A liberal Catholic taxonomy.

In the November 18, 1994, issue of Commonweal the editorial was titled "Liberals & Catholics," and its opening words asked this pertinent question: "Can Catholics be liberals?" (The question was especially pertinent since, just a few weeks earlier, the majority of American Catholics had voted Republican in the congressional elections. After answering, not surprisingly, that Catholics can be liberals, the editors promised to discuss the question again in the future. (See also my column of December 16,1994.)

If we want to investigate the compatibility of liberalism and Catholicism, it is essential to bear in mind that not all who are both liberal and Catholic are of the same type. It would be helpful to sort out these types, to develop a liberal/Catholic taxonomy. So here is a modest contribution toward such a taxonomy. What I offer are "ideal types," Platonic forms as it were. Of course, no individuals perfectly conform to any particular type, only more or less approximate it.

Catholics who are liberal can be divided into two groups: "Catholic liberals" (CLs) and "liberal Catholics" (LCs). That is to say, among people who are both liberal and Catholic, some (the CLs) stress the liberal aspect of their identity, while others (the Lcs) stress the Catholic aspect. The former are liberals first and Catholics second, the latter Catholics first, liberals second. Cls can be divided into two categories according to how they respond to conflicts between Catholicism and conventional liberalism. When such a conflict arises (for example, on abortion), one CL subtype opts for the liberal position and rejects the Catholic position. Let us call people of this kind "Catholic liberals of the pure type" (CL-P). When I say they reject the Catholic position, I don't mean they come right out and say so. Usually CL-PS finesse their rejection of the Catholic position, offering a theory whose purpose is to disguise this rejection (for example, "I am personally opposed but..." or "separation of church and state" or "you can't legislate morality").

The other CL subtype responds to liberal-Catholic conflicts by allowing the Catholic position to have a veto over the liberal position. Let us call these people "Catholic liberals of the qualified type" (CL-Q). In doing so they don't renounce their liberal identity, not even temporarily. They remain more liberal than Catholic, proof of which is found in their unwillingness to become champions of the Catholic position they profess to uphold; for if they were to fight for this position they would place themselves in open opposition to their liberal comrades, thus jeopardizing their liberal credentials. So they quietly dissent from liberal dogma at these points of conflict, saying to their liberal allies: "You know I'm with you on everything else, but I can't go along on this; after all, it is my religion. I hope you'll understand."

The CL-Q reminds us of a man who says to his mistress: "You know, my dear, I love you more than my wife, but I'd feel terrible if I skipped her birthday party. I hope you'll understand." The CL-P, by contrast, is like the man who says: "Don't worry, sweetheart, you can count on me; and frankly I don't give a damn what my wife thinks. In the meantime I'll cook up a story to explain why I'm coming home at three in the morning."

Liberal Catholics (LCs) can also be divided into two classes. On the one hand there are those who adopt the agenda of conventional liberalism and then try to find Christian justifications for that agenda. We may call them "liberal Catholics of the piggyback type" (LC-PB). They wait for secular liberals to do the hard work of defining the liberal agenda, and then jump on board with words something like these, "This agenda has the blessings of the Holy Spirit."

If the LC-PB starts with liberal conclusions and then searches, on a post hoc basis, for Catholic premises that will justify these conclusions, there is another kind of LC who does things the other way round. People of this kind start with Catholic premises and then try to figure out what liberal conclusions follow. We may call them "liberal Catholics of the critical type" (LC-C), since they are bound to be critical of the agenda of conventional liberalism. Conventional liberalism, which derives from premises of a secular (even a secularist) nature, will inevitably conflict with a liberalism that derives from Catholic premises. Hence LC of this type will have no choice but to be critical of much that passes for liberalism in the secular world. (This type, it should be noted, will often be mistaken for a conservative; for it is commonly assumed, almost as a matter of definition, that anyone who criticizes conventional American liberalism must be a conservative.

In sum, we have four kinds of people who are both Catholic and liberal: (1) Catholic liberal, pure type (CL-P); (2) Catholic liberal, qualified type (CL-Q); (3) liberal Catholic, piggyback type (LC-PB); and (4) liberal Catholic, critical type LC-C).

So now back to the editorial's original question: "Can Catholics be liberals?"--which I construe to mean not "Can Catholics as a matter of fact be liberals?" (for obviously they can be, since so many of them are), but rather "Can a logically consistent person be both liberal and Catholic?"

Of the four types, only type 1 holds a liberalism that is flatly and openly inconsistent with Catholicism. The other three are more-or-less consistent; but here a distinction needs to be made. Type 4 is strongly consistent, while types 2 and 3 are weakly consistent. Or to put this more emphatically, type 4 is truly consistent, while types 2 and 3 create the appearance of consistency.

Of course questions of logical consistency have to do with the intellectual side of religion only. In Christianity in general, and in Catholicism in particular, the intellectual side is enormously important, far more so than in most of the religions the human race has practiced. But it is not the only side; there is also the prayer side, the moral side, the ritual side, the feeling side, the organizational side, etc. Thus it is possible for a CL-P to be a dreadfully inconsistent Catholic from an intellectual point of view while leading a life of moral goodness combined with mystical prayer and big contributions to the bishop.