Catholic Republic, page 7
The Whigs, if you don’t know, were the 17th century English political party which first advocated: Parliamentary sovereignty; the overthrowing of kings; the ousting of crypto-Catholicism from English politics; finally, the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The English narrative in the century after the Reformation (the 17th) curves strongly toward “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”59 In England, Protestant Whigsd began reading Catholic Natural Law philosophy to depose Protestante Tories and Royalists. And they couldn’t have been a bit happy about it. But indeed, sometimes the enemy of your enemy actually is your friend—temporarily. While the first of these Whigs were more bibliographically honest about the Catholic pedigree of their anti-Royalist ideas, their intellectual grandchildren in America a century later would not follow suit. Such Catholic pedigree was quickly—and perhaps intentionally—forgotten. Let’s have a look.
Leading up to the thought of John Locke (1632-1704), the other originators of Whiggism on the Founding Fathers’ reading lists sound like the title of a clown college, or a law firm: Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), and Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694). Such thinkers, together with Locke, comprised the political names most often quoted from the West side of the Atlantic, during the American founding.
And as you may have guessed, they were all entirely dependent on Catholic thought, which was regarded as contraband, from the Protestant perspective.
Hugo Grotius, the earliest Whig hero, ranks as the 15th most cited author60 by the American founders, according to a study by Donald S. Lutz. Grotius was the leading light among English Whigs until replaced by Locke sometime after the Glorious Revolution.61 Also credited as having written the earliest Protestant apologetic handbook, he was a devoted Reformation thinker and a Dutch jurist who like all the subsequent Whigs felt curiously unashamed to articulate three natural rights that his theology could not account for. You know them as life, liberty, and property.
As Catholic apologist Father Robert Spitzer makes absolutely clear, the now famous short list of natural rights from Jefferson’s Declaration came not from Grotius, but rather from a Jesuit Thomist being read by Grotius: “The principle of natural rights … originated with a 17th century Spanish Jesuit named Francisco Suarez, in a 1610 tractate entitled On the Law.”62 While Thomas Aquinas remains the godfather to these rights, the Thomist Suarez was certainly, as Spitzer points out, their direct father. Grotius counts as neither of these.
While Grotius accepted the three natural rights (i.e., the basis for revolutions) which ought to have been offensive to his Protestantism, his shame kicked in regarding the right of revolution (a right he denied as an honest Protestant). It has been said that “those who seek in Grotius an intellectual ancestor of Locke or Jefferson, as a supporter of the right of revolution … must look in vain.”63 This is because, as commentators have long noted, Grotius believed that “once [the people] had transferred their right of government to the ruler, they forfeited the right to control the ruler however bad their government was.”64
Why pose three natural rights at all, if they are not guaranteed by a fourth—the right to defend them? Nevertheless, Grotius instituted a Whig theme which would be repeated frequently, thereafter: “Protestant Natural Law” and “Protestant natural rights.” At the very riverhead of Whig thought, Grotius borrowed openly from the Catholic thought of Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suarez, even praising their works. But, later Whigs would not be so transparent as to their Catholic sources.
The first English Whig to make the American founders’ reading list, ranking #33 most often cited,65 was Algernon Sidney, a Protestant who unlike Grotius affirmed the right of revolution. It has been said that John Adams could not, without breaking into tears, read from Sidney’s fiery political philosophy. Thomas Jefferson, for his part, cited Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government as “probably the best elementary book of the principles of government, as founded in natural right which has ever been published in any language.”66 But the problem with Jefferson’s claim is that Sidney himself acknowledged—perhaps by protesting too much—his intellectual debt to a Catholic called one “of the greatest of neo-Thomist Jesuits … Robert Bellarmine”:67
I do not find any great matters in the passages taken out of Bellarmine … I do not think myself obliged to examine all his works, to see whether they are rightly cited or not; however there is certainly nothing new in them … but as he seems to have laid the foundation of his discourses in such common notions as were assented to by all mankind, those who follow the same method have no more regard to Jesuitism and popery, tho he was a Jesuit and a cardinal, than they who agree with Faber and other Jesuits in the principles of geometry which no sober man did ever deny.68
Common notions?! Why yes, Algernon, common notions means Catholic Natural Law, if that’s what you mean!
Once more, Sidney was one of the first English Whigs who begrudgingly embraced his Catholic rivals.69
But even if Sidney had not directly referenced Bellarmine’s work as he did, his admission that natural rights rank among the common notions of the world still means that he was engaging in a sort of common sense, Catholic Natural Law reasoning. And, as we saw in the Introduction, such reasoning should not have been available to a consistent Prot-Enlight thinker. Thankfully, for clarity’s (and this book’s) sake, he openly admits it!
Next we come to Samuel von Pufendorf, the tenth most often quoted source70 of the American founders, and a famed German jurist. Pufendorf spent much of his academic life studying and writing on the works of Grotius. So obviously, any Grotian absorptions of Thomas (secret or admitted) would have trickled down to Pufendorf. Around roughly the same time that Sidney found a Catholic source to appropriate in Bellarmine, Pufendorf conveniently found a right of revolution and even a duty to overthrow tyranny missed by Grotius.71
Subsequent to Pufendorf (and Sidney), the Whigs forgot their ideological hesitancy about revolution, even though none of them could provide a non-Catholic basis for it! In this way, Pufendorf was a trailblazing Whig thinker along with Sidney.
Lastly, we come to John Locke, the American founders’ Whig of choice. Locke is easily the best known of the forefathers’ forefathers. He is the fourth most consulted source for the American founders (only the Bible and other non-political sources outrank Locke). Also, the paradoxical nature of Locke’s philosophy is the most emblematic of America’s “Protestant Natural Law” and “Enlightenment Natural Law.” By Locke’s day, Whiggism had already adopted the Catholic Natural Law, absorbed it entirely, and then conveniently forgot about it. “Often classified as a Natural Law theorist but vigorously reject[ing] the Aristotelian metaphysics of the Scholastic [Catholic] tradition,”72 Locke cannot belong under this classification. His thought stands unrivaled as the epitome of Prot-Enlight discordance.
Locke’s thought absorbed the natural rights, but neglected their inconvenient justification: the Catholic Natural Law.
Locke’s entire philosophy was dedicated to proving how mechanistic and meaningless the universe is. The theme is utterly well-developed in the course of his writings. But suddenly, in his political discourses, Locke springs it on his reader that nature is somehow (not via the Catholic Natural Law) the bearer of a meaningful message of God-given rights.
It’s this simple: if a thinker rejects the central ideas of Thomas Aquinas, then he must be against Catholic Natural Law. He must reject the concept of nature as moral, meaningful, and purposeful. Locke was doubly guilty of such a rejection of the Catholic Natural Law, being both a practicing Prot and a practicing Enlight.
The Bible counts as supernatural law; man’s natural intellect and common sense (in relation to nature) equate to the Catholic Natural Law.f In this vein, commentator Jeremy Waldron notes that “Locke was intensely interested in Christian doctrine, and in the Reasonableness he insisted that most men could not hope to understand the detailed requirements of the law of nature without the assistance of the teachings and example of Jesus [i.e., the Bible].”73 As Waldron points out, this would be denial, not acceptance, of the Catholic Natural Law. Waldron continues, “Like the two other very influential [Prot-Enlight] Natural Law philosophers [being read by the founders], Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf, Locke equated natural law [not with intelligible nature but] with the biblical revelation.”74
Natural Law equals Biblical revelation?! Natural Law, by its very definition, means deriving rights and duties from the intelligible world around us, not from Biblical revelation. Locke, however, was forced to proceed with that misdefinition. He rejected true Natural Law, but supported the Whig revolution (in his Two Treatises (1689)) against the (ironically) Catholic tyrant in 1688s Glorious Revolution. In other words, he wanted the right of revolution even as he rejected its source. Similarly, a century later, the American founders, implementing Locke and calling themselves neo-Whigs, wanted a right of revolution to overthrow the tyrant King George III—while also rejecting the source.
It is fair to repeat that Locke’s “views show the shape of the new world that Luther helped create in proposing that each person should access God through prayer and Bible study”75 (not through the three prongs of the Catholic Natural Law76 summarized by this book).
The simple fact is that if one’s creed does not allow one to reason about rights or duties from nature alone—an ability both the Enlightenment and the Reformation dismissed—then he will have to either appropriate from the Catholics if he wants to turn revolutionary, or forebear under tyrannical regimes whenever they pop up. There’s not another way around it.
This is why each of the Whig thinkers or heroes bore such a tortured relation to Thomas Aquinas: like an angry teen, they wildly craved independence (from both the Catholic Church and the Royalists), yet simultaneously they needed the vital “Romish” philosophy and patrimony to overthrow the Royalist yoke.
Whiggism was just crypto-Catholic political theory imported by English Protestants—many of whom were also Enlightenment empiricists—and turned directly against the Catholics in the 17th century. Neo-Whigs continued the crusade against the Catholics (including the “more Romish” Protestants like Episcopalians) in 18th century America. That is, Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Natural Law theorists were the secret heroes of the reluctant English Whigs (who were themselves the heroes of the later American neo-Whigs).
Neither the English Whigs nor the American founders could have waged revolution in 1688 or 1776 without drawing from and appropriating Catholic ideas. And this means that the American founding was unequivocally Catholic. Now, how simple is that?
Breaking the Regime: First Phase in Any Republic
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and fifty-six men signed it.
It should now be clear that only one man—the single Catholic signer of the Declaration—meant those Catholic Natural Law ideas in full, without modification, mitigation, or perversion. That man happened to be Charles Carroll of Carrollton. All the ideas of this chapter come together by stating that American rights turned to pseudo-rights first culturally—because they were misunderstood by Protestants from the outset—and then legally.
Now, those rights are mere relics of the past. But they can be returned to.
In other words, this chapter began by announcing that the four natural rights heralded by the Declaration have been replaced by cheap, functionally-opposite substitutes. As such, government has grown to replace both religion and family. The religious Right (grandkids of the Protestant Reformation) blames big government in American politics, which they identify as the secular Left (grandkids of the Enlightenment).
The religious Right are largely correct: the natural rights of the Declaration were codified a decade later in the Constitution, albeit in an imperfect way. But this chapter has labored to show how both parts (Prot and Enlight) had lent to the formation in the 1776 Declaration (and then in the 1788-1791 Constitution) of an American rights regime that was highly ambivalent about the source of those rights. And that ambivalence is precisely what allowed the secular Left to pervert the American Constitution, replacing those prior Declaration rights with semi-forgeries.
America is the nation wired Catholic, labeled Protestant, and currently functioning secular. This first chapter has argued that if America had been honestly labeled Catholic—following its wiring—then the understanding of rights would have been proper. And in turn, those rights would not have been subject to perversion and to present-day secular functioning.
The final point of this chapter is also the biggest: the necessary Catholic wiring of our republic is not unique to America. All republics are by definition governments of self-rule, requiring the Catholic Natural Law, which itself requires the “baptized Aristotelianism” of Thomas Aquinas. There is no other way to have a republic.
Interpretation: among would-be republics, America is not unique in its dependence on Natural Law Catholicism. All true republics are.
The principles of the Declaration of Independence represent not only the first step toward American independence, but the first phase of life in any republic: breaking with the old regime. You have just finished reading about this first phase as it must happen in any new republic.
Global geography is fixed: no undiscovered land exists where one can go and found his own colony. As such, new republics must be begotten by breaking from old ones. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, borrowing from Natural Law Catholicism, America was founded by “dissolving political bands” with England and by clearly “declaring the causes impelling the separation.”
So it must be for any new republic, not only the American one.
There must be a document breaking the former regime, or at least breaking ties with it. Such a document must, as the Declaration did, list the reasons for the revolution. And as the reader now knows, those reasons must always be the same in any righteous (i.e.,
Catholic Natural Law) revolution: violations of life, liberty, and property. The right of revolution, a fourth right, is triggered by violations of those primary three. If the revolution succeeds, the former regime will be broken.
The ideas of Catholicism were absolutely necessary in the breaking of the English regime in 1776. Such ideas are indispensable to any other Natural Law revolution. After all, anyone who believes in the republican form of government actually borrows from Catholicism.77
Now, after exploring the first republican phase, regime-breaking, we will go on to see how the second phase of all republics—regime-making—requires codifying into a Constitution those Catholic Natural Law rights recently won in revolution.
Notes
a. Here is an excellent summary by founder/framer George Mason: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” George Mason, Virginia Bill of Rights; Article I. June 12, 1776.
b. The sense of happiness intended by the founders of our republic came somewhat nearer than today’s conception to the Greek word eudaimonia. Thomas Aquinas rightly understood eudaimonia to mean a particular kind of happiness: the morally ordered kind of human life, described above.
c. The Protestants rejected the Natural Law from within Christianity; Enlightenment thinkers rejected it most often from outside Christianity. But the thought of both movements converged in the English political party called the Whigs in the middle of the 17th century. “Prot-Enlight,” as I’ve called the phenomenon, lived and thrived among these early-Modern, anti-Royalist partisans of English Parliament.
Here’s the gist of the Whigs’ importance to America: the mostly Protestant American founders of 1776— “neo-Whigs” if you will—looked to the English Whig thinkers of the previous century. Most famous among these was John Locke. In fact, the principles of the American Revolution of 1776 largely mimicked the principles of the Glorious Revolution waged by the Whigs in England in 1688. Just as the American revolutionaries would subsequently describe, the theological politics of the Prot-Enlight Whigs set out the four natural rights we have discussed throughout this chapter! Yet while the Whigs accepted such rights as intelligible conclusions taught by nature, the reader should now recognize that the Prot-Enlight philosophy they embraced actually rejected each of the Natural Law’s premises (which produced the conclusions they wanted, natural rights). Catholic thought was thus secretly consulted—indirectly in some places and quite directly in others. And of course, the Catholic thinkers never received their due credit (until now!). As such, it is worth examining the writings leading up to and during the Glorious Revolution because such thinking was so closely examined and reproduced less than a century later by their American admirers. The bitter rivalry between Protestant Reformers and Catholic counter-Reformers still burned white-hot in Europe and England in the middle and late 17th century. The reader must remember that the context of intra-Christendom religious rivalry was far more stark in the 1600s and 1700s than it is today. The fervent anti-Catholicism of the American Colonials ran back to English Whig politics between 1650 and 1750. This helps to explain why credit in America was stolen from the Catholic thinkers, without recognition, and given to the Protestant ones (who reified the nonsensical Protestant-Enlightenment Natural Law described just above).
Imagine a rival (Prot-Enlights) whose most loathed enemy (the Catholic Church) discovered and wielded something (Natural Law) which he himself absolutely needed for the struggle. Even more paradoxical, imagine that that discovered thing was the very source of their disagreement! So, imagine a person who, in a fight with his enemy, takes from and uses against that enemy the enemy’s knife…all in the name of the rule that “knives should never be used in fights.” This accurately mimics how both the Reformation and the Enlightenment related to the Catholic knife of Natural Law, especially in the English-speaking world.
