(no subject)
Deprived of his insider position, George Weigel slowly loses his mind
Let me start this little rant by admitting that I haven't read Caritas in Veritate, I will read it but it's continuing absence in book form and my recent inability to sit down and read anything might mean that I don't read it for some time. Still, having read both Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus, I can say that Weigel's claims about both are rather questionable. Both of these earlier encyclicals were just as critical of capitalism as this new one presumably is, a fact that Weigel wants to forget in order to preserve his idea of Catholic social teaching as being a largely conservative endeavor that went off the rails with Populorum Progressio and was restored by the heroism of Pope John Paul II. All of the social encyclicals going back to Leo XIII have displayed equal levels of concern about both communism/socialism and capitalism, but of course the conservative movement would like to forget about the latter and focus on the former just as Liberation Theology fans would like to forget about the former and focus on the latter.
The irony here is that the National Review crowd is making the same mistake that often gets liberals pegged as "Cafeteria Catholics" (and, in fact, that same conservative crowd created this very mistake with William F. Buckley, Jr.'s condemnation of Catholic social justice well before the liberal "we don't have to follow the Church's view on birth control to be Catholic" concept ever took off). People like Buckley and Weigel desperately want the Church to be a fellow traveler with them in their glorious battle against liberals, and when the Church shows its sympathies to "socialist" economic ideas they react either with a defiant refusal to accept or else with denial. Buckley reacted with the former, putting himself above the Pope as the arbiter of Catholic belief, and Weigel is reacting with the latter. Where Buckley considered himself almost to be more Catholic than the Pope, Weigel is putting himself forward as the Pope's authoritative voice to the American political system. Weigel would like the people of America to ignore the statements and writings by the Pope that contradict conservative ideology, listening instead to what Weigel claims is really going on in Vatican City. Weigel may have had this insight in the papacy of John Paul II, although his perplexing statements in this article about the supposed fight between the Pope and The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace would seem to indicate that he often imagined things in the Vatican the way he wanted them rather than how they actually were. He clearly does not have such a position in the current papacy, and so any opinions that he has about the current Pope are just opinions without any basis in actual knowledge. He may have known Pope Benedict back when he was a Cardinal, but that does not mean that he has any idea of what he is thinking now or what his relationship may be with the less conservative-friendly parts of the Curia.
A good article to read to gain a different perspective on the issue is this one on the "Evangelical Catholicism" blog. The author here makes some very good points about Weigel's self-serving interpretation of Catholic thought and the degradation of his rhetorical style now that his position as the conservative American "ambassador" to the Vatican is in question. Of particular interest is the fact that Weigel's portrayal of The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as a Communist organization that tried to unduly influence the Pope was nowhere to be found in his comprehensive biography of Pope John Paul II. I've seen the book Witness to Hope and it is quite large, in fact I can't imagine that War and Peace could be any larger while remaining portable, and there is a section of the book that specifically discusses the creation of Centesimus Annus and the Pope's interaction with the Pontifical Council on its creation. Nowhere in that book does Weigel mention the tension between Pope and Council on the tone of the encyclical, which would be a glaring omission to such an authoritative biography. A much more likely interpretation would be that Weigel, in his career-long attempt to reconcile ultra-conservatism to Catholicism, sought to create a narrative of past events to explain how the Cardinal Weigel had once lauded had become a Pope whose writings challenged the notions upon which American conservatism had been founded. It couldn't be that the much beloved Cardinal Ratzinger had betrayed the conservatives and advanced a view of social justice that was anathema to their beliefs, so of course it must have been the evil Curial officials (essentially the Vatican version of "Beltway insiders") and their sinister machinations. Just as with Weigel's previous statements about the true "American conservative" heart of Catholicsm, and also with liberal ideas about orthodoxy on social justice and optional orthodoxy on moral issues, the idea that you can chop up Catholic theology to fit into one or the other American political camps is ludicrous and simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Let me start this little rant by admitting that I haven't read Caritas in Veritate, I will read it but it's continuing absence in book form and my recent inability to sit down and read anything might mean that I don't read it for some time. Still, having read both Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus, I can say that Weigel's claims about both are rather questionable. Both of these earlier encyclicals were just as critical of capitalism as this new one presumably is, a fact that Weigel wants to forget in order to preserve his idea of Catholic social teaching as being a largely conservative endeavor that went off the rails with Populorum Progressio and was restored by the heroism of Pope John Paul II. All of the social encyclicals going back to Leo XIII have displayed equal levels of concern about both communism/socialism and capitalism, but of course the conservative movement would like to forget about the latter and focus on the former just as Liberation Theology fans would like to forget about the former and focus on the latter.
The irony here is that the National Review crowd is making the same mistake that often gets liberals pegged as "Cafeteria Catholics" (and, in fact, that same conservative crowd created this very mistake with William F. Buckley, Jr.'s condemnation of Catholic social justice well before the liberal "we don't have to follow the Church's view on birth control to be Catholic" concept ever took off). People like Buckley and Weigel desperately want the Church to be a fellow traveler with them in their glorious battle against liberals, and when the Church shows its sympathies to "socialist" economic ideas they react either with a defiant refusal to accept or else with denial. Buckley reacted with the former, putting himself above the Pope as the arbiter of Catholic belief, and Weigel is reacting with the latter. Where Buckley considered himself almost to be more Catholic than the Pope, Weigel is putting himself forward as the Pope's authoritative voice to the American political system. Weigel would like the people of America to ignore the statements and writings by the Pope that contradict conservative ideology, listening instead to what Weigel claims is really going on in Vatican City. Weigel may have had this insight in the papacy of John Paul II, although his perplexing statements in this article about the supposed fight between the Pope and The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace would seem to indicate that he often imagined things in the Vatican the way he wanted them rather than how they actually were. He clearly does not have such a position in the current papacy, and so any opinions that he has about the current Pope are just opinions without any basis in actual knowledge. He may have known Pope Benedict back when he was a Cardinal, but that does not mean that he has any idea of what he is thinking now or what his relationship may be with the less conservative-friendly parts of the Curia.
A good article to read to gain a different perspective on the issue is this one on the "Evangelical Catholicism" blog. The author here makes some very good points about Weigel's self-serving interpretation of Catholic thought and the degradation of his rhetorical style now that his position as the conservative American "ambassador" to the Vatican is in question. Of particular interest is the fact that Weigel's portrayal of The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as a Communist organization that tried to unduly influence the Pope was nowhere to be found in his comprehensive biography of Pope John Paul II. I've seen the book Witness to Hope and it is quite large, in fact I can't imagine that War and Peace could be any larger while remaining portable, and there is a section of the book that specifically discusses the creation of Centesimus Annus and the Pope's interaction with the Pontifical Council on its creation. Nowhere in that book does Weigel mention the tension between Pope and Council on the tone of the encyclical, which would be a glaring omission to such an authoritative biography. A much more likely interpretation would be that Weigel, in his career-long attempt to reconcile ultra-conservatism to Catholicism, sought to create a narrative of past events to explain how the Cardinal Weigel had once lauded had become a Pope whose writings challenged the notions upon which American conservatism had been founded. It couldn't be that the much beloved Cardinal Ratzinger had betrayed the conservatives and advanced a view of social justice that was anathema to their beliefs, so of course it must have been the evil Curial officials (essentially the Vatican version of "Beltway insiders") and their sinister machinations. Just as with Weigel's previous statements about the true "American conservative" heart of Catholicsm, and also with liberal ideas about orthodoxy on social justice and optional orthodoxy on moral issues, the idea that you can chop up Catholic theology to fit into one or the other American political camps is ludicrous and simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.