Is America bourgeois?

 263

Is America bourgeois?

David L. Schindler

The only soul it is clear that America has not lost is its Cartesian soul.

We cannot deny the fact that the bourgeois culture actually developed on Protestant soil, and especially in a Calvinist environment, while the Catholic environment seemed decidedly unfavorable to

 its

evolution. that Catholic Christianity in America is marked in significant ways by bourgeois disorder. Weigel's concern is not so much to criticize Ratzinger as to use the occasion to defend American culture from a

 conventional—progressivist-leftist—form

 of a criticism that America, in her historical-philosophical roots and/or present cultural circumstances, is a bourgeois, and therefore just so far decayed, civilization. My concern in the present article is to use the occasion provided in turn by Weigel's defense to challenge a certain way of reading Ameri-can culture as being, in its nature and its history, favorably disposed toward Catholic Christianity. I take Weigel's argu-ment to be representative of what is a conventional form of such a reading (more commonly from the Right); and I take the argument to be seriously defective from the point of view of what I will call creedal Catholicism. Since Weigel's argument was occasioned by Ratzinger's criticism, I will in turn rely on Ratzinger for articulation of the meaning of creedal Catholo-There is always a temptation for religion to ally itself with the existing order, and if we today ally ourselves with the bourgeois because the enemies of the bourgeois are often also the enemies of the Church, we shall be repeating the mistake that the Gallican prelates made

 in

 the time of Louis XVIII. , .

 ,

 „ Christopher Dawson, Catholicism and the Bourgeois

 Mind,

in

 The Dynamics of

 World

 History

Thus the Catholic Church appears Oriental to the West and Occiden-tal to the East. She is a stranger in both camps, and her home

 is

everywhere and nowhere. . . Christopher Dawson,

 Christianity East and West

In a recent article in Crisis magazine,

1

 George Weigel opens up issues which merit serious attention on the part of Catholics in America. The article is

 occasioned

 by a charge, expressed some months ago by Cardinal Ratzinger,

'George

 Weigel, Is America Bourgeois?, Crisis Vol. 4, No. 9 (October, 1986): pp. 5-10. References in the text are to this article.

Communio

 14

 (Fall, 1987).

 ©

 1987

 by

 Communis. International Catholic Revieto

I.

As Weigel notes, the term bourgeois has many meanings. Having offered several dictionary definitions of the term, each of them signaling vicious qualities such as avari-ciousness, excessive concern for one's private and material interests, tendency toward mediocrity and the like, Weigel settles upon what he takes to be Ratzinger's understanding. Though he would likely not embrace all of these features as aptly describing the bourgeois character of American culture, Ratzinger nonetheless thinks of American culture as gravely deficient

 morally—as

 characterized by a selfishness and radical individualism which has little or no concern for fundamental moral norms, or for the common good (p. 5). Ratzinger's criticism of American Christianity as being bourgeois thus carries within it one or other of the following two assumptions about America: some variant of the Parrington/Beard thesis about John Locke and the nature of the American regime in its founding; or, if not this, then some variant of the seculariza-tion hypothesis with respect to the character and quality of American culture in the present. The Parrington/Beard thesis finds a radical individualism inscribed at the heart of America's

 

264

 David L. Schindler Is America bourgeois?

 265 self-understanding. America in its Founding was shaped deci-sively by the Locke of the Enlightenment. The secularization hypothesis holds that contemporary American culture, in a fundamental way, carries within it a denial of transcendent reference points for personal or civic life (p. 8).

Weigel

 argues that the historical evidence no longer supports the

 Parrington/Beard—radical

 individualist—

interpretation of America in its Founding; and that the empir-ical and other available evidence does not support the secular-ization theory regarding contemporary American culture. In-deed, to the contrary, Weigel suggests that there is in fact a deep sense of communitarianism in America, as well as evi-dence of a renewed religiosity. The communitarianism can be seen in America's traditional linking of liberty with civic virtue, and is exemplified further in the propensity which Americans have for establishing voluntary associations and forming com-mittees to address problems. The renewed religiosity is verified in the data provided by recent public opinion polls, and can be seen in the growth of those churches which are not accommo-dating but are rather standing firm in their interpretation of Christian truth claims and behavioral norms (e.g., evangelical and fundamentalist churches). Thus Weigel is led to his con-clusion: Cardinal

 Ratzinger

 wants an evangelical proclama-tion and a moral catechesis that has not lost its edge. I would suggest that the American present, far from being impervious to such a proclamation and catechesis because of bourgeois decadence and an ill-Founding in the eighteenth century, is open

 to—indeed

 eager

 for—precisely

 what the Cardinal is calling for: A Catholicism which has not lost its self-respect (p.

10).

 Indeed

 [i]f there was ever a 'Catholic moment' in Amer-ica, it would seem to be now (p. 10). In constructing my response, I begin by drawing attention to what are the two crucial features of

 Weigel's

argument. The first is his definition of bourgeois. Weigel takes the defining characteristics of bourgeois to be selfish-ness and individualism. So far this seems to me appropriate. The problem nonetheless surfaces

 immediately—or

 so I will

argue—when

 one notices that Weigel understands this selfish-ness and individualism first and most properly in

 moral

 terms; when one notices, that is, that he characterizes Ratzinger's concern with respect to American culture as one primarily for its

 moral

 deficiency. This characterization may appear to be innocent, and indeed the obvious import of the single quotation from Ratzinger with which Weigel concerns

 himself.

What I shall argue on the contrary is that this characterization utterly misses what is deepest in Ratzinger's concern as that concern takes its shape from the Founding Documents of Christianity. From within the horizon of these documents, as we shall see, selfishness and individualism are deficiencies first and most properly at the level of theology-ontology. When and insofar as their meaning is properly retrieved at this level, it will become clear that

 Weigel's

 moral meaning is seriously inadequate. Secondly, then, having conceived the problem of selfishness in moral terms, and having adduced evidence of America's moral generosity, which he calls its communitarian-ism, Weigel goes on to offer evidence of America's religiosity. But it is crucial to notice the nature of the evidence which he

offers.

 First there is what is exactly the

 external

 evidence provided in survey opinion polls which reveal the fact that Americans (increasingly) believe in a personal God, belong to a church, and the like. And secondly, there is the evidence of growth in those churches which are making rigorous demands on their congregants. Now to be sure Weigel recognizes the obvious ambivalence in the nature of this evidence: that it can be used in support of an America disposed as much, say, to fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism as to Catholi-cism. But he takes note of such ambivalence nonetheless only to set the issue aside as

 impertinent—taking

 it to suffice for his purposes merely to record a preference for Catholic incarna-tional humanism (p. 10). His reason for so proceeding is made explicit: whatever the distinct nature and requirements of Catholic Christianity relative to other—e.g., fundamentalist and

 evangelical—forms

 of Christianity, the point is that the evidence which he has adduced suffices to show that America is in any case Christian in the sense pertinent to Ratzinger's criticism, to

 wit:

 American culture is not predisposing a critical mass of its people to reject even the most severe interpretations of Christian truth and behavioral norms (p. 9). But of course that is just what is at issue: is the distinction between

 Ratzinger's—a

 Catholic-creedal—Christi-

anity

 and, say, fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant Christianity, a trivial one with respect to the meaning of this statement, that is, as

 conveyed

 to us in the

 evidence offered

 by

 

266

 David L. Schindler

Weigel?

 I suggest that it is not. Or rather, I intend to argue that the evidence which Weigel adduces, first of America's moral generosity and now of its religiosity as shown in public opinion surveys, suffices at best to show that America is disposed to a Christianity, not which is indifferently

 either

 fundamentalist-evangelical

 or

 Catholic, but which on the contrary is precisely fundamentalist-evangelical

 as

 opposed

 to Catholic. To put the matter still more strongly: I intend to argue that the very presuppositions which lead Weigel to take America's apparent moral generosity, along with the external data provided by public opinion polls, as conclusive evidence of America's religiosity are exactly what lead him to overlook

 other—and

indeed

 abundant—sorts

 of evidence which testify on the con-trary to America's significant and widespread secularization. What are these presuppositions? Christopher Dawson, in discussing the two move-ments, stemming respectively from the Renaissance and the Reformation, which have dominated Western culture since the sixteenth century, uses the term extroversion to indicate the sense in which these movements entail a negation of a dis-tinctly Catholic vision of reality.

2

 In its etymology, the term extroversion means turning outward. What I propose is that

 Weigel's

 argument, from its conception to its conclusion, carries the presupposition of an

 ontology—an onto-logic—of

extroversion. By this I do not mean to say that Weigel advances such an ontology consciously or explicitly. Indeed, in a sense that is just the point: Weigel ignores the ontological dimension of the problem with which he is dealing even as the Catholic-creedal Christianity which sets the broader context for his argument sees that ontological dimension as fundamental. But Weigel does not for all that elude an ontology; on the contrary, he merely advances, now implicitly or unwittingly, a bad ontology, which can aptly be termed one of extroversion. But, once again, I intend to make this claim in the name of Ratzinger as representative of a Catholic-creedal understanding of Chris-tianity. We therefore begin with an exposition of that understanding.

2

Christopher

 Dawson,

 Christianity East and West,

 ed. by John J. Mulloy (La Salle,

 111.:

 Sherwood and Sugden, 1981), pp. 24-26.

7s

 America bourgeois?

 267 The exposition will draw principally from Ratzin-ger's

 Introduction to Christianity.

3

 This book is an effort by Ratzinger to elucidate the central meaning of the Apostles Creed; or, as Ratzinger himself also puts it, an attempt to repeat today what Karl Adam accomplished more than half a century ago in his masterful

 The Spirit of Catholicism.

 The explicitly Catholic and creedal context of the book is of course crucial for our purposes. The issue with which we are concerned, then, is that of the nature of selfishness and individualism. Now the terms selfishness and individualism suggest disorder with respect to what it means to be a self or an individual. Use of such terms involves one just so far thus in the presupposition of some constructive understanding of the meaning of

 self

and individual. Ratzinger's understanding can be found in his treatment of Trinitarian theology and Christology.

4

 The central elements of that understanding for present purposes can be distilled as follows: (1) Jesus Christ is understood as a relation of unity with the Father. Son and Logos are both essen-tially relational concepts: both essentially involve reference to another.

5

 The Abba prayer of Jesus to the Father best expresses this relation of unity. The general point, then, is that Jesus as Christ is one whose very being is a being-relative or -related. Jesus as Christ is a completely open being, a being 'from' and 'towards,' that nowhere stands on its own.

6

 The peculiarity of Jesus'

 1/

 of his person . . . lies in the fact that this T is not at all something exclusive and independent but Being completely derived from the 'Thou' of the Father and lived for the 'you' of men.

7

 Jesus' being is pure

 actualitas

 of 'from' and 'for' and as such at once coincides with God and is . . . the exemplary man.

8

 As exemplary man, Jesus is not man for himself but essentially man for others.

9

3

Joseph

 Ratzinger,

 Introduction to Christianity

 (New York: Crossroads, 1969).

Ibid.,

 pp. 114-204.

5

Ibid.,

 pp. 133 and 136

 inter alia.

%id.,

 p. 134.

7

Ibid„

 p. 154.

8

Ibid.,

 p. 170.

'Ibid.,

 p. 179; cf. pp. 175-182 passim; p. 156.