In January this year, the Holy Father met with the DIALOP “transversal dialogue project,” a forum founded ten years ago following a meeting between the Pope and Alexander Tsipras, the leader of the radical left-wing Syriza Party and later prime minister of Greece.
The Left has always claimed a monopoly in virtue, and with great success. The Conservative Party has long accepted this claim. When Theresa May called the Tories the “nasty party,” she clearly knew that her Conservative Party audience would not even blink. This fact is probably one of several which underlies the party’s constant leftward shift.
The highest virtue, as we all know but hardly dare say anymore, is of course Christian virtue, and the Fabian Left, at least, claims a monopoly in this too. This theological victory of the Left is so complete that in European eyes the religious Right looks unhinged. When the late Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said a few years ago that it was no longer clear that Catholics would automatically vote Labour, his underlying assumption was that under ordinary circumstances, they would have so voted.
But before real conservatives fold up their arms and die in the face of this moralising onslaught, I beseech them to take courage from the battles of the early Church and remind themselves that at the very depths of the conservative instinct lie ideas which are shared with the Church Fathers. It is, in fact, the conservative instinct which is, at root, the more Christian.
In the early Christian centuries, the greatest enemy of what, pace the Orthodox churches, one can call Catholicism, was a loosely linked alliance of heresies collectively known as Gnosticism. We have heard a lot of it in recent years thanks to books like The Da Vinci Code. The Gnostic idea was very attractive and spread like philoxera in the early Church’s vineyard. Common to all its forms was the idea that man is basically good. If this is so, people asked, why does he constantly do and think evil? The Gnostics answered that the matter of which the world is made is evil, and man is trapped by the world. Taking an image from the Book of Job, they likened souls to nuggets of gold, but caked in the filth of worldly matter, that matter being the cause of all misery which in turn needs to be washed off. They believed that all the suffering spirit needs is knowledge (gnosis), the soap, if you like, with which to cleanse itself, so as to reveal its true, shining nature.
This gnosis, however, was not available to all; it goes without saying that it was only to be found in the assemblies of the Gnostic sects themselves, who possessed it as a secret. Everybody likes a secret, even a widely known one, which is why secret societies are so successful, and why a novel such as The Da Vinci Code deliberately makes the reader feel as if he is being let into the truth behind a cover-up. But even more appealing is the idea that, underneath, we are all likeable, and that our failings are not our fault, but someone (or something) else’s—the world’s fault, as the Gnostics saw it.
Against this appealing soteriological programme, the Catholic Church had nothing to offer but medicine with an unpleasant taste. Human nature, it said, was not a nugget of gold caked in mud. Oh no, from the Fall in the Garden of Eden, it has been muddy; and though matter is not intrinsically evil, it has been sullied. What is more, there is no secret about salvation, no privileged route reserved for the enlightened few, and no amount of toil will improve matters. There is, the Church said, but one way out: to recognise that man’s self interest lies in a dependence on forces greater than himself, and beyond which he has no control; nothing less than a wholehearted dependence on the wisdom and power of Almighty God would do.
Does this sound familiar? Of course it does. The fundamentals of human nature have not changed, nor will they ever. The ancient battles are still the same. Even the weapons are the same: only the terminology has changed, and not always that much either.
“Man,” says your socialist, echoing the gnostic, “is basically good.” Why does he not behave himself? “Because he is trapped, a victim of bourgeois society. He lives in a state of ignorance, in need of re-education. And we have the key to build a paradise on earth, the workers’ state.”
And what is the correct retort to this? The honest, fundamental answer to this appealing but dangerous social creed is: “You cannot reform us. Our nature is fallen, we are lazy and we have no sense of duty. But you can appeal to our self-interest. You can offer us the carrot of wealth and the goad of the shame of failure. In short, take away our social security benefits, lower our taxes, and let us take the consequences of our own actions.” Is this not in fact the secular version of the Christian message, that salvation cannot come from what the Book of Common Prayer calls “works of superogation”?
Against this it may be argued, indeed will be argued, that this is no blueprint for a Christian society. You often hear conservative-minded people saying that whatever the attractions of capitalism, the state has a Christian duty of charity to its poor. Well no, it doesn’t. Charity enforced through taxation is not charity, so state spending can never be regarded as charity. Indeed, the welfare state actually saps the Christian impulse to give and reduces the means for Christians to do so.
One might have expected, now that Soviet gold no longer funds the mass production of lies, that the most obvious failings of socialism would have been universally recognised. Why is it so difficult, when the facts are so plain and no longer denied—the gulags, the re-education camps, the killing fields, the failure of socialist governments to feed their populations—for people to shake off the feeling that, at the most basic level, socialism stands for high ideals and capitalism for heartless self-interest? It is surely because the capacity for socialists to tell plausible lies not only to others but to themselves—and, thanks to social media, on a scale that Suslov, the head of Soviet agitprop, could only have dreamt of—arises from a flawed human instinct (call it a form of original sin if you like) that makes man want to believe that his tribe is good and kind and noble, and that his leaders know best.
It is an attractive proposition, but a false one, and just as the Church Fathers were right to fight it in the early centuries of our era, so conservatives must fight it now. If you do not hold out against this siren song, government by spin is all you can expect; at least, it is all you can expect from a socialist. If, on the other hand, you want what used to be called a godly government, you must start by looking for an honest one, and that, above all, means a government which tells the painful truth, that it has no power to forgive us our debts, and that easy credit cannot be inflated away without dire consequences for others; that it has nothing to offer but tears, toil, sweat and, when the need arises, blood.
While it is possible to understand the UK Conservative Party’s attempts to win the centre ground of politics, it is losing the moral high ground in the process; and no election is worth winning on those terms.
God is a Tory
Photo by Tom Parsons on Unsplash
In January this year, the Holy Father met with the DIALOP “transversal dialogue project,” a forum founded ten years ago following a meeting between the Pope and Alexander Tsipras, the leader of the radical left-wing Syriza Party and later prime minister of Greece.
The Left has always claimed a monopoly in virtue, and with great success. The Conservative Party has long accepted this claim. When Theresa May called the Tories the “nasty party,” she clearly knew that her Conservative Party audience would not even blink. This fact is probably one of several which underlies the party’s constant leftward shift.
The highest virtue, as we all know but hardly dare say anymore, is of course Christian virtue, and the Fabian Left, at least, claims a monopoly in this too. This theological victory of the Left is so complete that in European eyes the religious Right looks unhinged. When the late Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said a few years ago that it was no longer clear that Catholics would automatically vote Labour, his underlying assumption was that under ordinary circumstances, they would have so voted.
But before real conservatives fold up their arms and die in the face of this moralising onslaught, I beseech them to take courage from the battles of the early Church and remind themselves that at the very depths of the conservative instinct lie ideas which are shared with the Church Fathers. It is, in fact, the conservative instinct which is, at root, the more Christian.
In the early Christian centuries, the greatest enemy of what, pace the Orthodox churches, one can call Catholicism, was a loosely linked alliance of heresies collectively known as Gnosticism. We have heard a lot of it in recent years thanks to books like The Da Vinci Code. The Gnostic idea was very attractive and spread like philoxera in the early Church’s vineyard. Common to all its forms was the idea that man is basically good. If this is so, people asked, why does he constantly do and think evil? The Gnostics answered that the matter of which the world is made is evil, and man is trapped by the world. Taking an image from the Book of Job, they likened souls to nuggets of gold, but caked in the filth of worldly matter, that matter being the cause of all misery which in turn needs to be washed off. They believed that all the suffering spirit needs is knowledge (gnosis), the soap, if you like, with which to cleanse itself, so as to reveal its true, shining nature.
This gnosis, however, was not available to all; it goes without saying that it was only to be found in the assemblies of the Gnostic sects themselves, who possessed it as a secret. Everybody likes a secret, even a widely known one, which is why secret societies are so successful, and why a novel such as The Da Vinci Code deliberately makes the reader feel as if he is being let into the truth behind a cover-up. But even more appealing is the idea that, underneath, we are all likeable, and that our failings are not our fault, but someone (or something) else’s—the world’s fault, as the Gnostics saw it.
Against this appealing soteriological programme, the Catholic Church had nothing to offer but medicine with an unpleasant taste. Human nature, it said, was not a nugget of gold caked in mud. Oh no, from the Fall in the Garden of Eden, it has been muddy; and though matter is not intrinsically evil, it has been sullied. What is more, there is no secret about salvation, no privileged route reserved for the enlightened few, and no amount of toil will improve matters. There is, the Church said, but one way out: to recognise that man’s self interest lies in a dependence on forces greater than himself, and beyond which he has no control; nothing less than a wholehearted dependence on the wisdom and power of Almighty God would do.
Does this sound familiar? Of course it does. The fundamentals of human nature have not changed, nor will they ever. The ancient battles are still the same. Even the weapons are the same: only the terminology has changed, and not always that much either.
“Man,” says your socialist, echoing the gnostic, “is basically good.” Why does he not behave himself? “Because he is trapped, a victim of bourgeois society. He lives in a state of ignorance, in need of re-education. And we have the key to build a paradise on earth, the workers’ state.”
And what is the correct retort to this? The honest, fundamental answer to this appealing but dangerous social creed is: “You cannot reform us. Our nature is fallen, we are lazy and we have no sense of duty. But you can appeal to our self-interest. You can offer us the carrot of wealth and the goad of the shame of failure. In short, take away our social security benefits, lower our taxes, and let us take the consequences of our own actions.” Is this not in fact the secular version of the Christian message, that salvation cannot come from what the Book of Common Prayer calls “works of superogation”?
Against this it may be argued, indeed will be argued, that this is no blueprint for a Christian society. You often hear conservative-minded people saying that whatever the attractions of capitalism, the state has a Christian duty of charity to its poor. Well no, it doesn’t. Charity enforced through taxation is not charity, so state spending can never be regarded as charity. Indeed, the welfare state actually saps the Christian impulse to give and reduces the means for Christians to do so.
One might have expected, now that Soviet gold no longer funds the mass production of lies, that the most obvious failings of socialism would have been universally recognised. Why is it so difficult, when the facts are so plain and no longer denied—the gulags, the re-education camps, the killing fields, the failure of socialist governments to feed their populations—for people to shake off the feeling that, at the most basic level, socialism stands for high ideals and capitalism for heartless self-interest? It is surely because the capacity for socialists to tell plausible lies not only to others but to themselves—and, thanks to social media, on a scale that Suslov, the head of Soviet agitprop, could only have dreamt of—arises from a flawed human instinct (call it a form of original sin if you like) that makes man want to believe that his tribe is good and kind and noble, and that his leaders know best.
It is an attractive proposition, but a false one, and just as the Church Fathers were right to fight it in the early centuries of our era, so conservatives must fight it now. If you do not hold out against this siren song, government by spin is all you can expect; at least, it is all you can expect from a socialist. If, on the other hand, you want what used to be called a godly government, you must start by looking for an honest one, and that, above all, means a government which tells the painful truth, that it has no power to forgive us our debts, and that easy credit cannot be inflated away without dire consequences for others; that it has nothing to offer but tears, toil, sweat and, when the need arises, blood.
While it is possible to understand the UK Conservative Party’s attempts to win the centre ground of politics, it is losing the moral high ground in the process; and no election is worth winning on those terms.
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