Tranquillitas ordinis: the present failure and future promise of American Catholic thought on war and peace

National Review, August 14, 1987 by Robert Royal

Will It Liberate? Questions about Liberation Theology, by Michael Novak (Paulist Press, 311 pp., $14.95) Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace, by George Weigel (Oxford, 489 pp., $27.50)

AFREQUENT FAILING of books thatclaim to provide a religious basis for worldly projects is a conspicuous lack of worldly wisdom. The authors are gentle as doves--they often are "doves' politically. But they seem to have forgotten about being wise as serpents. Their idealism wings its way through the air, unencumbered by facts and undisciplined by intellect.

These two splendid volumesin no way share those typical failings. Both arrive at "neoconservative' political conclusions, but engage in serious historical and intellectual argument with their opponents. If they have a common fault, it is the gentleman scholar's--treating some opponents with a good deal more intellectual seriousness than they merit.

Indeed, in Will It Liberate? MichaelNovak admits that he admires liberation theology for its "intellectual ambition.' The liberationists, he says, want to answer all the big questions. They make North American theologians look timid by comparison. But, since liberationist thinkers focus so vehemently on praxis, Novak says: Fine, let's look at the practice you advocate. Let's ask: What is life going to be like after the revolution?

If the result will often be, willinglyor not, a mixture of religion and Leninism as in Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, with ingredients borrowed from Castro's Cuba, perhaps it's worth looking again at theory. Latin Americans generally have a natural inclination, given their history, toward state-centered solutions. Capitalism is a dirty word in Latin America: Many Latin Americans assume that they have been living under capitalism, and that their societies are confirmations of Marxist theory.

In fact, most Latin American countriesare more mercantilist than capitalist, and Marx's major social, political, and economic--as well as religious-- predictions have been falsified by history. Understanding all this leads to some new questions about what it is that liberation theologians really want for the people. Novak is splendid in explicating the "inner will of socialism' and deftly encourages liberationists to broaden their vision.

Most liberation theologians have notpaid sufficient attention to the institutions of liberty. In his inspiring final chapter, Novak concedes, "In general, the philosophers of the liberal society have been better at making the institutions of liberty work in practice, than at making explicit their own philosophic presuppositions.' But here Novak not only makes explicit the principles of liberty, he shows how the principles of socialism embraced by most liberation theologians are likely to lead to continued poverty and perhaps even worse political oppression. We all, South and North Americans alike, should therefore become better reacquainted with the principles and institutions of freedom.

George Weigel's large and lucidTranquillitas Ordinis arrives at the same conclusion. His profound call for American Catholics to restudy the significance of the American experiment announces the arrival of a strong new voice in the discussion of the Catholic Church's role in public policy.

The modern world faces an immensestruggle to survive between the pit of totalitarianism and the fire of modern warfare, says Weigel. Hence our principal concern should be the one that Camus identified: how to avoid becoming either victims or executioners. For this, in addition to good intentions we need stronger intellectual analysis within the Catholic Church and Western society generally.

Weigel sees the rich Catholic traditionof the just war as offering potentially important contributions to political debates that have become too narrow. The phrase from St. Augustine used in his title suggests that just-war theory is actually a theory of peace. Augustine's "peace is the tranquillity of order' was meant, says Weigel, to illustrate that the main purpose of politics is to control the use of power. As Weigel interprets it, tranquillitas ordinis, far from being a merely static concept, means "the peace of public order in dynamic political community.'

American Catholicism, best exemplifiedin the seminal work of John Courtney Murray, understood the large convergences between Catholic views on human dignity and the limited state on the one hand, and the founding principles of the American Republic on the other. The "Murray Project,' says Weigel, needed to be developed further. But with the crisis of American society during the 1960s, this tradition of moderate realism was largely abandoned. Weigel traces the Church's steps toward that abandonment through figures such as Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Gordon Zahn, James Douglass, and the Berrigans. He also gives a valuable sketch of the political views of Father J. Bryan Hehir, the bishops' chief advisor for their 1983 pastoral letter on war and peace.