For those unable to purchase the Catholic Herald, find below the sub of an article of mine that appeared this weekend.
The Left is not the enemy of the Catholic Church
Catholic commentators should be careful not to demonise those on the Left, says Michael Merrick
They do not flow quite so easily as they once used to, the words ’Catholic’ and ‘Left’. These terms used to fit snugly together, accurately describing the political inclinations of swathes of the Catholic community, but have been slowly rent apart: from cliché to contradiction within less than two decades.
The separation hardly came out of the blue. Following years of implicit and explicit attack endured during New Labour’s reign, one could naturally understand the Catholic commentariat snuggling up to the Conservatives, the latest swing of the pendulum toward whichever political party would ease the relentless pressure being placed upon the faithful. The foot needed taking from the throat and if the Conservatives brought with them the promise of breathing space, then all well and good.
Yet the fallout between the Catholic community and the left has taken on air of permanence of late, just as the bonds have taken root between the Catholic community and the political Right. For what has become increasingly obvious is that, for a good number of well-informed and genuinely astute individuals, being an orthodox Catholic and being on ‘the Left’ is largely incompatible.
It is the language that shapes the intellectual landscape which lets us see most clearly the direction of travel. For many, ‘the Left’ is a phrase emblematic of those habits of thought and action that stand aggressively against the truths upheld by the Catholic Church. Respected commentators with whom many a faithful Catholic would find common ground, including certain luminaries of this parish, are perfectly happy to attribute a host of ideological idiocies to this phenomenon. Everything from liturgical vandalism to hug-a-heretic liberalism is attributed to that dark and not-so-distant force known as ‘the Left’.
Apart from being untrue (in itself a fairly fatal flaw in the analysis) the impression is given that the promulgators of such myths prefer cartoon caricature to blood and guts reality, even at the cost of flinging mud at those they ought to be standing alongside.
The notion that Left-wing thought is inimical to orthodox Catholic thinking is simply not one that is shared by a great many of those sitting in the pews throughout the country. To engage with the legacies left to us by our forefathers in faith, indeed by the very weave of social history and our unique place in it, while proclaiming that ‘the Left’ is an enemy, in whatever sense, of the faith and the Catholic community: this tale, as much as any other, presents itself as a hermeneutic of rupture.
After all, the faith that inclines an individual to stand in defence of the family, of the unborn, of the truths and values of the faithful community, is precisely the same faith that similarly compels some to stand on the Left-wing of the political spectrum, arguing that all these things are relentlessly assaulted by the political orthodoxies of the Right. This was as true historically, with sophisticated Catholic critiques of capitalism, as it remains now, as more than a few in the Labour Party continue to demonstrate. To use ‘the Left’ as shorthand for dissent is to ignore this crucial aspect: for many, their political and economic critiques are manifestations of their fidelity, not obstacles to it.
This is not to embrace what the professional, political Left has too often become. One can readily admit that social liberalism has fractured our communities every bit as much as its market-based twin, and mourn the role of the Labour Party in pursuing that creed (though one could point out that this ideological oeuvre has always been a hobby of the already empowered, existent within all three political parties). Indeed, for the Left the story is not as uniform as its cultured despisers would have it. Peter Hitchens’s distinction between the social and moral conservatism of the Left’s working class, and the ‘let-it-all-hang-out liberals’ comprised largely of the Oxbridge elite, is apposite.
Yet, in confining discussion to the moral free-marketeers of the New Left, one tells only half a story. For while the Catholic view of the family and the unborn (for example) are rightly defended from upon the rock-solid walls of Church teaching, we must be careful not to forget that other teachings have equal call on our thought and action. Church teaching interlinks and interweaves, most compellingly when offered as a coherent, holistic vision. Its impact is neutered the moment it is balkanised for political expediency. To use the encyclicals most symbolic of the impulses of which we speak, Humanae Vitae presents itself most powerfully when read with Rerum Novarum, not in isolation from it.
This gets at the nub of it. The phenomenon alluded to by those who would wash their hands of ‘the Left’ is not a political party or tradition, to be pinned to one end of an increasingly redundant political spectrum. It is much more elusive than that, forever moving because ultimately loyal to nothing but itself. As John Milbank has argued, the feigned confrontation of Left and Right is nothing but shadow play: in truth they are allies, each pursuing only the liberalism that drives them.
This demands that we employ a little more nuance in interpreting the socio-political landscape. The truth is that that which the Church holds to be good and true can exist on the Left, has existed on the Left, and continues to exist among significant portions of the Left, as becomes obvious once one zooms out from the unrepresentative outpourings of media-savvy progressive activists and cosmopolitan liberals ill at ease with their own tradition. Indeed, there are few expressions of Church social and moral teaching not readily identifiable within the traditions of the Left, both historically and philosophically, a truth inexplicably forgotten though increasingly rediscovered.
As such, painting ‘the Left’ as the bogeyman that assaults a Catholic vision of the good life is not just simplistic but genuinely dangerous, since it feeds into that culture war narrative that is so pernicious to the wholeness of Church teaching precisely because its tidy-minded simplicity, while so very alluring, is also so very wrong.
Not that I try to claim Catholicism for the Left, or indeed the Left for Catholicism. To do so would be to contradict my whole purpose in writing this article.
But it is to offer a warning that those who would slip so cosily into the arms of the Conservatives as a reaction against ‘the Left’ ought to be careful: that which you run toward is much the same as that which you run from. The intellectual and political tides that swept away any influence among the professional Left (although not the cultural Left) are the same tides currently weaving their way through the professional Right.
In other words, the revolution of the New Left is the revolution of the New Right. And both need Truth spoken to them.
Kevin – Exactly true. Michael writes a lot of left -wing twaddle. They don’t by any means have a lock on compassion. Far from it. It is the left wing who attempts to replace God with ‘the state.’ It is the left -wing that cheers on ‘abortion rights.’ It was and is the left wing who throws Christians against the wall and shoots them first. Ask Russians, Ukrainians, all of Eastern Europe. Ask Mexicans, ask Spaniards — Ask Nicaraguans, ask Cubans. IT sure as death and taxes ISN’T possible to be a practicing ‘left winger’ in the US and be a practicing Catholic. The so called ‘blue dog democrats’ who were allegedly Catholic and pro-life had a little dog and pony show that they put obama through when that Marxist was going to allow ‘freedom of conscience’ in his ‘Deathcare’ bill that they rammed through congress that no one wanted, Oh, yeah, Catholics weren’t going to be forced to support abortion on demand. Guess what, Mikie — The Obowmao is FORCING all Catholic institutions to PAY for ABORTION coverage for their employees. The leftists are SCUM.
Thank you for your enlightened contribution.
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I couldn’t agree more with your piece. The New Left and the New Right–essentially iterations of globalising and technology-induced liberalism–are necessarily enemies of the Church, but the Old Left and Old Right substantially overlap. At the same time, I wonder if Kevin’s implied point above is correct–that the Old Left is now useless and its orientation towards an anticlerical, weird secularism given to semi-pagan views of the environment, mystic worship of technology, and acidic selfishness, is not reversible. I hope that it is.
That’s a fascinating post Michael. I’m always interested in your comments on twitter and enjoyed and appreciated the more sustained essay.
I find that I often share a lot of your opinions but I feel you have a tendency to apply labels to people and groups which I think is often unfair but more importantly, for the purposes of political analysis, are inaccurate. For instance, in what sense could Tony Blair and New Labour be considered ‘of the Left’? As a ‘project’ New Labour ditched the concept of class and embraced a rather vacuous identity politics – liberal multiculturalism, feminism-lite and free-market friendly.
Don’t get me wrong: anti-imperialism, anti-racism and gender politics still move me but New Labour assumed that consumer sovereignty could resolve all issues of recognition and identity. So a Sex in the City-shopping culture and the ‘pink pound’ were presented as evidence that we were enjoying a post-feminist moment and that gay liberation had arrived. But you can still get beaten senseless by homophobic thugs on a night out in the wrong part of town and the woman on the check-out at Tescos has all the household chores to look forward to after her shift.
The ‘metro-liberal’ left that you identify is I suspect small, unrepresentative and not really a creature of the Left at all. If the being of the Left means anything it must mean the equitable redistribution of power and wealth, and the last Labour administration never came close to achieving this. Really, if you are party in power for as long as the last government and you leave office with the gap between rich and poor greater than ever, on what grounds could you claim or be accused of being of the Left?
Intellectually and politically the Left is promiscuous (I suppose all political organisations, institutions, movements and associations are and have to be) but the concept of the Left must have limits – it must have a constitutive outside – or else it becomes meaningless.
Best wishes,
Stephen Baker
Cheers Stephen
In some snatched free time, I would only add that I agree, and have long articulated the belief, in this post and elsewhere, that libertarian liberalism is more of the right than the left, and that contemporary cosmopolitan liberalism drifts from tradition to another loyal only to itself – see the contemporary political scene for example. Indeed, the article draws upon this very insight: as I’m sure you can imagine, being socially conservative as I am, there are plenty who maintain that I myself cannot be of the left, even though the very tradition from which they pronounce contradicts them. Which rather suggests I’m closing to your framing of the question than (say) a Hundal or a Harman.
Which leaves the interesting bit – what does the ‘the left’ really look like? Which is where the debate is at least heading, thank goodness
Anyway, hope you’re well,
MM
Left conservatism? It seems to me that there has been a long tradition of leftist ideas that are dedicated to the preservation of institutions and ways of life. To be honest this only occurred to me when I found myself opposed to a lot of Blair’s ‘modernisations’. `So I presume I must have been one among the ‘forces of conservatism’.
In a way this is why I distrust the proliferation of labels and prefixes. I don’t consider myself a conservative. And I don’t think Blair was a moderniser nor Cameron a progressive. How could they be when both have presided or are presiding conditions of work and living that look and feel Dickensian.
Politicians are playing with language; looking for a politics that is purely discursive; striving for a narrative – Cool Britannia, the Big Society, whatever. But there is no substance because none of them will address the key political questions, which I suspect are pretty timeless (defying the temporal definitions of conservative and progressive): how will we distribute wealth and power?
What does the Left look like? I think it looks like it should be trying to speak to that question rather than ‘spinning’ around it. People’s positions on the distribution of wealth and power is what defines them, not the labels and prefixes they associate themselves with or others attribute to them.
Great post, Michael. I myself was driven into a reactionary right-wing stance not long ago, out of pure disgust with the left, since they seemed the most obvious and active despisers of religion and social traditions. But I couldn’t fool myself for long that galloping commercialism, defiant individualism, unapologetic hedonism and consumerism, and a self-congratulatory disdain towards social outcasts (prisoners, criminals, illegal immigrants) was consistent with the faith I professed or any meaningful definition of “conservatism”. However I’m not so sure we can salvage the left per se– shouldn’t we just abandon the whole “left wing-right wing” terminology? You know British politics and society better than me, but I’m not aware of any figures on the left who profess anything other than a Tony Blair-style Christianity. Other than yourself of course!
Cheers pal
Firstly, I do agree with you that the old labels are increasingly obsolete, but nonetheless they remain with us, and it seems to me that if they’re not fixed items (ie/ they’ve changed so much they seem to have little meaning) then reconstruction is as plausible an alternative as decimation: as the left-right paradigm is the very cultural grammar through which we understand our political playground, so there is nothing to say we cannot at last try to remake the constituent parts of that paradigm in an image more acceptable to us. After all, that has already been achieved at least once by the very people and ideas we take most objection to.
Secondly… well, again I agree to an extent, but then there is a difference between ordinary folk and the ‘unrepresentative outpourings of media-savvy progressive activists and cosmopolitan liberals ill at ease with their own tradition.’ I know that sounds fanciful, perhaps even naive, but the culture industry is somewhat less anarchic than the masses it serves – in short, there are plenty like me on the left, who have been forced from the Left, but who nonetheless could never see themselves as being anywhere other than on the left.
This is the kind of sneaky stuff Christians should open their eyes to. The liberal Left should not be allowed to dictate values and beliefs to the Catholic community, that would make Gods words worthless and the Left would then become “g”od. The church is not to conform to societies political whims and definately shouldn’t rip out sections of the bible to please the Left. Would you let a child run your home? Of course not! The liberal Left are like children whose logic doesn’t see past the minute they’re in.
This thought process proves the devil is very active in the Church, shaming or fooling Christians into questioning and turning their backs on Christian values in order to embrace a so called “Change”. Not all change is good!
It would seem the article has passed right over your head
I hear you saying that you can be Orthodox catholic and still be on the Left. What I can’t think of or read in your blog is examples that demonstrate that what you say is true.