Adaptive Integralism
Unmasking Toxic Integralism Toward Social Fulfillment as Alter Israel
Introduction
Toxic Vs Adaptive Integralism: Spectrums of Catholic Political Thought
-The Roots and Definition of “Modern” Integralism
-The Problems of the “Modernism” and the Hierarchical Response
-Rethinking Integralism
The Many Varied Traditions of Governance in the Judeo-Christian Tradition
-Political Structures in the Old Testament
-Political Structure in the New Testament
-Messianic Legacy and The Church
Integralism and Inculturation: A Methodological Exploration of Implementation
-Seeking the Monolith Versus Seeking the Fulfillment
-Christian Civil Engagement in Three Models
-Basics Mechanics and Principles of Adaptive Integralism
Conclusion
Introduction
The logarithmic selection of certain social media sites could lead one to a coloring of the digital continent where it would be easy to believe that “integralism” is a commonly understood aspect of Catholicism. Not only common, one could easily believe that integralism is “arguably” a coherent political structure that the church authoritatively defines, promotes, and even requires assent to. A casual survey after mass in my parish the other week showed no common understanding or even familiarity with the term. In fact, before visiting such corners of the digital continent, I myself had never heard the term, and I consider myself fairly well informed in church teaching and church history.
The global political landscape, and especially the political landscape of the United States, seems to be devolving into chaos. The trajectory went from cold war binary to monolithic global superpower to current uncertainty. And nothing breeds desire for certainty and stability like amorphous uncertainty. Enter the political theology/philosophy of toxic integralism, with a view of the past that is picture perfect (meaning in no way reflective of dynamic reality) and offering a promise of order and stability, with a side of self-righteous justification.
The purpose of this treatise is to review the revisionist historical narrative that leads to toxic integralism, illuminate the tenets of such a view, and reframe the meaning of integralism to a more adaptive version that suits the gospel. By the end, the reader will understand that Christian political theory should not be static. Rather than focusing on structure, Christian political theory should be adaptive to the needs of postlapsarian reality and primarily concerned with setting the social conditions that allow for recognition of, acceptance of, and cooperation with grace.
In the first section, we will be exploring the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. We will discover that these tenets seemed to be couched in a certain historical perspective born out of the magisterial response to the western secularization’s development of two modern egregores, Nation and Economy. Part of the assumption of modern integralism is that the Church, somehow, ceded its involvement in temporal authority. We will proceed to show how this was not the case. Rather there was a shift in the relationship of evangelization. Formerly Christianinculturation worked through a monarch (a form of government having origin in the pagan god-kings) to the populace. With the advent of secular democracies, evangelization needed to shift to a model that works from the bottom up through social justice and the new evangelization.
In the second section, we will parse the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We will discuss various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We will see that there is no one “Christian” way to structure or select civil governance. We will note that as civil governments grow in complexity, the role of religion changed in its relation to the practicality of civil governance, generating a prophetic voice that stands against oppression and sheer utility. We will also discover that every form of governance, even familial based patriarchy is the result of postlapsarian development. Thus any preference for a structure based on cosmology would need supplemental bolstering to stand. In the end, the structure, chosen by any manner, is malleable to redemption. We will conclude that the structure shares a Christain outlook if it recognizes subsidiarity and calculates its decrees by the common good.
We will begin the third section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture. We will lay out three different contexts for this development; first where the Catholic population is an oppressed minority, second where they are an accepted minority, and third where they are the cultural shapers. After noting some factors to be considered given the pluralistic nature of the modern world, we will discuss the basic nature of adaptive integralism. Noting its function, basic methodologies, and programs of implementation we will specifically apply these to the civil structures of liberal democracies. Finally, we will parse the role of each of the three hierarchies of the church, clerical, consecrated, and dyarchies as they maneuver in an adaptive integralist framework.
Toxic Vs Adaptive Integralism: Spectrums of Catholic Political Thought
In the first section, we will be exploring the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. In the second section, we will parse the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We will discuss various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We will begin the third section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture.
The Roots and Definition of “Modern” Integralism
It turns out when you delve into it, integralism is difficult to define, even generally. It is not a doctrine or ideology that is propagated by a manifesto, or even a philosophical tradition. At its very base it seems to imply two power structures, the clerical hierarchy, and civil governance. These hierarchies are seen as reflections of a cosmological hierarchy that puts God at the top of the great chain of being and descends down in authority. The “natural law” observation to validate this view is the structure of the family as naturally hierarchical. The conversation of integralism revolves around how the clerical hierarchy exerts authority over the civil authority, which exerts authority over the general populace. Such discourse is perceived as “political theory”. The use of the term on the digital continent seems also to imply a certain understanding of history regarding church state relationships. The term integralism seems to take that understanding and crystalize it’s at a particular point, and then proclaim that relationship “doctrine”. It may, therefore, behooves us, here at the beginning, to indulge in a little historical review in order to get an angle on where to begin.
It is hard to pinpoint a place to start discussing church/state relationship in a Catholic context. One could easily see how the perspective changes depending on whether one starts with the crucifixion, or before that using Jesus’ relationship to power structures in his life on Earth, or even further back in salvation history to God’s covenant with Israel, and that historical nation’s political existence. But current discussions of Integralism do not go near that far back. Modern integralism usually assumes that “church/state relationships” involves a cooperative relationship between two governances, the clerical church hierarchy, and the civil authority. For that to be the case, we would have to start relatively late in church history, after the development of Church hierarchy, and after both the Edict of Milan and the Edict of Thessalonica, both in the 4th century.
A few decades after the Edict of Thessalonica made Christianity the official state religion in 380AD Saint Augustine penned his City of God wherein he grappled with what an imperial church could even mean. Official status was a new phenomenon in Christianity’s 400 year history. Augustine sets the stage for a host of assumptions concerning church-state relationships, not the least of which is some sort of intrinsic division between the two. This is presumably because much of the existing civil structure of Rome at the time of his writing was still steeped in paganism. If the integralist position is that “the two” must work in unison, that there is even a “two” in a context where Christianity is the imperial religion, is the result of Augustine’s grappling with this new situation.
But the starting point for the integralist can’t actually even be here because Augustine’s treatment of the two cities is not that they are a cooperative dyad, born out of a reflection of cosmological hierarchy, that mutually edifies. Here is how Augustine conceived of the two cities as he lays in out in City of God Book 14:28,
Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, You are my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, I will love You, O Lord, my strength. And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,— that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride —they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Romans 1:21-25 But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, that God may be all in all. 1 Corinthians 15:2
Of course, Augustine is not simply talking about two hierarchies, clerical and civil. This book concerns the sacking of Rome and accusations of fault levied by the power interest of the pagan religious who used to hold that privilege. It is a dicey topic because one cannot simply throw off the civil aspect of humanity and say it doesn’t matter, especially when that aspect has only recently stopped persecutions and offer premium protection. But Augustine is trying to thread a careful needle, wherein he exalts Christianity by focusing on the future glory of the Eschaton, while at the same time reminding the reader that there are those who are too concerned with things of this world (i.e. passing civil structures). Augustine’s political underpinning is actually an “overpinning”. His theory of the state, based on biblical interpretation, is that governments and empires are positioned by Divine providence to best facilitate salvation history. Before the incarnation, the unwitting aim of these governments is to set conditions for the incarnation. After the incarnation, the often unwitting aim of these governments is to set conditions for spiritual growth of its members. But that setting is not necessarily political stability, nor civil authorities working in conjunction with clerical authorities. Rather it is stability guided by the providence of God, which may present as chaos from the human perspective. City of God turns out to be in no way a political treatise, but rather a work of moral and spiritual encouragement in the face of trying times. Thus we cannot even look here for the genesis of integralism.
It is not even as if the ecclesiastical structure was set in such a way as to cooperate with Roman civil structures in the time of Augustine. It is not until the western collapse of the Roman empire that Gregory the Great formed the hierarchy to such a degree as to be a competing organizational structure resembling a universal “government” akin to the civil structures. Gregory is also an early example of a pope who uses his office to coordinate missionary activity through civil relations with the see of Rome.
But a well functioning clerical hierarchy that is able to effectively influence civil governments is only half of the picture for the modern integralist. There also seems to be a need for a civil structure that sees itself as part of the Church’s plan for the salvation of souls. The regressive integralist’s basis for that structure seems (maybe unconsciously) to be some idea of the divine right of kings, based, again, out of a cosmological view, supported by natural law deduced from natural family structures. The divine right of kings in its most basic form sees the monarch as appointed by God and subject to no human power. This idea far predates Christianity. In its pagan origins, it would not be odd to see the king as himself possessing divine powers. As Rome devolved in the West and various military and tribal factions broke into feudal structures this idea carried through the medieval period tempered by the qualification that kings were in some ways subject to (or in participation with?) ecclesiastical authority. But even that was a struggle to assert for the Pope and bishops. Ecclesiastical investiture was a constant battle between civil and clerical authorities.
It is in this milieu that the regressive integralists sets their sights on a political philosophy, dreaming up a scenario, where the state, as subject to the authority of the clerical hierarchy, enforces the Christian polis. This would have been conceived of as the height of political beauty for the regressive integralists. Then they conceive of a tragedy, the toppling of the monarchies, and the institution of the secular agenda of “liberalism”. This toppling symbolizes the cosmos gone awry since according to their cosmological investment, God is king and invests the kings with their authority. The structure of governance from top to bottom is a microcosm of the great chain of being in the cosmos itself. To rebel against one is to rebel against the other. Thus the advent of liberalism with forms of government “from below” from the integralist’s point of view is obviously demonic. The best test case is the French Revolution, with its violent program of forced secularization. There is no apology for the violence of the revolution, but integralists tend to start the narrative as if a populace of secular atheist political liberals sprung en masse out of the Earth of France and began chopping off heads. There is little account for the abuses of both civil and clerical authorities. Nor the suffering inflicted on the populace by the constant violent sectarian wars that had been raging for two and a half centuries and how these things may have effected the zeitgeist. Looking past that the regressive integralist seeks to restore some sort of monarchy, or at least an authoritarian regime, and reimplement a “halcyon existence” that never existed.
There is always an assumption that the monarch will be a moral person, as opposed to the liberal will of the people which is depraved. Truth be told, neither is guaranteed to be either moral or depraved, but regressive integralists seem to have faith in the one over the many. This posited monarch then becomes a sounding board for what they believe good Catholic governance looks like. “A King would …” is no longer some lone individual’s idea of what a government should (usually particularly) do, it seems more like an established norm. But absolute monarchs or dictators do not have established norms, that is the whole point of the absolute, they do what they deem fit.
The belief of regressive integralists’ is that the Catholic monarch would understand that God is the true king, and therefore calibrate his judgment according to God’s will. But how does that mental assent differ between the monarch and the elected official? The only difference seems to be a perception of an authoritative cosmology that works “top-down” or “bottom-up”. But as was often noted in the treatises Christian power dynamics work both ways simultaneously. If the populace elects people who see life this way, one will get as good governance as if a monarch shared the belief. Apart from that, the Kings of Israel did believe that God was king, and as we shall see, it did little to offer comfort to the nation.
The regressive vision of integralism is only one two forms as it has re-manifest over the past few years on the digital continent. These are not organized ideologies, but the two camps generally break down as what we have been calling the regressive integralist and what we may call the progressive integralist. As we noted the regressive integralist seeks to look to the past and re establish a perceived church state relationship that died as Europe secularized over the past two and a half centuries. In order for that to happen, the regressive integralists seeks to restore governmental structures of the past and reinstitute the church under past manifestations in order to achieve this ideal. It would not be odd for a regressive integralist to identify themselves as a “monarchist”. The progressive integralist sees the valid concerns of the effect of secularization as it historically unfolded. Progressive integralist seek to address them in ways syncretistic to modern approaches, but with an eye on church state relationships that afford the church’s position as superior or authoritative in matters or morality and as cultural shapers. It would not be unheard of for a progressive integralist to identify themselves as “communist”.
Both sets of integralists identify with Christ and his mission. Both see Christ as following their political model from the top or from the bottom. Regressive integralists often point out that Christ is “Christ the King” and thus identify government as having an inherent religious function. But integralists often forget that Christ is also “Christ the Criminal”, that a key aspect of Christ’s life goes against prevalent power structures, and this speaks to something fundamentally awry concerning those structures. Both of these titles can be understood analogically and be developed to draw out important moral lessons, especially concerning structures of society. Only former title (Christ the king) is able to be anagogically interpreted, because Christ will not be a criminal in the Eschaton. The latter title (Christ the Criminal) is the only one that is historically present, Christ was in fact a worldly criminal, and never a worldly king. Thus of the two, “Christ the Criminal” seems to be the primary and more useful term for postlapsarian pastoral and practical application and when practicing Christo-anological interchange. This is the title that the progressive integralist it could take as he sides with the populace in order to shape society in ways we will describe below.
Regressive integralism tends to lend itself more to what we will call toxic integralism. Toxic integralism is a variety of integralism that is bound by a network of family resemblance beliefs, which paint a grim picture of dispossessed adherents. “Toxic integralism” is in some ways a strawman that we are creating here to bind those family resemblant factors into a cohesive misery of integralism. There are, no doubt, some absolutely toxic integralists, but as we noted integralism itself is in no way a cohesive philosophy so we can only speak in straw men and generalities. Generally, the regressive desires a monarch, while the progressive desires a dictatorial authoritarian regime. As we noted each promotes an extreme acceptance of totalitarian uniformity based on targeted “truths of the faith”. The authoritarianism, not the structure is the “toxic” aspect. Generally, manifestations of toxic integralism are also accented by a disdain for the cultural and political state of affairs. This is not to say that there is no room for criticism of the cultural and political state of affairs. There always is. But this disdain seeks an immediate, impatience, and unhealthy break. Such a ruptured refiguring is more akin to the eschaton than the incarnation, which is our present mode. Modern integralists of all stripes also tend to seek this change by government decree that implies coercive implementation of Christan moral codes and they generally at least tacitly approve of coercive religious participation.
That being said, here is where we can begin to see how the toxic variance in modern integralist traditions manifest because those coercive moral codes are selective. The selection is generally based on the secular political bias of the individual integralist. Thus we reach a final family resemblant phenomenon of modern integralism, the sola traditio approach to religious authority. This approach takes the exact same tact as the protestant sola scriptura. The protestant seeks self justification by personal interpretation of selective readings of scriptures. The integralists usually make the same mistake, self justifying by personal interpretation of selective readings. But this time it is from magisterial documents (tradition). Neither approach wishes to grapple with the Magisterium, the living authority of the Pope and bishops. Both retreat to personally selected and interpreted textual sources. For the modern integralists, the sources, selections, and interpretation will depend on where they fall, for example, as a regressive or progressive integralist.
The varieties of modern integralism curiously lines up with the spectrum of secular politics, except that its population concentrates on the extremes of the spectrum forming an inverted bell curve. The curve and the insistence on rapid immediate change, seem to seek an authority to bolster a political agenda rather than a political agenda that is founded on a religious view. Generally, the bombast of the toxic integralist betrays more of a sophomoric desire to “settle all the world’s problems” that most of us feel when we are young and imagine that a benevolent dictatorship would work, as long as the dictator completely agreed with us. The only difference is that instead of bludgeoning one’s political opponent with reasoned out political philosophy alone, the toxic integralist seeks to at least supplement that intellectual tradition with the hammer of divine imprimatur. At worst, the philosophy is dropped all together and bumper sticker politics is combined with bumper sticker theology and a dash of hackneyed quotes from traditional magisterial sources. These together allow one the illusion of absolute justification, while providing no advancement to the common good.
The anxiety of the toxic integralist is not born out of an observation of salvation history or a calibration by way of the incarnation. Rather the anxiety of the toxic integralist is often born out of a certain narrative of recent (the past 3 centuries) history as we discussed. The need for strong insistence on integralism is born out of a certain narrative that paints the clerical hierarchy overwhelmed and retreating from its duty to rule the rebellious civil authority. One can look to a favorite document for a sense of how this narrative is spun. During ongoing political upheaval that followed the revolution in France, Pope Leo XIII wrote Au Milieu Des Sollicitudes and stated,
Again, at present, when contemplating the depths of the vast conspiracy that certain men have formed for the annihilation of Christianity in France and the animosity with which they pursue the realization of their design, trampling under foot the most elementary notions of liberty and justice for the sentiment of the greater part of the nation, and of respect for the inalienable rights of the Catholic Church, how can We but be stricken with deepest grief?
According to most strands of regressive integralism, in this grief, the church retreated from engagement and ceded the political order to those invested in governance by republic. This was the mistake because such governance is not cosmologically oriented, rather it is oriented by the secular. More extreme iterations, toxic integralists believe that secular agents “infiltrated” the church hierarchy in order to destroy it from within, painting a grim picture of a clerical hierarchy that was once in glory as it maintained a universally ordered system of balanced governance and institutional religion. Now the church is seen as corrupt, unable to implement its proper authority on the secular world, and crumbling under the weight of its enemies.
There are, of course, some grains of truth to this narrative. But the vacancies and neglect of nuance lead to a host of assumptions adopted by modern integralism that are unfounded and unnecessary to the Catholic faith. Before deconstructing this narrative it may help to delve deeper into the problems of recent historical development in order to attune ourselves to a healthy political disposition.
The Problems of the “Modernism” and the Hierarchical Response
The regressive integralist is wise in their distrust of some currents of post-enlightenment “liberal” thought. But, as we have often noted in these pages, the political worldview of liberal secularization turns out to not be secular at all. The treatise Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention commented on how Francis Bacon began the secular agenda,
Francis Bacon sets out the mission of science and by that the secular worldview in 1620 in the preface of his Novum Organum
in order to have a thorough knowledge of the subject, [man] will himself by degrees attempt the course which we describe and maintain; will be accustomed to the subtilty of things which is manifested by experience; and will correct the depraved and deeply rooted habits of his mind by a seasonable, and, as it were, just hesitation: and then, finally (if he will), use his judgment when he has begun to be master of himself.
Bacon’s simple mission is to use science to better humanity's lot in life as we dwell on this earthly plane. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, but the last two words of this quote also speak to something more than just “betterment”. To be master of one’s self means that God is not the master, and that one is able to attain perfection in and of one’s self.
This self mastery was not only misguided, but it also completely failed to manifest, arguably because humans are made to strive toward and orient themselves to the transcendent as transcendent. The shift from the more materialistic focus to a form of transcendent animist was noted in the treatise Applied Remythologization
We live in a world that offers a materialistic cosmology, which is to say an exclusively dynamistic cosmology. But at the same time when one applies mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial beings, one begins to see that humans have a hard time keeping their dynamistic forces from straying into animistic territory. We are now going to give a brief analysis of three harsh gods the of the modern world. Each of these gods has its roots in a secular dynamism but each has at least in part morphed into an animistic reality. The gods we will review will be The Nation, Science, and The Economy. That these are false gods is not new to Christianity, but the intuitive sense is they are “false god” because, though they are powerless, like “gods” they draw people away from the true God. Our contention with mythic-lens reconstruction is to remove the words “like” from the previous sentence and remind the reader that they are not powerless at all, but powerful as gods in the old cosmologies.
What we witness with the unfolding of secularization as a program is the rise of two egregores. That is to say, as “gods” Nation and Economy are not angelic beings that God created to have dominion over aspects of creation. That type of “god” would be an angel or a demon. Demons as false gods are beings that were created in the beginning and either seek or are given glory above the one true God. An egregore is a power that seems to be created out of the human collective psyche. An egregore is beyond just “a bunch of individual thoughts” It takes the form of a psychic entity in and of itself, at least in the mind of its devotees, if not in reality. The concept of an egregore is generally more often found in esoteric thought. The treatise Cosmic Evangelization commented often on how Paul’s belief that humans judge the angels. Can they in some limited way “create” some category of spiritual beings as well? Jerimiah 16:20 states, “Can human beings make for themselves gods? But these are not gods at all!” His answer notes that we cannot make “God”, that is, the one true God. He exists apart from our imagination. However, the answer is not unequivocally negative. It does not say we cannot make “something”. Certainly, we make idols, physical entities that we believe “house” gods. But those entities are artistic representations of either existent celestial beings, or beings that the human psyche has constructed and given power. The interesting thing is that either way, those gods have “power” over humans and can inflict great suffering. The injunction is true, they are not the one true God, but neither is a political leader who has power. That simple fact does not rob them of their ability to wield power for good or evil.
With an understanding of how egregores work, we can lay out the two most popular in the world today. As we noted above, they are Nation and Economy. Are Nation and Economy independent psychic entities that manifest in different regions and cultures as anthro-genital demons? Are they simply a collective psychological phenomenon, whose “existence” is more akin to mass hysteria? Are they one of these which has come under the control of demons? I doubt these aporias can be answered definitively. Regardless of the objective answer, we must ultimately take a pragmatic approach to their existence. I think we may assume that as they come into existence, these egregores can then be manipulated by existent principalities and powers. The Bible implies as much. Such an egregore can be “hijacked” so to speak, by demons. They can also be under the patronage of angels. We will begin by relaying the same recent history of secularization we reviewed above. But this time, instead of a political struggle, it will be framed as the assent of these egregores using a narrative application of mythic-lens reconstruction.
Nation and Economy are the egregores that were created through the vain assumption of the secular agenda; an agenda which claims that humanity is destined (or even able) to control its own affairs. The overthrow of monarchs, whose rule supposedly reflects a hierarchical cosmology, was replaced by institutions of collective will, run by various democratic processes. Those monarchies were Christain. But they came into being by the Christian inculturation pagan political forms reflecting pagan cosmologies. In some cases, these were structures where the monarch himself was believed to possess divine power. The same inculturation process of cosmologies and hero-leaders that happened to these monarchs and tribal chieftains via an understanding of Christ the King can happen to modern revolutionaries by narratively appropriating Christ the criminal. A revolutionary reformer calling for repentance and expression of love toward neighbor against a brutal leadership invested in a culture of death channels Christ the criminal, even if they don’t know it.
From the enlightenment liberal agenda, we garnered a new cosmological focal point for political impetus. The political gaze was directed downward to humanity and is not static but dynamic. The liberal agenda was intended to keep affairs “in house” for humanity. But ignoring the way the cosmos and the human person is constructed does not change the way it is constructed. The effects of this misstep were rapid and painful. Almost immediately two principalities arose in prominence, Nation and Economy. Nation made a fast ascent and spurred on liberal progress such as the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, The Mexican Revolution, and so on. These movements maneuvered by creating secular governments which in turn sparked “civil religions” that appeal to devotion aimed at the state and require allegiance to the notion of Nation. This early ascent sets the precedent for devotees of Nation to cooperate with “religion”. The cooperation does not come with an understanding of divine sovereignty, religious ethics, and cosmology as a reality. It comes with an understanding that religion is “powerful” as a secular psycho-social reality. By means of it Nation can control the populace. Thus devotees of Nation either co-opt an existing religion, assert its subservience and use its social power, or they create a standalone civil religion. Either way, devotees of Nation form governments and cultures that garner their “power” from a collective national ethos above any reality that is perceived to transcend the will of the state. That ethos may be geographical, but more likely it is geography with an investment in culture and/or racial eugenics.
As the French revolution was exported across Europe promoting Nation as the savior from oppression, the new power rising is the egregore Economy. First conceived of as “principles” in the American system of capitalism, Economy was then re-forged as a reaction to that conception in the development of Communism. Each system is a face of Economy worship because each seeks all calculations by means of Economy. With fits and starts the monarchies slowly disappear and are replaced by a motley collection of national governments and economic outlooks. The First World War seemed to be the last gasp for effective monarchical empires as both the germanic Keiser and the Ottoman Empire expired and revolution ushered in the communist state of Soviet Russia. The Second World War could be easily seen as a sorting out between the adherents of these two egregors. On one side is the Axis Powers, fascists, who worshiped the state and sought to bring all loyalty to the state. On this side, racial and cultural calculation took precedence even over economic calculation. In their vision, the world would be divided hierarchically by geography and race. On the other side were the devotees of Economy; capitalist and communist. They are not as strange of bedfellows as it may seem on the face. All of the allied powers were devotees of Economy. After the war, in which they soundly defeated the devotees of the egregore Nation, the two factions of devotees began a protracted standoff [the Cold War]. These factions divided between those who thought that the egregore Economy could be controlled for human benefit by proper devotion (socialism, communism) and those who thought human will should bend to the whim of the egregore (capitalism).
With capitalism having won the Cold War, it seems we now have a cruel god who is billed as abiding in an ethereal realm. This god is often described in anthropomorphic terms or by totems. Lastly, this god is believed to possess a power far beyond human control. Humans can only adapt to life under its tyranny. This god is maintained by a series of demigods known as “corporations”. The lingering devotees of Nation may abide in congresses, parliaments, or nationalist militias and terrorists organizations around the world. But even they calculate according to economic principle, so strong was the defeat of Nation.
Through all of this, the secular agenda is kept in play by a dazzling set of interconnected facets, which form a propaganda of absolute awe for Economy. By promoting a dynamistic empirical cosmology, all other gods are bereft of their existence. Priests and prophets of Economy propound a teleology of infinite progress that is maintained by the mesmerizing awe of technological power. Devotees ascribe to an anthropology focused on relativistic “freedom” that doesn't actually exist. That supposed freedom keeps in play a social morality calibrated by utilitarian hedonism that maintains a complete secular focus, keeping the populace from ever knowing that they have been enslaved to a celestial principality. Humans still assert their “control” over their destiny, but that control is limited to the equivalent of choice of breakfast cereal. If our worst fears are true, that principality is not an egregore, but a demon who has subsumed the original egregore and now tugs and shoves humanity this way and that into disparate forms of suffering.
The recent history painfully reiterated the ancient assumption that man is not absolutely free. Even as one observes the trajectory, one sees how a clever egregoric demon (perhaps guided by a celestial demon) took two centuries to bring humanity from enslavement to corrupt kings with governments based on structures created out of pagan worship (a fact often overlooked by the regressive integralist), through a liberal agenda of freedom, to an attitude of controlling the egregore, to ultimately seeing themselves as enslaved to the all powerful egregore Economy, guided by its “invisible hand”. As Jerimiah says, “By breaking a wooden yoke, you forge an iron yoke! For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: A yoke of iron I will place on the necks of all these nations serving”.
This mythic history is a depressing tale for the modern Christian, especially the integralist who thinks he can simply fix all these problems by restoring an authoritarian form of government modeled on the old monarchies that forces the populace to accept proper cosmology and morality. Yet the problems presented would not be that different under a monarch or dictator, even if the one that freed us from this egregore was a pious Catholic. Integralism can’t trust a one time fix any more than the liberals did.
Paul made it quite clear that man is enslaved to principalities and powers. That Christ frees us from those powers, not a political structure. Paul also asserts that this world is “subject to futility”. That, “subjugation to futility” is what needs to enter into the conversation of the modern integralists. There is no way for a community on its own to build a structure that perfectly storms heaven. The Tower of Babel made this absolutely clear. Jesus’ response is one of relief, not structure. ““Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Rather than a political structure, the Son incarnated into the least likely station to exert civil-political authority.
So what then? Should Catholics give up and stick to individual piety? Did the church do the right thing in abandoning the political game to the secularists? Or is the “benedict option” of withdrawal from society the way to go? These are questions that require nuance. Certainly, the church is a community, and it is not good for man to be alone. The incarnation teaches us that withdrawal from a sinful world is not an option for Christians. Even if collectives of Christianity did withdraw, the parable of the weeds and wheat reminds us that the structures we build in isolation will also be subject to futility. And most importantly, the simple fact is, as our history lesson unfolded in real time, the Church did not by any means withdraw from the stage.
The idea that the church “withdrew” from political engagement probably stems from two things. First is that the secular authorities do not want the guidance of the church and effectively “kicked the church out.” The second is the Church, during the time of monarchial overthrow, lost its investment in temporal power, meaning the Papal States, which were definitely dissolved by 1870. In 1846 nationalist Italian forces, bent on overthrowing monarchies, captured Rome and Pope Pius IX declared himself prisoner of the Vatican, a status which lasted six decades. That historical fact, coupled with the loss of monarchical governments where the church had influence, seems to lead people to believe that the church sat back and took a strategy of waiting for the restoration of monarchy.
Indeed this was the Church’s first strategy. Most of the documents cited by regressive integralist who are monarchists are taken from sources of the ordinary magisterium dating during a time when the church was adapting to a great shift in how civil governments were structured. The clerical hierarchy had formed a cozy relationship with monarchical civil authority. Cozy is not to say amiable, necessarily and it is certainly not to say objectively morally superior. Cozy means that there was an understanding of the rules regarding how the clerical hierarchy could influence via the civil structures. The monarch signifies all authority. His will is the will of the civil structure. Work the monarch and you work the culture, people, nation etc. It is definitely a convenient form of government for evangelization. Many a saint earned canonization by converting a pagan king, and thus his whole population. Consider the case of Saint Valdimir I of Kiev,
Christianity had made some progress in Kiev, but Vladimir remained pagan, had seven wives, established temples, and participated in idolatrous rites, possibly involving human sacrifice. Around 987, Byzantine Emperor Basil II sought military aid from Vladimir. The two reached a pact for aid that involved Basil’s sister Anne in marriage, and Vladimir becoming a Christian. He was baptized, took the patronal name Basil, then ordered the Christian conversion of Kiev and Novgorod. Idols were thrown into the Dnieper River.
Conversion of the entire populace appears to be that easy. Monarchy may be a good model of government for a church that wishes to influence a Christain populace in general via one person. Convince the monarch, and you have presumably convinced the people. One can see the appeal here. Regressive integralists usually frame their more unreflective social media posts on what mico-cultural mores, couched as moral principles, they want to foist upon the whole populace with the force of law.
As the situation on the ground developed rapidly in the mid 19th century the popes wrote in response seeking to correct the errors deeply ingrained in the mythic history as related. In doing this, they often opined for forms of government that are easier to deal with. The quintessential text that one may turn to for a concentrated dose of this dynamic is Quanta cura authored by Pope Blessed Pius IX in 1864. In this encyclical he states,
And again do not fail to teach “that the royal power was given not only for the governance of the world, but most of all for the protection of the Church;” and that there is nothing which can be of greater advantage and glory to Princes and Kings than if, as another most wise and courageous Predecessor of ours, St. Felix, instructed the Emperor Zeno, they “permit the Catholic Church to practise her laws, and allow no one to oppose her liberty. For it is certain that this mode of conduct is beneficial to their interests, viz., that where there is question concerning the causes of God, they study, according to His appointment, to subject the royal will to Christ’s Priests, not to raise it above theirs.”
This encyclical goes on to condemn absolute moral relativism as it is beginning to appear in its many forms, freedom of conscience (wherein “conscience” is seen to dictate truth; as opposed to primacy of conscience, which is accepted doctrine), morality guided by public opinion, and the notion that might make right. Quanta cura also goes to great length to reiterate divine authority over civil authority. It asserts that the religious neutrality of the civil power cannot be embraced as an ideal. The encyclical is a reaction to many examples of philosophical and civil unrest that had already begun and would only intensify over the next century and until the present.
But if one carefully reads the letter, it’s dictums are as applicable to monarchy as they are to democracy. They are couched in reference toward the populace because of the new phenomenon of bottom up governance. But they are principles easily, and often, aimed at corrupt kings of old. Pope Blessed Pius IX may have tipped his hand as having a soft spot for monarchy, but that is only because at this time in history, monarchs were his closest seeming ally. Besides, who wants all the trouble of convincing a populace, when you can simply convince a king, dictator, warlord, or strong man such as Saint Vladimir I of Kiev and have his subjects fall in line? But simplicity and laziness are not equivalent to revelation by diving truth. Monarchy is not the exclusive divinely approved form of human governance. In fact, as we shall see, there are certain parts of the Bible that cast great suspicion on monarchy. It is simply that at the time the documents are authored, monarchy had been easier to evangelize under that model and are offering protection against contextual enemies.
This same idea of proselytization seems to be the desire of the integralists. But as Pope Francis points out, especially now, we cannot rely on proselytization, we must rely on evangelization. The latter is a call or draw to the truth by means that awakens the person for who they are and urges them to seek Christ. The former implies a forceful means, for example by rigid logic argument or political maneuvering such as we are discussing.
It took some time for history to play out enough that the magisterium realized that the new way of running society was not going away and had in fact exerted an absolute victory over the old way. By World War II the fascist seemed like the only remaining allies because they at least recognized a use for religion. That use, of course, was as a tool to further their nefarious nationalist agendas. Then, lastly, the capitalists, because they took the fascist model of useful subjugation of religion (anything that makes money is tolerated in the capitalist model) seemed to make the best political ally.
The communists, on the other hand, hate religion and see it as a simply a tool for subjugation. The communist view is formed out of the monarchical, fascist and the capitalist corruptions of religion. It is intensified by the mistaken view that humans can escape subjugation to the transcendent. Modern monarchical integralists often paint over the legitimate abuse of both monarchies and capitalists with regards to religious corruption. They deem monarchy as valid for cosmological reasons and discount the fact that many popes and bishops had to call kings and dukes to repentance concerning their governance. And poor governance by aristocracy that is aligned with the church reflects poorly on a church loathed to call out such corruption because it benefits the church (corruptly). The communists of the 19th and 20th centuries had some legitimate criticisms of the temporal governance of the church; criticisms worth pondering. By the end, the ecclesial church found no true Political allies in the emerging secular world. But then again, neither did it have them in early Rome, and neither was its relationship to medieval monarchy perfect. Things have not drastically changed. The Church's true mission and relation to the political realm is and always has been prophetic.
Both monarchical and socialist, that is, regressive and progressive integralists, are born out of this history, how can they be otherwise? They look back to a specific time in church history for validation, a recent time when the church cooperated in a particular way to the civil powers that be. But that cooperation is based on one person signifying the authority of the state. Since that is not the case for every state, that cannot be the exclusive model for the Church. Neither Judaism nor Christianity brought monarchy to the world. Christain monarchy developed from pagan political models and was used to Christianize cultures. Why would the current secular situation be any different?
Rethinking Integralism
Did the Church “take its (political) toys and go home” when the monarchists were ousted from power last century? The answer is definitively no. Did the Church remain engaged by demanding monarchial government? Absolutely not. Those who think so tend to focus their gaze on a period of magisterial documents when there were still effective monarchies in existence and those popes preferred this form because of its ease. But even those documents do not demand monarchy in any authoritative way when read with care. What they demand is that Christians recognize that divine authority trumps political and economic authority and that the state bolster the faith. But what that bolstering looks like and what needs to be assumed about the state before one can expect such bolstering is a completely different matter from simply asserting that the state should bolster the faith.
Instead of retreat the Church did what it does, it engaged. When we say “Church” here we mean the entire body of Christ, clerics, and lay, consecrated and married, not simply the clerical hierarchy. The clerical hierarchy of the church, slow as it is to adapt and ever cautious in its approach, did the same. In his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, Pope Saint Paul VI demonstrates the new modus of engagement,
But it seems to Us that the sort of relationship for the Church to establish with the world should be more in the nature of a dialogue, though theoretically other methods are not excluded. We do not mean unrealistic dialogue. It must be adapted to the intelligences of those to whom it is addressed, and it must take account of the circumstances. Dialogue with children is not the same as dialogue with adults, nor is dialogue with Christians the same as dialogue with non-believers. But this method of approach is demanded nowadays by the prevalent understanding of the relationship between the sacred and the profane. It is demanded by the dynamic course of action which is changing the face of modern society. It is demanded by the pluralism of society, and by the maturity man has reached in this day and age. Be he religious or not, his secular education has enabled him to think and speak, and conduct a dialogue with dignity.
If the regressive integralist blanches at such talk, it must be remembered that this was the exact approach to the pagan monarchs and tribal chieftains in the Roman Church. This approach is solidly traditional, not “traditional” with an eye simply on the developments of the past two centuries. This is in no way an “infiltration” of the heresy of modernism anymore than adaptation of a monarchic civil structure was a cessation to paganism. The heresy of modernism as outlined above has everything to do with disregarding the primacy of divine authority. It is to be doubted that any church document that developed and adapted to modern circumstances does that. What is called for is to look at one’s enemy and see Christ. If one sees an enemy of the Church and a destroyer of the stability of monarchy, one may be seeing aspects of Christ the criminal. Certainly, criminality is what the Pharisees and Roman officials saw when they saw Christ. The next step is to do what any Christian would want to do, find where Christ is (in that position), and dialogue with Christ the criminal.
The only unique aspect of magisterial teaching on relationships with secular powers as of late is that new civil structures and relationships seem to have developed after the incarnation and initial spread of Christianity. Though this discounts where they actually come from, it indicates a sort of “atheist backslide” attached to the new brand of civil governance. It seems to be a “criminal” system in that it over turns the established order (monarchy) like so many money tables in a temple. But the fact that the system developed post-Christendom does not negate the fact that it can be redeemed. To assert such is tantamount to asserting that individuals being born centuries or millennia after Jesus’ saving act implies that an individual cannot be redeemed.
To believe that structure of governance begets ati-christainty is simply to buy into the idea that monarchy is somehow cosmologically invested. Again, it is not. Any mechanical form of human organization that may develop is able to be turned to goodness by investment in the incarnation. Jesus himself hints at a bottom up form of organization this when he states in Matthew 18,
If your brother sins against you,
go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
If he does not listen,
take one or two others along with you,
so that every fact may be established
on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church.
If he refuses to listen even to the Church,
then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.
Amen, I say to you,
whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth
about anything for which they are to pray,
it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.”
This entire passage about forgiveness demonstrates a system of social checks and balances that ensures respect and dignity is maintained in the community. In short, like the Levitical Law it is a maneuver of social governance. But the end in no way implies a hierarchical model that is top down authoritarian. Quite the opposite it implies a very secular understanding of authority. “Heaven” in this passage is generally understood as “the will of God”. In this case, the valid interpretation is easily, “God is pleased when we are able to make peace.” But when one considered the wide spread ancient belief attitude that “the heavens” is the vault and in many ways “determines” (astrologically) our situation, this statement is a radical challenge to any top down authoritarianism, as well as any model for natural determinism.
To believe that one form of government is the only acceptable or functional model is to deny the power of God to redeem our situation as infected by original sin. That is not to say that governments and economies can do no wrong. It is to say that various imperfect systems and structures are able to be worked into compatibility with Christain life.
The first thing any Christain should remember is that we live in postlapsarian reality. No governmental structures will be perfect. Monarchy and a monolithically Catholic population do not guarantee pure and proper devotion by the individual. In fact, such a set of circumstances comes complete with its own host of dangers to one’s soul, including but not limited to complacency, hard heartedness, and litigiousness. The latter is amply exhibited in the longings of toxic integralists. They seek a legal (law based=litigious) platform to implement a litigious brand of Catholicism, the exact brand of religion that most of Jesus’ parables and miracles are aimed against.
That said, the current secular situation is drastically askew. The populace makes neither personal nor political calculation based on divine teaching. Rather all is reduced to economic calculation. With a secular model, civil leadership is not top down, it is bottom up, the people choose the leader. So here are two points where the church must speak to the modern civil structure. The modern integralist should be thrilled to know that the church is maneuvering to address these issues.
One can no longer simply sway a king and expect a populace to sway. One must sway a populace in order to obtain an amicable Christain leader. A successful integralism is an adaptive integralism. It must be able to work with the situation as it is, not as one would like it to be. It must be able to change the political makeup of a culture or nation regardless of how that system operates, such that it is compatible and cooperative with gospel values.
Enter “The New Evangelization”. This is a particularly effective concept in states where the leadership seeks to subject religion for state purposes. Such efforts reorder the church’s focus to reflect how current political power dynamic play out in order for the Church to hold sway in a Christain (or formerly Christain) society. This does make Christianity appear to be one lobby among many. But the simple fact is, in a pluralist society, Christianity IS one lobby among many. It happens to be the lobby with Truth on its side. But having truth on one’s side never stopped a populace from following another lobby if one is unpersuasive.
As for economic calculations, the entire program of the Church’s social justice teaching is meant as a sacralized alternative to the egregore of Economy. These engagements are not the effect of “the encroaching heresy of modernism”. They are the church’s developing response to the very real problems of modernism and a sacralization of the problems that modern developments are seeking to solve. From this, it looks as though the progressive integralist is “in the right camp”. But their presence online often suggests tactics that buy too much into the secular approach at the expense of the transcendent. Also, their penchant for authoritarian coercion presents serious problems.
Whatever modern Catholic integralism is, it cannot be a situation where Church officials or Catholic civil leaders “lord their authority like the gentiles”. So, are we to simply seek “the salvation of souls” and never worry about political structures? Absolutely not. The social justice tradition of the Church is at present the strongest tool of the professed integralist. This is because social justice teaching directly addresses the false god who currently occupies the strongest ascendency, Economy, and seeks to subject that false god to Christ.
The concepts of social sin and social justice are hard concepts for the modern individualist to comprehend. The focus of personal morality has been a dominant milieu in Christianity because; first Christianity had no power, then over the course of half a century, it gained imperial power. In each of these, personal morality is the focus, and social concerns of civil society play out in the realm of ecclesiastical authorities, kings, princes, and dukes. But with the development of the liberal the civil order the church cannot demand that it return to this or that model. Making demands regarding political structure was certainly not Christ’s model, nor was it the model in the early Roman empire when Missionaries set out to convert pagan tribes by converting their leaders.
An understanding of both social sin and social justice is necessary for the entire Church because the role of the faithful in society includes voting. In a pluralistic society, the moral perils are clear. All the more reason to have a voting populace that can form their consciences by legitimate teaching and do their part to tame the Economy to the will of Christ. This is cosmic evangelization by conversion. In the current model of capitalism, Economy dominates Nation and subdues it to its will. Nation in turn seeks to exploit religion and usurp its power in order to serve Economy. The principles of social justice use all of these mechanisms but seeks to put this disordered and demonic hierarchy back into its proper scope. If properly implemented the social justice teaching would have a nation informed and guided by divine revelation that keeps an economy at the people’s service. In this structure, the sabbath works for man, not man for the sabbath. That is to say, laws and governing principles benefit humanity, not the other way around.
Social sin is a necessary conception when one cannot judge society by judging its one ruler. Where the civil structure is guided by the will of the people, the sin of the nation is also the sin of society. This was always the case to a certain extent, even in the most controlling monarchies. But with the rise of democratic forms of government, the nature of social sin becomes painfully obvious. What is different now, though, is we no longer simply have “social evil”. Where there is intent and knowledge there is culpability and we move from simple evil, with no culpability, to sin, with social culpability. Democracy gives a society volitional buy-in. Society as a whole makes choices by its will, hopefully, according to information. This gives us a clear framework for “social sin” as opposed to social evil implemented by a singular authoritative monarch who might alone bear the sin.
Again, social sin is hard for the western individualist to grasp. One person’s vote is not a direct causal factor of the sin. Rather it is a collective or aggregate culpability. Most social evil is evil by omission. We are not culpable because we A) do not know how we are causing evil and B) do not will the evil. In times of imperial monarchies, this would have been the case for almost all people for almost all civil circumstances in an empire because they had no ability to sway the policy of civil governance. But with the advent of democracies and an informed populace, in as much as one votes, one is in at least some minimal way culpable for how they use their vote. That aggregate culpability is social sin, the guilt of the nation. It is not a new idea, it has been around since the Tower of Babel. The advent of democracy has simply given it a new and wide reaching manifestation, which begs a new approach. That approach is the social justice doctrine of the Church. Social Justice teachings are teachings of the church that any good pope would have previously given to a monarch in order to allow him to be a just ruler. But now civil justice is a social matter, not simply an aristocratic one, thus how integralism works must adapt.
The Church couches many of these concepts in terms familiar to the secular political and economic frameworks, but does not calculate according to the egregores. This is the program of adaptive integralism, the ability to sway a politically active populace toward amiability with Christan life. This will orient the calculations of society so that they are based on God’s revelation in scripture and the Incarnation. The basic human rights demanded by the Church are the right to life, and the means for its development and the right to social services, that is the right to be looked after from cradle to grave. The right to life includes the right to the means of the development and sustenance of life. That is, the right to food, clothing, shelter, necessary medical care, and rest. The Church asserts the right to social services despite ill health, disability from work, widowhood, old age, enforced unemployment, or anything beyond a person’s control. There is also an imperative for rest, which is required under a regular schedule, such as the sabbath, as well as for sickness, and to develop family and religious life. Rest is a command of God. It rejuvenates the body, mind, and soul and is a requirement of a just society.
So is democracy the best form of government for Christianity? It is a prevalent form of government on the planet at this time. That is all that matters for us. As Pope Saint John XXIII stated in Pacem in Terris
It is not possible to give a general ruling on the most suitable form of government, or the ways in which civil authorities can most effectively fulfill their legislative, administrative, and judicial functions. In determining what form a particular government shall take, and the way in which it shall function, a major consideration will be the prevailing circumstances and the condition of the people; and these are things which vary in different places and at different times.
Democracy or monarchy could be good manifestations of integralist thought, the question is which is more pragmatic for this time and place? Regressive integralism seems currently to be more prone to manifest as toxic integralism. Progressive integralism may manifest that way, but it is just as likely to simply be the current strain of adaptive integralism the magisterium is seeking to implement by the New Evangelization and social justice doctrine.
If a regressive integralist sees adaptive integralism as some sort of abrogation of “civil truth” formerly revealed by scriptures or the church then they have been paying attention to neither scripture nor church teaching, nor most importantly the life of the Church. Most likely such a regressive integralist is using a social contract framework and trying to fit it into a model that favors salvation history through covenant. Taking the political and using it as a lens for the sacred is the opposite of what integralism should be doing. That said it is worth attempting to take the opposite tack as we analyze the relationship between the “two kingdoms”.
In this section, we began by exploring the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. We discovered that these tenets seemed to be couched in a certain historical perspective born out of the magisterial response to the western secularization’s development of two modern egregores, Nation and Economy. Part of the assumption of modern integralism is that the Church, somehow, ceded its involvement in temporal authority. We proceeded to show how this was not the case. Rather there was a shift in the relationship of evangelization. Formerly Christian inculturation worked through a monarch (a form of government having origin in the pagan god-kings) to the populace. With the advent of secular democracies, evangelization needed to shift to a model that works from the bottom up through social justice and the new evangelization.
In the next section we will parse the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We will discuss various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We will see that there is no one “Christian” way to structure or select civil governance. We will note that as civil governments grow in complexity, the role of religion changed in its relation to the practicality of civil governance, generating a prophetic voice that stands against oppression and sheer utility. We will also discover that every form of governance, even familial based patriarchy is the result of postlapsarian development. Thus any preference for a structure based on cosmology would need supplemental bolstering to stand. In the end, the structure, chosen by any manner, is malleable to redemption. We will conclude that the structure shares a Christain outlook if it recognizes subsidiarity and calculates ist decrees by the common good.
The Many Varied Tradition of Governance in the Judeo-Christian Tradition
In the first section, we explored the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. In this second section, we will parse the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We will discuss various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We will begin the third section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture. We will lay out three different contexts for this development; first where the Catholic population is an oppressed minority, second where they are an accepted minority, and third where they are the cultural shapers. After noting some factors to be considered given the pluralistic nature of the modern world, we will discuss the basic nature of adaptive integralism. Noting its function, basic methodologies, and programs of implementation we will specifically apply these to the civil structures of liberal democracies. Finally, we will parse the role of each of the three hierarchies of the church, clerical, consecrated, and dyarchies as they maneuver in an adaptive integralist framework.
Political Structures in the Old Testament
The regressive integralist tradition seems too long for a bygone time when social rule by an absolute authoritarian civil leader was understood as the only form of governance. They see this as the stable form of governance from the beginning of time and give it a cosmological validity based on spurious applications of natural law and cursory selections of scripture. When one traverses the scope of salvation history one sees the goal of any healthy variety of modern integralists, an approach to civil governance where harmony with divinity is the primary lens (though not often the primary practice). Yet in scriptures, one encounters quite an array of structures by which what we would consider “civil governance” operates. Each of them seems to have strengths and weaknesses according to the texts. This being a political piece on integralism, strengths and weaknesses are measured against how well the political structure seems to please God according to the narrative. The scriptures are convenient because the narrative often lets us know God’s point of view, whereas any other medium of political thought can only speculate on God’s disposition. This speculation often leads to toxic varieties of integralism.
It is worth taking a brief survey of political structures as they develop through scriptures, in order to garner respect for the many varied approaches tried and tested. There is a trajectory from simple to complex which seems to follow the trajectory of the cosmological paradox as it splitters humanity into multiple billions of self regarding sentient beings. As humanity traverses the cosmological paradox reality is in a process of reordering from Eden to the Eschaton, thus adaptability will be key. As this happens how humanity governs itself seems to adapt to the terrain of relationships throughout the narrative of salvation history. This adaptability gives credence to an adaptive model for integralism.
In the beginning, there was no obvious structure other than perhaps the family, but there was not even a “family” per sey in Eden, only the dyad. The first postlapsarian “political structure” that seems to develop was the patriarchy. In fact the structure of authority that is presumed to be “inherent” in the family from the beginning, seems to actually be part of the “punishment”. The punishments themselves come off as the natural consequences of the rebellious actions, as we often noted in previous treatises, the experience of good and evil is exactly what they asked for. One consequence is a relationship where “power” structures are created, which adapt to human concupiscence. As was noted in the treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent,
In the flow of salvation history, there was a turning away from the leader/servant after the Garden toward authoritarian monarchies and patriarchies that sought by strict discipline to order human civilization and culture . . . this is due to the aggregating effect of concupiscence into human structures of social sin. Our ontological view is thrown off and God, our neighbor, and our environment are all seen as only “other”. There is no communion. Because of this the hierarchies almost always end up benefiting the top in ever new and ever-evolving forms of tyranny. Sometimes this is even justified by claiming the tyranny of God as a source of the abuse of authority.
In the Garden, there would be no need of conception of a hierarchical structure. In postlapsarian reality concupiscence typically corrupts, the aid supplied by God. When humans willfully cooperate with concupiscence divine aid becomes a hindrance.
In this context, the family is the postlapsarian primordial organic structure where parents teach children to be parents. It is a “civil governance” of sorts, but only in the context of postlapsarian reality. One can see that scripture does not see patriarchy and familial structure in exactly the same light as civil governance because that structure is immediately contrasted with a more broad civil structure in Genesis 4. “Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. Cain also became the founder of a city, which he named after his son Enoch.” The line where the first city was founded shows a bias against civil structures period. As was noted in the treatise On Promotion of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness, “what Noah took on the arc was all the things that were of the natural order, family, animals, and food. The things that were left were all the things of Cain's line, manipulative technology.” In that treatise, we were discussing how Cain’s line developed technology. Here we may point out that Cain’s line developed “civilization” and again, Noah only took family into the arc, not extra-familial governmental structures.
The disadvantage of patriarchy is on display with Abrahams’s unhealthy obsession with descendants. It is also exposed as being subject to all the same weaknesses of any authoritarian model throughout the Genesis text, especially the problem of favoritism. Be that as it may, patriarchy has its advantages. It is obviously the “natural” form of governance, thus it is the model that others should be based on. This is probably because the hope is that a parent truly cares for their children. Thus there is less of a change that “subjects” will be objectified and exploited.
Patriarchy as a model of governance covers a family or clan, but once one surpasses clan to something larger like tribe the complexity may warrant more than leadership by kinship association. As was noted in the treatise The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family, the ties are extensive and often not simply bio-determined. The extension of these associations ultimately leads to a new development in governance. With the choosing of Abraham as the first patriarch of Israel, humanity was already firmly developing into a system of city-states ruled by priest-kings such as Melchizadek. This position seems to be a direct development from a patriarch, who would manage both leadership and spiritual guidance simultaneously. But for the priest-king his governance is not simply paternal, he rules humans who are not his biological or in any other way familial relation. As families bond together for protection, efficiency and cultural edification governance become necessary in a way that goes beyond the family structure.
As governance develops and becomes complex, the governed culture may become more monolithic, but the functions of government often segregate according to skill and need. As this was happening, God took Abraham and his descendants into his care by entering into a covenant with him. If integralism could surmise a cohesive political/economic theory, the main concept would have to be “covenant”. Each variety of governance that Israel endeavors is sealed with a covenant. The problem is that “covenant” is not a political theory. Rather it is a relationship built on the virtue of trust toward mutual edification rather than litigious definition. A covenant does not carry the connotation of a contract, thus this is not the model of the social contract between people. A “covenant” connotes a “sacred pacts”, thus it has an awareness of the divine in its establishment and execution.
The best example left of a covenant is a functioning sacramental marriage. Marriage is not meant to be a relationship that works by a give and take litigious relationship, though marriages do require both give and take as well as defined norms. One of the most detrimental aspects of simple civil marriage is this exact litigiousness. The language and norms of covenant hint at a deeper relationship than simply external, social mutual benefit. It is a relationship that shares in divine life, a relationship of love. This loving relationship based (rather than authority based or law based) impetus for governance is the divine lens that is often missing from discussions of integralism online. They rather seek to work out the rules of society and use a perceived divine imprimatur which gives a mechanism of enforcement
To work out governance outside of the scope of covenant is to work out governance via a secular model of social contract. What are the “rules” for church state relationships? The very question is already far afield of covenant model. It is compartmentalized beyond the original organic structures. This is a delicate dance because married partners know that there are rules to a healthy marriage. Some of these rules are “traditional” and apply pretty much across the board. Many if not most of the rules are particular to the couple. Of these tailored rules, many are unspoken, and some are even unconscious. Meanwhile, some are consciously communally hashed out and defined. That rules exist doesn't negate that the foundation of the covenant is love. As hard as all this is in a marriage, marriage is simple compared to society.
One can get a sense of this complexity by observing the rules of the covenant God entered into with the Hebrews through Moses. Here is where Israel shifts from a patriarchal structure to a “nation”. It is able to subsume external groups despite a lack of direct family ties. This happens individually, such as Rahab or Uriah the Hittite, and communally such as the Gebionites. This demonstrates the ability of “governance” as opposed to family, yet at the same time, the lineages of the Old Testament constantly remind us that we are all one human family, descendants of Noah. Therefore the two, governance and family, must work synergistically. God’s transition from family to political governance is the first indication of the need for an adaptive integralism.
The Israelites are governed by a “law” like other nations, and the law gives them freedom. Historically, the law is certainly a cultural crystallization resulting from the Babylonian captivity. But the narrative impact is a portrayal of God who is adapting to the situation of the Israelites, much how he adapted to the needs of Adam in the second creation story. The Israelites are now a large people and need governing principles and structures in order to operate. The law is a covenent from God which allows them to focus only on God and gives them the ability to ignore any civil/religious leader who directs contrary. The story is a story of a people escaping from a system of governance that is authoritarian, racially driven, and economically exploitive. The covenant relationship with God adapts and changes to meet the people’s needs.
Moses’ role seems to be a “political” system of a theocrat, which implies that the authoritarian model is the model to go with, it's just that one has to find the “right”, what?, leader? Land? God? None of these are suitable answers. Not to mention that the narrative of the journey to the promised land is not quite so simple as “we found the right form of government and good laws”. The entire story the people are rebelling against Moses, demanding luxuries of Egypt that do not exist in the desert, challenging his authority to lead. Moses is seen as merely a go between, trying to facilitate the relationship between God and Israel that needs to be there in order for the covenant to be truly a relationship of love. Themes include; don’t test God, Trust God, don't go after false gods. Little to none of the narrative of Moses deals with theory of Law and how to form it such that people can be ruled. The only commentary on that is, God gives the law from the mountain, and this model does not play into modern integralism’s penchant for political speculation at all.
The narrative shows how Moses has to develop an understanding that one human cannot be the absolute leader. His father-in-law Jethro, teaches him this in Exodus 18 by telling him that being the absolute authority is “not wise” and teaching him to layer civil authority. This story communicates governance from the secular point of view.
More complex than that is Number 11 where “governance” is discussed from the divine point of view,
The LORD then came down in the cloud and spoke to him. Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, he bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied but did not continue. Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, had remained in the camp, yet the spirit came to rest on them also. They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent; and so they prophesied in the camp. So, when a young man ran and reported to Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp,” Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses’ aide, said, “My lord, Moses, stop them.” But Moses answered him, “Are you jealous for my sake? If only all the people of the LORD were prophets! If only the LORD would bestow his spirit on them!”
In this story, there is also a sharing of power, but that sharing is not judicial, rather it is prophetic. This authority comes from above, not below. The difference is accented as Israel itself develops political structures and the Kings and princesses are seen in contrast to the prophets, who are there to call the people to God against the political and personal machinations of the royalty. This story is fascinating because the power of investiture of prophecy is clearly not human and seems to contain what Catholic parlance calls an “ordinary” and an “extraordinary” form. Whatever prophecy is, it is not a secular political office. Many of the subsequent stories of the prophets point out that such “secular/political” positions existed in the ancient world, and strongly assert that there are authentic prophets and inauthentic prophets.
The law and the prophets form two aspects of leadership in the Hebrew and Christain community. Law connotes order, truth, stability, moral action, rubric, justice, maintenance. The prophetic connotes dynamism, context, relationship (love), mercy, motivation, moral intention, and sincerity. Each of the dual aspects has its powerful strengths. Each, when taken to the extreme and neglecting the other, leads to serious dangers. When law operates without prophecy society becomes disordered such that man is subject to the sabbath. The populace can become over litigious which leads both too prideful mercilessness in the law and/or spiritual laziness in doing only what is required and acting without beatitude. When the prophetic stance is held exclusively it often inflames personal self righteousness because there is no true way to objectively verify legitimate prophetic status. Thus anyone claiming to be a prophet should be listened to. Yet many people may claim this without a true call. An overly zealous prophetic investment also tends to a relativistic stance regarding action. True prophets meet the circumstantial need at hand. If one notices the longitudinal trajectory of prophecy, the variance caused by this could lead to the idea that “anything goes”. These two aspects are needed in society and their need to be in a relationship of cross-spectral mutual pedagogy.
Moses was a charismatic theocrat, but not a King. When he died he was given a stealth burial and his family did not continue as a dynasty. Rather Joshua son of Nun seemed to take leadership of the community, but primarily as a military rather than a theocratic prophetic leader. This was what the circumstances called for as the Israelites entered the promised land. Here we see what regressive integralist often neglect to note, Scriptures use of malleable political structures in motion according to the needs and tasks at hand regarding salvation history. Joshua son of Nun is not an aristocratic king, but a military dictator. He begins a line of dictators known as the judges who, usually, are only in power for the time that Israel is threatened. When there is no threat, there is no Judge, and familial relationships are the default form of governance.
What seemed to happen (narratively) was the sectioning off of the land of Israel after the conquest such that each tribe could run their own affairs according to their own tribal governance. The last half of Joshua recounts this division much how the last half of Exodus is dedicated to law. The reader will notice that when the Israelites crossed the Jordan and ate of the fruit of the land “on that day the manna stopped.” The land itself implies a secular program of self sustenance, always with the assumption and awareness that God supplies both manna and harvest. With the introduction of the Judges, an ostensibly “governmentless” nation, the first economic structure of Israel emerges. It implies both private property and a communally oriented attitude and use of that property. Similar to the law and the prophets, this dual structure allows for the scriptures to assert that each man should dwell under his own vine, while at the same time understanding with complete certitude that the land is God’s not one’s own. The many harvest laws are meant to teach one to share their bounty and not to “possess” the yield of their land. If this was not enough chapter 25 of Leviticus is a stark reminder that God is the one who provides sustenance, not land, not labor, and such sustenance is meant to be shared. Thus, though each man may sit under “his own vine”, each man has no problem understanding how the apostles held everything in common. Private property is subject to the common good and the universal destination of goods. This is in line with what the Catechism of the Catholic Church states,
In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge. It should allow for a natural solidarity to develop between men.
The right to private property, acquired or received in a just way, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. The universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise. "In his use of things man should regard the external goods he legitimately owns not merely as exclusive to himself but common to others also, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as himself.” The ownership of any property makes its holder a steward of Providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others, first of all his family. Goods of production - material or immaterial - such as land, factories, practical or artistic skills, oblige their possessors to employ them in ways that will benefit the greatest number. Those who hold goods for use and consumption should use them with moderation, reserving the better part for guests, for the sick and the poor. Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.
In the Old Testament, the land is “capital”. It is how people survive and make their living. The law is quick to offer guidance on not only sacred rites and purity issues, but justice issues for humans, animals, and the land itself. Any economic structures that start to veer off from created reality to abstract reality (for example interest based economic structures) are quickly condemned. The intention and investment in sustenance must be kept in the realm of God’s created reality, not the egregor.
In the economic implementation of the book of Joshua, there is no sense of getting what one “deserves”. God delivers the land to the people though they don’t deserve their military victory. The Levites get no land, only a tax based support for their work as priests. There are also entire cities, whose sole purpose seems to be places that allow for peace between dueling parties (cities of refuge). All this to say that, as culturally complex as the second half of Joshua is, the point seems to be that there needs to be personal and communal investment in the economy and a sense of working together. These are underpinned by a constant awareness that nothing is deserved, all is gifted by God. Here is yet another example of God’s adaptive care. He gives the people responsibility and ask that they remember the covenant as they exercise it.
After Joshua’s death, the dictatorial Judges only arise according to the cycle of sin. This cycle works thusly; the Israelites turn from God to a false god. They are conquered by a foreign power. They suffer and cry out to God, who hears their pleas and calls a judge to rescue them as a demonstration of God’s power. The book ultimately offers a pessimistic view of both libertarian political philosophy and patriarchy and favors of Monarchy.
As the Israelites enjoy their freedom from any overarching civil structure, the peaceful duration of each cycle is shorter than the last and the periods of oppressive suffering last longer and longer as the Israelites seem to “forget” to cry out to the Lord for deliverance. By the time the Philistines conquer Israel, they do not even cry out to the Lord. Rather the Lord uses Samson, who seems unaware that he is even a judge, to bring suffering upon suffering until the Israelites are motivated to fight back. The book ends in a self centered civil war that results in carnage, death, and orchestrated mass rape. The ominous last line of the book delivers the book's most damning criticism of both libertarian philosophy and western individualism, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own sight.”
The last judge is Samuel, who represents a curious blend of judge, prophet, and priest. At the opening of his story, the Temple is at Shilo. Both religious sentiment and the priesthood are waning. The sons of Eli are corrupt and all die in battle as a result. Subsequently, Samuel becomes high priest and judge. His leadership goes well for his life, but he appoints his sons as judges after him and they are also corrupt. The people of Israel then come to him with a ludicrously framed request. “Now that you are old, and your sons do not follow your example, appoint a king over us, like all the nations, to rule us.” Why would a nation ask for a form of government that operates by inheritance given the circumstances? For the past two leadership cycles, a decent leader had begotten corrupt sons.
This leads into the entire saga of the Kings of Israel, which is a story of monarchical tragedy. It begins with Saul, who frames the story as a whole by starting off well and devolving into madness, pride, and self destruction. David is the greatest king of Israel, with whom God made the monarchical covenant. Even he is known as much for his faults as his virtue. David’s son Solomon succeeded him and again, started off well. In his humility, he asked for the wisdom to govern the people. He received that wisdom and used it to be a king who rarely ever went to war because of his political acumen. Rather he entered alliances via strategic marriage, but at the same time, these marriages lead the people away from their covenant with God.
To read the stories of the kings for what they are in no way gives one the impression that monarchy is preferred by God. Even Solomon who utilized his political wisdom in skilled ways (according to worldly metrics) brought religious and social turmoil on the populace such that it leads to civil war and division. This war sets off a downward spiral of kings where the often repeated trope is to name a successor king and point out how he was even worse than all the others before him.
Monarchy is obviously seen as a secular rival to the kingship of God. Upon the people’s request, God tells Samuel not to grieve or feel rejected, “it is not you, but me that the people are rejecting as their king.” But typical of God, He allows us to choose and adapts to his approach to us depending on the consequences of our actions. Before the inauguration, God has Samuel read the rights of the king to the people of Israel, and the reflection is a laundry list of oppression.
Samuel delivered the message of the LORD in full to those who were asking him for a king. He told them: “The governance of the king who will rule you will be as follows: He will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses, and they will run before his chariot. He will appoint from among them his commanders of thousands and of hundreds. He will make them do his plowing and harvesting and produce his weapons of war and chariotry. He will use your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will tithe your crops and grape harvests to give to his officials and his servants. He will take your male and female slaves, as well as your best oxen and donkeys, and use them to do his work. He will also tithe your flocks. As for you, you will become his slaves. On that day you will cry out because of the king whom you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you on that day.”
Monarchy is seen as at odds with the divine plan. It is obviously seen as a structure that inherently (pardon the pun) begets corruption across generations and breeds oppression for the people. God adapts to our needs, expresses patience, and often gives us what we ask for, making the best of the disastrous consequences. But that there are kings in Israel is in no way a divine stamp of approval. Any regressive integralism that seeks monarchy would be wise to read the legacy of the kings of Israel. The monarchy seems set against God and the “integralist” office of the prophet. Typical of the corrupting effect of power, monarchies appoint their own prophets to flatter and project justification. But the true mode of the prophet is a divine call to justice, humility, and worship. Christ’s prophetic role as he walked the Earth is what begets Christ the criminal.
The strength of the monarchy is the unity of the people according to Justice. One can see it in the story where Saul frees the people of Jabesh-Gilead from the evil warlord Nahash. Upon hearing of Nahash’s cruelty Saul is overcome with a spirit of wrathful justice,
Taking a yoke of oxen, he cut them into pieces and sent them throughout the territory of Israel by messengers saying, “If anyone does not come out to follow Saul and Samuel, the same thing will be done to his oxen!” The dread of the Lord came upon the people and they went forth as one. . . The next day, Saul arranged his troops in three companies and invaded the camp during the dawn watch. They slaughtered Ammonites until the day had gotten hot; by then the survivors were so scattered that no two of them were left together.
One can see clearly in this story that a thing, under the spirit of God, brings the people together as one and scatters the cruel and oppressive enemies of justice such that no two are together. If a people can garner such a cooperative king, life will be good. But the text makes clear that an instance of such glory may not be sustained and succession of that glory is no guarantee.
The last form of “government” we see in the Old Testament is occupation and exile. This is often the form in Judges as well. Most of the books of the prophets speak from a place of occupation or exile. The egregores of government and economy both grow powerful and outstripe the independence of Israel, much how they outstripe the modern west and the modern westerner. How does one abide under their cruel oppression, while one is in many ways bereft of power?
The reaction of the priestly and aristocratic class was to take a certain view of the past and double down on law. This is where we get the works of the Pentateuch and historical books of the Bible. But the living legacy of the time period is the prophetic books. The complex narrative of Kings ends with an abandonment of faith in monarchy and a reestablishment of covenant with Elijah, carried out by his servant Eisha. This covenant doesn’t just urge the people to “practice” Judaism to stay off cultural genocide. It calls the people to truly live justice and worship God. It is in the context of political occupation that we meet the savior of humanity, who fulfills the law and the prophets in his person. But it turns out that his kingdom is “not of this world”.
Political Structure in the New Testament
Salvation history oppresses Israel under a series of ever expanding empires ultimately bringing the nation under the boot of Rome. It is under that oppression that the Word becomes flesh. In that world, the king is the emperor. Luke’s gospel open’s with a census, which carries ominous connotations in the scriptures for two reasons. First, David is punished for enacting a census, presumably because he wanted to know his odds in war, as opposed to simply trusting that God will protect the people. The imperial census in Luke’s gospel is enacted for tax purposes, bringing to mind an entire network of extortion founded on violence and brutality. Here we have both economic and nationalistic kowtowing by means of the census. But, most generally, and most pertinent to our purpose, is how the census advances the theme of alienation.
If a leader needs to enact a census, how far removed has that society become from the natural governance of patriarchy where a father knows his children? As the cosmological paradox proceeds, complex systems of governance most certainly reflect a development of the alienation we see in seed form in Genesis 3. That is not to say that these forms of governance are totally evil. Perhaps being born out of the postlapsarian context they are inherently so (evil being a lack of full goodness). But then again, the family is also born out of the postlapsarian context. Both are in need of fulfillment and that fulfillment is the mission of the incarnation.
The local governance Christ was born into was a bureaucratic quagmire. This is best evidenced in the New Testament by Jesus’ pingpong trial and verdict based on political expediency. The local “king” is a puppet administration and the imperial procurator is an embittered soldier turned governor who simply seeks to manage the local powers by an intricate balance of slight tokens of allowance offset by prominent displays of cruel brutality to remind people who the “true” king is. Meanwhile, the populace is beset by cultural factions of revolutionaries, seclusioninsts, imperial sympathizers, and reformers. Each faction vies for some sort of voice among the populace. In the midst of all of this is Christ the criminal, a criminal according to all of the power dynamics of this world, because he does not accept the status quo.
Family structure is painted no better off as the gospels begin. Macrocosmically, Israel lost ten of its tribes in the Assyrian conquest to death and assimilation (Samaritans). Microcosmically Jesus’ family represents the worst example of what we called in coastal Alabama (a territory not unlike Galilee in social standing) “trailer trash”. The intricacies of the holy family was noted in the treatise The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family,
[The Holy Family] looks spiritually beautiful in terms of piety until one analyses the family structure at hand. Once one looks at how this family is organized it is hard to make an argument that God needs the traditional nuclear family to be the only way, or even the best way, that the world works. In this structure you have at least a second marriage situation with children from a previous marriage. You have an older man who is marrying a very much younger woman. Along with that the very much younger woman is with child, by someone who is not the person she is marrying. They are also conceivably familial outcastes in that close relations serve important roles in the temple, yet they have a hard time finding lodging in Bethlehem. This family presents a structure that any cultural conservative could easily point to and say, “see, there is the problem with society.”
The situation of governance at the time of the incarnation is across the board abhorrent. Then again, the situation of governance as it developed in the context of postlapsarian reality has always been abhorrent. We could frame this moment as a culmination of catastrophe, but the problem, the effect of origins sin, has been present since the age (subject to futility) began. It is not new. Each form presented is in serious need of redemption and fulfillment.
There is a fact that is often pointed out in religion classes, yet, for some reason forgotten by toxic integralists. Jesus, as the Messiah did not come and wield authority by means of the civil or religious governing structures at hand. Rather he seemed to be seeking a refresh based on personal relationships; the exact relationships that would negate the need for a census.
Jesus’ basic political/economic disposition is one of paradoxical engaged detachment; to be “in the world, but not of the world”. The paradox is activated by understanding his role as redeemer and fulfiller. Up to the point of the incarnation, salvation history had no human organizational structure that could be considered functional. With the incarnation any political or economic structure is redeemable and has the potentiality to be fulfilled in Christ. That “potentiality” indicates that no structure is actually fulfilled. Hence we must abide in the world as it is, not as we would have it. But we must work toward making it the world it should be, even against all objective measures of success. This is the modus of the incarnation as a fact of history, thus this is the modus of Christian social engagement.
The generative story of disorder social relationships is the Tower of Babel. We noted in The Onesiman Interface, “The story of the Tower of Babel is a ready demonstration of social sin. It is relatable chiefly in that it is the first sin in the Bible where no single culprit is named. The humans involved do everything collectively so as to make a name for themselves, but by the end, they have confused their language and cannot even communicate effectively.” Communication in many ways is the medium for social organization. The diversification of languages is a stopgap to an encroaching oppression and struggle against God. Pentecost heals this division for those incorporated into the Spirit. The incarnation allows access to that incorporation. It is by clinging to Christ that we are able to be saved, and it turns out, work toward reordering society.
A toxic integralist may draw on the image of “Christ the king” to bolster their advancement of theocracy via authoritarianism. But as Jesus’ model shows, he is anything but an authoritarian figure, in as much as gentiles lord their authority over others. In Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent we discussed the unique aspect of hierarchical power structure in Eden,
Humans in the garden are cognitively and intuitively aware of the ontological worldview that was discussed in Christian Ontology. The humans experience the world as simple and manifold at the same time. Because they experience objects and relationships as equally real, and they have an objectively perfect loving relationship with God, each other and their environment. In such a world, leaders who are servants do not seem askew. With trinitarian ontology objects and relationships are seen as simple and manifold. The concept of a power dynamic that runs by inversal unity seeks to apply that ontology to power structures in order to demonstrate proper Christian power dynamics. All positions of power are geared toward the same end, expression of love, all exercises of power are one, yet there are many varieties. The most obvious way this is true is to take the highest and invert it, make it (at the same time as it is the highest) the lowest.
The world The Son entered was not the world of Eden. Part of his mission was to reestablish an understanding of power that looks to the perfection of the past, but is applicable for the present circumstances. Postlapsarian reality will never offer humanity access to static perfection. Rather it is a situation where one only has access to perfect striving. This striving requires adaptive integralism to be the model. It is a combination of looking to the past perfection of Eden with present striving that will ultimately yield a new perfection in the Eschaton. Thus the perfection of social power structures will need to be adaptable. As an example of adaptability, we can look to the basics of Christian power dynamics as they were laid out in the treatise The Onesiman Interface,
Christian Power dynamics demand that the greater serve the lesser, and it is off this basic Christian teaching that Paul is offering his advice. It must be remembered that according to Paul in his letter to the Philippians, Jesus “ though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” This is a high-christological reframing of Jesus’ admonition to the sons of thunder in Matthew chapter 20, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;” This same sentiment is reiterated in 1Peter 5:3 and demonstrated by Jesus at The Last Supper in John’s gospel when he washes the disciples' feet.
The messianic mission encapsulated in the incarnation is itself a service to an oppressed, broken, and dysfunctional humanity. In that mission, Jesus does seem to set up a political structure of sorts. His structure seems to be suited to postlapsarian reality as it has developed over the long term. Directly after the fall familial structures were closer to the natural order as humanity bio-divided and grew across the span of the cosmological paradox. As humanity began to organize and grow, such biological ties, suited to compassion through familial relationship, were dampened by economic political structures which offered benefits and dangers.
Jesus offers a model for abiding in a dysfunctional family that has diversified beyond filial-integrity. His model was to organize society based not on pre-existing political structures (the gambit of family to empire), but on friendship. Jesus’ loose organizational structure was noted in the treatise Ecclesiological Orientation,
Jesus’ methodology for effecting the world was to gather a close group of friends and engage with them in loving relationships. Jesus had his best friend, Peter. He had his close inner circle, the pillars, Peter, James, and John. There was the wider inner circle, the twelve apostles. There was an even wider group of committed people, disciples. And lastly there were followers, acquaintances interested in him, but not quite as on the inside as the disciples. This is the original Christan hierarchy. Yet this community is an organic whole that is all saved by his action and by relationship with him. From the great commission and his ascension, his legacy begins. This is “Jesus the influencer”. His strategy is awful by any study of marketing methods. But Christianity is not a market, it is a relationship.
At the point of the incarnation, the alienating effect of empire has become so ingrained into human consciousness that the family model was already becoming simply transitionally useful.
It is conceivable that one is born into a family and leaves it to seek fortune or start a new family. This narrative is first demonstrated in Cain and is exemplified in the New Testament by the prodigal son. It has become the standard narrative trajectory of the family in the United States and is thus becoming a standard Western concept. A friendship model follows the same urge of both economy and nation, to allow for a structure of connection that extends beyond family ties to those one does not have an immediate bio-natural relationship with. Nation offers the protection and inclusion of family ties, whereas economy is meant to set up a system of exchange that a family would organically abide in. Friendship extends the compassion, love, and protection offered to family to those outside the family. But the connotation is different than nation or economy, which are legalistic and rule based.
Jesus’ choice of Apostles does not necessitate a complete rejection of family, only an expansion of inclusiveness at the expense of exclusive metrics such as bio-family over all else. Thus at times Jesus speaks harshly of family ties, even his own, but only in so much as they stand in the way of seeking the Kingdom of God. Through the incarnation, the template was set for micro communities that struggle toward mutual love that they extend outward. This was the exact model offered in Two Paths for Expanding True Love.
So what type of “king” is Christ? As he said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” According to John chapter 6 he rejects both national and economic models while he was walking the Earth. Just after the feeding of the five thousand the gospel states, “When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.” He was not interested in being king of a nation. When they found him and approached him he took a pot shot at both the crowd and a leadership that coerces by economic means, “Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
Unlike kings of this world, he does not persuade by political, or brutal, national or economic force. Rather he incarnates among the lowest of the low and poorest of the poor. He associates with those left behind by society and seeks to bring them into a relationship with God. These that are abandoned by the civil powers (presumably because they are useless) are most ready to rely on God. The beatitudes in both Matthew and Luke indicate the usefulness of this strategy. They are likely to listen to a message of hope from God because God is the only one who has not abandoned them.
Yet the plan of the incarnation is not a complete rejection of existing human social structures. The most interesting indicator of this is Jesus’ affection for tax collectors. The tax collector is an interesting symbol of imperial, national, and economic oppression. They represent the imperial as manifest in the local in that the tax collectors for the Roman empire were local Jewish people. They represent absolute corruption of both imperial and local power, structures, and economic manipulation motivated by pure vice. They represent Nation for the sake of Nation, and Economy for the sake of Economy. In short, they present as mediums or agents of the egregores of Nation and Economy in every negative way. Yet Jesus comes to be with these people in intimate ways. He accepts them, dining with them and bringing them to love of God by bringing them an experience of the love of God. He did not tell them to stop being tax collectors, he simply gave them an avenue to be tax collectors who love God and use their position to manifest the kingdom of God. This was the beatitudnal reorientation and redefinition of existing power structures is what was spoken of in the treatise The Onesiman Interface,
Thus, Paul advises that Philemon to take Onesimus back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.” The beatitudinal reorientation keeps the same names as the structures of society, which are shot through with social sin. It is a recognition of the individual will’s inability directly effect the consequences of social sin. But at the same time a beatitudnal reorientation invests the individual moral agent with an alternate worldview to operate under until the world is healed. Therefore, when acting after such an adjustment, the personal relationship between the two actors would be quite different than society would expect. So from the outside view there is a master / slave relationship, but the actual relationship is mutual edification and respecting human dignity and mutual subservience to Christ. Paul bolster’s the angle of mutual edification by pointing out how useful Onesimus has been to him. Christian Power dynamics demand that the greater serve the lesser, and it is off this basic Christian teaching that Paul is offering his advice. ... Paul is introducing this same understanding of power dynamics to Philemon in his particular situation.
Thus the onesiman interface is a methodology concerning how to act justly on an interpersonal level in a situation where one is forced to participate in the structures of social sin. The methodology involves a beatitudnal reorientation recounted by Paul in his letter to Philemon regarding the escaped slave Onesimus.
This personal intimate approach may strike one as “antiquated”. One may find it fine for Jesus, but the church developed into a world power and so this method is outdated. Antiquated in this case is traditional with a capital T. To succinctly see this methodology as outdated because of growth is to see the family structure in the same light. The methodology only becomes “antiquated” to those who bow down as Nation and/or Economy grows in strength within them against worship of the one true God.
The simple fact is, neither family nor friendship as dominant relationships are naive or antiquated. They are how individuals live their lives in society. We can only effect what we can effect. If one wants a large effect, one should position one’s self in a place that has macro-effect. But one will still personally abide in an inner circle. Is it a circle of compassion and friendship or manipulation and competition? As a Christian one should seek the former in order to have good influence on how to fulfill their vocation. Concerning that, if a Christian seeks a position of influence and power, it is incumbent upon them to remember that Jesus himself aligned with the poor, such that whatever you do to the least, you do to him, one’s job is to serve.
Whether one has great authority or little economic or civil power, one can still affect the coming of the kingdom according to the basic way Christ teaches about it. Jesus speaks often of the Kingdom of God, but it in no way reflects a defined political structure. He does offer guidance on how one relates to existing power structures that result from original sin. His advice is surmised, again, through the lens of taxation. Again, taxation is a useful lens because it can represent each egregor of Nation and Economy at the same time. The collection of taxes represents a centralization of power away from the individual.
They sent some Pharisees and Herodians to him to ensnare him in his speech. They came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?”
Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” They brought one to him and he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They replied to him, “Caesar’s.” So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were utterly amazed at him.
This incident begins with a convenient alliance between the chief priests, the scribes, the Herodians, and the Pharisees who are all maneuvering to bring the hammer of macro-civil governance down upon an upstart. They are doing this not by seeking or pointing out the truth, but by seeking to “trap him in speech” a strategy pointing the reader back to Bable. The first sentence of the passage brings to mind everything wrong with postlapsarian dysfunctional authority and governance.
They are attempting to play power politics with Jesus, their alliance tries to force him into choosing between imperial power or the downcast crowd. By the choice, he will be destroyed. Either they can charge him with treason for denying taxation. Or he will lose credibility with the populace as an imperial sympathizer and lose his “power base”. But the alliance misunderstands his powerbase. It is not the will of the populace, it is (as they facetiously flattered) in accordance with the will of God. God does not choose sides. God does allow people to do so, and so Jesus gives his answer.
The coin is a significant symbol of Nation and Economy. It does nothing itself, but only signifies the abstract and intangible principles of each. It is a physical tool of mediation for these egregores. It seems more so for the economy from our point of view, but Jesus pointedly asks whose’ image is on the coin, and it is Caesar. One may wonder politically, does Nation serve Economy or does Economy serve Nation? In either case, very often neither serves humanity. Both are seeking to subjugate humanity. Jesus suggests we leave the coin as a “demonic sacramental” to those who are in its service. At the same time he reiterates a much deeper human dignity and freedom because, though Cezar stamped his image on the coin, God stamped his image on us at creation. Jesus subtly reminds us of what is important. We need not serve abstract, and ethereal principalities or powers. Rather, we must give our whole being to God and use our spiritual and physical presence to do his will.
The short term strategy is to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and leave those demonic powers to their own devices. The long term strategy is to spread the gospel to all nations by sacralizing and fulfilling their existing structures. The kingdom of God is most certainly not a geographic position. Rather it is an inner disposition (personal), that spreads outward and extends. It is long term and patient; a mustard seed. It is elusive, visible, yet ungraspable; lightening. It is inclusive; a dragnet. Given we abide in the cosmological paradox, it is transitional and mixed, in the process of becoming, even morally; a garden of weeds and wheat. All of these analogies are applicable on a personal level and inasmuch as Christians form societies, on a social level. What most of Jesus’ analogies do is speak to the transient nature of the kingdom as it unfolds, fulfills, and sacralizes people, cultures, and the world; “perfect striving”.
Whatever the final shape of the Kingdom may be, in terms of government structure or methods of exchange for goods and services, we are not there yet. We are in the process of getting there. Thus Jesus seems ultimately concerned that we respect that process as legitimate and allow for it to happen. What you don’t do is try to force the kingdom or grasp it as your own property. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” The obvious question is, why hide it again, why buy the field? Why not just take it? The urge to do so is the urge of Adam and Eve to take the fruit, to think that it belongs to us by right, that we don’t have to follow the rules of others. In this case of the Kingdom of God, the rule is patience and letting people and cultures have the experience of growing in the kingdom. This is opposed to the authoritarian model of toxic integralism where one foists Christianity upon people and cultures by force. Such brutality is in no way the actual kingdom of God. A colonial approach to Christianity is neither gospel or traditional based.
After Jesus’ ascension, the most detailed account we have of the early church is the Pauline saga. Paul did raise funds and seek bureaucratic backing to enforce religious sentiment, but it was the sentiment of Judaism against Christianity. Once he converted he completely fell in line with Jesus’ model of evangelization and fulfillment. He allowed Christ to abide in him and experienced the abidance of the Spirit as freedom. He gathered friends and with them went into the wider Roman empire, founding micro-communities of companionship in Christ and seeking to renew the face of the Earth. This is exactly the slow process described by Jesus as the kingdom of God. Through it Paul created the foundational structure of the church and set an example of missionary activity in the Church.
Messianic Legacy and The Church
Over time the community of Christianity develops into what we might call “The Church”. “The Church” carries connotations of institutional structure and formal definitions. The Church grew as humanity did and similarly it needed social support structures that are formally defined because the human condition carries with it the intrinsic alienation of the fall. These structures at their best are modes of manifesting the gospel and the life of Christ to the world. They supply a medium for the micro communities that Christianity thrives in and a matrix for growing and developing relationships of Christain love.
The regressive integralist again may look back to the time of nationalist secularization and see the church as a “perfect society” in contrast to the developing secular models. By “perfect society” the regressive integralist means that it is structured perfectly as opposed to what they consider the breakdown of society by liberalism. The foundational document for this claim is Pope Leo XII’s Immortale Dei. In this document, typical of the time period where secular governments are seeking to assert their authority over the spiritual authority of the church and even the ability of the church to govern its own members’ spiritual lives. Pope Leo XII is concerned with conveying that the church’s teaching is derived from divine authority and therefore more foundational than civil governance. He does refer to the church as a “perfect society”. But he does not seem to be indicating that its structure or membership is morally perfect or that it is the most efficient means of governance. Rather he seems to use the phrase to imply that it is philosophically a self contained legitimate society and not simply a facet of some other society.
They [secular governments] lay hands on the goods of the clergy, contending that the Church cannot possess property. Lastly, they treat the Church with such arrogance that, rejecting entirely her title to the nature and rights of a perfect society, they hold that she differs in no respect from other societies in the State, and for this reason possesses no right nor any legal power of action, save that which she holds by the concession and favor of the government.
His concern revolves around autonomy rather than quality of structure as some may take the phrase to mean. Indeed, if one seems to think that “perfect society” refers to church structure and how civil structure should reflect it, in the self same letter Pope Leo XIII states
The right to rule is not necessarily, however, bound up with any special mode of government. It may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature of the government, rulers must ever bear in mind that God is the paramount ruler of the world, and must set Him before themselves as their exemplar and law in the administration of the State. For, in things visible God has fashioned secondary causes, in which His divine action can in some wise be discerned, leading up to the end to which the course of the world is ever tending. In like manner, in civil society, God has always willed that there should be a ruling authority, and that they who are invested with it should reflect the divine power and providence in some measure over the human race.
With that in mind, we can turn to the myriad of complex forms of governance present in the church, even during the writing of this encyclical.
The treatise Ecclesiological Orientation noted three hierarchies that abide in the church simultaneously. Each has its own way of functioning and existing in the Church. Given this, whatever integralism is, it must take into account not just the relationship between civil governance and the clerical hierarchy. It must account for the role of each hierarchy, and how each brings its strengths to bear in forming a Christian society. The three hierarchies were the dyarchies, the consecrated, and the clerics. Now the toxic integralist may look at these and see validation for a hierarchical authoritarian model of civil governance. But that a structure has a leader does not necessarily mean that it is a hierarchy in any authoritarian sense of the word. First, Christian power dynamics as expressing inversal unity applies. Any properly functioning Christian hierarchy will “take the highest and invert it, make it (at the same time as it is the highest) the lowest.” Then upon examination, these hierarchical structures are not all top down monarchies as a toxic integralist may think.
The first structure, the dyarchy, is patriarchal. But that term is not to be understood as a father who is an authoritarian monarch. We discussed how such a rigid view does not fit the reality of ancient or modern families. Nor is authoritarian patriarchy intrinsically the best form for fostering Christian love. We discussed the multiple means of operation and effectiveness of the nuptial dyads in two separate treatises The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family and more recently Ecclesiological Orientation. The dayrch’s strength does not lay in its natural structure as much as its natural emotive and intuitive bond. We noted in The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family, “For all of these relational considerations to be taken into account one does not need a particular structure. It is how one employs the relationships in humble and subservient ways that instill proper beatitude such that family life can be the training ground for recognizing and cooperating with the saving grace of God.” Again, setting the conditions for such recognition and ability to cooperate is the goal of integralism civilly, and we see it present in the “basic political unit” the family. In that treatise, we went on to discuss a series of complex family structures as presented in the Old Testament and each with a myriad of moral and social lessons. We noted in Ecclesiological Orientation how malleable a nuptial diarchy must be
A nuptial diarchy must be free to create an environment that suits their family culture and life. Short of heresy, they must be free to express the Catholic faith and the life of Christ in ways appropriate to their mode of being and for the best education of their children if they are an autocephalous nuptial diarchy. This is the greatest point of ecclesiological influence for most Catholics.
This adaptability and fluidity applies to how the authoritative structure works in the marital and family relationship. The treatise Two Paths for Expanding True Love contrasted the dynamic nature of marital authority with consecrated life and nuptial dyarchies come of as much more adaptable despite what traditional gender ideologies would have one believe.
In married life one must work out the authoritative structure in real time. We must follow the instruction of Ephesians chapter 5 and “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Thus, obedience is a requirement also, but how that obedience works out depends on how you structure your family community together. Without a sense of subordination one would never be able to successfully navigate a marriage. The difference is that an order works with the eschatological narrative, thus the Body of Christ model give a top down authority, Christ is the head, we are the parts. Marital love works on the trinitarian model and so the obedience is mutually subservient as opposed to top down. Mutually subservient is a hard skill to build, especially if you have to personally build it as you are developing the relationship dynamics.
The beautiful part of familial “governance” is that connotatively it is not considered governance at all. It is simply a natural way humans relate. Family brings with it a natural bond of community and ideally a functioning inherent compassion. And it bears repeating that “family” is not simply dyarchies and their biologically generated autocephalous members. Any of the compositions and structures discussed in the treatise The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family and more are understood as familial. As was noted in Ecclesiological Orientation,
Some domestic diarchies may be much more democratic or involve much more consultation. Others may have a family culture where one person is trusted with the power to wield sole authority in all but the most impactful decisions. Some may delegate authority to certain fields for particular diarchies and other fields to the other. Some may combine all of these methodologies given the need or circumstance. Regardless, under any model, the power broker(s) use their power to serve the whole, and particularly to the benefit of the most vulnerable. That is not a nuptial maximum or a consecrated maximum, that is a Christian maximum.
Family is a stark contrast to “governance” which comes off as more litigious, rigid, and alienating. Governance seeks subjugation to the authority of those one may never meet and almost certainly implies an economy that hinges on a medium of abstract capital and labor. This is opposed to familial economy, which is based on carnal commonality of life. The family ideally operates on physical and psycho-spiritual survival and edification of its members. Any system of labor with money attached as a reward is usually peripheral between the adults or for the children to learn how to interact in the wider world. Families usually don’t mint or otherwise create their own inner currency in order to facilitate an inner economy. Rather families cooperate simply out of a sense of shared humanity.
The hierarchical structure of the family is usually bio-generated. This can be contrasted with the hierarchical structure of consecrated communities, many of which are democratically installed. The Rule of St Benedict sets up the precedent for election of leaders and from there most consecrated communities at least elect their leaders.
At the election of an abbot let this principle be always observed, that he be appointed whom the whole community, being of the same mind and in the fear of God, or even a part albeit a small part of the community shall with calmer deliberation have elected. And let him who is to be elected be chosen for his worthy manner of life and his fundamental wisdom, even if he be last in order of community seniority.
The structure is hierarchical because human communities require leadership and leadership requires some sort of hierarchy of command. But how the leadership is chosen and how it leads is pretty much open to how the community is constructed to operate, and how the leader chosen channels the Spirit. Unlike the family structure, there is properly no form of bio-succession in the governance of this nor the clerical hierarchical structure. Only the family structure works appropriate to any form of bio-succession. In terms of economic structures, most consecrated communities hold to a complete communitarian model. Like the family, money is only engaged in monetary economic exchanges in as much as they have “commerce” with “the world”. Their goal is often to be self sufficient to their cause, either by working the land and sustaining themselves often as a community of prayer, or as mendicants who minister to the wider community.
It was noted in the treatise Two Paths for Expanding True Love that the rules and constitutions of various consecrated communities function almost like utopian literature, a system of governance and economic engagement that is geared eschatologically and adhered to by the communities. That there are so many variations on consecrated rules reflect not eschatological perfection, but the perfection of the cosmological paradox, perfect striving.
The clerical hierarchy is neither a hierarchy of succession nor election (usually). The only democratic installation is the election of the pope, first by the populace in Rome, and ultimately by the college of Cardinals. Even this has not always been a democratic position. The clerical structure runs much more akin to a monarchy in how the hierarchical system relates to both the other members for the church and to the outside world. But this hierarchy is one that, according to belief, is chosen by God through a discernment process, not an inherited office. This hierarchy does not self sustain, but is sustained via a system of tithing (taxation) on the rest of the church. Interestingly, the priestly hierarchy is the most economically “worldly” regarding the need for a sustaining medium. It has a set system for garnering its sustenance via the laity that presumes exchange. The other two hierarchies have the possibility of being self sustaining off the land. As we noted earlier this system was set up at the end of Joshua for the Tribes of Israel.
Each hierarchy engages with “the world” in a particular way. The clerics exist as sacramental technicians. Because of this, they are also regarded as the teachers, based solely on the principle lex orandi lex credendi. Since their prayer is the “official” prayer of the church, they are perceived as guarantors of the teaching of the church and as the “rulers” of the church. But in many ways, this is a technical view. Certainly, the Magisterium declares doctrine and recognizes dogma. Certainly, the magisterium has the responsibility of calling out improper belief and guiding the populace. But to say they “rule the church” as a blanket statement seems to carry with it a very particular understanding of the church.
We noted in Ecclesiological Orientation that each of the three hierarchies has a certain modicum of autonomy from the others. The clerical structure certainly has an organized model for litigious governance of itself. Canon Law also gives a clear set of guidelines for how the clerical structure interacts with the consecrated structures, who has authority and autonomy when. Where things get unclear is how each of those structures related to the structure of nuptial dyad. As we documented in Ecclesiological Orientation there is very little guidance here in canon law. There is only a moral authority of teaching from the clerical structure in terms of any “governance”, but teaching is not ruling, it is a facilitation of self ruling for another.
Again, the greatest serves the least. Those seen as “the church” (the clerics) are in a support role when it comes to civil governance. Consecrated govern themselves, but it is fundamentally the job of the nuptial dyads to seek a way to influence the world. As we noted in Two Paths for Expanding True Love
The married are the special forces of the church, in that the lives we life operate deep in hostile territory, and special forces must be adaptive or they are destroyed. The job of special ops is to train native populations to be on your side, and that is the married couple's job, by their lives, through one’s everyday action, and through one’s marriage. Married people evangelize by living their sacramental lives in a world that is not geared toward facilitating it. The married vocation finds allies in a given culture and actives or recruits them into the service of Christ. Thus married life takes the sacramental path that relies on the grace of God, which allows us to take risks and make mistakes. The married mission is adapting to the culture, going native and bringing the faith to the culture by being a sacramental sign in its midst.
Thus as integrators, nuptial dyads especially have a powerful part to play regarding “the world”. In a culture that is not Christain, they are the ones to seek to influence. In a culture that is Christian, they are the ones that wield civil authority. Though they are continually taught by the magisterium, the authority itself is properly theirs.
Most modern integralists would understand the nuptial dyad’s role in civil governance. But there is a stock response of not seeing the nuptial dyads as “true rulers”. Instead, integralism seems to be the idea that finally, the clerical class can rule through an authoritarian puppet layman. In truth, what it takes, even in an authoritarian model, is a well educated and capable layman who has the proper authority to rule civil affairs, even regarding the laity. This is why civil investitures is always a dicey issue. Popes should listen to rulers, and rulers should listen to popes. The types of authority they wield are simply different. Corruption is personally possible in either field of governance.
So, what does the magisterium do? They teach, and what they teach is not “proper civil governmental structure”. Rather they instruct governmental structures by helping them understand how Christain principles apply to the macro realm of civil life. In former times, that would be a specific type of personal morality for an aristocrat, king, or emperor. But as the West moved through the enlightenment and structures of civil governance changed, the method of instruction needed to change too. Thus the magisterium, during that time and subsequently, developed a way to instruct the lay populace who control civil structures, the social justice tradition.
The social justice tradition of the church is simply an updated way of instructing and guiding the rulers of the civil world. It is instructive integralism in the broadest sense of the term. The principles it operates on are founded on inalienable human dignity, applying the broadest definition of what it means to be human (a creature made in the image and likeness of God). The social justice principle takes this and applies it to a calculation of the common good as opposed to individual maneuvers of will and knowledge. This is a practical teaching in a situation where the governance involves any sort of democratic process. Its calculations can be applied individually but the particular scope of choice is any that an individual makes that affects the common good. Common good considerations help combat the poorest manifestation of both modern egregores because the foundation is human dignity, not an abstract principle like utilitarianism or “the economy”. Rather, the church's teaching on social justice keeps moral choices that have societal ramifications in the exact realm of those ramifications. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Catholic social teaching does not side with “capitalism” or communism” regarding the egregore Economy. Social justice teachings have extreme criticism of both economic theories because both calculate as theories apart from human dignity. Again, the Biblical stance ends up being that “each man sits under his own vine”, and “they hold everything in common” at the same time. This both/and is essential to social teaching regarding property. It is possible because catholic social teaching is not modeled on a “theory” of property, rather it is modeled off of God’s good creation and the dignity God gives every human. Thus, to return to the familial or consecrated hierarchy, one can see that members of these hierarchies definitely “own” things. At the same time in the ideal, they would definitely offer them absolutely to help the common good and not cling to “rights” or take someone else’s things needlessly by force. Is this economic model viable for running a national economy? Well, not if the economy is a demonic egregore that is self glorifying. That egregore would die under such a model and would inflict great suffering as it does so. But it is not the job of the Magisterium to organize national economies, it is their job to teach doctrine on how to maneuver as one who has buy-in in society. Hence the oneisiman interface speaks more to a relationship model for making choices rather than an abstract set of principles.
The social justice doctrine also has advice concerning the egregore Nation. Again, Magisterial documents often assert that there is no specific way one must structure civil governance. But what the social justice tradition does assert is that the structure should be rooted in creation, not abstraction. Governance should interface at the point of effect, not from on high. The term in social justice discourse for this is subsidiarity. Subsidiarity makes sense for two reasons. First, it keeps governance grounded in creation as opposed to abstract. Subsidiary plays into our sacramental cosmology because it respects both the physical and the psycho-spiritual dimensions of reality. The people making choices of governance are the people who relate to the level of society where the choice is made. Thus it is more likely to be made out of concern for human dignity rather than abstract principles or an endgame far removed from the people effected. Second, it allows for maximal buy-in of interpersonal governance. Remember social justice teaching is a teaching of morality, and thus it ultimately involves personal choices, even if those choices are sought to affect society.
Also, both Catholic social doctrine and the lineages of the Old Testament constantly remind us that humanity is one family. The principle of solidarity strikes boldly against any desire of Nation to be categorically exclusive out of a concern of race, geography, patrimony etc. Solidarity demands that we recognize our familial ties by recognizing the dignity and right to life of all people.
In the end, catholic integralism cannot be much more than an adaptive evangelization utilizing the social justice doctrine of the Church. But most people will not go on to make sweeping changes by leading a nation, as a king, a president, or member of congress. Most of us will abide in the structures of social sin in imperfect nations and oppressive economies making our best choices within these structures. We must work against the propaganda of the egregors and seek our beaditudnal reorientation in order to effect the oneisiman interface and redeem the sinful structures of society.
This is a small scale process for most of us. It happens, according to subsidiarity, in our homes, our workplaces, our social groups, and our parishes. Each of the baptized is called to be priest prophet and king. With the call of baptized priesthood discussed in detail in The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church for this treatise, we can focus on prophet and king a bit more. Every member of the church is called to bring society back to a love of God as a prophet would. Each member of society has certain authority and must wield it appropriately. These are the qualities of leadership, which, according to Christian power dynamics, necessitate service to those one leads. Whatever the level of society one is seeking to impact, one must do so with an eye to the gospel and the common good in mind. After our first duty, to honor and love God with our whole being we have a three fold call to this world, a call to justice, a call to care for one another, and a call to care for the garden (Earth). The Catholic “political program” as a terrestrial affair amounts to nothing more than this.
In the first section, we began by exploring the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. We discovered that these tenets seemed to be couched in a certain historical perspective born out of the magisterial response to the western secularization’s development of two modern egregores, Nation and Economy. Part of the assumption of modern integralism is that the Church, somehow, ceded its involvement in temporal authority. We proceeded to show how this was not the case. Rather there was a shift in the relationship of evangelization. Formerly Christian inculturation worked through a monarch (a form of government having origin in the pagan god-kings) to the populace. With the advent of secular democracies, evangelization needed to shift to a model that works from the bottom up through social justice and the new evangelization.
In this section, we explored the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We developed various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing Ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We discovered that there is no one “Christian” way to structure or select civil governance. We noted that as civil governments grow in complexity, the role of religion changed in its relation to the practicality of civil governance, generating a prophetic voice that stands against oppression and sheer utility. We also discovered that every form of governance, even familial based patriarchy is the result of postlapsarian development. Thus any preference for a structure based on cosmology would need supplemental bolstering to stand. In the end, the structure, chosen by any manner, is malleable to redemption. We concluded that the structure shares a Christain outlook if it recognizes subsidiarity and calculates its decrees by the common good. We will begin the next section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture.
Integralism and Inculturation: A Methodological Exploration of Implementation
In the first section, we explored the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. In the second section parsed the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We discussed various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We will begin the third section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture. We will lay out three different contexts for this development; first where the Catholic population is an oppressed minority, second where they are an accepted minority and third where they are the cultural shapers. After noting some factors to be considered given the pluralistic nature of the modern world, we will discuss the basic nature of adaptive integralism. Noting its function, basic methodologies, and programs of implementation we will specifically apply these to the civil structures of liberal democracies. Finally, we will parse the role of each of the three hierarchies of the church, clerical, consecrated, and dyarchies as they maneuver in an adaptive integralist framework.
Seeking the Monolith Versus Seeking the Fulfillment
One of the not so accidental aesthetic alignments of toxic integralism revolves around 19th-century piety. Most regressive integralists and even a fair share of progressive integralists align with what they would call “traditional” liturgical aesthetics, for example, Latin Mass, Ad orientem etc. The aesthetic itself is legitimate, beautiful, effective, and comprises the “extraordinary” (that is irregular) form of the mass. But a possible dark connection between the two polarities is that this form harkens back to a time when the clerical hierarchy had a more authoritarian approach toward the laity. It also harkens back to a time when the church aligned with authoritarian nobility against encroaching secularism and was able to wield influence with an oppressive nobility. That particular liturgical aesthetic has existed since early in Christianity but was crystallized and universalized as a response to the protestant reformation. The development of reformation happened concurrently with the age of exploration and the subsequent colonial age. Thus there is the protestant secular model of colonial evangelization where the Christan offers “freedom” while committing (at least) cultural genocide. OR there is the Catholic model of colonial evangelization where kings expand their empires and the church usurps adherents through colonial power.
The regressive integralist seems to think that these conversions were “of the heart” and happened legitimately because of the euro-colonial influence. The first problem with that is that many successful population conversion happened because of an inculturation process, that was subsequently stifled by Rome due to their experimental nature; Rome being suspicious in a time of liturgical crystallization happening as a response to the protestant reformation. An example of this would be the Jesuit missions in the East, especially Japan. On the other end, where colonialism was used, there were forced and coerced conversions via secular conquest. These forced conversions happened when monarchs worked in conjunction with the institutional church as a sort of “co-monarchy” bent on colonial conformity.
The problem with looking to this time as a pinnacle of conversion is that the secular atheist mindset did not spring whole cloth out of a demonic conspiracy. It sprung for the abuses of aristocratic powers and corrupt aspects of the church aligned with them. This is why the secular enlightenment turned so anti-religious. It is disturbing that toxic integralism, which manifests as authoritarian, also defines itself by a catholic aesthetic that not only leans authoritarian, but whose abuse in many ways sparked the anti-theocratic nature of secularism. It was the oppressive authoritarian mindset of both nobility and the clerical hierarchy that gave fuel to the worst expressions of both modernism and secular thought.
In the regressive integralists’ mind, the shift in the mid 20th century away from such an authoritarian model was a great mistake and breaks with “tradition”. It seems to me the reverse is true. If a break was made with tradition it was the break that allowed for clerical authority to call for the Crusades and for employment of the temporal sword against enemies of the church and as a “motivation” to conversion. There are many examples of this and they sync neither with the message of the gospel, nor the modus operandi of Paul and the early apostles. If one’s response is that “Christianity became a power, so we had to change” I don’t dispute dynamism of the gospel, quite the contrary. But dynamism that abandons the gospel is an error. If a theologian, doctor of the church, saint, or pope taught this in the past, they were wrong.
This leads to the sticky point of modern integralism that begets toxic integralism in a secular pluralistic age. Is to wish for “true integralism”, to wish for monolithic population first, that convert of their own free conversion, then “integralism”? Or is it to wish for forced conversion? Either way, “integralism” becomes a useless term. If it is the former, the church is working adaptively to evangelize now and according to secular modern of liberal political structures, if evangelization is successful, the democratic aspects of governance will be where the church has influence over the state via a well catechized laity. Again, the programs for success here are the new evangelization and the social justice doctrine of the church. In such a case, opining about the need for an integralist agenda of the church is simply impatient whining. One would be better served by dropping the minutiae of political philosophy and picking up some relevant catechetical skills.
If it is the latter, and one is seeking forced conversion, then one is a heretic and in no way seeking first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. Rather one is seeking to lord one’s authority over subjects like the gentiles in direct opposition to the command of Christ. Not only is this bad for the person dabbling in integralist theory, if they were successful at satisfying their lust for power in a pluralistic society, it assumes forced action, which could be forcing the population to sin against conscience. This scenario is the worst inversion of a just king who leads a population to righteousness. It is an oppressive tyrant who litigiously forces damnation upon his subjects, all the while painting himself as the righteous one.
I fear that as both regressive and progressive integralism present on the digital continent it is the latter option, a program of forced conversion, which is one of the worst aspects of toxic varieties of integralism. The conversion, in this case, is conversion to objective action, the realm of “the world” not the interplay of grace and will, the beatitude of the Kingdom of God.
Again, anecdotal evidence for this is that toxic integralists are obsessed with a crystallization of the liturgy at just the historical point of colonial authoritarian cooperation with the clerical hierarchy. (Not to mention the obsession with the crusades, a phenomenon scrutinized in the treatise Modern Slavery and the Mercedarians.) The toxic integralist always speaks in critique of society with a political aim to subjugate the populace to their own picture of how society should work. This self righteousness is also a hallmark of toxic integralism. It is unlikely that one will find two integralists who even mostly agree on how Christian culture should operate. Each has micro-obsessions for which they are marshaling the concept of “integralism”. This aspect of toxic integralism is a demonic inversion of the common good, where one is using society and social structures to serve individual obsession rather than directing one’s passion to serve society.
The most convincing evidence for obsession with coercive conversion is that no digital integralist even paints a scene of integralism from the point of view of the peasant or simple proletariat. The picture is always a commentary on “how society should run”, the point of view of the authoritarian ruler. The point of view is always, “If we had an integralist state things would run according to XYZ fashion.” No digital integralist ever makes a statement such as, “I wish I was a peasant in an integralist monarchy so my every decision was made for me” [end commentary’]. Or “I wish I was a brother worker in an integralist utopia so I could simply be assigned a job and mindlessly live out my days as a laborer for the common good” [end commentary]. The digital toxic integralist is not patiently waiting for the mustard tree to develop from seed. Rather, they generally present as anxiously stumping for a secular political point of view and using a fabricated theocratic authority in order to bolster their claims.
An adaptive integralist agenda follows the evangelical agenda of Christianity as laid out in the New Testament, and seeks to implement it as it has been followed for most of Christan History. Colonial cultural imposition turns out to be the exception to the rule and the non-traditional aberration. Catholic cultural conversion (which includes political action) is not that different than individual conversion. We start with a broken system, the modus is not the destruction of the agent, but redemption. That is, we take all that is salvageable, even things that present as horrible, evil, and sinful, and we seek a way to redeem them, fulfill them, turn them to good. In both cases, the result is a converted reality, not a reality that is fundamentally different than the former reality. Rather it is a fulfillment of what that reality is in the kingdom. On the individual example, Jacob the trickster becomes Jacob the negotiator, Moses the wrathful murder of an oppressor become Moses the champion of Justice. On the social level, pagan Rome generates and is subsequently influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. An adaptive integralist agenda follows the extremely gradual agenda of the Kingdom of God. If the model of redemption for the individual follows from the old and new covenants, then the model of redemption for the nation should as well.
We noted how the concept of proselytization in Judaism differs from the standard concept in Christianity in the treatise Anthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission. Their concept of evangelization could be very helpful for a reconception of integralism because it works according to “nation”, though their concept of nation is not exactly the nationalist image of the modern world. When the messiah comes, the feeling of Judaism is that there will be a messianic age, an age where the nation of Israel is religiously and politically perfect. They do not foresee a mass conversion of gentiles to Judaism when this happens.
Hebrews actually do see themselves as beacons for how Gentiles are to regard God. According to Jewish thought the Gentiles will find God by coupling the Noahide Code with the compatible parts of their culture. The Jews would see this action as completely appropriate for the gentiles, just as the Sinai covenant is completely appropriate for them.
Here is a national redemption and fulfillment as opposed to an individual redemption and fulfillment. The Noahide code calls for each nation to formulate their own laws (tantamount to the Levitical code) for their nation. If the individual, via participation with their baptismal grace, is to be an alter Christus, then a nation that structurally seeks first the Kingdom of God is an alter Israel. An adaptive integralism seeks to actualize each nation and culture as an alter Israel which is true to itself, but presenting the covenantal relationship with God that messianic Israel (the New Jerusalem) would have.
The treatise The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church discussed how people function as alter Christus,
Whenever any of the baptized exhibit holiness or act charitably, they are effecting their priesthood. Whenever any of the baptized die to self and live in Christ they stand as an alter Christus through their baptismal priesthood. Lumen Gentium makes this same point
Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity.
We went on in that treatise to discuss the four modalities of Christo-analogical interchange, which offered a dizzying variety of ways that one could effect one’s priesthood.
The three structures that we offered as examples for baptismal priestly action, motherhood, spousal, and mendicant/donor, are examples of an almost infinite variety of relationships we could illustrate. If the reader just imagines a treatise that drags on to explore the four modalities of christo-analogical interchange applied to healer and heald, mourner and comforter, student and teacher, boss and worker, siblings, waiter and diner, mutual sharers in joy, mutual sharers in grief, what else? The list is almost endless. For each example, there are the four modalities of christo-analogical interchange the setup dynamics of mediation and sacrifice for imaging the alter Christus. This is the dizzying fluidity, dynamism, and similitude of baptismal priesthood.
The fluidity of the Alter Christus is reflected in the alter Israel. Alter Christus is how each person seeks to manifest Christ in their life, as a unique person, attuned to their unique makeup. Alter Israel contains the same dynamism but as a social reality. Alter Israel is how a nation or culture seeks to manifest the conditions of “the New Jerusalem” of the Eschaton, which sets the conditions that facilitate the Alter Christus of each individual. Thus if the model of integralist is to seek the New Jerusalem via the working model of alter Israel as it applies in postlapsarian reality, an adaptive integralism is necessary. Only then can we share the vision of the Evangelist when he describes the throne of God, “After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”
The evangelization and social fulfillment of an alter Israel in adaptive integralism is accomplished by the actions of Christians through their baptismal call. Again, as we noted in The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church,
The social and especially interpersonal, nature of the priesthood of baptism is specifically made evident in the other offices conveyed by baptism, prophet, and king. Simply put, a prophet calls a king (or society itself) back to God or activates zeal for God in the community. A king orders society to God’s good purpose. All of the baptized are called to do these three things in the world as it exists. The priesthood of baptism is transformative of society. It is this priesthood that brings the gospel to a broken world and then brings that sacrificial struggle back to the binding sacrifice of the mass.
This is primarily done by the laity who by means of interpersonal relationships and social structures. Those structures are on a micro and macrocosmic scale. Those structures can take on many and various forms, some of which are natural and some of which are constructs of society. Every field of operation is fair game for a baptized priest to do their work, and in this field “wisdom is vindicated by all her children”. Baptismal priesthood is the priesthood of evangelization by both word and deed and as a priesthood, this evangelization is done by means of mediation and sacrifice.
Rather than a king and nobility seeking to implement an alter Israel, modern times demands that the populace in general steer society toward the alter Israel. Any particular alter Israel will reflect the varieties and family resemblance of the Alter Christus’ in the particular society.
When reflecting on the concept of alter Israel one may ask, if they are all differing, like the differing nations coming into covenant with God in the messianic age, how will we know we are headed in the right direction with society? What is the template? Jesus himself offers answers we already discussed above. This is a growth process, a process of adaptive integralism. An alter Christus adapts to the needs of the relationships available considering how to mediate and sacrifice appropriately. An alter Israel adapts to the needs of the society, as members and as a whole, as it is particularly broken, and sets conditions for the common good by seeking to implement measures that recognize the dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the right to life while seeking to set the maximal conditions for their populace to recognize and cooperate with grace. The New Jerusalem may be a static reality of the Eschaton, but both Israel and alter Israel exist in the cosmological paradox, and therefore must adapt to that environment. As the Venerable Pope Pius XII stated in his speech at the Anagni Seminary in 1949,
“The mystical Body of Christ, following the example of the physical members which comprise it, does not live and act in the abstract, outside the constantly changing conditions of time and place. It is not, and can never be, separated from the world which surrounds it. It is always of its century; it goes forward with it day by day, hour by hour, continually adapting its ways of doing things and its attitudes to those of the society in the midst of which it must act.”
We can look to both Eden and the Eschaton for certain types of guidance toward perfection. But the perfection of the cosmological paradox is always perfect striving. Seeking an alter Israel is at least in part seeking growth, while recognizing the situation of weeds and wheat, and realizing that God is a patient father who will save Sodom and Gomorrah, despite their inhospitality, if he can find ten righteous people out of many thousands. A static authoritarian integrasilm is a toxic integralism that loses compassion for the reality of dynamic persons and dynamic societies.
Alter Israel works on a fulfillment model of peoples based on what has been revealed by the incarnation. When Christ incarnated, he took on all that humanity is and redeemed it. That is he personally fulfilled humanity, human nature, by his life death and resurrection. He offers humans an avenue to redemption and fulfillment by his act. Since that avenue is both individual and collective, the results will be the best expressions of all that is unique and beautiful at each level. It bears repeating that what has potentiality for beauty in God’s eyes may not (yet) be recognizable to us. We can point the reader back to the example of the tax collector, who seems irredeemable, yet is one of the favorite targets or redemption by the incarnate word as he walked the Earth.
What we are suggesting for the agenda of implementation of an alter Israel is a maneuver of adaptive integralism through cosmic evangelization. Again cosmic evangelization is a process undertaken by the Mystical Body of Christ, the Pilgrim Church on Earth, whereby we seek to conform the cosmos to the vision of the Eschaton, just as we seek to conform ourselves to what we will be in the Eschaton. It is the process of accepting the principalities and powers of all the various peoples who prepared humanity for the coming of Christ and offering them proper dulia. It is also the process of seeking to convert, those powers who seek latria for themselves to beings who take glory only in dulia and offering latria to God. Lastly, it is the process of replacing cultic rituals aimed at demonic principalities and powers with properly calculated ritual offered with saints and angels, such that their intercession and aid is sufficient for humanity's need for such calculated ritual.
The treatise Cosmic Evangelization developed three varieties of cosmic evangelization, fulfillment, conversion and replacement. Fulfillment “seeks to recognize those powers who have good influences and work with the Holy Spirit as preparers for Christ utilizing any given culture’s logos spermatikos.” Conversion seeks “ to change the cult of that deity and actualize it, that is, turn it to its true end, and bring glory to God.” And lastly, replacement is the strategy “if a malevolent celestial power is ultimately rebellious or unable to convert, the evangelizer can exchange from a demonic celestial power for a saintly celestial being who resides in the heavens and intercedes for us.”
“Why are we discussing “celestial powers”, demons, angelic beings etc? This is a treatise on political integralism.” Why would a Catholic parse politics from a greater cosmology? In this treaties we have discussed two egregores that have come into prominence, one specifically that has enslaved a large portion of the world and is poised to enslave the rest. Even if this “egregore” is tantamount to mass hysteria, the processes and investments of cosmic evangelization will be psychologically helpful. But it is quite possible that the power of an egregore of mass hysteria has been usurped by an actual demonic power. In either case, cosmic evangelization is the key strategy. In this case, an angel of darkness disguised itself as an angel of light to deceive humanity. Life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, equality, and fraternity; these are all good things that the liberal agenda is seeking. The sickness of humanity (original sin) has allowed whiley powers to lead us to believe we are seeking and attaining these things. All the while we are seeking and receiving the opposite. If demonic powers are so adaptable and able to sway the populace, then integralism must be adaptable as well, so that through the power of the incarnation we can strive toward perfection.
Cosmic evangelization by conversion would seek to unmask the egregores and change their cult to practices more in keeping with what was originally promised. That would involve life and ritual that goes back to the source and recalibrates around the truth of what those principles mean. Again, Economy and Nation serve the glory of God and the needs of the people, not the other way around.
If the principle of national or economic supremacy is too ingrained, such an endeavor may call for cosmic evangelization by replacement. In this case, the very concept of nation or economy must be exercised and replaced with the patronage of relevant saints, who can personally guard the health of human social bonds by teaching, example, and intercession.
One can see that even the form of cosmic evangelization must be adaptable. These are slow processes, not things that happen overnight. It is a conversion experience, not a revolution or crusade after the likeness of “this world”. You cannot “force” people into a state of grace and justification. Grace requires cooperation, and thus willful acceptance. The best you can do is set the conditions that facilitate the acceptance of grace. Thus the agenda of one who seeks to convert the social order into a relationship of “integralism” is an agenda of adaptive evangelization. If the movement is wise, it will recognize that the “secular” forces we are dealing with are anything but. They are absolutely transcendent focused. Thus we must approach them, and every other religious tradition in a pluralistic society with the utmost care, so as not to coerce, but rather to convince. As that process plays out, we must respect the situation of conscience that will necessarily be present in a pluralistic society. As Dignitatis Humanae states,
“This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”
“Truth, however, is to be sought after in a manner proper to the dignity of the human person and his social nature. The inquiry is to be free, carried on with the aid of teaching or instruction, communication and dialogue, in the course of which men explain to one another the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in order thus to assist one another in the quest for truth. Moreover, as the truth is discovered, it is by a personal assent that men are to adhere to it.”
The people of God, the Body of Christ, must sacralize culture according to whatever paradigm shifts may happen in the culture. That sacralization is not an imposition of the alien. It is a fulfillment of the present. This is in no way an assent to social relativism. The sacralization is an orientation to truth as best presented and lived by the people, the culture, and the society. Thus a pluralistic society is not a “battle on several fronts” it is an opportunity to redeem and fulfill the unique alter Israel born out of that very pluralistic makeup.
But the pragmatic acceptance of the paradigm does lead to the stark dangers of the progressive integralist. The shared deficiency of all toxic integralism is the hope for an authoritarian regime that coerces rather than convinces. Much like how regressive integralist monarchists may regress too far and unwittingly buy into the idea of the pagan god-king, the progressive integralism may be too invested in the zeitgeist. Rather than sacralizing the economy, the progressive communist integralist often falls prey to the sagacious egregore Economy. They basically fight the cold war trying to sway culture back to a religious understanding that we can control and manipulate the egregore and make our lives better. Adaptive integralism cannot be an integralism that sheds its vision of a society attuned to cooperation with grace. It bears repeating that abidance in this world is “subject to futility”. No person is going to achieve moral perfection on their own power, and no society is going to achieve the perfect order of the New Jerusalem. “So why try?” The answer is the same for individuals and for societies because we are called to perfect striving, and acceptance of grace and redemption, which come from God. Thus it is our responsibility, all the more so under the current political paradigm, to engage with society and seek the conversion of the culture.
Christian Civil Engagement in Three Models
There are three situations in which an adaptive integralism needs to operate. The first is when Christianity is a persecuted minority. The second is when Christianity is an accepted minority, but not the steering cultural force. The last is when Christianity is or has the ability to be, the steering cultural force due to population and influence. The variety of situations Christians may find themselves in is similar to the variety of different political structures one may find oneself in. Not only must adaptive integralism be malleable in the structures that it engages, but given that it is essentially an evangelical agenda, it must adapt its techniques and methodologies to the terrain so that it can adapt the culture to the life of Christ. Thus “adaptive” integralism is adaptive in three forms, it adapts to the political structures humanity needs in a given situation to best facilitate cooperative grace. It adapts it’s evangelical methodologies to the population at hand so that the gospel is recognizable. And lastly, its purpose is to adapt the culture, to fulfill it, so that it can become a place where grace God’s through Christ is seen for what it is and the culture facilitates cooperation with that grace. As the document Faith and Inculturation states,
The process of inculturation may be defined as the Church's efforts to make the message of Christ penetrate a given sociocultural milieu, calling on the latter to grow according to all its particular values, as long as these are compatible with the Gospel. The term inculturation includes the notion of growth, of the mutual enrichment of persons and groups, rendered possible by the encounter of the Gospel with a social milieu. "Inculturation [is] the incarnation of the Gospel in native cultures and also the introduction of these cultures into the life of the Church.”
As the Christian church maneuvers between these populations and statuses, it must toggle between effective use of the analogy of Christ the king and Christ the criminal. In certain situations, the criminal concept will be more useful and in others the king. Always and in each situation Christ the King is calling us to recognize the absolute providence of God, giving the Christian integralist the authority to act in order to effect change in society. Christ the criminal is especially present in this postlapsarian world, there to remind the Christian integralist that the status quo is not the Eschaton, and the World is ever ready to crush the Christian bodily if corrupt temporal powers are questioned.
When Christianity is a persecuted minority Christ the criminal stands at the forefront. In this society Christianity has no right to protection from the civil powers that be and an evangelizer can expect hostility if they are successful enough. They can expect no progress toward acceptance by the governing structure, but they can still act to effect society. Of course, daring acts that lead to martyrdom are worthy of remembrance and honor. But such acts generally dramatically accentuate what must be a steady abidance of Christianity in the culture that presents the best of that culture is to itself by the life of Christ shared by the Christains there. This is the grassroots agenda of an adaptive integralism, working via cosmic evangelization and inculturation. The practitioner must be “just odd enough” to survive because survival is what the integralists wants Christianity to do in this hostile environment. They must be odd because the hostility is anti-Christian and they must live Christian lives. Where there is conflict between life in Christ and the cultural climate, that conflict is the conflict that creates Christ the criminal. The active adaptive integralist must use their life as an example of goodness. It behooves most Christians in such a society to operate on an evangelization of fulfillment rather than an evangelization of condemnation so as to spread the gospel in the society at the grassroots.
Such an attitude will help spread the gospel according to the model of the mustard seed, slowly implementing the Kingdom. As active Christians participate in society, it must be a dialogue with the culture that is predominantly affirmative and compassionately critical. This methodology is promoted by Gaudium et Spes,
For our part, the desire for such dialogue, which can lead to truth through love alone, excludes no one, though an appropriate measure of prudence must undoubtedly be exercised. We include those who cultivate outstanding qualities of the human spirit, but do not yet acknowledge the Source of these qualities. We include those who oppress the Church and harass her in manifold ways
Christians in an oppressive society must understand themselves as the salt of the Earth. Though the environment consists of alien material, the Christian’s job is to intensify the good flavor of that material and make it the best version of what it is. This is the practical methodology of adaptive integralism in a context where Christianity is persecuted. This methodology is “from below” that is grassroots, in an effort to win the populace, and thus shift the culture to one that is informed by Christian virtue and open to cooperative grace.
This method struggles against the dominant hagiography of early martyrology, where the outspoken Christian dies and their courage leads to conversion. No doubt this happened and the effects are real. We would not disparage such heroes of the faith. Modern examples follow the same typology, fighting to implement the social justice doctrine of the church. But most Christians in such situations live covertly and their survival and abidance is what sustains and grows the life of the church in a culture longitudinally.
As an accepted minority, again, patience is a key virtue of the evangelist and, therefore, of the adaptive integralist. In a pluralistic society, for example, one must reflect on the parable of the weeds and the wheat. One must practice tolerance as a strategy of patience. G.K. Chesterton famously stated “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” and his view is often touted by toxic integralist in their assertion that “error has no rights”. But there is a difference between tolerance that is a relativistic aqueicense and tolerance that is born out of the patient striving of a skilled evangelizer. The former has in every way succumb to the heresy of modernism. The latter takes his queue from God, who's loving narrative of salvation history from the Garden to the present has shown no acceptance for error, yet has demonstrated the utmost tolerance via patient persuasion.
For the Christian who abides in such a culture or nation, they must remember that both Sodom and Gomorrah and the Weeds and the Wheat teach us that our sheer presence offers those people God’s protection, small as the Christain population may be. With believers there, God’s way has a chance. As “Jonathan said to his armor-bearer: “Come, let us go over to that outpost of the uncircumcised. Perhaps the Lord will help us because it is no more difficult for the Lord to grant victory by means of a few than it is by means of many.”
The advantage in this situation is that the adaptive integralist can begin to build societal structures that advance the cause of a Christian society. The best examples of such structures, schools, and hospitals, have been being founded by Catholics, especially consecrated, for over a thousand years. In the context of oppression, only individual works of charity can escape murderous notice. But once Christianity is tolerated, then systematic operations of Charity can begin to be constructed in order to demonstrate to the culture why Christianity is alluring. In conjunction with corporeal and spiritual works and systems of charity, such institutions can begin to publicly craft calculated ritual of cosmic evangelization and seek to reorder the society toward fulfillment.
When one thinks of the “dialogue” in the quote from Gaudium et Spes above, one pictures a table where impressive people discuss the merits of opinions. For the standpoint of cosmic evangelization, dialogue is a translation of cultural symbols into a Christan milieu of calculated ritual, especially as it is manifest in the field of dynamic popular piety. This calculated ritual would turn the cultural symbols toward latira due to God, and dulia due to the predominant principalities and powers. In the present case, it would effect subjugation of the egregores of Nation and Economy. The adaptive integralist would be wise to utilize this strategy and seek symbolic and analogical confluence of cultures. Whereas the hallmark of the toxic integralist is that they are seeking to utilize power of the institutional church toward service of one or the other of these egregores. The adaptive integralist in this situation must carefully toggle between how they present Christ the King and Christ the criminal.
The last situation Christians can find themselves in is as the cultural influencer. This could be because the governmental structure is theocracy, or it could be in a Christian majority liberal government. In either case, as Augustine believed, the job of the adaptive integralism is to set the conditions for a society that can recognize grace and is culturally disposed to cooperating with it. This is not necessarily best done by passing laws that crystalize moral minutia. Rather it is a struggle to apply the entirety of the Christan worldview into the context of the culture. An example of an attempt at one issue is the treatise Birth Control vs Labor Rights That treatise grappled with how to square two issues that currently align as political and cultural opposition in America. The struggle is discovering how they work together such that what appeared to be opposition is unmasked as poorly structured priorities. For example, we noted in that same treatise,
Society is simply no longer structured in such a way that a nuclear family with many children can economically survive. This causes great anxiety for parents, even those who are extremely open to life. . . . The social justice tradition of the Church, as it is framed for the modern mind in the seven principles seeks to establish the environment one needs to fully participate in sacramental grace. They also set up a social matrix for better individual expressions of love, because they can be expressed without the anxiety that comes when the basic needs aren’t being met.
What the Church cannot do is become an agent of the oppressive power that Christ came to liberate us from. There must be a constant remembrance of Christ the criminal because that is Christ’s mode in postlapsarian reality as it progresses to the Eschaton. Such oppression is the desire of the toxic integralist, who would side with oppressive monarchs, dictators, Sadducees, and Pharisees in order to push an agenda of morality bereft of context and cultural hegemony.
Rather, the purpose of an integralist agenda is to advance the onesiman interface and struggle to redefine power structures relationship by relationship such that the authoritarian model is rendered irrelevant. The major agenda is not defining exactly how government works, but reshaping civil structures so relationships are Christocentric. That is how “the church” must influence civil society. Integralism seeks to sculpt a society where implementation if christo-analogical interchange is facilitated, and its facilitation is the window through which civil law is sculpted, rather than the window of economic efficiency or nationalist ideology. It was noted in the treatise The Onesiman Interface how this role is critical to the laity’s ministry and mission,
The sacral investiture of the indigent is simply a recognition of the dance between the helper and the helped in Christian power dynamics. Once one recognizes this, one can immediately see how it applies to the onesiman interface between personal action and social sin. It represents the complicated nature of how the greater serves the lessor, the lessor, according to worldly power dynamics, being the indigent and the greater being someone offering aid. In this “sacramental” ritual the helper effects Christ’s priesthood, and takes on the role of Christ the helper, and giver of mercy to those in need. This is his role as a layman as is noted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (898-900)
"By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer.”
The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church:
Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.
Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it.
Thus whatever “integralism” means, it is much less likely to be something like a system where two monarchies, one noble one clerical rule society together. Civil structures are clearly under the previews of the laity, with the clerical hierarchy in an advisory position of teaching the faith the laity must incarnate into society.
The regressive toxic integralist loves to point to the modern martyrs of blood thirsty liberal regimes as pinnacles of integralist values and warnings of the dangers of liberal anti-religious ideas. This seems to indicate that the laity cannot be trusted with civil governance, much like a clericalist will think the laity cannot be trusted with … anything. But liberal ideas are not the enemy. An authoritarian oppression, which may include an abuse of the image of Christ the king at the expense of Christ the criminal, is much more dangerous, and one driven by the demonic absolute regard for Nation or Economy is a horror to an authentic adaptive integralist.
The modern martyrs of liberal modernism are especially those from the french revolution, the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and the martyrs of Eastern Europe under the communist regimes. These noble people most certainly lived for Christ and died a truly sacrificial death. Their death was not in vain, but the meaning of their lives and deaths may not be what the toxic regressive integralist believes. Their deaths are not “resistance to theologically illicit civil philosophies” because Christ is king. Rather their deaths were sacrificial acts of reparation for a Church that sided with oppressive structures of this world. The wrath of the anti-Christain oppressor from this time period is a reaction to the oppressive governmental structures that did not seek God’s justice. In this the revolutionaries are channeling Christ the criminal. This wrath struck out against Roman Catholicism because it not only failed in its task to struggle for justice and align with Christ the criminal, but it bolstered the very injustice that its office of prophecy called it to cry out against and warped the true meaning of Christ the King.
As the martyr cries “viva Christo Rey”, it cannot be a cry of renewed oppression under a different regime, it must be a cry for the justice of the true king. The one who cries this is signifying Christ the criminal by the method of their death at the hands of civil authorities and pointing to Christ the king, who reigns in the cosmos and only brings perfect order in the Eschaton. This justice abhors all violence, seek beatitude, and sides with the oppressed in every situation. In as much as the atheists side with the oppressed, they side with Christ the criminal, but they need serious nurturing to bring him to fullness within themselves and their movement. The courage of the sacrificial death for reparation should be a beacon of love from the stalwart believer to the enraged dispossessed of the compassion of Christ for the poor.
It is the job of the adaptive integralist, as a wise evangelizer, to listen in this wrath to find the source and develop any goodness they can find. They are listening for the quiet voice of Christ the criminal. Once they hear it, they can amplify that voice and bring wrath to silence, while ushering the reign of Christ the king. Most embittered atheists critique Christianity based on its hypocrisy. It mostly comes down to either the hypocrisy of sexual mortality not lived by the clerical hierarchy or the hypocrisy of the lavish opulence of the clerical hierarchy who cavort and influence worldly powers as compared to the situation of Christ and his gospel. The atheist murderers of the liberal revolutions were the latter. This means that fundamentally their wrath is justifiable at its source, it is the wrath of Christ the criminal in the temple as he overturned the tables of the money changers. It is their methodology and the lengths to which they take the reform that is disordered.
It is fine and well to posit how things “should be”, how society “should be run according to Christan principles” and how Christianity “shouldn’t have to share the public square” with erroneous ideologies and religions. The regressive integralist can have a great theory on how a monarchy and a clerical hierarchy can interact in the ideal and through the ecclesiology of Saint Paul truly for one body of many parts. I can personally get behind that, in the abstract, I can also get behind Christian socialism and 100 other ideologies that work in theory. But in this world, Christ was in the world and not of the world, thus he was Christ the criminal. Most likely we as Christians will have to be the same, according to the world.
Regressive integralist structures have many historical problems. Not the least is the situation in England not long before the revolutions just mentioned. In this case, The Crown decided that an “integralist” structure was absolutely appropriate, yet, it wanted the crown to dictate the direction. Schism occurred, with many laity, consecrated, and ordained imprisoned in Newgate and the Tower of London. Many of these were martyred. In this case, it is an integralism where bishops and a parallel hierarchy are moving in concert with civil governance, but where the crown defines the religion. At a certain point it must have been hard for the commoner to know who was pulling who’s strings and how to align. Generally in toxic regressive integralism, the commoner is not to use their brain much anyway.
Ideal political structures would be nice. But if integralism is defined by that situation, then integrtalism will not exist until the New Jerusalem. This situation on the ground is pluralistic, thus the church as it evangelizes on a social level must engage pluralistically. We cannot act as though the situation is otherwise. In fact, we cannot “act” as though it is pluralistic anymore than the Son “acted” human. An incarnational theology doesn’t sell ideas or impose impossible perfections. It fulfills reality as it is. To do otherwise leads to the exact problem of the atheist militants of the secular revolutions, the particularly painful modern curse of genocide. This problem was just as rife on the religious-political spectrum in the tumultuous period we are discussing, because the civil governments that aligned with religious structures were seeking to subject religion to the egregor Nation. Thus, the Falange in Spain and the Nazis in Germany (who were considered at the time allies of Catholicism against communist) were not much different than the secular atheists. Brutal and bloodthirsty authoritarianism cannot be the basis of Catholic integralism or it will cease to be Catholic.
More than anything, pluralism is the result of advanced communication. It is the problem of Babylon looking for a Pentecost. At the basic level, this communication is brought about by migration, and as modes of transportation increased in speed and volume over the past two centuries, certain nations became melting pots. Over the past century in particular the methods of communication beyond simple travel and face to face conversations make information immediately available. From telegraph to telephone to television to the digital continent, cultures intermingle and merge are a pace that transcends geography. Especially on the digital continent, this proves to advance the problem of Babel. The reader will realize that the problem of diversification of language and dialect is only the surface of the problem of Babel. The true danger is that even as individuals speaking the same language, the same dialect, we often miscommunicate and misunderstand. This is all the more exacerbated as microcultures merge and clash on the digital continent.
The constant rapid communication makes for an intensified pluralism that is not bound by distance or border. With the information age as it is, one cannot hope for an authoritarian ruler who can control the narrative, even if that were a good thing. Any isolationism of “error has no rights” is not going to survive. Integralism must be adaptive and have the evangelical impetus to be an alluring voice on the digital continent. With that in mind, we can end this treatise with practical general advice and principles for how the adaptive integralist should maneuver in modern secular liberal democracies in the information age.
Basics Mechanics and Principles of Adaptive Integralism
For the last part of the last section, “The Basic Principles of Adaptive Integralism” we begin with an excerpt from the 1988 document Faith and Inculturation put out by the International Theological Commission.
The inculturation of the Gospel in modern societies will demand a methodical effort of concerted research and action. This effort will assure on the part of those responsible for evangelization: (1) an attitude of openness and a critical eye; (2) the capacity to perceive the spiritual expectations and human aspirations of the new cultures; (3) the aptitude for cultural analysis, having in mind an effective encounter with the modern world.
As we noted earlier, part of the “toxicity” of toxic integralists is their impatience. They seek imposition of a fully formed perfect system from “the outside”. This desire is understandable, but to demand it runs contrary to the gospel and forms perfect synchronicity with the genocidal tendencies of modern utopian based secular movements.
The patient modus of adaptive integralism should be a program of inculturation, not a program of conquest. When Elijah summons the priests of Baal to Mount Carmel in 1Kings 18, the dramatic display is one that prefigures the current secular lust for utopian based genocide. After quickly and decisively demonstrating the superiority of God “Elijah said to them, ‘Seize the prophets of Baal. Let none of them escape!’ They seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon and there he slaughtered them.” But Elijah quickly learns the lesson of Cain, to take life creates a cycle of violence that leads to nothing but fugitive based alienation. He is put on the run as a result of his violence. It is only after being given strength by God due to his personal exhaustion to near death that he is able to see that mediating “The God of dramatic signs” is not his calling. After the wind and the earthquake and the fire of Horeb, he encounters God in the small sound, which reestablishes a covenantal relationship and gives impetus to a slow longitudinal process that Elijah does not finish. In Truth, Elisha does not finish it either because Israel is not God’s beloved bride. Nor has Christ finished it “in history”. This is a mission that all followers of the God of Abraham are still seeking to accomplish, to reestablish a true covenantal relationship with God on the individual and social level. On that front the prophetic voice is paramount. As a personal reality seeking to sway persons, the structure of the social institution is mostly irrelevant. More important is how well it sets the conditions for the pursuit of justification for its populace.
The model of Elijah in the reestablishment of the covenant is a personal relationship between God and Prophet, that begets a personal relationship between the prophet and legal authority. This personal model is the subsidiary model Christ takes when the Logos incarnates and Jesus forms friendships on this Earth. Jesus does not seek to befriend Herod, Pontius Piolet, or Cezar. Rather he sets his sights on local fishermen and neerdowell revolutionaries.
But Elijah is called to effect the macro-structure, to root out Jezabel’s corrupting influence and reform Israel. Thus, much like in Judaism, inculturation works on two levels, the Law and the Prophets. As it is often perceived, “integralism” seems to focus more on the Law than the Prophetic nature of the mission of the Church. This leads to a litigious pharisaical culture, which in turn tends to toxic integralism. An adaptive integralism needs to inculturate by striking a good balance between a legal and prophetic approach. Again, the logos does not incarnate as a Roman patrician, rather the incarnation is one of poverty and a call to justice via personal relationships.
The adaptive integralist, whether they be the cultural majority, accepted minority, or a persecuted minority, must seek to form personal relationships that create an environment of Justice against the prevailing injustice of the society. In a pagan setting, the injustice is the oppression of a false deity that does not foster love. In the secular world, it is the injustice of an oppressive structure that tramples the poor and gives no hope for true joy. The adaptive integralist will seek to inculturate The Justice of God into the system of the target culture. The principles of Catholic social teaching will speak to the majority of the population in any given macro-culture because postlapsarian human culture oppresses, and Catholic social teaching offers freedom in Christ. The basic message of Catholic social doctrine is universally appealing to the world’s poor and downtrodden, thus universally appealing to most of humanity. In the prophetic tradition, the first avenue of approach for an adaptive integralist is to promote the social teaching of the church according to the level of their role in society (macro or micro). Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Immortale Dei makes a bold proclamation of the effect of this method,
“Yet, in regard to things temporal, she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly life. And, indeed, wherever the Church has set her foot she has straightway changed the face of things, and has attempered the moral tone of the people with a new civilization and with virtues before unknown. All nations which have yielded to her sway have become eminent by their gentleness, their sense of justice, and the glory of their high deeds.”
Once this more universal appeal has set in the adaptive integralist agenda can begin to work on the culture as it presents itself. The adaptation of an adaptive integralist is not a colonial imposition of European Catholic cultural symbology, ritual, and beauty. It is a true inculturation (an incarnation) of Catholicism to the culture itself. As Towards a Pastoral Approach to Culture notes there are multiple tools one can employ in order to shape of culture, “Ordinary ways of experiencing faith include, popular piety, the parish, educational institutions, Centres of theological formation, catholic cultural centers, mass media, and religious information, science, technology, bioethics and ecology, art and artists, cultural heritage and religious tourism, young people”.
Not among the immediate list is “governing bodies” because the subsidiary model of Christ began with personal relationships of friendship, not political conquest. In an older hierarchical model, one may seek to persuade a king, and therefore society, by forming such a relationship with a tribal, monarchical, or imperial ruler. But almost never in Christian history has the legitimate modus of evangelization been objective military conquest and forced conversion. The aberrations would be the crusades and the darker initiatives of Christain colonial expansion. These exceptions are simply objectively evil mistakes, which do not suit the true goals of an integralist state. So, what are the goals of an integralist state?
There is one goal of an integralist state, to set the conditions so as to allow for maximal ease of the populace to cooperate with grace. This is why even at the level of a persecuted minority, the first maneuver of the adaptive integralist is to begin to seek a shift in the society toward conformity with the social justice doctrine of the Church. As we noted in Birth Control vs Labor Rights?,
To work for social justice allows us to do God’s work, to bring God to each other, by setting the conditions for protecting each other from all anxiety and granting peace in our day. A society that is justly ordered allows for all of its citizens cleric consecrated and married to have the same opportunity to approach the sacraments and Christ himself with contemplative detachment because our societal anxiety has been mitigated. Such order allows for a matrix the offers freedom from anxiety and is social facilitator of cooperation with grace the same way avoidance of sin and practice of virtue is a personal facilitator of cooperation with grace. This brings us to the final conclusion of this treatise, the harmony of the social justice tradition of worker’s rights and the Church's teaching against artificial birth control.
Anxiety and fear intensify selfishness and cooperation with concupiscence. Trust and peace intensify cooperation with divine peace and justice.
Integralism must begin its concerns at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and work it’s way up the pyramid toward a society where cooperation with grace is maximally available. A rudimentary understanding of Maslow's hierarchy allows the integralist to realize that the formation of a stable society will foster “self actualization”, that is, the seeking of meaning and truth, a quest which Christianity has the answers for. Thus, on a social scale, laying the foundation for such stability will foster in the individual both the cerebral quest for fulfillment and the conditions for cooperation with the grace that flows from God through Christ’s Church.
One may contest this by pointing out that harsh conditions often spur spiritual growth. Christian theodicy and the cycle of sin demonstrate the pedagogy of redemptive suffering. And this is true. But the integralist is not calculating based on individual salvation. Salvation and justification is fundamentally God’s work, not the integralist’s. The integralist is seeking to shape society in cooperation with the Church and in conformity with grace. Since the calculator is social and not individual, one must seek the common good. Each individual has unique conditions that will best awaken them to the reception of God’s grace. For society as a whole, it is the common good that sets the best conditions. Maslow's hierarchy of needs demonstrates that this works by reducing anxiety and allowing a populace to reflect on the good, the true, and the beautiful. This is the basic lesson of the Sabbath, as well as the Jubilee year and a host of other Levitical Laws.
This is hagiographically evident in that historically monarchs are canonized because of their personal piety, because they successfully protected their populace, and/or because they had a program of justice reflective of the gospel. There are no monarchs who are canonized specifically for authoritarian oppression or forced conversion. God himself set this same agenda in the first and second creation stories, setting the specific conditions for maximal joy and allowing the first parents to develop their relationship with Him.
By the time an adaptive integralism agenda has inculturated successfully, it is important to continue to push the agenda of social justice and synchronize it so as to maximize cooperation with grace. For example, the treatise On Promotion of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness, demonstrated the synchronicity between an ecological view that preserved resources and a social justice agenda that allowed access to those resources not just for the physical sustenance of the populace, but also for a true sharing in the sacramental life of the Church. That sharing includes access to receptive sacral matter [human bodies, i.e. the right to life], confluential sacral matter [what is needed to perform the seven sacraments: flour, wine, oil, water] and auxiliary sacral matter [what is needed for both official and dynamic popular piety].
Each of these aspects of sacramental cosmology is key to total inculturation of Christianity toward an alter Israel. The social justice doctrine begins with human dignity. Thus, receptive sacral matter is the first thing that adaptive integralism should be concerned with if the host society has deficiencies on the matter. This would first include combatting policies that actively strike against life, such as any type of eugenics, capital punishment, abortion, etc. The destructive anti-life policies often work in concert with other cultural conditions that bolster longitudinal destruction of life through secondary causes. Thus a program of adaptive integralism will strive to set the minimal conditions for a just society, regardless of the civil structure, by combating both direct and indirect threats to life equally. In order for that right to truly reflect dignity, the populace must have access to the means for the development of life including food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and rest. All of this should be provided by the just society to the best of the society's ability despite ill health, disability from work, widowhood, race, religion, old age, enforced unemployment, or anything beyond a subject’s control. Private property is to be protected, as we noted in the previous section, but any concept of “ownership” of that property is subordinated to the universal destination of goods because in reality, God owns everything.
Moving up from the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy, an important supplement to the simple efficiency of life is the necessity of beauty and the ability to approach God in a manner appropriate to the culture as a alter Israel. Thus specifically for adaptive integralism, the availability of time to rest and access to auxiliary sacral matter in order to develop dynamic popular piety is critical. A colonial toxic integralism will arrive in a culture as a conqueror and impose official popular piety on the populace by force. Official popular piety has a level of certainty, but it is reflective of the culture it is born in. In a host culture, it could very well be effective, especially as a novelty. But dynamic popular piety will allow for the true growth of a culture of the gospel in the people. The key to the development of dynamic popular piety, from an integralist social point of view, is access to a just relationship between labor and rest as well as access to auxiliary sacral matter appropriate to the culture.
Right to life and the setting maximal conditions for seeking God is the groundwork of an adaptive integralist agenda. The present situation in the world is one of Globalism, rapid digital communication, and nations with civil structures that are either authoritarian or based on liberal democracies. Adaptive integralism would operate in a modern authoritarian regime much like it would in pagan Rome, or among the pagan tribes of old Europe. Remember, there is almost no difference between these political situations. These regimes have their god too, they most likely worship some variant of the egregore Economy. The methodology of implementing adaptive integralism is not that much different than the methodology of old. There are two possibilities, convert the leader and hope for a domino effect or work a longitudinal grassroots agenda.
If one can convert the god-king, one can convert the nation. But it would have to be a true conversion that begets a benevolent dictator, not a calculation by a dictator for his own ends. What will follow should not be laws that force conversion, but a shining example to a populace accustomed to looking to a singular leader for leadership in life. But even with such a true conversion were to take place, this is a one time affair subject to backslide over generations.
The second methodology available, slow adaptive integralism, will take the secular model and work from the bottom up. It is an effort at grassroots conversion that will ultimately change the entire culture first then overturn the political. This is adopting the narrative of the liberal democracy and turning to a Catholic evangelical liberalism. In an authoritarian regime’, this would no doubt be a way of revolution. But this revolution consists of martyrdom and the struggle for justice as opposed to violence and genocide.
This bottom up approach is the necessary methodology in the civil structures of liberal democracy. It is an approach that is longitudinal and reflective of the evangelical methodology of Saint Paul. It targets the entire populace instead of putting all its eggs in one basket. It is the approach that Gaudium et Spes boasts when it states,
By virtue of her mission to shed on the whole world the radiance of the Gospel message, and to unify under one Spirit all men of whatever nation, race or culture, the Church stands forth as a sign of that brotherhood which allows honest dialogue and gives it vigor.
Such a mission requires in the first place that we foster within the Church herself mutual esteem, reverence and harmony, through the full recognition of lawful diversity. Thus all those who compose the one People of God, both pastors and the general faithful, can engage in dialogue with ever abounding fruitfulness. For the bonds which unite the faithful are mightier than anything dividing them. Hence, let there be unity in what is necessary; freedom in what is unsettled, and charity in any case….
In a liberal democracy each hierarchy of the church has it’s specific task regarding adaptive integralism. The clerical hierarchy, headed by the magisterium, operates according to its teaching capacity. Its job is to promote the social justice doctrine of the church and illuminate how it best facilitates true sacral engagement in the world and makes known the life of Christ. This teaching is crucial. The clerical hierarchy must teach this to both members of the church and nonmembers in any society where Catholicism is to take root and shape that culture into an alter Israel. After this teaching, the clerical hierarchy must recognize the subsidiary nature of the many parts of the Body of Christ. The clerical hierarchy must trust the laity (consecrated, dyarchies, and single) to do their job and sacralize society from within, especially through dynamic popular piety that speaks directly to a culture in the symbolic and ritual languages of that culture. This trust speaks to a dialogue between the revealed teaching of the Church (dogma) how it is applied and related generally (doctrine) from the clerical point of view and how it interfaces with the symbols and rituals of the culture from the laity’s point of view.
For their part, secular consecrated and the single must utilize their special charism of focus and seek to specifically change society for the better through prayer and through activism in the implementation of the social justice doctrine of the Church. Their freedom from complete integration in a society (“the World”), as well as their freedom from having to “earn” their own living and be specifically responsible for the most vulnerable (their own children), allows them a special ability to promote adaptive integralism on this level. More often than not the dyarch does not have time to do the research and lobby on the multiple fronts necessary to effect macro-change. The consecrated especially are perfectly suited for this task. As an institutionally minded population, the consecrated best understand how to move institutions, thus engagement on a macro level best suits their chasm. It is the consecrated who have the time, focus, and organization to truly be a grassroots powerhouse for inculturation of the Gospel.
Lastly are the dyarchies. As their role in adaptive integralism of a liberal democracy is twofold. First, being the largest population of the church, they must inform their conscience by church teaching and vote to the best of their ability. It is in their numbers that they bring to bear the power of the gospel in a liberal democracy. Ad Gentes expounds eloquently on how ordinary men and women must be the ones to carry this mission through dialogue into their daily lives and work.
But they must give expression to this newness of life in the social and cultural framework of their own homeland, according to their own national traditions. They must be acquainted with this culture; they must heal it and preserve it; they must develop it in accordance with modern conditions, and finally perfect it in Christ, so that the Faith of Christ and the life of the Church are no longer foreign to the society in which they live, but begin to permeate and to transform it.
Thus the integralist, with an eye toward manipulation of civil structures, will also note the power of bulk voting. But civil structures are only one extremely small part of influence in society. As we noted in ecclesial orientation, simple structures working according to subsidiarity take longer but have better, more authentic, and longer lasting effects than grand scale victories, which often pan out as hollow and as quick to change as they were to come. Operating at one’s best depth and level was the major thesis of the treatise Ecclesiological Orientation. There it was revealed that for most people expansive family and friendships relationships are the best model for social influence. The document Towards a Pastoral Approach to Culture may offer the best model for adaptive integralism,
What matters is to evangelize man's culture and cultures (not in a purely decorative way, as it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right to their very roots), in the wide and rich sense which these terms have in Gaudium et spes, always taking the person as one's starting-point and always coming back to the relationships of people among themselves and with God.
This model of Catholic inculturation of the gospel toward an alter Israel is the most solid way that an adaptive integralism can achieve its goal, a culture which seeks to set the best conditions, in this postlapsarian world, for cooperation with grace by its populace.
We began this section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture. We laid out three different contexts for this development first where the Catholic population is an oppressed minority, second where they are an accepted minority and third where they are the cultural shapers. After noting some factors to be considered given the pluralistic nature of the modern world, we discussed the basic nature of adaptive integralism. We noted its function, basic methodologies, and programs of implementation. Lastly, we specifically applied these to the civil structures of liberal democracies and parsed the role of each of the three hierarchies of the church, clerical, consecrated, and dyarchies.
Conclusion
In the first section, we began by exploring the basic tenets and assumptions of modern Catholic integralism. We discovered that these tenets seemed to be couched in a certain historical perspective born out of the magisterial response to the western secularization’s development of two modern egregores, Nation and Economy. Part of the assumption of modern integralism is that the Church, somehow, ceded its involvement in temporal authority. We proceeded to show how this was not the case. Rather there was a shift in the relationship of evangelization. Formerly Christian inculturation worked through a monarch (a form of government having origin in the pagan god-kings) to the populace. With the advent of secular democracies, evangelization needed to shift to a model that works from the bottom up through social justice and the new evangelization.
In the second section we explored the various structures of Judeo-Christian governance. We developed various models founded on structures discovered in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the existing Ecclesiological hierarchies of the Church. We discovered that there is no one “Christian” way to structure or select civil governance. We noted that as civil governments grow in complexity, the role of religion changes in its relation to the practicality of civil governance, generating a prophetic voice that stands against oppression and sheer utility. We also discovered that every form of governance, even familial based patriarchy is the result of postlapsarian development. Thus any preference for a structure based on cosmology would need supplemental bolstering to stand. In the end, the structure, chosen by any manner, is malleable to redemption. We concluded that the structure shares a Christain outlook if it recognizes subsidiarity and calculates its decrees by the common good.
In the final section by contrasting monolithic toxic integralism with an adaptive integralism that seeks to foster the development of an alter Israel in its host culture. We laid out three different contexts for this development first where the Catholic population is an oppressed minority, second where they are an accepted minority and third where they are the cultural shapers. After noting some factors to be considered given the pluralistic nature of the modern world, we discussed the basic nature of adaptive integralism. We noted its function, basic methodologies, and programs of implementation. Lastly we specifically applied these to the civil structures of liberal democracies and parsed the role of each of the three hierarchies of the church, clerical, consecrated, and dyarchies.
In a treatise on “integralism”, one might expect a political structure to be proposed that would negotiate the relationship between the clerical hierarchy as “authoritative” and the civil governance. But hopefully, this treatise has demonstrated that such an expectation is the result of a deeply entrenched notion that there is some sort of separation between church and state, that there is a separation between the laity and the clerical hierarchy “as church” and there is a separation between the governed and the governors. All of these separations do not square with Christian ontology and point to the alienating effect of sin. Rather, this treatise recalls the effect of Christ to bring healing to a sinful world and starts with an evangelical agenda of inclusion and fulfillment. If each of us recognizes our role in the social order and practices it with joy, we can begin to approach a vision of the New Jerusalem even here and now, before we experience its actuality in the Eschaton.
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