When ‘conservatism’ was properly understood, it did not stand athwart history yelling ‘stop’;1 but, rather, dedicated itself to a continual sifting of historical tides for linkages to that which has proven sound and fit in the past. Catholicism, where it has served best, is conservative in this sense. The Vatican has historically involved itself with secular authorities, contemporary movements, and scientific speculations in order to discover what is eternal and transcendent among history’s unceasing developments, thereby to enlighten what is merely current regarding its origins and likely outcomes.
Catholicism engaged the governing center-right politics of the United States with We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition, published by the Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray in 1960. This book arrived with the Imprimi Potest of his Provincial, the Nihil Obstat of the Censor Librorum, and the Imprimatur of his Bishop.
George Weigel (William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and biographer of John Paul II) traces America’s self-identification as a propositional nation to this book. In a recent article Mr. Weigel characterized Fr. Murray’s effort as one of the best books ever written on what makes America America.2 He states the gravamen of Fr. Murray’s text to be that . . .
Catholics [are] the new torchbearers of the constituting truths of the American proposition 3and proclaims Fr. Murray’s initiative to be well on the way to realization.
Such connections between an infallible body and ongoing historical development are of course risky, and they have occasionally proven tragic in both the secular and sacred realms, as in the often-cited instance of Galileo’s trial. Though Galileo’s argument for earth’s movement relied on his erroneous interpretation of the tides, and the Inquisition’s finding upon that particular is now considered correct, this ecclesiastical dust-up is commonly regarded as marking the origin of specifically Western science, wherein Truth is required to explain the evidence. This philosophical challenge continues to aggravate even the most materialistic seekers after the foreclosed fact, e.g.:
a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won’t fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling 4And, as we have seen, this disposition is most evident in the material science declaimed by the atheists and Talmudists of the Austrian School. In another of its regrettable rushes to assert competence in a secular realm, our Church formally recognizes the Austrians’ economic Truth through its participation with the Jesuit-influenced Acton Institute, founded and currently headed by the Reverend Robert A. Sirico.
As is evident from the Rev. Sirico’s recent Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, the problem with ideas received by religious people is that everything they hear is presumably a secret revealed to them personally by God, as when Fr. Sirico discovers Christianity’s materialistic counterpart:
there is a virtuous circle at work here. Christianity, a global religion, played a role in paving the way for economic globalization, and economic globalization then played a role in bringing more people in contact with other cultures and, with it, Christianity, which in turn brings more people into the fold of Christianity.5
Fr. Sirico was presumably no less certain of his ground in the 1970’s when he misspent his education consorting with Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and the New Left; and as he was in celebrating gay marriages when such became fashionable; and as he is in his current project of disseminating the Real Truth about human choice and action as he finds them revealed in the writings of Mises and Hayek.
Catholicism’s attractions to the Austrian School have two obvious sources. The first would be a shared fascination with the supernatural apparitions that manifest themselves to our mortal astonishment, e.g.: markets. The second would be the individual — the perfection of whose soul results in a capacity for self-governance, thereby rendering statecraft both easy and largely superfluous. Issues arising from imperfect soulcraft, e.g. forming habitable communities with the actual resources of a given time and place, apparently do not arise within the Libertarian/Catholic nexus.
It remains to observe a Church that upheld the pagan Ptolemy’s astronomy against all comers for most of two millennia now certifies the miracle of the market at the center of a Jewish Atheist’s speculations on materialism. Here again it will be noted that Mises’ most ardent disciple, Mr. Lew Rockwell, confesses his mentor’s preference for a mundane, scientific economics:
Ludwig von Mises didn’t like references to the "miracle" of the marketplace or the "magic" of production or other terms that suggest that economic systems depend on some force that is beyond human comprehension. In his view, we are better off coming to a rational understanding of why markets are responsible for astounding levels of productivity that can support exponential increases in population and ever higher living standards.6only to correct him with . . .
Mises forgive me: this is a miracle.7Mr. Rockwell represents himself as a practicing Roman Catholic in good standing with his faith.
And once again the issues joined are without spiritual content, require a competence the Vatican has no reason to profess, and are asserted in terms that are entirely falsifiable via objective counterexamples:
For neoclassical economic theory clearly rests on absurdly unrealistic assumptions, such as perfect knowledge, the continuing existence of a general equilibrium with no profits, no losses, and no uncertainty, and human action being encompassed by the use of calculus that assumes infinitesimally tiny changes in our perceptions and choices.
In short, this formidable apparatus of neoclassical mathematical economic theory and econometric models, all rests, from the Misesian point of view, upon the treacherous quicksand of false and even absurd assumptions.8So far as we can tell, our models operate on conflicted, imperfect knowledge; they operate as well in or out of equilibrium; they sustain both profits and losses; there is no certainty as to what an emulation will do until it has done it; and significant, controlled departures in perceptions and choices are made manifest in the models’ operations. The rest is, as it once was in defense of Ptolemy, nothing more than rhetoric, slander, and argument from an irrelevant moral authority.