Unservile Catholics
Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy by Jay P. Corrin
University of Notre Dame Press, 2003
(571 pages; $49.95, hardcover)
reviewed by John C. “Chuck” Chalberg
What George Bernard Shaw once gave us, Jay P. Corrin has now partially taken away. It was Shaw who discovered the thing he called the “Chesterbelloc”: the two-headed monster whose targets were the likes of Shaw and his circle of socialists and agnostics. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are the two Catholic intellectuals who figure most prominently in this book, even if they do not figure in quite the same way or wind up at quite the same place. Which turns out to be Corrin’s point—and an important point it is.
Having previously written a book on Chesterton’s and Belloc’s “battle against modernity,” in this book Corrin includes many Catholic writers—and doers—who faced the “challenge of democracy.” Specifically, he examines their search for answers to problems facing industrial democracies. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, this search did not quite turn into one long, grim march toward fascism.
A Middle Way
Corrin begins by reminding his readers that there is “nothing intrinsic to Catholicism itself that precluded support for a liberal, democratic world order.” Fair enough. Then he goes a step further: “The main objective of this study is to give voice to those Catholics . . . who drew from their religious traditions [why the plural?] a liberal and progressive approach to the problems of modern social change.”
The changes he has in mind are essentially economic and political. His immediate concerns are similar to those of the nineteenth-century Catholic thinkers who wrestled first with the rise and increasing power of large-scale industry only to have to come to terms with the counter-rise and power of the modern state. While Pope Leo XIII figures prominently in these pages, Corrin turns first to such lesser-known persons as the Catholic layman Frederic Ozanam, who founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler, who preached against laissez-faire doctrines of absolute property rights.
The stage thus set, Corrin seems primed to tell the story of Catholic intellectual journeys leftward. But what to do with Leo XIII, not to mention Chesterton and Belloc? Once he reaches this point in his story, Corrin starts upon a new path, namely, the Catholic intellectual search for a middle way between right and left. And his heroes turn out to be not just those nineteenth-century Catholics who refused to endorse the monster that was unfettered capitalism, but their twentieth-century counterparts who refused to embrace the monster-in-the-making that was the totalitarian state, whether communist or fascist.
Borrowing from Leo XIII, Chesterton and Belloc defined their third way as “Distributism.” They believed that property and power should be distributed as widely as possible. They also believed that the common man could best lead a fully Christian life in a Distributist society, because such a society best preserved the sanctity of the family, the independence of the church, and the vitality of the local community. In sum, Distributism was less an economic theory than a vision of an entire way of life.
Here the dilemma is less intellectual than practical. Put simply, can such a presumably good idea ever be implemented, and, if so, can it be implemented democratically? Or is Distributism a utopian idea? We all know the terrible history of modern attempts to create a heaven on earth. Witness the late and unlamented history of the Soviet Union.
John C. Chalberg writes from Minnesota.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Catholic from the online archives
35.4—Jul/Aug 2022
The Death Rattle of a Tradition
Contemporary Catholic Thinking on the Question of War by Andrew Latham
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
29.3—May/June 2016
A Deathbed Reflection on Catholic Social Teaching & Our Future Prospects by Karl D. Stephan
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
Speaking Truth About the Sexes Is Not Optional by Anthony Esolen
31.5—September/October 2018
The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity by Andrew Latham
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
