Liberalism, Conservatism, and Social Catholicism for the 21st Century? By William F. Murphy, Jr., S.T.D. Introduction In treating the topic of “Liberalism, Conservatism and Social Catholicism for the 21st Century?” 1 my approach is inspired by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century “social Catholics” beginning with Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler in Germany, whose example inspired various so-called “study circles” of laity and clergy throughout Europe, the most prominent among them being the Fribourg Union. These social Catholics, including the American Msgr. John A Ryan, worked toward solutions to address the central social question of the industrial revolution. This question concerned how to improve the dire situation of workers, one that already had led not only to the 1848 “Communist Manifesto” of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also to various insurrections throughout Europe that threatened social stability. These so called “social Catholics” sought solutions through dialogue with the main alternatives of their time, including the socialists who had gained broad support from industrial workers by advocating for their rights, the industrialists who argued for the laissez-faire economic freedom to run their businesses as they saw fit, and the progressive reformers in the United States. 2 My approach also strives to follow the example of St. Thomas Aquinas who exemplifies a dispassionate and thoughtful consideration of the views of his most important interlocutors, both within the Catholic tradition and outside of it. Such considerations included an appreciation of whatever was true in the views of his conversation partners as a reflection of Divine Truth. This appropriation of his interlocutors’ insights into truth fed into Thomas’s own response to the questions at hand, which typically advanced the state of the question by making distinctions and clarifications and ordering the insights he had gained within a broader, sapiential vision. 3 It seems to me that an authentically Catholic, Thomistic, and publicly-reasonable approach to the most urgent social questions of our day—including violations of human rights, global warming, increasing inequality, ongoing systemic injustices, tribalization, and the breakdown of constitutional and global governance—would benefit from a consideration of three overlapping traditions. These are, as my title suggests, liberalism (in the sense of constitutional democracy with a market economy), conservatism and Catholic social teaching. In what follows therefore, I will offer a relatively brief engagement with key aspects of those three traditions, in the hope of outlining a narrative that both illumines some of the most important issues at stake in our day and facilitates a further conversation. Whereas it seemed with Pope Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors that Catholicism and liberalism were irreconcilably opposed, I wish to discuss not only the surprisingly degree of reconciliation they achieved in the twentieth century through the Second Vatican Council and subsequent Catholic social teaching, but also the renewed alienation that soon followed, especially in the United States amidst tension with the rise of new left on the one hand, and a growing alliance of American Catholics with the conservative movement on the other, which was effected with the help of appeals to fear and bias as in Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” marked by “dog whistles” about “law and order,” etc.. With the future of the liberal world order of constitutional democratic states and international institutions in serious question and no viable alternatives in sight, I will sketch an argument about those aspects of conservatism that Catholics should accept
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