Catholicism between globalism and nationalism

The Catholic Church can be seen as a transnational corporation. In fact, it is probably the largest and oldest in the world.

Dec 02, 2016

The Catholic Church can be seen as a transnational corporation. In fact, it is probably the largest and oldest in the world. Catholics hold dual citizenship, in the sense that they are “citizens of two cities” – the heavenly city and the earthly city (Vatican II, Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 1965, par. 43).

Catholics also have blended identities, in the sense that they are able to navigate social, cultural, and national boundaries better than others because of a very strong transnational or supranational identity. And Catholics have a multicultural education, given that Catholicism claims to be free from idiosyncratic worldviews and has a particular sensibility to the universal.

One of the challenges the US President Donald Trump’s election poses to Catholicism (and not only in the United States) is whether or not religion will be able to respond to this populist revolt against the elites. Will Roman Catholicism defend its own kind of cosmopolitan and globalist worldview? Or will it become nationalist and provincial?

This is a challenge especially for the so-called Catholic intelligentsia — academic theologians, writers, teachers and publishers, as well as the clergy, vowed religious and the bishops. In this sense, the fault line of how US Catholics have accepted (or not) the vision of Pope Francis rests, on the global nature of Catholicism. Sceptics of the Pope’s ecclesiology advocate — in my opinion — an Americanised, exceptionalist version of Catholicism. Francis, on the other hand, defends a Catholic worldview that is solidly internationalist and anti-nationalist.

This is not just the Pope’s personal view of Catholicism’s role in world affairs. It is actually an integral part of the Catholic worldview that has developed, especially in the modern period, with the rejection of the various versions of Catholic nationalism — such as Gallicanism in France and beyond, Febronianism in Germany and Josephinism in Austria.
The Catholic Church’s rejection of nationalism was particularly evident during this last century. There are interesting parallels between the present moment in our national and world politics and the way the Church reacted and responded to the consequences of social and ideological turmoil.

In the 1920s, for example, Pius XI tried to react against rising nationalism by advancing the “social kingship of Christ” — one of the devotions Pope Francis is now reinterpreting from the point of view of the poor. In his latest apostolic letter Misericordia et misera (Mercy and Misery), Francis decided to establish the new World Day of the Poor on the Sunday before the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is an effort to give a new, contemporary significance to a liturgical feast that was created in 1925 with a clearly political intent.

In 1945, after World War II and the failures of liberalism, fascism and communism, the Christian-democratic project in Europe was a restoration of a social order. It was also inspired by the Church’s social doctrine and made possible by the golden age of Christian-Democratic parties.

In the 1960s, the political cultures of the Second Vatican Council rejected the ideological polarisation of the Cold War, lauded international organisations like the United Nations and UNESCO and accepted (if not totally embraced) constitutional democracy. Even before the end of communism, John Paul II had already imagined a new world order where religions — and the Catholic Church in particular — were called to be a key actor for a new internationalism. Recall that the first Vatican-sponsored interreligious meeting at Assisi took place in 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Now we are at another critical turning point in history.

It is marked by the Trump election, the Brexit referendum, the rise of nationalism in Europe, a fascination with strongmen in politics and, in general, our taking for granted that social and political rights (included religious liberty) are protected by democracy.

These are “signs of the times” that require theological discernment for the Catholic Church, and not only in the United States.

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