The article focuses on the chasm that modern philosophy has wrought in human nature, thus giving rise to various dichotomies—intellect–morality, religion–science, and faith–reason. A belief has grown that these dichotomies are permanent and nothing can bridge them. Today, some people claim that economic activity may succeed regardless of moral considerations. No wonder then that we are facing conflicts, clashes, and dishonesty. Generally, we fall prey to a utopia.

Such was also the state of affairs in the nineteenth century. Its thinkers acquired the heritage of modernity against which they (Acton, Bastiat, Newman) had to stand up, but, instead of growing desperate, they resorted to an integral concept of the human person and went beyond modernity. Like Newman, they resolved to place intellect and morality, faith and reason, and religion and science “under one roof.”

Introduction

I hope everybody would agree that politics alone is insufficient for a proper understanding of ongoing social matters. In other words, politicians who are to represent the nation are expected to make decisions, rather than provide the structural framework or lay foundations of political systems. Therefore, when liberalism or liberal democracy, for instance, are under consideration, we shall be more prudent if we turn to philosophers to provide proper definitions of what European liberalism means and what it meant in the writings of its founding fathers. Only in this manner can we gain the appropriate contexts and historical background, and save ourselves from expediency to which politicians so often resort. They frequently satisfy themselves with what is useful rather than with what is right because they want to win followers and be reelected. Therefore, they have no qualms about calling themselves socialists, democrats, or liberals without even knowing what the underlying doctrines here denote. They excuse their ignorance by saying that they have adopted a pragmatic attitude. This pragmatic approach is oftentimes misleading and biased, especially when it comes to the interpretation of political facts.¹

Driven into a network of concepts and categories, we need to develop the habit of demanding their definitions, unless we want to be completely confused and at a loss. It is especially urgent now when different political allies are all too eager to name any behavior an expression of freedom and demand that it be safeguarded by way of state legislation; when political correctness actually removes from the social sphere what was once called traditional and moral; and, eventually, when tolerance, specifically understood, in fact reduces our freedom by banning certain manifestations of our liberty.²

In terms of philosophical inspiration, European liberalism is typically traced back to two main sources. One of them is French rationalism and the other is British empiricism. I think we need to add yet one more that goes beyond rationalism and empiricism to the great traditions of Christianity—to Saint Augustine and the natural-law tradition. Philosophy has called it personalism. Rationalism and empiricism evolved the idea of ego-cogito, the individual; personalism developed a concept of the person. Rationalism and empiricism brought an end to Aristotelian qualitative physics and ensured a quantitative investigation of the world, thereby pushing it on the path of technological and industrial progress.

Now personalism grounded European civilization on the dignity of the human person, the priority of the person over institutions, and the priority of society over the state. These are the values with which European liberalism is imbued as well; they permeated it at various stages of its development. The dignity of the human person is rooted in both philosophical and religious traditions. As for the philosophical tradition, let it suffice to mention Kant with his time-honored claim that we should never use another person as only a means to an end.³ Christianity (on which I shall concentrate throughout this article) teaches us that people were created by God in his image and after his likeness; they committed a sin of disobedience for which they were deprived of their harmonious communing with God; they were then redeemed by the Son of God, and may repent for their sins and hope for everlasting life with God. Philosophy says that human beings are free and rational, contingent and erroneous; by the use of their natural abilities they may arrive at certainty in the course of methodical (scientific, universal, and objective) procedures and investigate the world as their telos. Religion says that the human being is weak and sinful and must always be in the process of self-transformation. Philosophy helps individuals scrutinize the world, improve it, and make it a better place to live for mankind; religion incites them to cultivate and obey their consciences as their precious God-given gifts and seek their Creator as their ultimate telos. Here, we have the two faces of the same being, so to say, the face of an attentive technician who looks down to earth and a caring steward who looks up to heaven. Philosophy takes the person in his or her natural endowment; religion encourages him or her to transcend it and enter into communication with God through faith. There are some who claim that it suffices for a person to be merely a technician, and there are others who say that it is not enough: People must be both technicians and stewards.

Therefore, there are representatives in the tradition of liberal thinkers who stress that although there cannot be any conflation or mingling between the two spheres—natural and supernatural—on the political level, yet, nevertheless, they can, or even should, be integrated in the human person. Some contemporary writers call it “a healthy strand of liberalism … compatible with a theological tradition of reckoning with our status as creatures.”⁴ They enumerate adherents of this strand, starting from its founders down to the present time, Edmund Burke, Lord Acton, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Henry Newman, Frédéric Bastiat, or today Michael Novak. They all belong to the so-called liberal-conservative or liberal-Catholic branch of the liberal tree that sought to heal the modern breach. This branch holds that the rational human being not only can, but for his or her own sake, should be religious, and the economic human being moral. It was so natural for these authors to view the person in his or her integrity, as both rational technicians transforming the world and profound believers, deeply rooted in Christianity that informed all spheres of their life. In fact, only by virtue of this intrinsic coalescence could they find their true freedom.

In spite of this, our situation today resembles, in a way, that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when religious wars raged throughout Europe. It was then that some people harbored the idea, to be later reinforced by the French Revolution, that once religion was erased from public life they would establish peace. Contemporary terrorism perhaps lends support to similar resentments because it often resorts to religious rhetoric, finding there a good excuse (fighting against infidels) for its inhuman acts of violence.⁵ Some authors make hasty generalizations and charge religion to be the main culprit. Soon we are frightened by apocalyptic visions: a war of worlds, a clash of civilizations, and the like. Politicians cling to such concepts and prepare themselves to save societies by disposing them of their customs, traditions, and religious beliefs. Someone who is frightened usually expects to be relieved of their fear, regardless of the costs. If I may borrow a term from chemistry, such helpers are intent on neutralizing societies. They naїvely believe that once we attain the composition of an anonymous crowd, rationally organized, we shall have social peace. This anonymity is taken to absurd levels, where individuals are taught not to identify themselves with anything, where they resemble a nameless group. Meanwhile, the opposite is true. An anonymous crowd finds it very difficult to exercise its freedom, as there are no points of reference according to which free choices can be evaluated by something from outside.⁶ Because these choices are not expected to be evaluated, they become meaningless. This situation breeds boredom and boredom is the sister of nihilism and nihilism is the enemy of life. Naturally, the person does not only want to choose what is better for him or herself but also what is good (decent). An anonymous crowd is waiting for someone to give them hope, for a duce, a führer, a leader who would take them into a blissful Arcadia.

Another false idea propounded by Rousseau was that the persons in their natural state, that is, in the prepolitical state, are perfect. It is civilization that has reviled them. Therefore, we need to remove all artificial obstacles to create an ideal community. This community is governed by one general will, a line of thinking to be later continued by nineteenth-century utopian socialists. Individual wills revolt; therefore, we need to blend them into one, teach them to give up their individualities and their private properties.⁷

The article seeks to denounce some popular views that look upon the person as a territory of constant revolt and insurmountable clashes. They can be summarized as follows: church-state separation means opposition; state neutrality should read secularism; what is rational cannot be religious; the modern liberal state is of its nature atheistic. Let us therefore tackle, face to face, the old stereotype that the modern world can be either free, rational, and secular, or unfree, irrational, and religious.

Point of Departure

Modernity in philosophy, as is well known, started when Descartes proclaimed his intellectual manifesto: He decided to base his opinions on a foundation wholly his own,⁸ remove from his mind anything that was doubtful as useless obstacles, distrust the testimony of his senses, and rely only on those ideas that were clear and distinct. People were thought to be free when they were rational, that is, taken to ideas that could produce enough evidence in the mind, that had the greatest force of persuasion. Religion, as it seemed, did not have to satisfy this criterion. The French philosopher, who himself was a very religious man, calmed our fears when he wrote: “The revealed truths which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to subject them to the impotency of my reason.”⁹

Unfortunately, both Descartes and later British empiricists were bound by their own postulate: Indeed, the revealed truths were beyond human comprehension, but whether they were revealed or not it was for human reason to decide. The successive developments of philosophy are marked by this dilemma: To whom shall we submit—either to our reason, or to something external (be that a person, authority, power, or God); shall we submit to something that is beyond the natural power of our comprehension? Kant radicalized the rational claim by evolving even morality from the depths of the human mind. Thus, an autonomous individual was born with his negative freedom—a lone demiurge limited only by the power of his own reason and its product (the law).

The fact that the cognitive (epistemological) perspective appeared in modernity does not mean that the metaphysical perspective disappeared. It is true that in premodern times they went hand in hand. Christian thinkers were well aware that various objects of investigation called for different tools, but faith and reason were two aspects of the same being. Modernity seemed to have broken this unity, but, of itself, it is not unanimous, and we find here similar attempts to regain the previous unity. Faith and reason went on their individual journeys but were part and parcel of the same human person. John Paul II put it poetically in his superb encyclical Fides et ratio: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”¹⁰

If religious truths are incomprehensible, we should not pretend they are comprehensible and embark on reducing them to common problems. Unlike the mental ideas derived from experience, we may embrace the revealed truths but not without a specific preparation and premeditation. We do not have to doubt everything in order to arrive at certainty anew in a methodical and scientific manner. There are some contents in our minds that appeal to us not with their clearness or distinctness but also not without a force capable of evoking in us a sense of duty. We are obliged to obey, to follow, and to submit to them rather than weigh and consider (as we normally do in the case of intellectual ideas). Otherwise, we might be watching intellectual ideas as if they were shown on a screen, picking this or that, yet remaining in the state of indecision. It is only when an idea coexists with a moral obligation on the part of the knowing subject (with his or her assent to it) that a person is ready to act as a free and responsible being. This is how the certainty of ideas is accommodated with the certitude of persons.¹¹ Such is the specific nature of religious and moral ideas. If something is revealed, it is not to be found in the course of a discovery. Anyhow, not in the same way as a discovery in the natural sciences. The spheres of religion and morality (i.e., the spheres of the concrete) are too idiosyncratic for scientific reason to penetrate.

In view of this, what kind of rationality should a modern state promote? The one that keeps religious matters away from public discourse? Is it to be rationally organized according to the kind of rationality as comprehended by rationalism? Whose state is it then? If we take this narrow view of rationality (propounded by rationalism), we are obviously satisfied with the technical control of the world. Nevertheless, we soon find out that in the case of human freedom (which we obviously allow for) a mere multiplication of rules, order, and bans does not work. We know also from experience that humans are not always rational in this narrow sense, that is, acting on evidential proofs, for very often they act on faith, even in daily matters. Nevertheless, their beliefs, their motivations to act, may reach the level of certitude, though evidence is lacking. What is more, given evidences, a person may still doubt whether he or she should act accordingly. This is possible when it comes to the revealed truths, morality, and conscience; here we are in the realm of internal illumination—“personal result”—something that does not have to be presented in the form of a logical proof.¹² Cartesian cogito with its power of ratiocination is not the person, let alone the whole person. To say that rationalism entirely exhausts the notion of human rationality is preposterous and amounts to making this rationality an ideology, notwithstanding the fact that Marx, to boost his socialism and distinguish it from its utopian counterpart, called it scientific.

In the context of modernity, we can draw some very important conclusions. The first one says that no other will should force me to accept a certain kind of thinking or acting, as this would amount to coercion and authoritarianism, and I can only assent to what my mind is ready to accept. I am a sovereign of the mental endowment of my mind—this is, briefly speaking, a definition of negative freedom and the principle of laissez-faire. A significant import of modernity is the concept of autonomy, which stresses that no one should impose on others what they are supposed to do. The only acceptable form of coercion is abidance by the law, which is general and universally binding (no one is exempted from its rules, unless he or she is deprived of civic rights). With respect to religious truths, the second conclusion would read that they should be interiorized and turned into living principles that move one from within. This is what Newman understood by the word realize—to know a truth and act accordingly.¹³ This truth must become my own, a postulate that I gather to be also a characteristic development of various trends of modernity.¹⁴ It is accepted in a different way than the scientific one, that is obvious, but it must be my own—a living principle—albeit not like a scientific concept. Thus, religious knowledge is unlike theoretical knowledge, although it does presume some theoretical basis. Because it disposes one to right action, it may help in the concrete, as it informs persons’ consciences, and—given various opportunities—enables them to choose the right one. To be precise, the “right one” in this context may not mean objectively right, but—first of all—such that does not oppose conscience. A well-informed conscience does not engulf us within an egoistic perspective but opens us to others. “The crucial point is that modern liberty,” writes Holmes, “cannot be described in a privative fashion. It is not freedom from society, but rather freedom in society.”¹⁵ Law is general, persons are concrete, and their circumstances are always concrete. Apart from being able to make his or her sovereign decisions, the person needs to know what decisions to make as a human being living with others.

What is the relationship of liberalism to all these philosophical queries? One of the contemporary political philosophers wrote that liberalism was a theory of politics, not a theory of man.¹⁶ Liberalism is therefore connected with praxeology (practice)—to use Mises’s term—rather than with theory. One should not wonder, then, that it does need religion and morality, or at least should never exclude them if they are significant dimensions of acting persons. It is a certain practice of dealing with social matters. Instead of defining an overall goal for a society to attain, it satisfies itself with providing merely a structural framework within which each member may pursue his or her own goal, on the one hand, and protects the cultivation of all the natural ties, customs, and traditions on the other.

As a political doctrine … liberalism is not neutral with regard to values and the ultimate ends sought by action. It assumes that all men or at least the majority of people are intent upon attaining certain goals. It gives them information about the means suitable to the realisation of their plans.¹⁷

The reason for this is that no institution (such as the state) is capable of defining one general goal for the society at large.¹⁸ The state may define such a goal, but then it would never be something that each member can accept freely as her or his own goal. Individuals are complex and varied and tend to heterogeneity; states tend to generality and homogeneity.¹⁹ Should a state seek to determine a goal for a nation, clashes would always be an inevitable result, for it is unimaginable for every member of a free society to rely exactly on one goal.

Another practical point here, crucial for liberalism, says that it is far better and more prosperous to allow people to follow their own goals than to make them carry out such that are imposed on them from without. Individual pursuits are harmonized into one whole, one social body by the overall legal structure. In a liberal state, individuals are allowed to establish their own associations, possess private property, engage in economic activity, formulate their opinions, criticize their governments, pursue their customs and hold to their religious beliefs. The laissez-faire principle primarily pertained to economic activity, but, on a broader reading, we can interpret it as: Let a people be, and by virtue of this reading the state is subservient to a society of persons. Therefore Mises rightly notices:

Liberalism is based upon a purely rational and scientific theory of social cooperation.… It would, however, be a serious mistake to conclude that the sciences of human action and the policy derived from their teachings, liberalism, are antitheistic and hostile to religion. They are radically opposed to all systems of theocracy. But they are entirely neutral with regard to religious beliefs which do no pretend to interfere with the conduct of social, political and economic affairs.²⁰

Mises’s formulation: “a purely rational and scientific theory of social cooperation” concerns, above all, political institutions, not the subjects of this cooperation who are never purely rational and scientific. Obviously, as an economist, the author had in mind the free market and free economy in general—important components of liberalism—which of course cannot be theocratic. The free market as a tool is neither moral or immoral.²¹ Those who use it fill it with morality or immorality. The author indirectly suggests that the sources of morality are somewhere else. The sciences of human action are not hostile to religion, nor—let us add—lead to it, for the decisions made in faith by the human beings are not like conclusions in the chains of logical reasoning. Liberalism therefore does not pretend to explain humans, let alone make their life sensible, for that would be usurping. It only relies on the knowledge about people, and its goals are much more modest.

There is yet one more important conclusion that can be drawn from the above statements. Because liberalism is not a theory but a kind of praxis, a political doctrine by which to arrange political and social life, it does not propose any morality, metaphysics, or anthropology; therefore, it must rely on other sources of morality, metaphysics, and anthropology. Indeed mention has already been made that there are authors in the tradition of conservative-liberal and Catholic-liberal thinking who claim that although liberalism is not founded on any particular morality, conditions must be provided for society itself to cultivate morality. The liberal state assumes what Insole calls “a principled neutrality on theological matters.”²² In other words, society must be filled with morality to carry out liberal goals, that is, to live the life of free and mature human beings.

We are thus ever involved in the struggle between the homogenizing activity of the state and its institutions on the one hand, and the individualizing activity of our persons. The state needs a compact community that is easier to govern. Society, on its part, is always on the lookout for individual expressions that elude stereotypes and clichés that are not derived from without but from within, and, last but not least, may freely join or leave its communities. This special tension, this fervent quest after one’s own identity in the context of bureaucratic attempts to classify, group, and order is typical of modern times. We vacillate between, so to say, Leibnitzean monads, or as some say atomistic individuals, and a kind of participatory communities.²³ History of political philosophy calls it a liberal-communitarian dilemma.

As we have said, the liberal state does not promote one binding morality, but it does not break with it. A society within its borders must be firmly grounded on values, because a free state is as strong as its active and creative society. In a liberal state, stress is laid on society. A state is strong by the strength of its nation.²⁴ There seems to be no way out: either we want to be free and virtuous or seriously limited in the exercise of our freedom. The law is general, concrete circumstances are individual, so how we behave in the concrete depends so much on who we are as persons. It is crucial for the human person, about which we shall be writing in the following paragraph, to be buttressed by the overarching legal structure that help this person to orient himself or herself in the general, and on the moral-religious values that are road signs in the concrete. This line of liberal inquiries is typical of the liberal-conservative or liberal-Catholic branch.

The Fundamental Dichotomies

Our reflection so far may have brought us to a conclusion that the history of philosophy can be viewed as a history of dichotomies. I think that liberalism is a good illustration, because it may be seen as a playground of dichotomies. Let us enumerate a few of them: ancient–modern; the City of God–the City of Man; individual–social; moral–intellectual; religious–secular; positive–negative; and, perchance the most significant of all dichotomies, faith–reason.

The first dichotomy is well known, among other things, from the writ-ings of Benjamin Constant and Lord Acton, and was characteristic of liberal-conservative analyses in which nineteenth-century authors compared ancient times with modern times, usually with a touch of nostalgia for the former and disapproval of the latter. Ancient times were therefore considered to be governed by civic virtues and responsibility for the community. Modern times, on the contrary, were regarded as utilitarian and mundane, when people concentrated on commerce and production, disregarding more spiritual pursuits.²⁵ Cardinal Newman even wrote that ancient people were “in most respects … as unlike us, as beauty is unlike utility” and had “an innate perception of the beautiful and true.”²⁶ This somewhat idealistic view of the ancients is a recurring topic in the authors who are critical of the negative trends in modern developments such as materialism, atomistic individualism, and relativism.²⁷

The dialectic between the City of God and the City of Man (the Invisible City vs. the Earthly City or the City of Jerusalem vs. the City of Babylon) refers to the well-known Augustianian eschatology. The saint bishop of Hippo viewed people as belonging to two orders. One is limited, contingent, and imperfect in which they arrive, after strenuous effort, at a certain knowledge with the use of their natural endowment (reason, logical thinking, and experiment). This knowledge is never perfect. We are simply describing here the condition of a fallen humanity. The fallen and, consequently, sinful humans whose knowledge is thus limited and faulty should draw thereof a lesson of humbleness. The visible world in which one lives is not one’s ultimate telos but only a means to gain the world to come; as fallen humans, they should never usurp to hold an absolute power, nor should they treat anyone except God as their absolute sovereign. The contemporary political order is merely a means to reach one’s ultimate goal, that is, salvation. Therefore, we should not expect from the physical world and its political order too much, as if they were the end of our hopes. In view of this, Novak calls Saint Augustine “the father of political realism.”²⁸ Insole, while dwelling on the relationship between the (invisible) Church and the (visible) world, says that there is “no visible division of the world into good and evil.”²⁹ We have to wait until the end of times for the final emergence and victory of good. This process cannot be accelerated by, for example, stamping out all the evildoers. Hence, Saint Augustine would also be against theocracy.

The second (invisible) order, perfect and supernatural, is reached by the power of our spirit. It is the target of one’s indefatigable yearning that no earthly pursuits could replace; it cannot be tested, validated or invalidated, or proved or disapproved by scientific means. Thus, the invisible order should never be reduced to the visible one and treated accordingly, that is, as if it could be reached by virtue of merely human endeavours, let us say a well-organized society, an ideal community.³⁰ The borderline between the two orders is hidden before human eyes—it runs through one’s heart. Humans alone in their hearts decide which world they want to belong to. This division is echoing Christ’s counsel: “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Matt. 22:21).

The borderline between the two cities is, so to say, a setting of the drama of our freedom with the human person as its main actor, for it is the human person who integrates the two orders (while using the one and striving after the other) by attaching to them their due weight. There are no external standards, although there is an abundance of examples, witnesses, and salutary narratives. What is thus acquired, however, must be lived through in individual lives.

The invisible city, like hardly anything else, eludes force or political manipulations. Indeed it is the true area of our freedom. The only thing any (visible) state can do is to allow people to follow their religion; cultivate their customs; and, thereby, facilitate their work of integration and abstain from transposing the political games onto the City of God. This potent drive after the invisible world, after God, is so natural that any denial of it cannot be made without much harm to human beings themselves. In this sense, the apparent hostility of the state-church separation becomes a fruitful cooperation that comes down to a practical principle: Let the two cities follow their individual lines of development.³¹

There remains one more essential point to be underlined. Keeping the two orders apart, yet in a fruitful combination, saves us from a complete deadlock into which we necessarily fall when we demand political freedom, on the one hand, and expect people to act decently, on the other. This demand is natural. Otherwise living in a free state would turn unbearable. Such a state will either have to resort to coercive measures, or run amok in chaos. The free state, of necessity, provides only the overall framework within which human beings must act honestly if the whole is to persevere.

Here comes the moral-intellectual dichotomy. Cartesian cogito distanced itself from morality, as it focused mainly on clear and distinct ideas of the mind. The human person seeks to unite the two dimensions in one being. We are not only scientists engaged in a quest after evidences and a technological transformation of the world, we are also moral beings who judge acts, the external world, and the mental endowment of our minds. In other words, the ideas that we possess are, as we have said, not only clear or distinct, they are also good or bad. John Henry Newman wrote in his Sermons:

The human mind … may be regarded from two principal points of view, as intellectual and as moral. As intellectual, it apprehends truth; as moral, it apprehends duty. The perfection of the intellect is called ability and talent; the perfection of our moral nature is virtue. And it is our great misfortune here, and our trial, that, as things are found in the world, the two are separated, and independent of each other; that, where power of intellect is, there need not be virtue; and that where right, and goodness, and moral greatness are, there need not be talent.³²

The main difficulty here is that once this separation sets in our minds we find it very difficult to follow what we have apprehended as intellectually true. We simply distance ourselves from ideas, be they clear and distinct, because we have failed to assent to them as morally good or evil, that is, morally obliging. Consequently, we start to live under the illusion that social life is merely a game in which the players bear no responsibility for their decisions. What is supposed to persuade them that they should act according to the truth they have recognised and in such a way that they do not feel coerced? How are they to respect the law, keep the contracts, or revere human life? It is by way of their moral nature manifested in conscience that they are able to do it, since conscience is a reality that transcends the natural order of things. Again let us dwell on Newman’s apt remarks:

[Conscience is] not a mere sentiment, not a mere opinion, or impression, or view of things, but a law, an authoritative voice, bidding him do certain things and avoid others. I do not say that its particular injunctions are always clear, or that they are always consistent with each other; but what I am insisting on here is this, that it commands, that it praises, it blames, it promises, it threatens, it implies a future, and it witnesses the unseen. It is more than a man’s self. The man himself has not power over it, or only with extreme difficulty; he did not make it, he cannot destroy it. He may silence it in particular cases or directions, he may distort its enunciations, but he cannot, or it is quite the exception if he can, he cannot emancipate himself from it. He can disobey it, he may refuse to use it; but it remains.³³

The integral human persons (intellectual and moral) in themselves “[witness] the unseen.” The visible is not to be mingled with the invisible on the political level, but it is fused together in the person, who is thus called to treat his or her life as a vocation, as a duty to fulfil. Conscience reveals one’s sovereignty, the innermost areas of impenetrable being wherein one is master of one’s life, but at the same time experiences the fallenness (contingency) of one’s being. Therefrom, some practical conclusions are to be drawn: the limitation of power, dignity for the human person, respect for the current law, respect for customs and traditions, humbleness in proposing one’s views, and so forth—all of these virtues are very dear to a free state. Hence, Insole writes:

The visible Church is called always to approach the invisible, not by self-righteously declaring its having arrived, but by witnessing constantly to the already-but-not-yet reality of the Kingdom, manifested by our awareness of both our frailty and fallenness alongside our calling to perfection and redemption.³⁴

There is something in the heart of political liberalism that he calls “the theological insight,” namely “that for theological reasons public power should not be used to save souls.”³⁵ Neither, let us add, should public power be used to dissuade people from seeking their salvation. There are many crucial spheres of political life where religion brings supportive insights; for example, nobody should aspire to hold absolute power, honesty in business, and decency in the world of the free media. These things function when the faithful take courage to be witnesses rather than mere formal (often scrupulous) advocates of religious tenets. Going deeper into the innermost heart of one’s religion does not cause isolation but brings one back into a more harmonious community with one’s fellow citizens.

Taking all this into consideration, I think the dichotomies described here are natural and complimentary rather than self-exclusive. We shall never be freed from them, and we cannot dispense of them by political means. We shall always face the task of harmonizing them in our daily pursuits. From the Christian point of view, therefore, there is nothing that can be called purely mundane or purely spiritual as long as we are human beings.

Two Ethics or Two Pillars of Modernity

Now I would like to consider three authors who proposed an integrated view of liberalism (modernity) in which dichotomies are not separating but uniting. My intention was to give a kind of overarching view, starting from the eighteenth century and ending at the present time; therefore, I would like to consider Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, and Ágnes Heller.

If we look back at the origins of free economy, we shall find there that its founding father embedded his concept of self-interest and the invisible hand of the free market within moral considerations. This moral aspect is called the impartial spectator. It was so crucial for Smith that one may, without making a mistake, say that no free-market economy can succeed without a working concept of the impartial spectator: regard for another person, obedience to conscience, or God. Smith’s view of the free market is thus not purely utilitarian or materialistic, because he propounds a complex view of happiness.³⁶ According to this view, the individual will never be satisfied with his or her success in entrepreneurial activity if this success is achieved with attendant suffering of others. The surveying eye of the impartial spectator is never tired of watching us. The intellectual and the moral perspectives have thus been united.

Smith seems to be well aware that we are not only purely rational and calculating beings, but that we are, above all, moral beings with a vivid internal experience of good and evil. This internal voice of reprobation, when we commit evil, or of reward, when we do good things, should never be hushed. The impartial spectator enables us to transcend our self-interest; thereby it may also be treated as a factor of social solidarity by which a more harmonious coexistence with others can be accomplished. Our moral nature is therefore not lulled to sleep once we get involved in economic activity, establish associations, or work in the free press, because moral and intellectual spheres should live under one roof—to use Newman’s metaphor.

Another attempt to heal the modern breach and reconcile dichotomies comes from the works of Frédéric Bastiat, a French political writer. In his acclaimed essay entitled The Law he writes: “We hold from God the gift that for us includes all other gifts: life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.”³⁷ It is noteworthy that for this liberal writer the theological perspective was not only natural but was also the foundation of human sovereignty. We are brought back to the suburbs of the City of God. As human beings, we have been endowed, entrusted with gifts for which we are responsible. Now, any political system (from the City of Man) should serve our proper stewardship.

As with Saint Augustine, Adam Smith, John Henry Newman, and other liberal-conservative writers, Bastiat also notices this twofold character of our human nature. We live in this world, use it as best we can, and use it for some purposes. The given world is neither our ultimate telos, nor is it a meaningless place. Contrary to social reformers intent on making the world an ideal place to live in, or to improve human beings by political measures, Bastiat proposes a certain ontological approach (i.e., goes beyond the mere modern epistemological perspective), namely, to rely on who we are, for we have been enabled by God to manage the gifts we have received from him.

We say that this force exists within society, and that God has put it there. If it were not already there, we should be reduced, like the utopians, to resorting to artificial means for producing it, by arrangements that would require the preliminary alteration of the physical and moral constitution of man; or rather, we should consider the effort to produce such a force useless and vain, because we cannot understand how a lever can operate without a fulcrum. 38

We are neither purely intellectual (rational), nor purely moral. We are human beings—not reliable mechanisms or perfect angels. To provide a comprehensive description, the French philosopher comes up with his two systems of ethics: religious (philosophical) ethics and utilitarian ethics. These two systems, and that is extremely important for our considerations, do not contradict each other but concur in their conclusions.³⁹

Religious ethics addresses itself to people in their active roles, to their hearts. Its decrees aim at forming persons’ consciences, order them to do good and avoid evil, love their neighbor, be disinterested, and take up the work of self-transformation ever anew. The utilitarian (economic) system of ethics (also called defensive) addresses itself to a person in his or her passive role. It seeks “not to persuade, but to convince … gives, not counsel, but proofs” and its mission is “not to arouse, but to enlighten [it] wins over evil no other victory than that of denying its sustenance.…⁴⁰

These two systems concur to bring about appropriate results, as Smith’s invisible hand and impartial spectator. Free economy, by its definition, is conducted by individuals in concrete circumstances, individuals who are free to make choices not imposed by states or perfectly planned systems. Therefore, it is so vital to put these individuals on firm foundations.

Let us welcome, … the concurrent action of moral philosophy properly so called and political economy—the one stigmatizing the evil deed in our conscience by exposing it in all its hideousness, and the other discrediting it in our judgement by the description of its effects.

And further:

These two systems of ethics, instead of engaging in mutual recriminations, should be working together to attack evil at each of its poles. While the economists are doing their work—opening the eyes of the credulous, uprooting prejudices, arousing justifiable and necessary mistrust of every type of fraud, studying and describing the true nature of things and actions—let the religious moralist, on his part, perform his more agreeable, but more difficult, task. Let him engage in hand-to-hand combat with iniquity; let him pursue it in the most secret recesses of the human heart; let him depict the delights of benevolence, self-denial, and self-sacrifice; let him tap the springs of virtue where we can but dry up the springs of vice—that is his task.⁴¹

The two systems of ethics are yet another attempt to overcome the rationalist ego-cogito perspective and to bring back to the human mind its lost moral dimension. The human person is expected to tackle reality as a whole—as an intellectually prepared subject and a morally mature personality. These two aspects of a “broadened rationality”⁴²—such that is not alienated and engulfed in the conceptual endowments of scientific reason [ratio]—are especially dear to Ágnes Heller, a contemporary political philosopher. She has coined the notion of two pillars of the modern ethical world. Let us quote a passage from her writing:

The modern ethical world stands on these two fragile pillars, on pillars placed upon men created foundations. One of them should remain solid enough to maintain and to promote political and social justice, whereas the other must be firm enough to serve as a crutch for individuals to conduct a decent way of life. There is no modern ethics from which one or the other are missing. It depends on the message of philosophies, better to say on their own temporary or tentative foundations, whether justice or ethical good enjoys priority, but in modern life there is no priority.⁴³

The two pillars support the building of modernity. Neither can be removed unless we risk the collapse of the whole. The authors we have discussed so far understood well that the conditio sine qua non for the human person as a whole to develop is that there must be conditions under which the two aspects of our being may be cultivated: theoretical knowledge (the area of apprehension) and practical conduct (the area of virtue). If political economy is disregarded, and we resort to socialist solutions, the outcome is poverty; if virtue is belittled and becomes merely another topic for discussion, society becomes corrupted, immoral, and turns to chaos. Because religion lends support to morality, what is more, it is the foundation on which morality may grow, it cannot be absent from public life. Otherwise there is no point in talking about an integral human being, and there is no hope for the contemporary world.

Voicing Religious Concerns in a Secular State

The subtitle is somewhat provocative, because the liberal state should neither be secular nor religious in the sense that political institutions take over the functions of religious institutions, or religious institutions take over the function of political institutions. The Catholic liberal writers have confirmed separation of the two spheres, and rightly so. The liberal state, however, should not as a rule exclude religion from public debate—not only because that would contradict the principle of political liberty, which allows for pluralism and diversity—but because its primary task is to provide a structural framework for anything that is dear to a free society. The two cities are kept apart, but it is not the state’s task to decide in which one free people are supposed to live. They do not encroach on a foreign land as long as they remain in their respective area. Therefore, the Church does not exceed its authority when it voices concerns about some political measures, or judges some steps taken as immoral. On the contrary, it would simply imitate the state if it did not do so and have no corrective role for society.

Having the integral human person in view as our point of reference, there are no purely secular or purely religious spheres. They are mutually supportive. What difference does it make from the practical point of view if I abstain from a certain kind of action because I consider it illegal or sinful? Externally, judging from the outcome, the result is the same.

Meanwhile, there is a general tendency to adopt the narrow view of rationality, turn shy of religion, and shrink from manifesting religious duties, as if they were only matters for discussion, not principles to follow. Such attitudes have much to do with the way people treat the formation of their consciences. The result is obvious—moral chaos—one pillar of modernity becomes shaky, and the impartial spectator is hardly heard. John Henry Newman expresses his critical remarks:

Now it is plain how little the mass of men aim at taking their standard of things, or seeking a blessing on what they do, from religion.… If they defend a measure publicly, or use persuasion in private, they are obliged to conceal or put aside the motives which one should hope do govern them, and they allege others inferior—nay, worldly reasons—reasons drawn from policy, or expedience, or common-sense … or prudence.⁴⁴

The result of this is that there are many formal believers but few witnesses; the two pillars overlap, and the whole system becomes unsteady. Religion has become an encumbrance on the political level, and some ludicrous arguments have been circulated; for example, there is no place for religion in the modern state, religion is contradictory to liberalism, or religion is a hindrance and limitation to freedom (as if we have ever been granted absolute freedom). Is it not curious that it was so natural for the classical liberal writers, the founders of European liberalism, to approve of the vital role of religion in human life, in fact something without which people cannot be free, whereas many self-proclaimed liberal critics of today find it problematic?

People are responsible stewards in this God-given world—reads a Catholic-liberal claim. In what sense is it contradictory to scientific enunciations? If I insist that the world is a gift from God, how can my belief be disapproved by way of scientific methods? Because we cannot do that, the argument may be pushed further: Anything we do may be viewed from the religious perspective. The world is given, so it is good for us, and there is no other world to live in. We have to use what we have and what we are with God’s help. This is also the best remedy against any political systems designed to improve nature.

As prudent stewards “we must spiritualize this world” says Newman.⁴⁵ The world is spiritualized not by political measures but by responsible witnesses who seriously take on their daily duties. State institutions therefore cannot usurp the role of spiritualizers. To spiritualize the world means also to give a moral assent of our persons to the intellectual ideas of our minds. In other words, it is to treat our daily tasks as our vocation. It is humanity itself, in its everyday life that can play the role that can be an element of integration of the two cities when people take their everyday duties (as a father, a teacher, or a businessman) as their vocation. We are supposed “to conquer the world, [be] either master or slave.”⁴⁶ Only masters, self-possessed and self-governed beings, can be sovereigns in a political system. Religion seems to be also the best safeguard of our liberty and progress. Now we understand better Michael Novak’s diagnosis:

Without the background embrace of a strong moral structure, such that people will not do some things that the law would permit them to do, out of deference to supervening moral principles of a transcendent nature, a free economy is likely to self-destruct. For those individuals with no fear of the law and no allegiance to any moral code deeper than the written law will seek advantage after advantage, force others to take defensive actions, and bring the whole system into contempt.⁴⁷

In a free state, much room for individual decisions is left, an example of which is free economy that is unlike the centrally planned system. Therefore, whenever there is a failing element in such a political system, it is always human. Thus, we have come back to what we have said before: A free state is strong by the strength of its society; society is strong by the strength of its individual members. Only then do we have the right to talk about free human beings and free states as the best places of their development.

If we are to be serious participants of the political scene, to be subjects of the political discourse, we must be allowed to voice our religious concerns or to approach the social matters from the position of our faith. One cannot leave religion outside and pretend to be someone else. As we have said, liberalism is not hostile to religion, and there cannot be any contradiction between religious truths and science. In case we find things that seem to be contradictory, they may turn out only apparently so, hence this should rather make us rethink our premises.⁴⁸

Fundamentalism, religious or secular, is not the result of the modern breach in the first place, rather it should be ascribed to the fact that we have been accustomed to thinking that the breach cannot be healed: that we have to escape either to premodern or postmodern solutions. The crucial point, however, is not to escape but to tame and integrate the dissipated world, standing firmly on our natural endowments: reason, free will, and conscience; and knowing that the borderline between the City of God and the City of Man is not a battlefield of insurmountable conflicts.

Conclusion

So far, we have been discussing the question of secularization in the context of the concept of liberalism developed by the representatives of the so-called liberal-conservative or Catholic-liberal school. They hold, on the one hand, that people should be granted political liberty to engage in economy (the free market, private property, competition, the free media, and free associations) and, on the other, that they should stand on a firm moral foundation (religion, tradition, and fellowship). These two words: granted and stand are of great significance and need to be emphasized. Usually, we are granted something by someone else, we expect something from another party; we stand on our own. Therefore, we are entitled to be granted political liberty by the state, but the state alone is incapable of teaching us how this liberty should be exercised. It is only when the two dimensions are combined that a citizen of the contemporary state is able to overcome the modern breach in which intellect and will, knowledge and morality went their separate ways. This is also the underlying thesis of what Michael Novak called moral ecology with its basic elements: cultural humility, truth, the dignity of the individual person, and solidarity.

The dichotomies of modern times may be resolved by people who have thus been granted (political and religious) liberty. The division into negative and positive liberty is incorporated in the individual person as one synthesized experience. In other words, we can say: State institutions often multiply dichotomies, but persons harmonize them. Harmonizing and overcoming dichotomies is the task proper to active human beings. It is in the human person that such oppositions as secular-religious and rational-irrational gain a deeper dimension.⁴⁹

I think secularism fits in well with the ideology of political correctness. As rationalism becomes an ideology superimposed on rationality, in the same manner secularism becomes an ideology superimposed on the secular. As such, it is helpless to promote a free and virtuous society:

Secularism, … seems to have no corrective for a whole society’s rapid slide into decadence—on the part of the massive, world-wide entertainment industry, for instance. It appears to have no answer to moral relativism. Committed to being (or seeming to be) “nonjudgemental,” secularism seems to apply no brake to cultural and moral decline, and it boasts few capacities for cultural reawakening, conversion, and renewal.⁵⁰

Christianity has always introduced the transcendental touch to any political system. The sense of this touch is the message that no system is perfect, nor should anyone seek perfection in it, every human power is limited, and our knowledge is limited. The human being as an individual belongs to the political sphere; the human being as a person infinitely transcends the political sphere. Therefore, he or she needs a harmonious coexistence of both. People participate in political and economic life armed with morality whose sources go beyond that sphere. They belong to the domains of faith and religion that permeate the spheres of customs and culture. Religion, unlike anything else, informs our consciences, thereby supporting our virtuous dealings in the concrete. This is only true when believers themselves are active witnesses, serious adherents to religious tenets in theory and in practice, that is, such that apprehend what they believe and are ready to articulate their religious concerns in public. As the president of the Acton Institute notices:

This is not to say that there is not a political dimension to Christianity, but its primary import is to insist that the State be restrained and curb its appetite for money and power. The Christian message is one that seeks the liberation from arbitrary power and the flourishing of personal holiness in the context of cultural, political, and economic freedom.⁵¹

The state should be neither secular nor religious, for these terms refer to human beings in the first place. Once a state declares itself to be an advocate of the secular or the religious, it inevitably slides into totalitarianism. The state can never be neutral to values; that is obvious. The fact that we punish evildoers by virtue of our written laws means that we publicly acclaim some values. The free state should approve of diversity and pluralism, for this is the breeding ground of a free society. This also means to accept those for whom the City of Man is their ultimate telos, as well as those for whom the City of God is the ultimate telos. Only a free, self-possessing and self-governing people can make such choices. Should a state attempt to “make” people secular or religious, it becomes but a preposterous pretender intent on establishing yet another utopia.

To live well in a free society, … is morally far more demanding than to live in a socialist or traditionalist society. One must reach deep into oneself to find new moral resources. One must summon up initiative. One must take prudent risks and be prepared to lose everything in order to create something new that did not exist before. Only thus is new wealth produced. To be self-governing people in a free society is morally more demanding than to live in subjection under a Communist state or in a traditional dictatorial society.⁵²

Political liberty is a risky thing, for it is based on the uncertainty and unpredictability of human choice, the choice of a finite, fallen, and contingent being. Any political system that is founded on freedom inherits this risk as well. It presumes that society as a composite of interrelated elements—supported by law, religion, and morality—will function properly, but as we cannot order husbands to love and respect their wives, or parents to love their children, there seems to be no third way out but to take the risk. Liberalism, as I understand it, is a special setting for a free, active, and moral society to fill it in with meaning. It is such a society that is capable of apprehending truth and accepting it. There is an encounter of the intellectually prepared mind and a morally mature person.

Notes

1 To make the whole picture complete, we have to add that this attitude of overlapping categorial barriers is also typical of modern developments. It is not only a political phenomenon, but it can also be found in other areas of human intellectual activity. We can observe this happening as numerous disciplines of science come to life, and science itself becomes more and more multidisciplinary. Therefore, it is next to impossible to render all the intricacies of human reality in clear-cut concepts.

2 Is it not curious that Rocco Buttiglione’s public declaration of his religious beliefs was so readily accepted in some circles as antiliberal and a threat to democracy? How spontaneously people have agreed to a new definition of liberalism! Or, to take another example, the French banishment of religious symbols in public life. What has happened with our freedom to be unmolested in our manifestation of faith? Of course, for politicians, it is easier to issue a banishment than encourage people to understand one another. The first measure is easier though naїve and in glaring opposition to liberty; the second one is more tiresome but realistic and in harmony with liberty. Michael Novak warns us in his recent book: “It is an invitation to the disappearance of religion by degrees. First be silent and invisible, then dissolve into the ether.” Then comparing the American arrangement and France, he calls the French system bluntly “the lay naked state” (The Universal Hunger for Liberty, xx).

3 Let us quote it at length here: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as means only” (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. L. W. Beck, in A. I. Melden, ed., Ethical Theories, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1961, 319).

4 Cf. J. Insole, 13.

5 These terrorist recourses to religion are obviously designed to cause perplexity. We find an interesting remark in Ágnes Heller’s text, where she writes: “fundamentalism appears where there are no foundations” (“911, or Modernity and Terror,” Przeglad Polityczny 69 (2005), 70 [I am quoting it from a Polish translation byA. Lipszyc]).

6 This “outside” may denote a system of concepts in one’s mind, or the world in which one finds his or her abode. In the latter sense, our life in the given world is filled with meaning as long as we lay our hopes in the world to come. This hope, obviously, is not to be imposed but manifested.

7 Robert Nisbet describes this situation as follows: “You must entirely refashion a people whom you wish to make free, destroy its prejudices, alter its habits, limit its necessities, root up its vices, purify its desires”(The Quest for Community, 162).

8 R. Descartes, A Discourse on Method: Meditations on the First Philosophy. Principles of Philosophy, (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1984), pt. 2.

9 Ibid., pt. 1.

10 Fides et ratio, 1.

11 A well-known Lockean postulate says that we should not give our assent unless we attain certainty, or else we might grade this assent along the scale of probability. Newman’s refutation of this claim is that if this is true we might never be delivered from the state of indecision.

12 J. H. Newman, An Essay in Aid of Grammar of Assent (New York: Longmans, Green, 1947), 66–67.

13 Ibid., Parochial and Plain Sermons, 1339–40.

14 Michael Novak talks about “individual liberty of conscience” (The Universal Hunger for Liberty, xxiv), that is, the self-governing inner sanctuary of the human person that should never be violated. The demands of conscience are also limiting and restricting, yet this time it is not other-limitation but self-limitation. The liberal writers of the nineteeth century spoke much about the sovereignty of conscience.

15 S. Holmes, The Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 65.

16 Ibid., 222.

17 L. von Mises, Human Action, 154.

18 The fact that state institutions are not allowed to take a stand on religious questions does not mean that such questions are not important (as some people are apt to think), but it means that one can never speak about religious matters from the position of power. We would be in a pitiful condition, however, if we thought that also those who work in institutions can adopt neutrality. On the contrary, the way such institutions work depends much on whether they are managed by people with a well-grounded morality.

19 There are many more areas of homogenizing activity, such as the law (because of its general character), mass production, advertising, and so forth. Living in a state is a never-ending process of losing and regaining individual freedom. Freedom demands activity and vigilance, as we may easily give in to pressing trends and be thus melted into a mass. Describing totalitarianism, Robert Nisbet writes that it was indispensable for the totalitarian design to create the undifferentiated, unattached, [and] atomized mass” (The Quest for Community, 201).

20 L. von Mises, Human Action, 155.

21 See R. Sirico, “Is the Free Market Moral?” an interview with Fr. Sirico (manuscript). In a similar manner Cardinal George Pell writes about democracy that “it is not a good in itself. Its value is instrumental and depends on the vision it serves” (“Is There Only Secular Democracy?” Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 7, no. 2 [2004]: 324). Richard Ekins, however, writes: “the religious must view democracy as intrinsically rather than instrumentally valuable” (“Secular Fundamentalism and Democracy,” Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 8, no. 1 [2005]: 91). I think this apparent contradiction can be resolved if we define the respective viewpoints from which the above statements were formulated. We may treat democracy as a certain mechanism, as a certain potentiality—here we concentrate on how this mechanism is applied by participants of political life (the active view and the instrumental value); we may, however, treat democracy as a certain procedure that is given to us, as a kind of social good (the static view and the intrinsic value).

22 Cf. J. Insole, 155.

23 Ibid., 177.

24 See J. H. Newman, Discussions and Arguments, 326.

25 We have to bear in mind that the decline of social mores in the Victorian epoch was almost proverbial. Now various socialist programs were designed to make up for the hardships of capitalist economy negligent of its moral sources. Catholic liberals, then, would warn against shortcuts in economy that inevitably meant more state intervention and remind of the moral and theological roots of the free economy. They taught that socialism was no remedy. See also an interesting analysis by G. Himmelfarb, The De-moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York: Knopf), 1995.

26 Discussions and Arguments, 326, 327.

27 M. Novak, The Universal Hunger for Liberty (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 102.

28 Ibid., xviii, xxviii.

29 Cf. J. Insole, 82.

30 Saint Augustine’s vision of the two cities fits in well with his view of the hierarchy of love in which only God deserves our unconditional love; we should love other beings for his sake.

31 Analyzing the church-state separation in America, Michael Novak writes: “Such accommodation is to human nature, in both our public and our private roles fully compatible with the functional separation of church and state. The state does not perform the church’s duties. The church does not perform the state’s duties. State is separated from church, but religion is not expelled from society” (The Universal Hunger for Liberty, xx).

32 Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, 5–6.

33 Ibid., 64–65.

34 Cf. J. Insole, 177.

35 Ibid., 77.

36 J. E. Alvey, “The Secret, Natural Theological Foundation of Adam Smith’s Work,” Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 7, no. 2 (2004): 340.

37 F. Bastiat, The Law, in Selected Essays on Political Economy, trans. S. Cain (New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1975), 51.

38 F. Bastiat, Two Systems of Ethics in Economic Sophisms, trans. A. Goddard (New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1975), 149.

39 Ibid., 149.

40 Economic Sophisms, 150–51. This is very much in line with Novak’s claim that politics is corrective; religion is transforming, and “where there is no self-transformation, there is death” (The Universal Hunger for Liberty, xxii). Another interesting thing to note here would be an example of post-Communist countries. Under the circumstances of corruptible systems, people often easily gave in to corruptive scenarios, as there were no systemic precautions against bribery, theft, or denunciation. On the contrary, they were even promoted.

41 Ibid., 151, 153.

42 Heller, The Power of Shame. A Rational Perspective (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 216.

43 Heller, “Ethics in the Contemporary World,” Revista de Filosofia, no. 17 (1993): 10.

44 Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day, 106.

45 Ibid., 109.

46 Ibid., 111.

47 The Universal Hunger for Liberty, 89.

48 I share this belief with Michael Novak, see his book The Universal Hunger for Liberty, 11, 12. Let us quote him at length: “And what we learn in faith cannot contradict what we learn in philosophy. If it seems to, we have to rethink. That principle has been a source of enormous vitality in Western thought” (11).

49 Richard Ekins writes: “It is unsound to simply assert a dichotomy between the secular and rational and the religious and irrational” (“Secular Fundamentalism and Democracy,” Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 8, no. 1 [2005], 87).

50 M. Novak, The Universal Hunger for Liberty, xix.

51 Rev. Robert Sirico, A Free and Virtuous State: An Interview with Rev. Robert Sirico, Manuscript, 13.

52 The Universal Hunger for Liberty, 34.

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