THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND THE CATHOLIC POLITICAL THEORY

New Zealand Tablet, 13 February 1919, Page 22

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND THE CATHOLIC POLITICAL THEORY

(By Father Charles Plater, S.J.)

The relation which should exist between the individual and the State is on© of the central problems of political philosophy.. If the ; former is unduly subordinated to the latter ,we have Gaesarism ox* political absolutism. If the interests of the community are sacrificed to the overweening pretensions of the individual, we have anarchy. The Catholic ideal is to secure to the State the power of safeguarding the rights and promoting the temporal welfare of its subjects without depriving the individual of his right to ordered liberty. - ~ ... ... The history of the Church from the political side is a record of the struggle to confine the secular power within its proper, sphere, and to prevent it from infringing the natural rights of its subjects and of the Church itself. The Herods and the Caesars of the world have always looked askance at Christ. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but to God the things that are God’s’’ has seemed to them a dangerous doctrine. On the other hand, the Church has never been betrayed, by way of reaction, into denying the legitimacy of the monarchial form of government. When she found a king after her own heart she cononised-him under the name of St. Louis of France. But she never ceased to denounce political absolutism, and by the end of the fifteenth century she had secured ordered liberty for mankind in Europe, sometimes under the republican, sometimes under the monarchical form of government. The opportunity of Caesar came at the Protestant Reformation, Lutheranism made directly fox* political absolutism, while the regime of Calvin, established at Geneva, taught the world a sharp lesson as to the despotism latent in his teaching, Throughout Europe political rulers were quick to seize the occasion and to arrogate to themselves powers and privileges detrimental to their subjects. In England the Tudor sovereigns, who had put into practice the doctrines of the Reformers, were succeeded early in the 17th century by the Stuarts, who provided the doctrine of royal absolutism with an apologist, James 1., in his book entitled Basilikon Boron, claimed to rule by the immediate appointment of God, to whom alone he admitted responsibility for his actions. * This intolerable pretension was at once refuted by two of _ the most distinguished Catholic theologians, Bellarmine and Suarez. Basing themselves upon immemorial Catholic tradition, as well as upon reasons of a more abstract order, they proved that political sovereignty is primarily vested by Divine Providence in the community as a whole, which may either retain it oxtransfer it (tacitly or explicitly) to one or more individuals. If it choose so to transfer it, a species of contract arises between ruler and subjects binding the former to govern for the good of the Commonwealth, and the latter to render all reasonable obedience. Should the ruler violate his obligation, the.subjects are released from their allegiance, but so long as he governs justly he cannot be rightfully dispossessed of his authority. By this thesis, at once so clear and so reasonable, they secured the individual in the possession of ordered liberty, and by maintaining the ultimate Divine origin of all just authority, they erected a firm barrier against anarchy and sedition. When, in 1688, .the Stuart dynasty finally passed from the throne of Britain, it . was practically the Catholic theory of sovereignty which formed the philosophic basis of the title of the new king, William 111. Since that day the theory of political absolutism has found no defenders in the British Empire. Ordered liberty has become the fundamental ideal of English statesmen, and it is understood in the true Catholic sense of securing to the individual his natural rights as * lc a3onable being while imposing upon the State the

duty of promoting the 1 temporal welfare of its subjects. The theory of the, British Constitution can be traced nowhere better* than in the writings of Edmund Burke, the most famous of all “British' writers on a political philosophy. A fervent Christian, he ■ was appalled by the excesses of the French, Revolution' no less than by the anarchy which he saw must proceed, from, the logical application of some of Rousseau’s principles. Nevertheless he did not allow this to lead him into the opposite error of Gaesarism. Through his exposition of the British Constitution there runs a sane and reasonable idealism. Despotism is brutally realistic; the social revolutionary is usually ideologue. Between these two extremes is the happy mean which is to be found both in Catholic theory . and British practice.

Burke reminds us that civil society is of divine institution. It is a “partnership in all science, in all art, in every virtue and in all perfection.!’ In other words, the individual does not exist merely for the State. lie . has an absolute value. Tie is one of the great fellowship, of mutual co-operation towards high and worthy ends. And yet even in such a fellowship there must be some authority to curb the excesses of individuals and to forward common interests. Much authority, Burke maintains, is vested in the holders of it by some compact (tacit or express) between the rulers and the Commonwealth, and not by immediate Divine appointment. Divine sanction there is, indeed, behind all just authority, whoever yields it, hut it does not render authority responsible.. The raison d’etre of a government is the welfare of its subjects.

Let it not be thought from this that Burke was merely a demagogue, or that his exposition of the British Constitution favored the disruptive principles of the theorists of the Revolution. He has a full appreciation of the social value of the age-long tradition which lies behind the British form of government. “We are not the converts of Rousseau,” he writes, “we are not the disciples of Voltaire ; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us : atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God ; we look up with awe to kings ; with affection to parliaments ; with duty to magistrates: with reverence to priests ; and with respect to nobility.” Suarez and Bellarmine would not have written otherwise, nor could any - Catholic political philosopher desire a more correct statement of the true theory of the basis of the State ; and it is this theory which is embodied in concrete form in the British Constitution.

It would, of course, be absurd to contend that in the British Constitution alone do we find realised the Catholic theory of the State in relation to the immevidual, for that the'orv deals, with fundamental principles and not with the political forms by means of which the principles are carried into effect. As Pope Leo XIII. reminded us, the Catholic thesis is as applicable to a form of government in which the people retaining the ultimate sovereign power in its own hands delegates its exercise for a term of years to an executive officer as it is to an hereditary monarchy. So long as a government exists, and admits that it exists purely for the good of the nation over which it exercises , authority, so long as it strives to promote ordered liberty, social justice, and the general welfare, it is in harmony with the teaching of Catholic political philosophy. It is such a government as this which "is provided under the British Constitution.

On the other hand, no political theory could be more out of harmony with Catholic political idealism than one which makes the State an end in itself, which subordinates the individual to a military autocracy, which claims for the ruling dynasty not merely the Divine sanction attached to all legitimate' authority, but some immediate Divine appointment such as was claimed by the first Stuart king of England and was denied by the greatest Catholic theologians of his day no less than by the whole spirit and tradition of the British nation. " •• : -^."V ;