Emile s Quest on Religion and Modern Politics. Emile Perreau Saussine s death is a tragedy for his family and all those who loved him,

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Emile s Quest on Religion and Modern Politics. Emile Perreau Saussine s death is a tragedy for his family and all those who loved him,"

Hugo Hampton
5 years ago
Views:

1 Emile s Quest on Religion and Modern Politics Emile Perreau Saussine s death is a tragedy for his family and all those who loved him, and it is also a tragic loss for philosophy. We have carried on an ongoing conversation for 15 years, mainly on political and social philosophy. His faith and his belonging to the Catholic Church was a central fact of his life and thought. I am a secular Jew, and I might adopt the view Wittgenstein once expressed to his friend Drury: «I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing any problem from a religious point of view». So we had a common standpoint in taking religion seriously, but in extremely different ways. Therefore our conversation on religion was relaxed, open, and yet restrained, discreet I would say: none of us ever tried in any way to convince the other of anything. Contrariwise to our discussions about social and political theory, primitive societies or about the assessment of Alasdair McIntyre s and Charles Taylor s compared merits: then we could have fierce arguments. I would like to say a few words on his last finished book, Catholicisme et démocratie, just published in French, and forthcoming in English translation. The issue at stake in the book is a classical one, and it is addressed to in a rather straightforward way: is there a significant place for a religious institution like the Church in a secular age, and what can be now the meaning and function of such an institution? These questions are answered not by asserted claims but through a historical narrative, of how the Catholic Church has been dealing with the modern democratic world, that is for the last two centuries. The issue must be understood not as about faith, or about the plausibility of this or that religious belief or maxim, but about the possibility and significance of a living and organised community, allow me to say boldly: the issue is about the social fact of the Church. There is a strong claim underlying and feeding this interrogation: the idea that a society without religion/ religious authority if this is a sound description of what democratic and liberal societies intend to be, well such an idea, Emile thought, is at least unsatisfactory,

2 probably not consistent and maybe dangerous. What is called «secularisation» does not consist in getting rid of religion, be it by its disappearance, or its becoming a strictly private matter, or through a kind of mitigation or trivialisation, in the sense Chesterton put it when he said: the world nowadays is full of ancient Christian virtues who became mad (sorry if I misquote, I translate from French). I would like to highlight first some features of Emile s style, of his tone of voice, because it may be a good way to get to the substance of his intentions. Many if not most of the great modern catholic writers who addressed these issues could be labelled as of the imprecatory type. To my opinion, the greatest among them is a Briton, Gilbert K. Chesterton, but we French put up a good show with Bernanos, or the late Philippe Muray. Emile shares a lot with this tradition: his wit, his ironic perception, an instinctual diffidence and distance towards contemporary mores and values, sometime ferocious but without hatred. Yet he is by no means of the imprecatory type. All the opposite: his voice is dispassionate and confident. One could think: this was his character, liberal and lively, optimistic. Of course he was. Almost impossible to imagine him in anger. Yet, there is a paradox, a paradox I am sure he cultivated consciously, in his recasting a painful story, full of dissent and bitterness, inside the Church and between the Church and the world, in a rather peaceful narrative. He speaks in an even if not friendly way of nearly all the actors of this story, including the French revolutionaries. In the end, his refusal of the unreligious understanding of human freedom, of the idea that autonomy (that is the liberal idea of freedom) is self contained, is as firm and stubborn as that of the imprecators, but he does not pump up the volume. He seems to convert almost naturally the catholic feeling of alienation toward modernity into a positive leverage in the liberal world.

3 This is by no means the confidence of a dogmatic shepherd knowing with certainty where to lead his flock. His confidence lies rather in the idea than his doubts and quests as a Catholic will be audible and significant for outsiders. There is no doubt in his mind that readers can be interested and affected by the issue, whatever their faith or absence of faith. Therefore the surprising subtitle of the book, A history of political thought. One could find here a great conceit. Using such a phrase is part of Emile s sense of humour, but he means it for real. He strongly insists that liberalism cannot escape not only the religious, but also the churchly dimension of the human condition, if I may say so. One does not have to agree with this conception of the centrality of the Church for modern politics to acknowledge a great achievement in it: Emile s ability to speak at the same time for the inside and for the outside, to involve its reader in matters and conflict belonging to the history of the Catholic Church. This not of course by pretending that everybody is (or should be) catholic but, on the contrary, by modestly inviting the non members, that is the majority, to pay attention to what is happening in the club. One could sum up the book by saying that it favours a kind of liberal Ultramontanism, which makes sense of Catholicism, again as a social fact and not as a personal faith, in the modern conditions of the separation of Church and State and of religious freedom. The city of man is made of the various nations; the city of God has to be distinct, even distant, and therefore organised in its proper form and space. The Church has lost and cannot claim for any inner authority within modern nations, but it has gained an outer authority, maybe higher and more authentic, thanks to and not despite religious freedom and separation of churches and State. But it would be unfair to Emile s spirit to put it like this: first because his book is mostly a narrative, as I said, and second, because nothing is asserted in this book without qualification. Emile is in fact dealing with two ideas he does not pretend

4 to put together easily to say the least: a) a Tocquevillian idea of the need for some unifying pouvoir spirituel in a democratic, that is individualistic, society (liberal freedom needs education, atomism must be reunited somehow); b) an Augustinian sense of the distinction between the two cities. What is then the city of God, what is the Church, if not (not anymore) a political body? Emile is confident in the possibility of a felicitous harmony between the Church as an institution and liberal society but, at the same time, he is worried about its appropriate form, which can be neither the iron of a kind of state apparatus, nor the elusive ether of inner religion. When he tells the story of balance and conflicts in history between Gallicanism and Ultramontanism under their various versions, he stresses that every position has its logic and its point, and each of them its flaws and even dangers. He is neither a Pope centered Catholic fighting against the idea of national autonomy of Churches, nor the opposite. Because neither the first view nor the second are solutions as such, rather branches of a quest for a solution. This seems rather paradoxical, given the fierceness of their opposition in history, and still nowadays. Here is Emile s basic contention: c est peut-être la dépendance à l égard du divin qui, en tempérant la tyrannie de la majorité, rend possible la liberté politique. La vie religieuse peut aller de pair avec une sagesse que la vie démocratique ne produit pas d elle-même : une sagesse qui passe par la conscience des limites de l autonomie humaine.» Maybe only the dependence on the divine can allow for political freedom, by moderating the tyranny of the majority. Religious life can go along with some kind of wisdom that democratic life cannot produce by itself: a wisdom aware of the limits of human autonomy.

5 But this belief is in no way a political guideline for the Church, rather a puzzle, an unanswered question: what could be nowadays an institution faithful to this view of the dependence on the divine? The most significant figure of the book is perhaps Lamennais, who precisely did not promoted always the same conception of Catholicism during his life and bridged various and opposed trends among Catholics, from the priority of the allegiance to the Pope, to the foundation of catholic socialism. Lamennais searched restlessly a third path beyond clerical hierarchy and beyond liberal individualism, and was influential by this search more than by his findings. I shall conclude by suggesting that Emile s book is important in that it could be considered as the outline of a new way of dealing with the issues of religion and democracy, a way which understands and responds to the end of the conflicting period of secularisation. A way relaxed and yet anxious and demanding, like our conversation. Otherwise put, I believe that his style in reconstructing the history of Catholic politics is not only personal and provocative, but very relevant for the present moment of democratic experience. No doubt he would have extended his insight to further inquiries: on Christians in politics, on civil religion, or on what is called inter religious dialogue. Who knows? We shall have to continue the conversation by ourselves. Philippe de Lara

The challenge for evangelical hermeneutics is the struggle to make the old, old

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation. Downer s Grove: IVP Academic, 2006. 341 pp. $29.00. The challenge for evangelical hermeneutics