The profitable whirlwind of sensationalistic news and overheated commentary that has given us another “controversy” to gasp and wring our hands at. (Until Tiger Woods releases a sex tape or something like that.) As usual, it is hard to make sense amidst it all.
My intuition is that many of the defenders of religious freedom—including several recent posts by our own Kyle Cupp—are right to scold those who are trying to use this snafu to advance politics of fear and, sometimes, hatred. At the same time, I think that this might also be a missed opportunity for having a serious discussion about what “religious freedom” is.
More controversially, I have found myself in a position that makes me feel a bit squeamish: I think that I might agree with Michael Voris of RealCatholic TV in his (recently deleted) video entitled, “Catholic Government.”
On the surface of his argument, Voris is basically saying that he wishes that power would only be in the hands of people who think the exact same things that he does, those whom he calls “truly Catholic people” and distinguishes from “liberals.” He goes on to argue that the only way to save American democracy will be through a Catholic benevolent monarch, in the style of the Holy Roman Empire that rose out of the barbarism that ensued after the end of the Pax Romana.
He says:
The only way to prevent a democracy from committing suicide is to limit the vote to faithful Catholics. Only a true Catholic nation, in fact, will survive — can survive — because only truly Catholic people will be the ones looking at God and not staring in the mirror. When they cast their votes, they cast them with an eye to what God desires, not fallen human nature.
In other words, Voris is very, very confused at face value. He wants to save democracy from itself by killing it. He wants an America that never was: a Catholic Nation. Furthermore, Voris’ thesis sends a cold chill down the spine when thinking about how, exactly, he would separate the sheep from the goats. I admit it: this is some scary shit, to put it lightly.
But, after the initial shock wears off, I think Voris’ position is more defensible than one might think. In fact, if we flesh the argument out more fully and put it into dialectic with the points raised by defenders of religious freedom, we are forced to realize that “religious freedom” and “theocratic dictatorships” are not mutually exclusive. Tolerant secularism is not inherently secular. It too is a religion, it has its orthodoxies and its congregations and its preachers. And its inquisitions.
The inquisition of the sword and the gas chamber are monstrous and evil. But the inquisition that quietly takes away the responsibility to love without condition and proposes a neutered “freedom” in its place with the intoxicant of “tolerance” to replace the sobriety of love is, in many ways, just as horrible. It replaces the warts of religious conflict with the smooth talk of liberalism and its fundamentalist religion of secularism.
Voris is right. Democracy sucks. Derrida would agree on this point too. He argued that we should never want democracy, only democracy-to-come. The Gospel also teaches us this lesson. I commend the efforts of people who struggle for freedom and democracy only because what they are truly striving for is love. But, sometimes, I feel that we can forget that democracy and freedom are empty—and dangerous—without Gospel love.
Voris is right. We need a Catholic Government. If he were serious about this claim, Voris would begin to see that we already have a benevolent monarch: God. God is King and Queen. We are the subjects loved by Love. If this is true, then, the need for a Catholic Government would give us a sense of urgency to struggle to create a social, mortal order that is faithful to the reign of God.
In the end, Voris is mistaken. But he is on the right track. After all, “religious freedom” is a (false) “theocratic dictatorship.” Sadly, he deleted his provocative video for some reason. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.
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