints of the past. Conservatism, then, has always largely been about what the papacy itself is about, while liberalism has always largely been about something close to the opposite.
Of course, that is not to say that all conservatives agree with every element of Catholic moral teaching or that all liberals disagree with every element of it. Nor is it to say that all conservatives are or must be personally religious or that all liberals are or must be irreligious. The point is rather that conservatism is, at least in a general way, essentially sympathetic to the content of traditional Christian moral teaching and to the project of conserving it, while liberalism is, in a general way, essentially suspicious both of the specific content of the Christian moral tradition and of traditionalism as a mindset. Conservatism and Catholicism are basically “on the same page” while liberalism and Catholicism basically are not.
What, then, of the pope’s teaching on capital punishment, capitalism, and the like? Here we need to keep in mind a long-standing Catholic theological distinction journalists and “dissenting” Catholics of the Ted Kennedy or John Kerry stripe like to ignore, between fundamental and unchanging moral principles (concerning which the Catholic Church claims that a pope is infallible) and contingent applications of those principles to concrete circumstances, often referred to as prudential judgments (with reference to which the Church does not claim papal infallibility). When one considers some of John Paul II’s particular prudential judgments, they can seem at least superficially to match the views of liberals and to be inconsistent with the more obviously conservative elements of his teaching. But when one examines the principles on which those judgments are based, one will see that there is no genuine inconsistency and that they are not at all liberal.
Capital punishment provides a good example. It is often said, without qualification, that John Paul II was “equally against both abortion and capital punishment.” But this is an oversimplification at best and a falsehood at worst. The Catholic Church has always taught that abortion is intrinsically evil, but it has also always taught that capital punishment is not intrinsically evil. This did not change with John Paul II – he neither had nor claimed the authority to change the Church’s teaching that capital punishment can in principle be justified, and even explicitly reaffirmed that the Church has always taught this and still teaches it. What the pope did hold was that contemporary circumstances make the application of capital punishment problematic, and therefore that even though the death penalty is not intrinsically unjust, it ought rarely if ever to be used. Moreover, his basic reasons for opposing the contemporary use of capital punishment had nothing to do with the standard liberal reasons. He did not claim that murderers do not deserve the death penalty or that it would be unjust to kill them. Indeed, he could hardly have claimed this, upholding as he did the traditional Catholic teaching on hell, according to which unrepentant murderers (like all unrepentant sinners) deserve and will suffer a fate far worse than death.
(If anything, it is arguably only a belief in hell that could provide a very strong reason to oppose capital punishment from a traditional Catholic point of view, the idea being that the soul of an impenitent murderer is in such grave danger of eternal damnation that we ought out of mercy to try everything possible to get him to repent while there is still time to do so. I do not claim to know whether this was exactly John Paul’s reasoning, but it is surely closer to it than are the usual arguments against the death penalty offered by liberals. Two helpful discussions of this issue, by Cardinal Avery Dulles and J. Budziszewski respectively, have appeared in recent years in First Things.)
Regarding capitalism, it is important to remember that even Pius XI, who was perhaps more critical of existing capitalist societies than any other pope, said in Quadragesimo Anno both that the capitalist system “is not to be condemned in itself” and that “no one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist.” Leo XIII, who in Rerum Novarum inaugurated modern Catholic social teaching, also excoriated socialism as intrinsically unjust, defended a natural right to private property on the basis of arguments that echo those of John Locke, condemned high levels of taxation as a violation of private property rights, rejected equality per se as incompatible with the natural order, and expressed reservations about governmental action as a means of remedying the plight of impoverished workers. And John Paul II, in Centesimus Annus, went farther than any of his predecessors in acknowledging the superiority of the free market as a means of generating wealth, the legitimacy of profits, and the dangers inherent in the welfare state.
Moreover, the Catholic Church has consistently taught that social problems ought always to be dealt with primarily by those institutions closest to the individuals in need of help: the family first and foremost, then the Church, private associations, and local governments, with more central governments intervening only as a last resort. This is the famous principle of subsidiarity, and its aim is to preserve the stability and independence of the family. The primary threats to the kind of social order Catholic social teaching hopes to realize are excessive statism, which seeks to absorb the functions of the family into centralized bureaucracies, and excessive individualism, which seeks through easy divorce, extramarital sex, pornography, same-sex marriage, and other components of “sexual liberation” to undermine the normative status of the traditional family unit. Of course, both excessive statism and excessive individualism are key components of liberalism, and they have always been opposed by conservatism.
It is preposterous, then, to suggest that Catholic social teaching in general or Pope John Paul II’s teaching on these matters in particular is “liberal” (in the American sense of that term). The general principles that guide the Church’s thinking on these matters are not very different from the Burkean principles that guide conservatives. It is true, of course, that the Church does not favor an absolutely unfettered laissez-faire economy. But what this shows is, not that Catholic teaching is incompatible with conservative views about economics, but only that it is incompatible with the standard silly liberal caricature of conservative views about economics. Indeed, not even all those usually described as libertarians believe in an absolutely unfettered laissez-faire economy: Hayek, who was in the view of many the greatest of so-called libertarian thinkers, certainly did not (though he was, to be sure, also not keen on the label “libertarian”).
It is true too that the popes have long taught the doctrine of the “just wage,” according to which a just economic system ought to make it possible for every man to be able to support himself and his family with his wages. But the Church has also always held that faithful Catholics can legitimately disagree about which particular policy proposals for realizing this goal, and for realizing the other aims of Catholic social teaching, ought to be implemented. And Leo XIII explicitly recommended against putting too much emphasis on state action as a way to guarantee a just wage, given how greatly the needs of workers and the circumstances of employers vary from time to time and place to place. It must also be kept in mind that it is, quite specifically, a wage that will allow for the support of a family that the popes have in mind here: as always, what matters most is guaranteeing the health and stability of the family unit, not satiating the desires of the autonomous individual self of liberal ideology.
At the end of the day, then, the teaching of the Catholic Church on economic matters is essentially conservative, and even when the popes in their prudential judgments about such matters have seemed to be endorsing “liberal” policies, those judgments have not rested on liberal principles, have not been presented as infallible, and have not bound Catholics to support any specific legislative measures.
The bottom line is that it is simply false to suggest, as is so often done, that conservative Catholics “dissent” from the Church’s teaching as often as liberals do. A faithful Catholic can legitimately hold that capital punishment is justifiable in some circumstances or that a raise in the minimum wage is a bad idea; but a Catholic faithful to the binding teaching of the Church can never hold that abortion or euthanasia can justifiably be legalized or that there can possibly be such a thing as “same-sex marriage” (since, on the Catholic natural law understanding of marriage, marriage is inherently procreative and thus heterosexual as a matter of conceptual necessity). A liberal who takes the latter positions is necessarily at odds with 2,000 years of Catholic tradition. A conservative who takes the former positions is not necessarily at odds with the Church at all. There is no parity whatsoever.
A recent statement of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the role of Catholics in public life confirms this judgment – and, we might note, applies it also to the case of papal prudential judgments concerning war. Ratzinger, who is Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (i.e. the Church’s official spokesman on matters of doctrine and morality) writes: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” (emphasis mine)
There is no way to avoid the conclusion that at least in a general way, there is a harmony between conservatism and Catholicism that does not exist between liberalism and Catholicism. And given that the Catholic Church is the oldest and most distinguished institutional defender of the values all conservatives hold dear, even non-Catholic conservatives have an interest in the health of the Church and of the papacy. Likewise, Catholics have an interest in the health of conservatism and of conservative political parties – and in ensuring that such parties remain true to conservative principles.