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The Pope and the President - A view from
outside* Por Gerald Vouga Half a century ago the New Yorker magazine published what
soon became a famous cartoon. Two uniformed maids are standing beside an open
door through which a group of animated guests are to be seen around a
dining-table. One maid says to the other: "Who are the guests
tonight?". The second answers: "Don't know this lot, but they must
be intellectuals—all they talk about is sex, sex,
sex!" The sexual revolution was the third of the twentieth century's
great revolutions, and possibly the most lasting. Progressive intellectuals
today may have little enthusiasm for the politics of either socialism or
fascism, or for the ideologies of Communism or Nazism, but on one thing they
are universally agreed: the social agenda of libertarianism with its
doctrines on abortion, gay marriage, promiscuity, and radical feminism—all of this is non-negotiable. Not surprisingly its most
aggressive militants are in the media. If we were to use Foucault's divining
rod, "D'ou parles tu?",
and look for the social interest that lies behind this phenomenon, we would
not have far to seek; for who would deny that without the pervasive
sexualising of modern life the press, TV, cinema and advertising would be
deprived of a good deal of their material and income? Of course multiculturalism is also a touchstone of modern social
ethics. But it is a notoriously risky one because "enlightened"
approaches to sexual relations and behavior are to be found only in Western
culture—other peoples and cultures tend to be
lamentably backward on such questions. That today a candidate’s stance on the
ethical and behavioural issues listed above is perhaps the most critical
factor in modern political life is evident from the careers of two prominent,
influential, and sharply contrasting figures. George W Bush and Josef Ratzinger
George W. Bush, President of the United States, and Josef
Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, could scarcely be more different in background,
education, cultural interests and personal history. Yet the 2004 election of
Bush and the 2005 Vatican choice of Ratzinger both aroused a deeply visceral
and hostile reaction from the same quarters. No matter that the Pope like his predecessor was a declared
opponent of US intervention in Iraq. No matter that Bush when governor of
Texas pursued notably progressive policies on education, immigration and
other social issues. What counts nowadays for a favourable political image is
where one stands on social liberation and the freedom to do as one wants.
This, of course, is true of both sides. But the trouble for the enlightened,
sophisticated, post-modernist school is that the supporters of Bush and
Ratzinger are bearers of a much deeper and more ancient tradition. By which I
mean respect for tradition itself. Ratzinger, the music-lover who plays Mozart on the piano for
recreation, and converses with the former Frankfurter Habermas, was a leading
reformer during Vatican II.
Now he defends the Latin liturgy and wants correction of what
he considers to have been the errors of many 1960s Church reformers.
Furthermore he reiterates the basic traditional teachings on family and sex
of all three Abrahamic religions. Shortly before his election Ratzinger set
out his guiding principles in a homily guaranteed not to endear him to
post-modernists: "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism
which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value
one's own ego and one's own desires." So if Europe is to survive, he
says, it will have to somehow recover its Christian roots. Bush, not notable for high-brow tastes, was once something of a
play-boy. Now he defends "family values" and wants to purge the
courts of legislating judges, especially those who would force changes in
domestic life and sexual conduct into law whether voters like it or not.
Despite all the accusations against him the U.S. President takes a
traditional American constitutional stance: toleration for all religions, and
equal toleration for those who profess none. But he proclaims his own faith and never fails to invoke the
Divinity's protection of America, at the same time declaring repeatedly that
his quarrel is not with Islam but with tyranny. Pope
Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI has taken a stand against Moslem persecution
of Christians and for the rights of converts from Islam to Christianity. He
has even supported Christian missionary activity among Moslems—activity banned in many Moslem countries. But it is clear
that he also has some sympathy for Islamic religious conviction, and
contrasts this with the pusillanimity of European governments who hesitate to
recognize Europe's Christian roots for fear of provoking their Islamic
immigrants. "What offends Islam," said Cardinal Ratzinger,
"is the lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which
provokes fundamentalism." He has criticized multiculturalism,
"which is so constantly and passionately encouraged and supported,"
because it "sometimes amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is
our own." Not just militant secularists but post-modernist Catholics
call Ratzinger the "panzer cardinal". As might be expected,
unwavering believers—Catholic or Protestant—with
varying degrees of individual reservation, have little difficulty in
supporting, indeed welcoming the emergence of both Bush and Benedict XVI as
influential moral leaders in a doubting and disturbed world. Less expected is the fact that a considerable number of
non-believers feel the same way. It is also remarkable that enlightened
sophisticates, when they discuss Bush or Ratzinger, are singularly unworried
about the theological positions of either. Intellectual problems relating to
the Genesis story, to divine miracles or the Cult of the Virgin Mary, and
even less to the content of the articles of faith contained in the Apostles'
Creed, arouse neither interest nor disagreement. What sparks indignation is the pro-family stance of both figures. Equally noteworthy is that non-believers are
similarly unconcerned with theological matters and concentrate attention on
moral questions. Friedrich
Hayek: the paradoxes resolved
If Friedrich Hayek were alive today he would have no difficulty
explaining these paradoxes. Famous for his The Road to Serfdom, he is usually
associated with free market economics. What is less
well-known is that his later life was devoted to cultural studies and
the origins of civilization. It was his insights into the workings of the
market, derived from Adam Smith, and his sympathy with the views of Burke and
Hume on politics, that laid the basis for his approach to cultural phenomena.
He regards human behaviour as having three sources, the innate
or instinctual developed over some 50,000 generations of pre-history, the
deliberately chosen, and lastly, that which has developed through a natural
process of cultural selection akin to biological evolution. "What has yet to be more widely recognized is that the
present order of society has largely arisen, not by design, but by the
prevailing of the more effective institutions in a process of competition.
Culture is neither natural, nor artificial; neither genetically transmitted
nor rationally designed. It is a tradition of learnt rules of conduct which
have never been invented and whose functions the acting individuals usually
do not understand. There is surely as much justification to speak of the
wisdom of culture as of the wisdom of nature—except,
perhaps, that because of the powers of government, errors of the former are
less easily corrected." According to Hayek, just as we see in the market, there is no
design in biological or social systems. Mutations in biology or societal
changes vanish or survive according to whether they benefit the survival of
the relevant species or population in the circumstances in which they find
themselves. In his last great work, Law,
Legislation and Liberty, Hayek elaborates his theory of cultural
evolution. Its vehicle, he maintains, is tradition, and he argues strongly
that the onus is on those who would break with
tradition to justify such a momentous step. There are always complicated
reasons for the long-term survival of traditions, and we should deeply and
patiently consider those reasons, however obscure, before impulsively
changing moral rules that have been with us
for thousands of years. The presumption
in favor of tradition
Hayek does not deal with religion; indeed, it is not even mentioned in the index to
Law, Legislation and Liberty. What he does examine at some length is the
pernicious effect on education and society of a permissive relativising
ethos, which he condemns as a corrosive force leading to disorder and the
breakdown of civilization. He regards Marx and Freud (until Freud’s very last
years) as the two great negative influences in this direction.
Long-established and virtually universal moral rules have survived since the
dawn of civilization because they conduce to orderly social life, itself a
condition for increasing prosperity and human wellbeing. None of this means that Hayek is against innovation when need
arises, or change when it is due: but he believes that when in doubt there
must be a presumption in favour of tradition. This, too, is the approach we
find today among many non-believers in the presence of religious defenders of
social conventions going back hundreds of years. It is especially apposite in
the case of Europe. Ratzinger sees Europe as under threat, and though he may
be looking at its empty churches, he is also very concerned over its empty cradles. Today a declining population that has abandoned its work ethic
for hedonistic pursuits faces a growing inflow of peoples who cling
stubbornly to traditions that are the opposite of permissive. And these
immigrants are rapidly multiplying thanks to European science and the welfare
provisions of liberal western states. Pope Benedict XVI is no unconscious transmitter of tradition. He
may have religious grounds for his moral judgments, but he has made it clear
that he also has pragmatic motives. It is these
which are shared by non-believers. The internal problems facing President
Bush in America on the moral plane may not be as acute as those which face
the Pope in Europe, but similar ruptures with tradition threaten American
well-being, and it is clear that Bush also has pragmatic motives for concern.
This is why he too finds support among those non-believers who, like Hayek, accept
that when in doubt—and when we have nothing better
to guide us—there is an unmistakable presumption in favour of tradition.
*First published in The Culture Cult
May 2005 Gerald Vouga |