A Note on the Depoliticization of Catholicism
by modestinus
In The Concept of the Politica, Carl Schmitt (in)famously identified “the political” with the “friend/enemy distinction.” The enemy, according to Schmitt, is the one who calls into question a person’s (or, really, a society’s) existential state. It presupposes the possibility of “actual killing” and though the political can vary in intensity, it remains total. That is to say, it is not its own “sphere” in the way the moral, economic, and aesthetic can be distinguished as “spheres” of life. Everything is political, or at least potentially so.
Few things nauseated Schmitt more than the modern obscuring of the political. (Remember, according to Schmitt the political is total; the “best” anybody can do is obscure it; they can never hope to eliminate it.) In his “Notes on the Concept of the Political,” a young Leo Strauss claimed that Schmit’s polemic on behalf of the political was moral. Schmitt, according to Strauss, detested the reduction of life to “entertainment.” Obscuring the political was part and parcel of the quintessentially liberal promotion of the entertaining, rather than the serious, life. Many decades later, Heinrich Meier would run with Strauss’ observation, arguing that not only was the friend/enemy distinction at the core of Schmitt’s thought, but that this distinction — and “the political” itself — was ultimately theological. Schmitt was, in Meier’s eyes, a political theologian who wanted to keep alive the most fundamental of all oppositions, namely between good and evil, God and Satan. Schmitt saw the Satanic in the radical socio-political movements of his day and some have argued that his (temporary) loyalty to National Socialism was motivated in large part by what he saw as the need to “check” the apocalyptic expansion of Soviet Communism across the globe. (Another plausible argument is that Schmitt’s Nazisim was the pathetic byproduct of base opportunism, but I’ll let that one go for the time being.) As most know by now, Schmitt spent his four decades on earth after World War II attempting to put back together his shattered reputation while perhaps fabricating an elaborate series of justifications for his decision. Despite his status as an estranged Catholic, he had no sympathy for the Second Vatican Council. Considering the trajectory of Schmitt’s thought during the 1920s and 30s, it’s not hard to see why.
While Schmitt’s anti-Vatican II sentiments were limited to what he confided in friends, a “Schmittian” reading of the Council reveals a core problem: the obscuring of the political. One way to read Vatican II is the (failed?) attempt of the Church to obscure the friend/enemy distinction by opening its doors to the world, including those sects, movements, and false religions which the Catholic Church had, up until the 1960s, condemned with varying degrees of intensity. Even the fundamental distinction between the Church — the Body of Christ — and the world was obscured as Vatican II opened the doors to an unholy union between Catholicism and secularization. (The concrete and dismal outcomes of this modernist marriage of convenience are laid out in Kenneth Woodward’s recent piece from the February 2013 issue of First Things, “Revolution in Rome” (h/t Professor William Tighe).) But not even the Catholic Church can obscure reality forever. Instead of providing new lifeblood to the Church, secularism has revealed itself as an existential threat: Seminaries remain empty; cloisters are now closed; religious orders continue to collapse; and institutions of Catholic learning — primary, secondary, and higher — are in crisis. The Church now preaches a doctrine of “universal humanity” — the liberal-secularist creed. In choosing to neutralize herself, the Church is now the ready-made victim of predatory ideologies. Its denial of the political has become its surrender to the devil. Or, to paraphrase Pope Paul VI, the smoke of Satan has indeed entered the Church; now it is choking the life right out of her.
The problem with this understanding of politics (let alone theology) is well-illustrated by Schmitt’s own path— its logical conclusion is the Nazi modus operandi of conducting politics through inventing, then slaughtering, imaginary enemies. It’s the theology of Cain.
If theology = politics = a totalized friend/enemy distinction rooted in the possibility of kill-or-be-killed, then what the hell is the point of the Gospel?
I think that’s a vulgarization of what Schmitt claims in COP (and other works). Setting aside the fact there is a “moral-polemical thrust” to Schmitt’s overall project, the heat of the COP is to uncover the meaning of the political. Schmit is making a positive, not a normative, claim with the friend/enemy distinction. There is no need to create an imaginary enemy; for Schmitt, enemies always exist and it is the obscuring of this reality which Schmitt attacks.
Schmitt only speaks of the “possibility” of killing; it doesn’t have to be actualized. The existential threat doesn’t have to give rise to a concrete battle. That is to say, his claims are not agonal. I’m also not sure Schmitt is saying theology = politics, but theological disputes can certainly be more-or-less political (cf. Europe’s religious wars; Islamic invasions; etc.). There is a definite “humanism” (I use that term loosely) concern on Schmitt’s part that the (false) motivation of liberal states to eliminate the political leads to total war, the “war to end all wars” where “the enemy” becomes a pariah that has to be eliminated in the name of humanitarianism (or, to use more contemporary examples, the triumph of liberal-humanitarian democracy). Schmitt despaired over the breakdown of the jus publicum europaeum and the legalization of warfare in the modern state system.
So no, I don’t think Schmitt was out to argue for the creation of new enemies to fuel any nationalist agenda. For Schmitt, the enemy is always present, and the enemy will always post an existential threat. Biographically-historically speaking, Schmitt surely saw Communist Russia as the enemy of Western Europe. The argument that he saw the Jews (for instance) that way is, in my opinion, very, very thin.
Claims that are notionally positive in practice become normative. Especially when they are false.
If Schmitt did not exactly argue that theology is politics, he did more or less claim that politics are theology. The important point, in any case, is that using Schmitt’s understanding of politics as a tool for analyzing the life of the Church entails a negation of the Gospel.
Eh, but is that Schmitt’s fault? There’s little-to-no evidence that Schmitt’s thought prior to 1933 (which includes three different versions of COP) in any way, shape, or form informed Nazi ideology. By 1936, Schmitt was effectively out of the party and fretting that he was going to get two in the back of the head from the Gestapo. That doesn’t get him off the hook for a morally idiotic decision, but I think there is a far stronger case to be made that his choice for the Nazis was base opportunism much more than someone like, say, Heidegger.
I guess I don’t agree that Schmitt equated politics and theology, even if he was — following Meier’s reading — a political theologian. I’m not sure why you think the friend/enemy distinction is false. Moreover, I don’t follow the claim that Schmitt’s insight negates the Gospel or that it is inapplicable to the Church. The core friend/enemy distinction for Schmitt appears to be between God and Satan. The Church or, more specifically, the post-Conciliar Church may attempt to obscure this fact now, but Schmitt’s logic points to the fact it cannot be eradicated. The premises of Protestantism are existentially opposed to the truth of Catholicism. No amount of ecumenical dialogue will ever obviate that fact.
Whether or not a distinction between friends and enemies exists in practice, when you make it the central operating principle of how groups of people interact with each other, you’ve introduced a logic of extermination and kill-or-be-killed into how you see the world. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy or even a kind of political original sin.
To make the opposition between God and the devil into the primary political opposition is just a quasi-mythological way of absolutizing the us/them distinction and justifying extermination. This is a Manichee and not Christian worldview, and leads inevitably to the operating principles of the Nazis.
I cannot understand the Gospels as doing anything other than demanding a renunciation of the logic of force and domination. This renunciation has to be the starting point for how we approach irreconcilable differences with others.
I disagree that there is a logic of force and domination in COP (or most of Schmitt’s work for that matter). The friend/enemy distinction is not a justification for war or killing; it only reveals the possibility due to the intensity of the existential opposition. Schmit’s theory does not advocate friends killing enemies; it merely uses that possibility to accentuate the degree of radicalness in the distinction. I’ll grant that Schmitt’s language borders on hyperbolic and that there are points where he is irresponsible in his quest to be provacative, but I think too much of your reading of Schmitt is filtered through those who want to dismiss him as an amoral/immoral bastard (which is far easier to do than engage the theoretical substance of his claims). Moreover, Schmitt — unlike his contemporary Ernst Junger — does not glorify war. Victory and the existential meaning of conflict does not appeal to Schmitt, nor does it inform his theory. Yes, the “moral component” of Schmitt’s thinking points to the necessity of people not to evade struggle (i.e., take existence seriously), but ultimately that comes down to answering the question over the right life. But that leads to Schmitt’s decisionism which, I would argue, is probably the most amoral/immoral aspect of his thought.
I have to agree with Samn here. That may be a first.
How provocative to post this on the 94th anniversary of the martyrdom of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg!
I know it’s impossible to truly know, but what if Vatican II hadn’t happened until today, what would the Catholic Church look like?
Who knows? I, for one, don’t think it would be the quasi-paradise that many traditionalists believe it would be. With that said, it’s difficult not to think that its position would be stronger and its presence more deeply felt had the Council not occurred. But I say this only on the grounds that it is difficult to imagine the problems which afflicted it in the post-Conciliar period taking root had the Church stayed roughly on the course that was maintained during Pope Pius XII’s reign. On the other hand, there was already an “opening to the world” underway in the post-War period and I am not sure Europe would look fundamentally different than it does today. Too many things were set in motion after World War II that was simply beyond the Church’s power to hold back. (And I will grant that not everything which has transpired in Europe over the past 60+ years has been an unqualified evil.) I think there is still a strong argument to be made that the Catholic Church didn’t know how to handle the post-war period, and given what was happening within the Church leading into the 1960s, some degree of “liberalization” in the Church’s theology was bound to take root. In other words, neo-Scholasticim would not have reigned supreme even had the Council never occurred.
There are other interesting (problematic?) things to consider. While I think the matter is open to some debate, traditionalists tend to turn a blind eye toward the realities facing Catholics in Eastern Europe after the war. One would think that pragmatism would have guided the Vatican away from its high-octane opposition to communist regimes, if only because doing so — as we saw after the Council — furnished some (contestable) benefits for Eastern European Catholics. It’s also hard to imagine that what transpired in Poland would have occurred without the elevation of John Paul II (probably an impossibility had the Council not happened). But, then again, who knows? The post-Conciliar way was not the only way the Church had to go and one can imagine all day long how things might have worked out for the better.
Liturgically speaking, I am skeptical that the Tridentine Mass — in its 1962 iteration — would have survived intact. Liturgical reform had already started during the 1950s and a “watering down” of the Tridentine Mass was already approved well before the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Mass. Vernacular liturgies were already in the air, as were other practices traditionalists frown upon (e.g., Priests no longer facing ad orientem). (For what it’s worth, the SSPX served the 1960s modified Tridentine Mass for a number of years before reverting to the 1962 exclusively.) The NO Mass as we know it wouldn’t have arisen in all likelihood, but I suspect the form of Mass served today — had the Council not occurred — would not look like the “Extraordinary Form” that is, slowly but surely, expanding in the Catholic world. Is that a bad thing? I’m not sure. There would probably always be some faction of Catholics who would adhere to older forms, but their polemic would have lost a lot of purchase had a non-Conciliar Mass reform occurred which didn’t radically break with the Mass promulgated by St. Pius V. (Also, for what it’s worth, I have no opposition to vernacular liturgies in principle; it’s just that the Catholic Church has done a terrible job with their official translations over the decades.)
As for ecumenism, it would have happened regardless. Maybe it would have taken a different form, but the Church was moving in that direction before the Council. I do wonder if relations with the Orthodox would have been better off had the Council never occurred, though that’s hard to say, too. If only the Church had invested its energies in its Eastern facet…
That’s a tough question requiring a complex answer, and it’s far above my pay grade. But I was thinking about one thing this a.m. — one very positive thing which came out of VC II — and that’s the view that non-Catholics can be saved. Yes, I know we always believed this (invincible ignorance and all that), but the Decree on Ecumenism really spelled it out so well, especially by distinguishing between the original heresiarchs (culpable) and modern Protestants who have grown up in their communions, not knowing anything else and oblivious to the truth of Catholic claims. The latter are far less culpable, if they are culpable at all.
Unfortunately post-VC II ecumenism took these important insights too far (“Everyone is saved! Wheee!”) — but I for one would not want to go back to the days when we could not enjoy fellowship with our non-Catholic Christian brethren.
Regarding your comment about “everyone is saved! Wheee!”.
I’ve just finished reading a quite dry book of historical theology which has great relevance to this; Terms for Eternity; Aionios and Aidios in Classical and Christian Texts, by Ilaria Ramelli and David Konstan. Ramelli is an Assistant Professor at the University of Milan and has a number of honors bestowed on her.
The book makes two arguments; the first is that the term desrcibing the type of punishment in the world to come, ( usually fire), is never described in the New Testament as retributive, that is, punishment that benefits the punisher. (timoria), but always described as purification, ( kolasis). The second point is that the Greeks had two terms for what we call eternity; aidios always and only referred to God or the attributes/powers of God and ainios which meaning can range from long duration to the length of a period of time, aion, but never absolute eternity.
These subtle distinctions never made into Latin. Eternity was the translation for both terms and punishment was, well, punishment.
It seems to me that the distinctions have great merit.
A phenomenon I’ve encountered is that the lapsed Catholics of my age group all view the Church as essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages or, for others, since Constantine. For whatever reason, Vatican II never enters their consideration. One of my friends, a twenty-something creative writing grad student, once told me he considers the Church the greatest force of evil in human history. Another, a law student, is paranoid about the Church’s influence on politics. Whether we pray in Latin or in the vernacular, they think we are plotting the execution of heretics and the burning of books. If one says that now we are now in favor of tolerance and democracy, they will point out that we used to not be, and so our religion must be false.
Of course this experience is only my own- it’s hard to know how widespread it is.
Interesting. More on this on the main page.
I’m interested in Samn!’s claim that making the friend/enemy distinction fundamental makes nonsense of the gospel. Wouldn’t the command to love your neighbor obscure the political by establishing a relationship that transcends the friend/enemy distinction? And this obscuring seems intentional to some extent. After all, God makes foolishness of our wisdom. And this friend/enemy distinction (or should we call it the Israelite/Samaritan distinction?) seems like a perfect example.
But maybe I’m just misunderstanding him.
I think Sam’s comments — like many comments on Schmitt — collapses the concept of the political and the concept of politics. The political, for Schmitt, is bound up with existential meaning.
The friend/enemy distinction isn’t transcended by the Gospel; it is overcome insofar as the enemy becomes friend through a mutual profession of the same faith. And, again, the friend/enemy distinction is not static in Schmitt; it varies in intensity and can rise to the level of an existential threat. To use a historical example, the Gospel advocates the conversion of the Muslim; but that fact doesn’t obviate the brutal truth that the Muslim represents an existential threat to the Church.
Thanks for pointing out the emphasis on existential meaning. That’s helpful, I think, though I do have some thoughts. And when speaking of a relationship that transcends the friend/enemy distinction, I was referring to a relationship to God whereby we are joined in a new way to those who might before have been either natural friends or natural enemies.
Doesn’t faith ground our existential hope in the promise and fulfillment of God? It seems like no “enemy” could possibly represent an existential threat to the Church for we know that resurrection follows death, that life wins out in the end, that nothing can threaten our true existence because our ground lies in heaven, not earth. It seems like he’s neutering Christian eschatology.
Or maybe you were making the claim that the ideologies of the Muslim and Christianity are contradictory (thus enemy) and thus the Muslim idea presents an existential threat to the Church.
Right; the logic of Christianity is not necessarily the logic of, say, economics. That is to say, just because there is an enemy doesn’t mean the enemy is to be annhilated. The recognition is the recognition of difference, of the one that calls oneself or, rather, one’s choice (say, for the Church) into question. I don’t believe Schmitt was ever saying more than that. That is to say, he wasn’t advocating that the enemy ought to be identified and eliminated. He was, however, making a transcendent truth claim that there will always be an enemy, regardless of whether or not we like it.
On my Muslim/Christian example, it is not just that they are “contradictory”; it’s that the Muslim calls the premises of Christianity into question. Islam is the existential threat; the intensity of the different gives rise to the real possibility of physical killing. Thus, it would be, in Schmitt’s view, an extremely intense example of the political. Another example — which Schmitt uses in his book — is the rhetoric of Cromwell against Papist Spain. Cromwell framed the struggle against the Catholics in apocalyptic terms; it was the most intense difference available, as intense as the distinction between belief and unbelief.