National Post (National Edition)
The danger of intolerant liberalism
IT HAS BECOME A THREAT TO BOTH RELIGION AND CULTURE IN CANADA
CONSEQUENCE WAS ... A NUCLEAR-ARMED SUBCONTINENT. — COLBY COSH
One of America’s leading intellectuals of faith and public life, Richard John Neuhaus, was born in the Ottawa Valley; his pastor father was an American who accepted a post at the Lutheran parish in Pembroke, Ont. Richard spent his childhood in Pembroke before leaving for education in the United States; he would eventually become a Lutheran pastor himself, stationed in Brooklyn.
He would be a leader in the 1960s civil rights movement and in anti-Vietnam War protests. But he would split with the political left and become a leading conservative voice. In 1990, he would become Catholic and be ordained a priest in 1991. Founder of the influential journal First Things, his influence on thinking about faith and public life was immense, and he influenced a vast number of individuals, including myself, as both a friend and mentor.
A towering figure, consulted by popes and presidents, he was also the priest who took his turn offering Mass at Immaculate Conception, the parish on Manhattan’s lower east side where most of the parishioners would have no idea that he was a writer and orator of global influence. In 2009, when he died his funeral was held there, among the people he served and many others who came from far and wide.
We gathered there again this week for a memorial Mass on the 10th anniversary of his death, and swapped stories and memories. And a common topic was what Fr. Neuhaus would have thought about the ten- sions now roiling our common life.
It is worth noting that the chief biographical work of Fr. Neuhaus was written by a Canadian, the principal of the University of St. Michael’s College, Randy Boyagoda. Published in 2015, the author himself is engaged today in the great question that animated Fr. Neuhaus’s long career: what contribu- tion does a liberal democratic society need from the worldoffaith?
Fr. Neuhaus knew well that the liberal order can be threatened by blood-andsoil nationalism, and that religious identity can be put to illiberal ends. The history of the 20th century made us alert to those dangers. It also made us alert to the lethal dangers of atheistic totalitarianism, in both its communistand fascist forms.
But Fr. Neuhaus also warned of an “illiberal secularism,” which speaks in the name of liberalism, but seeks to exclude any transcendent claims — including religious ones — from our common life together. It views traditional religious faith with suspicion, even as a threat.
Fr. Neuhaus spent his summers back in Canada, on the Ottawa River across from Pembroke, and so kept tabs of matters Canadian. He died before Justin Trudeau was elected, but would not have been surprised that in the name of liberal values, the prime minister would be sharply intolerant of those who would dissent from the consensus of secular liberalism.
In rereading Neuhaus this week, I was reminded of how he — as a young Lutheran seminarian — characterized his thought. He vowed then that he would be “in descending order of importance, religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically liberal, and economically pragmatic.”
Despite his move from the political left to the political right, from Lutheran to Catholic, he would maintain that he always remained faithful to his “quadrilateral.” Fr. Neuhaus held something more, namely that a liberal political order actually requires religiously grounded claims and cultural resources that politics itself cannot provide. Religious orthodoxy and cultural conservatism were thus allies of the liberal political order.
Today that view is often rejected and political liberalism has become the framework into which religion and culture are understood. Indeed, both religious orthodoxy and cultural conservatism are undermined by political goals and political means. The Canada Summer Jobs program is not the most important of those measures, but the most telling.
Fr. Neuhaus, against those who thought him too optimistic, maintained that orthodox faith and cultural conservatism could reanimate a liberalism that had grown tired. The passage of years has raised the possibility that a cranky and intolerant liberalism has become instead a threat to both religion and culture, as is the case in Canada. Thereaction to that, in increasing parts of the world, is to reject the liberal political order precisely to defend religion and culture. Neither outcome would have brought Fr. Neuhaus joy.
But joyful he remained, because it was not in his quadrilateral that he put his hope; that belonged to his faith in God, a more sturdy and reliable thing, he was quick to remind us, than any world ly alternative.