In the first part of this investigation I exposed the tension between Catholic morality and political morality, a contradiction from which we can, nonetheless, find a way of escaping.
But first, there is one “resolution” of the contradiction that seems to me illusory. This consists, as I described at the end of previous post, in pressing on the Catholic moral conscience, while severing the link between conscience and consciousness. From the latter springs the possibility of moral autonomy; from the former, only a confused sentimentality, easily corrupted and directed towards non-moral ends. Conscience can easily become the prey of manipulative politicians, as Gobetti knew, because it rejects moral reasoning in favor of intuition, autonomy in favor of dependence and a false solidarity: “…the word of faith and love spoken by the Church springs up on its own in the solitude of the individual conscience…” and creates bonds of common suffering or agitation.
This is the modus operandi of our Catholic politicians, for instance, when they direct all the moral energy of the believers towards “culture war” controversies. The electoral and social ambitions of politicians, cloaked in Catholic moral language, incite believers to action and protest. In the belief that the ends they pursue have a moral quality, the latter give full expression to their impulses and intuitions and stifle the rational development of their moral personality.
This tendency is quite evident in the political life of Georgetown. Catholic intellectuals are drawn towards this modus operandi when they come into contact with other right-wing groups, such as the conservatives I described before (“Conservatism and Rights”). The sentiments of the two groups often fuse together in the thought of individuals, whose conservatism is delighted by the Catholic strategy which destroys individuals’ moral autonomy and enslaves them to supposedly Christian dogmata.
But there is, aside from this false route, a resolution of the conflict between Catholic and political morality. There is at least one aim common to Catholic morality and the modern morality of politics, justice. Certainly, Catholicism and the logic of political activity do not conceive “justice” in the same way. And it is also true that for Catholics, justice is one of the lesser virtues of political life. But the pursuit of political justice can establish itself as, at least, an intermediate aim for the Catholic citizen.
It seems a contradiction in itself that, to conciliate Catholicism and political morality, the Catholic should have to disavow the Catholicity of his aim, and frame it in political terms instead. But it is not a deception for the Catholic to uphold justice as the ultimate aim of his political activity, because once justice is realized there is, strictly speaking, no “politics” in the modern sense of the word. In this world beyond justice, there are no competing claims of right, requiring appeal to rules of justice; here, then, the Catholic morality of private life will face no challenges from a political morality.
The world beyond justice is a sort of messianic world, because it seems that some external, miraculous force would be needed to bring it about. But for this very reason, it has no bearing on the political ethic, grounded in realism. The Catholic citizen may contemplate this world all he likes, but in practice, it is irrelevant, except as a lofty motivation to action.
There remains a tension between Catholic morality and political morality, on an everyday basis. But deprived of the conflict between the ultimate ends of political life, we can approach this tension, if not always erase it, through the realism of moral reasoning. In this way the Catholic, too, assimilates his proximal ends to the political struggle for autonomy.
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