Carl Schmitt Roman Catholicism and Political Form Contributions in Political Science 1996

7/27/2019 Carl Schmitt Roman Catholicism and Political Form Contributions in Political Science 1996

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Recent Titles inGlobal Perspectives in History and PoliticsMacro-Nationalisms: A History of the Pan-MovementsLouis L. SnyderThe Myth of Inevitable ProgressFranco FerrarottiPower and Policy in Transition: Essays Presented on the TenthAnniversary of the National Committee on American Foreign Policyin Honor of Its Founder, Hans J. MorgenthauVojtech Mastny, editorPerforated Sovereignties and International Relations: Trans-SovereignContacts of Subnational GovernmentsIvo D. Duchacek, Daniel Latouche, and Garth Stevenson, editorsThe Pure Concept of Diplomacyjose Calvet de MagalhaesCarl Schmitt: Politics and TheoryPaul Edward GottfriedReluctant Ally: United States Policy Toward the Jews from Wilsonto RooseveltFrank W. BrecherEast Central Europe after the Warsaw Pact: Security Dilemmas inthe 1990sAndrew A. MichtaThe French Revolution and the Meaning of CitizenshipRenee Waldinger, Philip Dawson, and Jsser Woloch, editorsSocial Justice in the Ancient WorldK. D. Irani and Morris Silver, editorsThe European Union, the United Nations, and the Revival ofConfederal GovernanceFrederick K. ListerThe Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning andFailure of a Political SymbolCarl SchmittTranslated by George Schwab and Erna Hil{stein


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM-AND POLITICAL FORMCARL SCHMITTTranslated and Annotated by G. L. Ulmen

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES IN HISTORY AND POLITICSGEORGE SCHWAB, SERIES EDITORContributions in Political Science, Number 380

GREENWOOD PRESSWestport, Connecticut London


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B) r o f ~e s f a i i l : j h ~ y ~ r - ~ ..mo_s:!!i ag!:ic::ul1!:i!al peoples h o ~ k r r c J w - n elarge lndustry. In any case, this is g e n e r a 1 I Y " t 1 ' u i ~ C W 1 1 y 1 ' r a v ethere been no Catholic migrations, at Jeast none on thegrand scale of the Huguenot or the Puritan? There havebeen any number of Catholic emigrants: Irish, Poles, Italians, Croats. Probably most emigrants have been Catholic,because most simple Catholics were by and large poorerthan Protestants. Poverty, peril, and persecution have impelled them. But they never lose the longing for theirhomeland.

Compared with these inciigent, dispossessed peoples, the 'Huguenot or.tliePuiHan -has a trength a:nd"piille Hiat isoften i n l l t g p ~ ....!I.e is capable of Jivi11g ona!li'soJC-But it

w o w d l : } - - : : ~ 4 f o P 0 f i g ~ G - S c t " y J ~ e f j . _ n c : l ~ I"OOts on every soif He can .build .hi iAQlJStry f ~ T and wide, ~ a k e alrs}r::flj.!:!" e r v a n t ofhis k . i l l ~ d l C i Q Q r and "inner-worldly asceticism,," and in theend have a comfortable home; all this because he makeshimselfmaster of nature and harnesses it to his will. Histype ofdomination remains. n a c c _ ! s ~ i 1 J l e to- thettumanCitholic concept-ofnature.----- - ------

Roma:n Catholic peoples a p p ~ a ! . ! Q ) Q Y ~ _ M l e soil, mother'earth, in a different way; they all ha'\l'e t h e i ~ s m e "[loyaltyJo t . h ~ J a n d ] . Nature is for them not the antithesis

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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 11of art and enterprise, also not of intellect and feeling or-heart; human labor and organic development, nature aridJreason, are one. V i n i c u l t ~ r ' Y is the most beautifuiSymbolof .this union.--But tlie cities that develop out of this type ofspirit also appear as naturally grown products of the soil,which become part of the landscape and remain true to theearth. In their essential concept of "urbanity," they have ahumanity that remains eternally iifaccesslblerolfiern:echanistic p r e c i s i o n t s n n : J f - a t n : : o a e r n " i n C f u s f r i a 1 ~ d t Y . ~ T u s f a s ~ t R e

T r i d e n t i r i e ~ C r e e a k n o w s little of the Protestant rupture ofnature and grace, so Roman Catholicism understands littleof the dualisms of natureancrsprrif; nature aricf h1teiiect,n a t u r e ~ - a l l d art - ~ a t u r e ~ - a n a m a c . h i n e : a : n . d - f h e i r ~ v a r y i n g 'pathos. ~ h e synthesis orsuch antitheses remains as foreignas the antithesis of empty form and formless matter.

The Catholic Church is categorically something otherthan the (in any case, always absent) "higher third" of theGerman philosophy of nature and history. To it belongneither thedespair of antitheses nor __ l l l ! , ( ) , ! Y ~ 2 . t i _ p ~ ~ - ,of therr y n t l i e s i s . F o f l l i i s ' r e i t s o n , ~ a C a t h o l i c must considerit a ubious honor when someone seeks to make his Churchinto the antagonistic pole of the mechanistic age. I t is astriking contradiction, again demonstrating the curiouscomplexio oppositorum, that one of the strongest Protestantperceptions finds in Roman Catholicism a debasement andmisuse of Christianity because it mechanizes religion intoa soulless formality, while at the same time Protestantsreturn in Romantic flight to the Catholic Church seekingsalvation from the soullessness of a rationalistic and mechanistic age.Were the Church fo have rested content with beingnothing more than the soulful polarity of soullessness, itwould have forgotten its true self; it would have becomethe desired complement of capitalism-a hygienic institution for enduring the rigors of competition, a Sunday outing


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12 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMor a summer sojourn of big-city dwellers. Naturally, theChurch has an important therapeutic function. But the

essence of such an institution must consist in somethingmore. Rousseauism and Romanticism are able to take pleasure in many things, including CatJ:olicism, as they wouldin a magnificent ruin or an authenticated antique; and "inthe fauteuil of the achievements of 1789," also to make thesethings into consumer goods of a relativistic bourgeoisie.

Many Catholics, especially German Catholics, appear tobe proud of having been discovered by art historians. Theirdelight, of little note in itself, would not need be mentionedwere it not for the fact that such an original and prolific athinker as Georges Sorel sought the crisis of Catholicthought in the new alliance of the Church with irrationalism. In his view, the argumentation of Catholic apologeticsuntil the eighteenth century was to demonstrate faith basedon reason, buttn the nineteenth century the ghurch bene:fited from irrationallstic currents. In tact; everyconceivable~ - - o p p O " s i t i o n f6-H1e- Enlightenment and rationalismreinvigorated Catholicism. Traditionalist, mystical, and Romantic tendencies made many converts. Today, as far as Ican judge, Catholics are profoundly dissatisfied with established apologetics, which appear to many as sophistry andforms without content. But all this misses the essentialpoint, because it identifies rationalism with the thinking ofthe natural sciences and overlooks the fact that Catholicargumentation is based on a particular mode of thinkingwhose method of proof is a specific juridical logic andwhose focus of interest is the normative guidance of humansocial life.

r In almost every discussion one can observe the extent towhich the methodology of the natural-technical sciencesdominates contemporary thinking. For example, the God oftraditional theological evidence-the God who governs the, world as the king governs the state-subconsciously is made

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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 13the motor impelling the cosmic machine. The chimera ofmodern big-city'awellers IS-'filled to the last atom withtechnologicaL and industrial conceptions, which are pr.Q:-,jected into cosmological or metaphysical realms. In t h ~ ,/naive mechanistic and mathematical mythology, the world 1becomes a gigantic dynamo wherein there is even no)distinction of classes. --=-J

The world-view of the modern capitalist is the same asthat of the industrial proletarian, as if the one were the twin-...__,brother of the other. Thus they are of one accord when theystruggle side by side for economic thinking. Insofar assbcialism has become the religion of the industrial proletariat of big cities, it contraposes a fabulous mechanism to thatof the capitalist world. The class-conscious proletariat considers itself the legitimate, if only the logically qualifiedmaster of this apparatus, whereas the private property ofthe capitalist is seen as the logically adverse remnant of atechnically backward age. The big industrialist has no otherideal than that of Lenin-an "electrified earth." They disagree essentially only on the correct method of electrification. American financiers and Russian Bolsheviks findthemselves in a C Q I 1 1 I I 1 ( ) _ n ~ t ~ u _ g g J ~ _ f o r _ e c g _ : P ( ) ~ C J h i n k i n g , ~t h _ a t j ~ , the struggle against politicians and jurists. G e o r g e ~ ' , \

S o r ~ l also belongs to this fraternity:.-- Here -then,- iri the 1economlc thinking of our tlme, is a fundamental antithesisto the political idea of Catholicism, because this idea contradicts everything synonymous with objectivity, integrity,and rationality in economic thinking.

The rationalism of the Roman Church morally encompasses the psychological and sociological nature of man and,unlike industry and technology, is not concerned with thedomination and exploitation of matter. The Church has itsown rationality. Renan's12 dictum is well-known: Toutevictoire de Rome est une victoire de la raison.13 In struggleswith sectarian fanaticism, the Church was always on the


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14 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMside of common sense. Throughout the Middle Ages, asDuhem14 has well shown, it suppressed superstition andsorcery. Even Max Weber has ascertained that Romanrationalism lives on in the Roman Church, that it knowinglyand magnificently s u c c e e d ~ d in overcoming Dionysiancults, ecstasies, and the dangers of submerging reason inmeditation. This rationalism resides in institutions and isessentially juridical; its greatest achievement is havingmade the priesthood into an office-a very distinctive typeof office.

~ p o p e is not the Prophet u t ~ ! h ~ . Y i ~ f _ Q h r i s t . Sucha ceremomal functwn precludes all the fanatical excessesof an unbridled prophetism. The fact that the office is madei n d e . l 2 ~ I ? - 9 ~ n t n c h a r i s m a _ s i g n i f i e s that the priest upholds aposition that appears to be completely apart from hisconcrete personality. Nevertheless, he is not the functionaryand commissar of republican thinking. In contradistinctionto the modern official, his position is not impersonal,because his office is part of an unbroken chain linked withthe personal mandate and concrete person of Christ. Thisis truly the most astounding complexio oppositorum. In suchdistinctions lie the rational creativity and humanity ofCatholicism. Both remain within and give direction to thehuman spirit, without exhibiting the dark irrationalism ofthe human soul. They provide no formulas for the manipu-

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lation of matter, as does the rationalism of economy and /,technology.-Economic rationalism is so far removed from Catholicrationalism that it can arouse a specific Catholic anxiety.Modern technology easily becomes the servant of this orthat want and need. In modern economy, a completelyirrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalizedproduction. A marvelously rational mechanism serves oneor another demand, always with the same earnestness andprecision, be it for a silk blouse or poison gas or anything


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 15whatsoever. Economic rationalism has accustomed itself todeal only with certain needs and to acknowledge only thosei t can "satisfy." In the modern metropolis, it has erected anedifice wherein everything runs strictly according to planeverything is calculable. A devout Catholic, precisely following his own rationality, might well be horrified by thissystem of irresistible materiality.Today, one can say it is perhaps more among Catholicsthat the image of the Antichrist is still alive. I f Sore'! seesevidence of a vital force in the capacity for such "myths;''he is unjust in asserting that Catholics no longer believe intheir eschatology and that no one of them still awaits theLast Judgment. That is factually incorrect, although inMaistre' s Soirees of St. Petersburg15 a Russian senator sayspractically the same. The expectation of the Last Judgmentis as alive with a Spaniard like Donoso Cortes, FrenchCatholics like Louis Veuillot16 and Leon Bloy,17 and anEnglish convert like Robert Hughes Benson,ls as with anyProtestant of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries whosaw in Rome the Antichrist. The main point, however, isthat the modern economic-technical apparatus arouses asimilar fear and loathing in a great many Catholics. GenuineCatholic anxiety derives from the knowledge that here theconcept of the rational is warped fantastically, in a manneralien to Catholic sensibility, because a mechanism of production serving the satisfaction of arbitrary material needsis called "rational" without bringing into question what ismost important-the rationality of the purpose of this supremely rational mechanism.Economic thinking is totally incapable of apprehendingthis Catholic anxiety. It is content with everything it cansupply with its means of technology. It knows nothing ofany anti-Roman temper, nor of the Antichrist and theapocalypse. The Church is perceived as a strange phenomenon, but no less so than other "irrational" things. I t is well


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16 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMand good that there are men who have religious needs to besatisfied reasonably. This appears to be no less irrational'than many senseless whims of fashion, which also demandsatisfaction. I f and when the sanctuary lamps fronting allCatholic altars are fed by the same. electric company thatsupplies the theaters and dance halls of the city, thenCatholicism will also become something instinctively andlogically comprehensible to economic thinking, somethingaccepted as a matter of course.

Economic thinking has its own reason and veracity in' that it is absolutely material, concerned only with things:'The political is considered immaterial, because it must beconcerned with other than economic values. In sharp contrast to this absolute economic materiality, Catholicism ise!llinently political. But it is not political in the sense of themampulation and domination of fixed social and international power factors, as obtain in the Machiavelliim conception (which makes of politics a mere technique in that itisolates a single, extrinsic factor of political life). The political mechanism has its own laws, which Catholicism as wellas any other historical forcg_embroiled in politics must obey.The fact that the "apparatus" of the Church has becomemore rigid since the sixteenth century, that (despite Romanticism, or perhaps to vitiate it) the Church is a morecentralized bureaucracy and organization than in the Middle Ages-everything one characterizes sociologically as"Jesuitism"-is explained not only by the struggle withProtestantism but also by the negative reaction to themechanisln of the--age. ' "' .-

The absolute1prince and his "mercantilism" were theforerunners of the modern tJpe of economic thinking andof a political state of affairs situated somewhere in the

dndifference point between dictatorship and anarchy. In theseventeenth century, a power-political apparatus developcrdtogether with the mechanistic concept of nature and the


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 17often reputed "functionalization" of all social relations. Inthis milieu, the organization of the Church also becamedenser and harder, like a..._protective shell. In itself, that isstill no evidence of political failing and aging; it only raisesthe question whether therein is still a living idea. Nopolitical system can survive even a generation with onlynaked techniques of holding power. To the political belongsthe idea, because there is no politics without authority andno authority without an ethos of belief.

By claiming to be something more than the economic,the political is obliged to base t s e l L o n . G a t ~ g M - i e s - - . o t f i e r . - t h a nproduction and consunrpfion:-Torepeaf:n'is-curious thatth"ecapifaTist en1reprerieuran.dthe-socialist proletarian areof one accord in considering the political's a s s u m p t i ~ n apresumption and, from the standpoint of their economicthinking, regarding the dominance of politicians as "immaterial." Seen from a strictly political viewpoint, this can.qiiiy

~ m e i i i that certain socio-political groupings-mighty r i v ~ t eentrepreneurs or the organized workers of particular factories or branches of industry-exploit their position in theprocess of production in order to grasp the reins of statepower. When they turn against politicians and politics assuch, they see them as the concrete force blocking their ownroad to political power. I f they succeed in removing them,the interest in formulating antitheses of economic andpolitical thinking will also be lost. A new type of politicsarise&. together with the new power based on economics.But what they do will be politics nevertheless, and thatmeans the. promotiOJ?: _


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18 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMof production and consumption, in no sense somethingeconomic; it derives from a different conviction about whatis moral or lawful. It concerns the ethical or legal determination of who is actually the producer, the creator, andtherefore the owner of modern wealth. As soon as production becomes completely anonymous, and a web of joint-stock companies and other "juridical" persons makesreference to concrete individuals impossible, the privateproperty of the prototypical capitalist is discarded as havinglost its evidence. This will come to pass, though today thereare still capitalists who know how to succeed on the basisof their alleged indispensability.

As long as both parties think in economic terms, Ca-tholicism might almost be ignored in such a struggle. Itspower is not based on economic means, even though theChurch may have landed property and various "financialinterests." These are innocuous and idyllic by comparisonwith the interests of big industry in raw materials andmarkets. Possession of the earth's oil deposits can possiblydecide the struggle for world supremacy. But the Vicar ofChrist on earth will have no part of this struggle. The popeis disposed to be sovereign of the Pontifical State. Whatsignificance has that in the great clamor of internationaltrade and imperialism?The political power of Catholicism rests neither on eco-nomic nor on military means but rather on the absoluterealization of authority. The Church also is a "juridicalperson," though not in the same sense as a joint-stockcompany. The typical product of the age of production is amethod of accounting, whereas the Church is a c o n c r ~ t epersonal representation of a concrete personality. Allknowledgeable witnesses have conceded that the Church isthe consummate agency of the juridical spirit and the trueheir of Roman jurisprudence. Therein-in its capacity toassume juridical form-lies one of its sociological secrets.

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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 19But it has the power to assume this or .any other form onlybecause it has the power of representation. It represents thecivitasJw.mar;.g.lt represents in every o ~ n t the historicalconnection to the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ. Itrepresents the Person of Christ Himself: God become manin historical reality. Therein lies its superiority over an ageof economic thinking.

The Catholic Church is the sole surviving contemporaryexample of the medieval capacity to create representativefigures----:-th_e pope,. theemperor, the monk, the knight, themerchant.)t is certainly the last of what a scholar19 once

C a i i e d t h - ~ - four remaining pillars-the House of Lords, thePrussian General Staff, the Academie Franc;aise, and theVatican. It stands so alone that whoever sees therein onlyexternal form mockingly must say it represents nothingmore than the idea of representation. The eighteenth cen-tury still had some classical figures, like the "legislateur." Inview of the unproductiveness of the nineteenth century,even the Goddess of Reason appears to be a representative.

In order to obtain a clear picture of the extent to whichthe representative capacity has disappeared, we have onlyto consider the attempt to rival the Catholic Church withan enterprise drawn from the modern scientific spirit.Auguste Co1_!1-te wan,ted to.found a "positivistic" church. The

result of his effort was an embarrassingly telling imitation.Nevertheless, one cannot but admire the noble intention ofthis man and even his imitation, which is still magnificentby comparison with similar endeavors. This greatest ofsociologists discerned the representative types of the Mid-dle Ages-the cleric and the knight-and compared themwith the representative types of modern society-the savantand the merchant. But it was an error to hold up the modernsavant and the modern merchant as representative types.The savant was only representative in the transitionalperiod of the struggle with the Church; the merchant, only


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20 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMas a Puritan individualist. Once the wheels of modernindustry began to turn, both increasingly became servants'of the great machine. I t is difficult to say what they truly-represent.Estates are a thing of the past. T ~ French bourgeoisie ofthee:1gtiteenth century the third estate-proclaimed itself"the nation." The famous slogan, "le tiers Etat c'est la Nation,"was more profoundly revolutionary than anyone suspected.When a single estate identifies itself with the nation, itabolishes the very idea of estates, which requires a pluralityof estates to constitute a social order. Bourgeois society wasthus no longer capable of representation. I t succumbed tothe fateful dualism of the age and developed its "polarities":on the one side, the bourgeois; on the other, the bohemian(who, if he represents anything, represents himself). Thelogical outcome was the class-concept of the proletariat,which groups society materialistically-aq::ording to one'sposition in the process of production-and thus conformsto economic thinking. Thereby it demonstrates that therenunciation of every representation is inlffirent in this typeor-niinkmg. 'l'he savant and the merchant have becomesuppliers or supervisors. The merchant sits in his office; thesavant, in his study or laboratory. I f they are really modern,both serve a factory-both are anonymous. I t is senselessto l c : t i f f i _ J 4 ~ y . , r . , e p k . e s e : o t _ s _ o m e + b i n g . They_are e 1 ~ h e r privatefridty!sluctJ. Q [ _ e x p n n e n t s ; = n o ~ repl s e n l : a ~ t v ~ -"Economic thinking knows only one type of form, namelytechnical precision, and nothing could be further from theidea of representation. The association of the economic withthe tech:_nical (their inherent disparity is still to be noted)requires the actual presence of things. Corresponding termssuch as "reflex," "radiation" or "reflection," which havereference to matter, denote various aggregate states of thesame material substratum. With such images one mal}essomething existing as idea understandable by incorporating


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 21it into one's own material thinking. For example, accordingto the famous "economic" conception of \history, politicaland religious views are the ideological "reflex" of relationsof production. Taking this theory on its own terms, thismeans nothing other than that economic producers standhigher than "intellectuals" in its social hierarchy. In psychological discussions, a word like "projection" sounds good.

(All such metaphors as projection, re:Qex, reflection, radiation and transference seek to express the "immanent" material basis.In contradistinction, the idea of representation is so,completely governed b c o ~ tions of ersonal authoritytliat t e r e p r e s e ~ t ~ t i ~ __as.welLaS=t1'l:e flersnn=-represente


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22 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMWhat first strikes the attention of an age devoted toartistic enjoyment is that which is last in natural and

historical development-the crowning fulfillment and ultimate gift, the aesthetic beauty of form. Form, figure, andvisual symbolism arise independ_ently from great representation. The modern factory, lacking representation andimagery, takes its symbols from another age because themachine has no tradition. I t is so little capable of creatingan image that even the Russian Soviet Republic found noother symbol for its badge of rule than the hammer andsickle. This suited the place of technology a thousand yearsago, but it does not portray the world of the industrialproletariat. One can view...__this emblem satirically, as suggesting that the private property of the economically backward peasant has triumphed over the communism of theindustrial worker, the small-scale agrarian economy over

Ythe technically and mechanically developed large-scale enerprise. Still, this primitive symbolism has something lackng in the most-advanced machine technology, somethinguman, namely, a language.I t is not surprising that the economic age first succumbs

to beautiful externals, for it is most of all lacking in beauty.Even so, in aesthetics also it is usually most comfortablewith the superficial. The ability to create form, which isessential to aesthetics, has its essence in the ability to createthe language of a great rhetoric. This is vyhat should beconsidered; not the snobbishly praised vestments of cardinals or the trappings of a magnificent procession and all thepoetic beauty that goes with them. Great architecture,ecclesiastical painting and music, or significant poeticworks are also not the criterion of the ability to create formthat concerns us here.

I t is undeniable today that the bond between the Churchand the creative arts has been broken. One of the few greatCatholic poets of the last generation, Francis Thompson,


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 23takes note of this in his wonderful essay on Shelley: TheChurch, once the mother of poets no less than saints, Dante

. no less than St. Dominic, now reserves for itself only theglory of holiness and leaves art to those outside the Faith.No one could formulate it more aptly and correctly: "Theseparation has been ill for poetry; it has not been well forreligion. "20 This is true; the present situation is not good forreligion. But with respect to the Church, it is not an

incurable illness. On the contrary, the power of speech anddiscourse-rhetoric in its greatest sense-is a criterion ofhuman life.Perhaps today this is a hazardous assertion. The lack of\mderstanding of the significance of rhetoric is but onemanifestation of the polar dualism of the age, expressedhere, on the one side, by a rapturously overpowering music;on the other, by a mute practicality. It seeks to make "true"art into something Romantic, excessively musical and irrational. It is well-known, largely owing to Taine's21 gifteddiscernment and depiction, that t h ~ r e is a close relationbetween rhetoric and the esprit classique. But Taine destroyed the living idea of classicism by making it theantithesis of Romanticism. Without actually believing ithimself, he endeavored to identify the classical with therhetorical and thereby with artificiality, empty symmetry,and fabricated lifelessness. A whole assortment of antitheses to play with!

In this comparison of rationalism and something "irrational," the classical is allotted to-the rational; the Romantic,to the irrational. Rhetoric comes under the heading of theclassical and rational. Most decisive, however, is rhetoric inthe sense of what one might call representative discourse,

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rath_9:.J.ban discussiQQ. affif" Elebate. I t moves in antitheses.BUt these are not contradictions; they are the various andsundry elements molded into a complexio and thus give lifeto discourse. Do Taine's categories help us understand


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24 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMBossuet?ZZ He has more intelligence than many rationalistsand more intuition than all Romanticists. But his eloquence-is only possible against the background of an imposingauthority, which lapses neither into a discourse nor a dictatebut finds resonance in the architecture of speech. Its greatdiction is more than music; it is a form of human dignitywhich becomes manifest in a rational form of speech. Allthis presupposes a hierarchy, because the spiritual reso-nance of great rhetoric derives from the belief in the

'-representation claimed by the orator. He is witness to thefact that the priest has his place in world history beside thesoldier and the statesman. Like them, he is a representativefigure. His place is not besicfu the merchant and the techni-cian, who give him only alms and confuse his repre-sentation with a decoration.

An alliance of the Catholic Church with the present formof industrial capitalism is not possible. The alliance ofthrone and altar will not be followed by an alliance of officeand altar, also not of factory and altar. I f the bulk of the

rRoman Catholic clergy of Europe were no longer recruitedfrom the peasant population but rather from the big cities,unforeseen consequences might ensue. But no eventualitywill make possible an alliance of the Church with industrialcapitalism. Nevertheless, Catholicism will continue to ac-commodate itself to every social and p o l i t i c ~ } order, evenone dominated by capitalist entrepreneurs or trade unionsand proletarian councils. But accommodations will be pos-sible only if and when economically based power becomespolitical, that is, if and when capitalists or workers whohave come to power assume political representation withall its responsibilities. The new sovereign authority willthen be compelled to recognize a situation other than thoseconcerned only with economy and private property. Thenew order cannot confine itself to management of theprocess of production and consumption, because it must be


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 25constituted formally: every order is a legal order; everystate, a constitutional state. Once this step is taken, theChurch can align itself with this new order, as it has withevery order. By no means is it obliged to align itself onlywith states in which the landed nobility or peasantry is theruling class.

T,he Church r e q u i r e ~ apolitical form. Without it there isnothirig{o correspol1d to its intrinsically representativeconduct. The domination of "capital" behind the scenes isstill no form, though it can undermine an existing politicalform and make it an empty facade. Should it succeed, it willhave "depoliticized" the state completely. Should economicthmkmg succeed in realizing its utopian goal and in bringingabout an absolutely unpolitical condition of human society,the Church would remain the only agency of politicalthinl.frig-and political form. Then t n e ~ h a v ea -stnpend5tts monop5l:y. its hietarchy would be nearer thepolitical domination of the world than in the Middle Ages.According to its own theory and hypothetical structure, theChurch would not wish for such a situation. It presupposescoexistence with the political state, a societas perfecta; notwith. a c o ~ s - o r t i u m of co;;:flicting mTetests. I t wishes to livewith the state in a special community in which two representations confront each other as partners.

One can observe how the understanding of every type ofrepresentation disappears with the spread of economicthinking. Still, the hypothetical and theoretical oas1sotcontemporary parliamentarism at least includes the idea ofrepresentation. It is even supported by what is technicallycalled the "principle of representation." So far as this principle signifies only a representation (of the electorate), itdoes not connote anything distinctive. In the constitutionaland political literature of the last century, this term standsfor a representation of the pople in contrast to anotherrepresentative, namely, the king, although both together (or


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26 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMwhen there is a republican constitution, the parliament

~ a l o n e ) represent "the nation." One accordingly says of theChurch that it has "no representative institutions" becauseit has no parliament and its representatives do not derivetheir authority from the people. Cop.sequently, it represents"from above."

Jurisprudence lost both its meaning and the specificconcept of representation during the popular struggle withthe king for representation in the nineteenth century. TheGerman theory of the state, in particular, developed ascholarly mythology at once monstrous and confused: parliament as a secondary political organ represents another,primary organ (the people), but this primary organ has nowill apart from the secondary organ, unless it be by"special proviso"; the two juridical persons are but one,constitute two organs but only one person, and so on. It isenough to read the curious chapter in Georg Jellinek'sAllgemeine t a a t s l e h ~ e on "Representation and RepreseihativeOrgans."23 The simple meaning of the principle of representation is that the members of parliament are representatives of the whole people and thus have- anindependent authority vis-a-vis the voters. Instead of deriving their authority from the individual voter, they continue to derive it from the people. "Th member ofparliament is not bound by instructions and commands andis answerable to his conscience alone." This means that thepersonification of the people and the unity of parliament astheir representative at least implies the idea of a complexiooppositorum, that is, the unity of the plurality of interestsand parties. I t is conceived in representative rather thaneconomic terms. The proletarian system of soviets thereforeseeks to eliminate this remnant of an age devoid of eco-, nomic thinking and emphasizes that parliamentary delepates are only emissaries and agents, deputies of theproducers, with a "mandat imperatif" (liable to be recalled


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 27at any time), administrative servants of the process ofproduction. The "whole" of the people is only an idea; thewhole of the economic process, a material reality.The intellectual consistency of anti-intellectualism iscertainly impressive. In the springtide of socialism, youngBolsheviks turned the struggle for economic-technicalthinking into a struggle against the idea, even against everyidea. So long as even the ghost of an idea exists, so also doesthe notion that something preceded the given reality ofmaterial things-that there is something transcendent-andthis always means an authority from above. To a type ofthinking which derives its norms from the economic-technical sphere, this appears as an outside interference, adisturbance of the self-propelling machine. An intelligentperson with political instincts who fights against politiciansimmediately recognizes in any appea! to the idea the claimto representation and authority-a presumption that goesbeyond proletarian formlessness and the compact mass ofin"carnate" reality in which men have no need of government and "things govern themselves."Political and juridical forms are equally immaterial andirritating to the consistency of economic thinking. But onlywhere the paradoxical situation arises that this thinking istaken up by fanatics (which can probably happen only inRussia) does it reveal its total enmity against the idea andall noneconomic and nontechnical intelligence. Sociologically, this demonstrates the true revolutionary instinct.Intelligence and rationalism are not in themselves revolutionary. But technical thinking is foreign to all social traditions; the machine has no tradition. One of Karl Marx'sseminal sociological discoveries is that technology is thetrue revolutionary principle, beside which all revolutions

/based on natural law are antiquated forms of recreation. Asociety built exclusively on progressive technology would


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28 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMthus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy, itself and its technology.. Economic thinking is not so extremely radical. Despiteits contemporary alliance with absolute technicism, it canbe its opponent. To the economic b ~ l o n g also certain legalconcepts, such as property or contract. Yet it confines theseto a minimum; above all, to those of private law. In thiscontext, the glaring contradiction between the goal of mak-ing the economic into a social principle and the endeavorto perpetuate civil law and especially private property canI only be noted in passing. Of interest here is that the. tendency of the economic to perpetuate civil law means ineffect a l i m i t a ~ i o n of juridical form. Public life is expectedto govern itself. I t _ ~ h o u l d be g o v e r n e ~ b y - p t t b i T C " " o p i n t b n ,thLoE_gnun of r i y a ~ i i d i x . i d u a l s . Public opinion, in turn,

s ~ h o _ u l d be governed by a privately owned free press. No_!b.:i118 in this system iueptesentatioc, evetjlhing is a J3Fi-wtematter. ....._

Historically considered, "privatization" has its origin inreligion. The first right of the individual in the sense of thebourgeois social order was the freedom of religion. In thehistorical evolution of the catalogue of liberties-freedomof belief and conscience, freedom of association.and assem-bly, freedom of the press, freedom of trade and commerceit is the fountainhead and first pri.Q.ciple. But whatever place 1is assigned to religion, it always and everywhere manifestsits capacity to absorb and absolutize. I f religion is a privatematter, it also follows that privacy is revered. The two areinseparable. Private property is thus revered precisely be-cause it is a private matter.

This hitherto scarcely recognized correlation explains thesociological development of modern European society,which has its own religion. Without its religion of r i v ~ c y ,the structure of this social order would collapse. The factthat religion is a private matter gives privacy a religious

..,

i


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 29sanction. In the true s e n ~ e , the unconditional guarantee ofabsolute private property can exist only where religion is aprivate mattel', where again it is also the governing principle. The often-quoted passage on religion as a private matterin the Erfurt Program of the German Social DemocraticParty24 is an interesting reversion to liberalism. Karl Kautsky, the theologian of this program, made a correction (inhis 1906 pamphlet on the Catholic Church and Christianity25) that is as symptomatic as it is innocuously incidental,namely, that religion is less a private matter than a simplematter of the heart.

The juridical foundation of the Catholic Church on thepublic sphere contrasts with liberalism's foundation on theprivate sphere. This also is consistent with its representativecharacter and allows the religious to be conceived in sucha juridical manner. Thus a high-minded Protestant likeRudolf Sohm26 could define the Catholic Church as something essentially juridical, while regarding Christian religiosity as essentially non-juridical. In fact, the permeationwith jur'idical elements goes very deep. Much of the seemingly contradictory political behavior of Catholicism sooften reproached is explained by its f?E!ll"!t jurigi_cal character. In the social world, s e c u l a f ~ j ' i l r i ~ p ~ u d e n c e also manifests a certain complexio of competing interests 'andtendencies. Like Catholicism, it also evidences a curiousmixture of traditional conservatism and revolutionary resistance in line with natural law. Every revolutionary movement confirms that jurists, the "theologians of the existingorder," are perceived as specific enemies. Jurists, in turn,are those who support revolution and imbue it with apassion for the rights of the oppressed and the offended. Owing to its formal superiority, jurisprudence can easily'ssume a posture similar to Catholicism with respect toalternating political forms in that it can positively align itselfwith various and sundry power complexes, provided only


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30 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMthere is a sufficient minimum of form "to establish order."Once the new situation permits recognition of an authority,it provides the groundwork for a jurisprudence-the con-crete foundation for a substantive form. But despite all thisaffinity in form, Catholicism goes further because it repre-sents something other and more than secular jurisprudence-not only the idea of justice but also the person ofChrist-that substantiates its claim to a unique power andauthority. It can deliberate as an equal partner with thestate, and thereby create new law, whereas jurisprudence \is only a mediator of established law. The law a judge mustapply in the state is mediated by the nation, whereby a moreor less fixed norm stands between the idea of justice andthe individual case.

An international court of justice, independent in thesense that it is not bound to political instructions but onlyto fundamental principles of law, is closer to the idea ofjustice. Given its separation from the individual st'ate,which distinguishes it from a state tribunal, it would alsoclaim to represent something autonomous vis-a-vis the state,namely, the idea of justice independent of the will aiidjudgment of individual states. Its aut11Qrity would thus bebased on the direct representation ~ f this idea, not on the

d ~ e g a t e d auth,ority of individual s t a t e ~ , even though itmight owe its 1existence to an agreement between thesestates. Consequently, it must present itself as an originaland thus also a universal court of justice. This would be the

i natural extension of the logical consistency; psychologi-~ c a l l y , it would be an inference of the original situation ofpower based on the original legal condition.

One can well understand the misgivings concerning sucha tribunal expressed by publicists of powerful states, all ofwhich spring from the concept of sovereignty. The powerto decide who is sovereign would signify a new sovereignty.A tribunal vested with such powers would constitute a


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 31supra-state and supra-sovereignty, which alone could createa new order if, for example, it had the authority to decideon the recognition of a new state. Not a Court of Justice buta League of Nations might have such pretensions. But inexercising them, it would become an independent agent.Together with the function of executing the law, managingan administration, etcetera (which might involve independence in financial affairs, budgeting, and other formalities), it would also signify something in and of itself. Itsactivity would not be limited to the application of existinglegal norms, as would a tribunal that is an administrativeauthority. It would also be more than an arbiter, because inall decisive conflicts it would have to assert its own interests. Thus it would cease to uphold justice exclusively-inpolitical terms, the status quo. I f it took the constantlychanging political situation as its guiding principle, it wouldhave to deciCle on the basis of its own power what new orderand what new state is or is not to be recognized. This couldnot be determined by the preexisting legal order, becausemost new states have come into being in oppCJ>sition to thewill of their formerly sovereign ruler. Owing to the rationaleof self-assertion, it is conceivable that a conflict with thelaw might arise. Such a tribunal would not only representthe idea of impersonal justice but a powerful personality aswell.In the proud history of the Roman Church, the ethos ofits own power stands side by side with the ethos of justice.It is even enhanced by the Church's prestige, glory, andhonor. The Church commands r e c o g n ~ t i o n as the Bride ofChrist; it represents Christ reigning, ruling and conquering


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32 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMgreat betrayal laid to the Catholic Church is that it does notconceive Christ as a private person, does not conceiveChristianity as a private matter, something wholly andinwardly spiritual, but rather has given it form as a visibleinstitution. Sohm believed the fall (rom grace could beperceived in the juridical sphere; others saw it in a moregrandiose and profound way as the will to world power.Li every worldwide imperialism that has reached its goal,the Church seeks to bring peace to the world. To theenemies of all forms, this raises the specter of the deviltriumphant.Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor confesses he has con-sciously succumbed to the wiles of Satan, because he knowsthat man is by nature evil and vile, a cowardly rebel whoneeds a master. Only the Roman priest finds the courage totake upon himself all the condemnation owing to suchpower. With the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoyevsky s t r o n ~ l yprojected his own, latent atheism into the Roman Church.Every power was something evil and inhuman to his fun-damentally anarchistic (and that always means atheistic)instinct. In the temporal sphere, the temptation to evilinherent in every power is certainly unceasing. Only in God

~ t h e conflict between power and good ultimately resolved.But the desire to escape this conflict by rejecting everyearthly power would lead to the worst inhumanity.There is a dark and prevalent temper that perceives Ca-tholicism's cold institutionalism as evil and Dostoyevsky'sremote formlessness as true Christianity. That is as superfi-cial as anything on the level of emotion and sentiment. It doesnot even realize the pagan nature of the notion that Christcould appear (in experimental fashion, so to speak) one ormany times between His historical existence and His gloriousreturn on the Day of Judgment. More concisely than Dos-toyevsky, yet with far greater vision, the genius of a FrenchCatholic devised a picture that at once includes the whole

---


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 33tension of the antagonism and (through the formulation of adirect appeal to Divine Justice) dialectically forces justice toits logical conclusion in that it preserves law with the formsof judgment and appeal. It is a despicable picture of the Dayof Judgment, which Ernest Hello27 had the courage to depict.When the Judge-of-the-World has pronounced sentence, oneof the damned, covered with iniquity, stands fast and, to thehorror of all creation, says to the Judge:]'en appelle.zs "Withthese words the stars ceased to shine." According to the ideaof The Last Judgment, however, His verdict is eternallyirrevocable effroyablement sans appel.29 To whom dost thouappeal My sentence? asks Jesus Christ the Judge. Amidst adreadful silence, the damned replies: "]'en appelle de tajusticea ta gloire."30

In each of the three great forms of representation, thecomplexio of life in all its contradictions is molded into aunity of personal representation. Thus each of the threeforms can also evoke a certain anxiety and perplexity, andgive new life to the anti-Roman temper. All sectarians andheretics have refused to recognize the extent to which thepersonalism inherent in the idea of representation is humanin the deepest sense. Precisely for this reason, a singularlynew type of struggle was signaled when the CatholicChurch in the eighteenth century met an opponent whozealously confronted Her with the idea of humanity. Thefire and flame of this opponent was especially noble. Butwhere he rose to historical significance, he also succumbed

'to that fateful antagonism whose appearance aroused somany forces against the Church. As long as the idea ofhumanity preserved a spontaneous power, its repre-sentatives also found the courage to succeed with inhuman

p o w e r . The humanitarian philosophers of the eighteenthcentury preached enlightened despotism and the dictatorship of reason. They are self-assured aristocrats. Thus theyI base their authority and secret societies (i.e., strictly eso-


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'34 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMteric associations) !2_n the claim that they represent the ideaof humanitY. In this, as in every esoteric construct, lies aninhuman superiority over the uninitiated, the commonman, and mass democracy. Who today still has such courageof conviction?

It would be highly instructive to recall the fate of aparticular German monument of great humanitarian genius-Mozart's Magic Flute. Is it regarded today as somethingmore than genial German music, an idyll, a forerunner ofthe Viennese operetta? Everyone avers it is also a hymn ofthe Enlightenment, of the struggle of the sun against thenight, light against darkness. Of course, this would also bein complete harmony with the sentiment of a democraticage. By comparison, it might be less acceptable to say thatthe Queen of the Night, a ~ a i n s t whom the masonic prieststruggles, is the mother in a specific sense. But ultimately,how alarming for men of the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies is the virile arrogance and authoritarian self-confidence of these priests, how diabolical is the contempt forthe common man depicted in the character of Papageno,the good-natured pater familias, who is intent upon t h esatisfaction of his economic needs and is disposed of whenhis wishes are fulfilled and his needs gratified. There isnothing more frightful than this beloved opera, i f only onetakes the time to understand it in the wider context of thehistory of ideas. One must compare it with Shakespeare'sTempest and recognize how Prospero has become a masonicpriest and Caliban a Papageno.

The eighteenth century staked much on self-confidenceand the aristocratic concept of secrecy. In a society that nolonger has such courage, there can be no more "arcana," nomore hierarchy, no more secret diplomacy; in fact, no r:p.orepolitics. To every great politics belongs the "arcanum."Everything takes place on stage (before an audience ofPapagenosf, Will-connneiClai and1naustr1aiseu cts still be


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 35permitted? Economic-technical thinking appears to have apeculiar understanding of this type of secrets. Therein may

- lie once again the beginning of a new, uncontrolled power.For the present, it remains completely in the economicsphere, conceivably little representative. It has as yet onlyoccurred to proletarian councils to rebel against such secrets. One will always hear only of humanity, and thereforenot see that once the idea of humanity is realized it will alsobecome subject to the dialectics of every realization. It mustcease to be nothing but human.The Catholic Church in Europe today has no adversarywhich so openly and vigorously challenges i t as an enemyas did this spirit of the eighteenth century. Humanitarianpacifism is incapable of enmity, because its ideal is lost injustice and peace. Many pacifists, though not the best ofthem, deal only with the plausible calculation that war isusually bad for business-the unshakable rationalistic assertion that in war too much energy arid material is squandered. As i t exists today, the League of Nations31 may proveto be a useful institution. But it does not appear as anadversary of the universal Church, even less the spiritualleader of humanity.The last European adversary of Catholicism was Freemasonry. I am unable to judge whether it still embodies thefire of its heroic age. But whatever spiritual pretensions itmay have, they are today as irrelevant to consistent economic thinking as the League of Nations and Catholicism.All are but phantoms to this type of thinking: the one,perhaps a phantom of the future; the other, perhaps aphantom of the past. As has been said: whether one phantom reaches out to another is as inconsequential as whetherthey come to blows. Humanity is such an abstract idea thateven Catholicism appears comprehensible by comparison,

because at least i t has possible advantages for aestheticconsumption. For the third time, I reiterate that the mate-.,


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36 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMriality of economic-thinking capitalists is very close to thatof a radical communism. Neither persons nor things requirea "government" if the economic-technical mechanism isallowed its own immanent regularity.

I f every political authority is rejected-in such reasonedarguments, then Bakunin,32 one of the greatest anarchistsof the nineteenth century, appears to have been the naiveberserker who was generations ahead of his time in thebattle against the idea and the spirit. He swept away allmetaphysical and ideological obstacles, then turned withScythian might against religion and politics, theology, andjurisprudence. His fight with the Italian Mazzini33 appearsas the remote symbolic skirmish of a colossal, world-historical upheaval of greater dimelJ-Sions than the Volkerwan-derung.34 For Bakunin, the theism of the Freemason Mazziniwas, like every theistic belief, only evidence of servitude...and the true source of all evil-all state and political authority. It was metaphysical centralism.

Marx and Engels were as well atheists. But here theultimate criterion was the conflict between the educated -and the noneducated. The insurmountable antipathy boththese men of the western half of Germany harbored forFerdinand Lasalle, who stemmed from the eastern half, wasmore than an unhee.ded whim. But their hatred of theRussian arose from their most deeply rooted instincts and

, manifested itself in the struggle within the First International. Conversely, everything in the Russian anarchist rosein revolt against the "German Jew" (born in Trier) andagainst Engeis. What continually provoked Bakunin wastheir intellectualism. They had too much of "the idea," toomuch "grey matter." The anarchist can only utter the word"cervelle"35 with sibilant fury. Behind this word he rightlysuspected the claim to authority, discipline, and hierarchy.To him, every type of cerebralism is hostile to life.

l


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 37Bakunin's untamed barbarian instinct hit with unerring

certainty on a seemingly incidental but in reality verydecisive concept, to which the German revolutionaries gavea strange moral fervor when, having created the bellicoseclass of the "proletariat," they baptized the "Lumpenprole-tariat." This designation (a la fois meprisant et pittoresque36)can actually be regarded as a symptom, since it is boundinextricably with so many different value connotations.Social thinking in all its manifestations is related in someway to this remarkable mixture called Lumpenproletariat. Itis a "proletariat," but to it belong also the bohemian of thebourgeois age, the Christian beggar, and all the insulted andthe injured. It has played a somewhat hazy but essentialrole in all revolutions and rebellions. Bolshevik writers havein recent years accorded it a vindication.

When Marx and Engels are at pains to distinguish theirtrue proletariat from this "rotten" rabble, they betray howstrongly they are still influenced by traditional moral andWest European conceptions of education. They want toimbue their proletariat with a social value. This is onlypossible with moral concepts. But here Bakunin had theincredible courage to see the Lumpenproletariat as the har-binger of the future and to appeal to the canaille.37 Whatfulminating rhetoric:

In my view, the flower of the proletariat is aboveall the great masses-the millions of uncivilized,disinherited, wretched and illiterate peoplewhom Mr. Engels ahd Mr. Marx would consign tothe paternal domination of a very strong govern-ment. In my view, the flower of the proletariat isprecisely this inexhaustible cannon fodder of allgovernments-this great mob, still little touchedby "'bourgeois civilization, which bears in its


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38 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORMwomb, in its passions and instincts, all the seedsof the socialism of the future.

Nowhere has the decisive educational antagonism been sopowerfully exhibited as in this. _statement. It sets the stagewhereon the essence of the present situation is clearlyrecognizable and Catholicism stands as a political force.Since the nineteenth century, there have been in Europetwo great masses opposed to West European tradition andeducation, two great streams crowding their banks: theclass-conscious proletariat of the big cities and the Russianmasses estranged from Europe. From the standpoint oftraditional West European culture, both are barbarians.Where they have a sense of their own power, they proudlycall themselves barbarians. The fact that they met onRussian soil, in the Russian Soviet Republic, has a p r ~ f o u n djustification in the history of ideas. However dissimilar andeven antagonistic the two groups, however inexplicable thewhole process in terms of all previous ideological constructsand the specific theory of Marxism, the alliance is noaccident of world history.I know there may be more Christianity in the Russianhatred of West European culture than in liberalism andGerman Marxism. I know that great Catholic thinkers deemliberalism a more malevolent enemy than avowed socialistatheism. I know this formlessness may contain the potentialfor a new form that might also give shape to the economictechnical age. Having withstood everything, the CatholicCnurch need not decide these questions. Here also, it willbe the complexio of all that withstands. It is the inheritor.

T h ~ r _ e is, nevertheless, a type of. decision the. Churchcannot a v ~ i d - a type of decision-that ~ ; t b ; t ~ k e l l T r i - t l i e presentday, !.n the concrete situation, in ~ v e r y . ~ _ i _ n g l e generation. With respect to such decisions, the Church.opts forone side or the other, even though it does not declare itself


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 39for any of the contending parties. Thus it stood on the sideof the Counterrevolution in the first half of the nineteenthcentury. On this basis, I maintain: In that remote skirmishwith Bakunin, the Catholic Church and the Catholic concept of humanity stood on the side of the Idea and WestEuropean civilization, closer to Mazzini than to the atheisticsocialism of the Russian anarchist.

NOTES1. [Gedanken und Erinnerungen, published posthu

mously in 1898. Memoirs, Being the Reflections and Recollections of Otto Prince von Bismarck, 2 Vols., Trans. by A. J.Butler (New York: H. Fertig, 1966). Trans.]2. [The Kulturkampf was initiated when Bismarckpassed laws in 1871/72 aimed at the state veto of theclergy. These laws were in response to the Vatican Councilor Vaticanum (1869-1870), which raised the papacy to thestatus of an absolute monarchy and thus changed therelation between Church and State-not only with theVatican's demand of absolute freedom in the training ofthe clergy but in its assumption of ethical superiorityvis-a-vis the state. In 1887 Bismarck ended the Kulturkampfby capitulating to the Curia. Trans.]3. [Marc Rene Montalembert (1714-1800), a Frenchmilitary engineer and writer. Trans.]

4. [Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861), aFrench ecclesiastic and orator. Trans.]

5. [Both of these quotations appear in English inSchmitt's text, but there is no clue as to their author.Trans.]

6. [Gardinal Desire Joseph Mercier (1851-1926)preached the revival of the philosophy of St. ThomasAquinas. Trans.]


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40 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM7. [Michael Felix Korum (1840-1921) worked for a

settlement of the Kulturkampf. Trans.]8. [Felix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup (1802-1878),Bishop of Orleans, opposed the dogma of papal infallibility

both before and during the Vatican.Council, but was oneof the first to accept it once it was decreed. Trans.]r 9. [Marcionism, a sect formed by the heretical Romanaeader Marc on (170?) I accepted no scriptures other thanthe ten Pauline epistles and a gospel altered from Luke. Itrejected the doctrines of the Incarnation and Resurrection,and taught a form of dualism whereby the God of the Jewsis different from the God of the Christians. It practiced anextreme form of asceticism and lasted until the seventhcentury. Trans.]10. [Johann Joseph von Goerres (1776-1848), a Germ,anwriter who upheld the power of the Catholic Church.Trans.]11. [In Schmitt 's analysis of political romanticism, henotes that it was never a part of romantic conceptual oractual reality to attempt to change the world, but rather toresolve its reputed dualism by a leap into a "higher third"realm, which in reality is only another realm from whichone might escape with an either/or. On Goerres and the"higher third," see Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism,trans. by Guy Oakes (Cambridge, MA: MIT P r e s ; ; l 9 1 r ~pp. 31, 49, 87f, 120, etc. Trans.]12. [Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892), a French philologist and religious critic. Trans.]13. ["Every victory of Rome is a victory of reason." Trans.]14. [Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (1861-1916), aFrench physicist who also wrote on religion. Trans.]15. [Les Soirees de Saint-Petersburg (Paris: Cosson, 1821).Trans.]16. [Louis Veuillot (1813-1883), a Catholic layman whoadvocated absolute papal supremacy. Trans.]


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 4117. [Leon Bloy (1846-1917) , a Catholic layman who

preached spiritual revival through suffering and poverty.Trans.]18. [Robert Hughes Benson (1871-1914), a priest andwriter who became privy chamberlain to Pope Pius X. Trans.]19. [Paul Charles Joseph Bourget (1852-1935), a Frenchnovelist and literary critic. Trans.]20. [This quotation is from Francis Thompson, "Shelley,an Essay," in The Dublin Review (July 1908). Trans.]

21. [Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893), a Frenchliterary critic, philosopher and historian. Trans.]22. Uacques Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704), a Frenchtheologian and gifted orator. Trans.]23. ["Reprasentation und reprasentative Organe," Allge-meine Staatslehre (Berlin: 0. Haering, 1900). In Schmitt'sfamous lecture at the Handels-Hochschule in Berlin on

Aanuary 18, 1930, he specifically criticized Jellinek forseparating jurisprudence and sociology: Hugo Preuss: SeinStaatsbegriff und seine Stellung in der deutschen Staatslehre(Tiibingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1930). Trans.]24. [The Erfurt Program was adopted at the Congress ofthe German Social Democratic Party in 1891-a year afterthe fall of Bismarck and the end of the antisocialist legislation that had made the party illegal in 1878. Trans.]

25. [Kautsky's pamphlet first appeared as a series of\articles in Neue Zeit (1906, Vol. 21, Nos. 1-3). See KarlKautsky, Die Sozialdemokratie und die Katholische Kirche,Second Revised Eqition (Berlin: Buchhandlung Vorwarts,1906). Trans.]

26. [Rudolf Sohm (1841-1917) was probably the mostbrilliant dogmatic jurist of his time. Working in a period inwhich the conflict between Romanists and Germanistswas not as sharp as it had been, he was attracted to bothRoman and Germanic law and, later in life, also to canonlaw, and achieved equal fame in all three. Trans.]


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42 ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM27. [Ernest Hello (1828-1885), a French Roman Catho

lic author of philosophical essays with a strongly mysticalbent, who influenced the Roman Catholic revival in thenineteenth century and still had many admirers into thetwentieth century. Trans.]

28. ["I appeal." This and the following French quotations appear in Leon Bloy, Salut par les ]uifs (1892), SecondEdition (Paris: G. Cres, 1924), pp. 88-90. Bloy indicatesthat he took the story from Ernest Hello. Trans.]

29. ["Fearfully without appeal." Trans.]30. ["I appeal for justice to your glory." Trans.]31. [The United Nations could be substituted. Trans.]32. [In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Schmittwrites: "For Proudhon and Bakunin, anarchism meant abattle against every sort of systematic unity, against t h ~centralized uniformity of the modern state, against theprofessional parliamentary politician, against bureaucracy,the military, and police, against what was felt to be th,emetaphysical centralism of belief in God. The analogy ofboth conceptions of God and the state forced themselveson Proudhon under the influence of restoration philosophy. He gave this philosophy a revolutionary anti-state andanti-theological twist, which Bakunin drew out to its logical conclusion" (p. 67). At the conclusion of Political Theol-ogy, we read: "For the anarchists, every pretension to a

1 decision is necessarily harmful, because true social order isnaturally revealed i f the immanence of life is not disturbedby such pretensions. Of course, this radical antithesis compels them to make a decision against the decision.Bakunin, the greatest anarchist of the nineteenth century,exhibits the strange paradox that in theory he must become the theologian of the strugglelgainst theology and inpractice the dictator of the struggle against dictatorship" (p.66, translation altered). Trans.]


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ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND POLITICAL FORM 4333. [Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was one of the ma

jor architects of the Italian state and also a political andsocial thinker. Influenced both by French romantics andSaint-Simon, he reacted against the rationalistic elementsof eighteenth century thought but absorbed the principlesof democracy. From Condorcet he took the doctrine of theindefinite progress of mankind and developed an essentially intuitive view of divinely guided historical evolutionprogressing through stages. He designated the new stage asthe "social epoch," which would be inspired by a newreligion to replace obsolete Christianity. Mankind wouldbe reorganized according to the principle of association,and since this principle required individual freedom andpolitical equality, all nations would presumably adopt ademocratic and republican form of government. However,freedom and equality were not conceived as substantivebut as instrumental to the individual in performing hisduty. The workers' movement begun by Mazzini's Italianfollowers in the 1860s lost out to Bakuninism in the 1870sand to Marxism in the 1880s and thereafter. Trans.]34. [The migration of peoples, especially the moveme'ntinto Southern and Western Europe of the Teutonic peoples, Huns and Slavs, from the second century A.D.,reached its peak in the fifth and sixth centuries with thesettlement of Norsemen in England and France. Trans.]35. [Brains. Trans.]

36. [At once contemptible and picturesque. Trans.]37. [Mob. Trans.] .


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AppendixTHE VISIBILITY OF THECHURCH: A SCHOLASTICCONSIDERATION

Carl Schmitt

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Everything that can be said about the visibility of theChurch stems from the following two tenets: "Man is notalone in the world"; "The world is good, and what evil thereis in the world is the result of the sin of man." Both obtaintheir religious significance from the fact that God hasbecome man. I f one speaks of them at all, it should not beto convince heathens or transcendentalists but rather as ifconversing with a Christian, because the point is not todiscover the irrefutable but to find the truth.

Historians of early Christianity, who have concluded thatthe first Christians and even Christ himself were indifferentto the things of this worll:i because they expected the endof the world tomorrow or the day after, base themselves ona trite psychopathological analysis of such behavior.Whether or not their psychology is right is of no interest tothose of religious persuasion, for whom it is much more aquestion of whether it is right to let mundane things taketheir own course, since the world may end tomorrow or inmillions of years. From a religious standpoint, the povertyof their psychology can be seen by anyone horrified at theinevitable prospect of his own death. A true believer has nodoubt the world will end tomorrow or in the near future.The psychological effect of apathy and indifference canalso be obtained by dwelling on my own death, which I must

....face in the foreseeable future or even more in the unforesee-

.....


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48 THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCHable present, rather than on history or on my career. The factthat the world still has not come to an end, despite theexpectation of believing Christians, does not disprove theirreligion. Conversely, it is also true that millions of people whoexpected to live more than a hundred years have died. Whyshould Christians be interested in the end of the world at all,whereas today an autonomous spiritualist is interested onlyin himself and believes every man is his own judge (andconsequently his own executioner).

When man stands before God, the world and all itsinhabitants become as nothing. There are no friends or loversto stand by him. There are no companions in the kingdom ofGod; no marriage and no contract. No one can write booksabout the Kingdom of God. All the touching words writtenabout it have come from those who have never been there.No one, not even a genius, has spoken the last word, and theWord of God can only say no ear has ever heard it.Whoever speaks is no longer alone in the world. How- ever, it would be false to say man is alone in the world andGod is not with him. Instead of the alternative, that wouldbe a combination of both. Man is either alone or in theworld. As long as he is truly alone, he is not in the world,that is, he is no longer even a man, and as long as he is aman and in this world, he is not alone.Only God is alone. The feeling of indescribable, insurmountable loneliness no man of value ever loses, the certainty one can never expect help from another in the mostimportant things, the knowledge no man can console another and any consolation based on the approval of othermen or contact with them is only a creature comfort and adangerous illusion - all these verities do not prove man istruly alone in the world. They are indications of a sinfulworld and of the longing for God, who is alone. I t would besophistry, betraying either the crudest materialism or confusing man with God, were one to conclude from the


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THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCH 49loneliness of God that man is closest to Him in his greatestphysical and psychical loneliness (as if mighty Tamerlanewould compare himself to Almighty God) and that hisrelations with God were only a personal matter, that itwould be more appropriate to pray to "My Father" than to"Our Father."Although God is alone, He is also omnipresent in theworld. To take refuge in God does not mean to flee the worldor even to abandon it and withdraw into pure spirituality,as though it were something incommensurable with relig-ion, to leave it to its own devices (then the best in the worldwould indeed be a command) instead of letting its lawproceed from the mouth of God. Those moments in whichman's longing for solitude in God is already fulfilled in thislife are allowed only to the elect few, as recompense andconsolation for long and active service. But no one isentitled to turn a subjective experience into the criterion of

~a proper Christian life. As with all essential things, one muststrive for success never as the result of one's own endeavorsbut always and only by the grace of God.A religious experience should not be obtained from apsychic p h e n o m e ~ o n . A didactic political system seekingto shape human behavior in such a way as to guarantee thisexperience (and guard against the illusion of some privatesensation) would in all probability do everything necessaryto create something so esoteric it would always be protectedagainst any profane interference. For if true solitude is inGod, then the way of man to God must not be a negationof community with other men, any more than suicide canbe considered an act of mortification in a Christian sense.Whether someone can be called a true Christian has nothingto do with the intensity of impatience with which he seeksto bind himself to God but rather with the path he takes.The path is determined by the law of God, that is, the panrema with which Christ admonished the tempter when he


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50 THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCHchallenged Christ to make bread from stones.l It means therejection of the immediacy, which Christ the mediator andHis means (the Church) would overcome in order to stillthe hunger for God.

Everything lawful in this world destroys everything indi-vidual. The statement that all men are equal before the lawhas the accuracy of an analytical judgment, so that, ifreversed, a law can be defined as that for which equalityexists. A natural law no less than its prototype-the juridicallaw regulating human relations-respects a distinction be-tween persons. The first, most primitive allusion to a con-tract made the participating individuals into contractingparties-into opponents, who can no longer say they havechanged their minds, that "in fact" they wanted somethingdifferent, that it is a violation of their "innermost self" tocompel them to fulfill the contract or anything of the kind.The fact man is not alone in the world leads to the conclu-sion that it is no longer a question of his individuality.

If the lawfulness of human relations develops accordingto its own immanent and purely mundane logic, then therewill no longer be any respect of an individual in history. Allinstitutions established to guarantee that man may makethe most of himself in his little room or apartment, or in theframework of laws, or wherever, will not protect him fromthe possibility that one fine day he may be taken from hisabode and made to understand what it means not to bealone in a God-forsaken world.Before God, man is nothing. But only in the world is hetruly without hope. No lawgiver would ever be so wise andso benevolent as to save man from the consequences ofworldly lawfulness. But God saves him in this worldthrough a fabulous upheaval in that He grounds all lawful-ness in every word that proceedeth out of His mouth. I f aChristian obeys authority because it is grounded in andbound by God, he obeys God and not authority. This is the


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THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCH 51only revolution in world history that deserves to be calledgreat-Christianity provided a new foundation for mundane u t h o r i ~ The great proviso which makes this acknowledgment not something hypocritical but rather contingentappears to the historian as a "peculiar mixture of radicalismand conservatism."Z For a political program which viewsproperty, income, or even education as its constituent elements, this mixture is absurd. But its wealth of contradic-

'ions has many counterparts (for example, the mixture ofpride and humility in the devotional formula "by the graceof God") and is only an expression of the fundamentaldualism that has dominated the world since the beginningof Christianity.

What rightly can be considered and perceived as humanpersonality exists only in the realm of mediation betweenGod and the mundane world. A man totally dedicated toGod is as little an individual as one totally immersed in themundane world. Individuality coexists only in that Godkeeps the person in the wgrld. The person is unique in theworld and thus also in the community. His relation ad seipsum is not possible without a relation ad alterum.3 To bein the world means to be with others. From a spiritualstandpoint, all visibility is construed in terms of a constitution of community. The members of the community derivetheir dignity from God and thus cannot be destroyed by thecommunity. But they can only return to God through thecommunity. Thus arises a visible Church.

Man is not alone in the world. God stands by him. Thusthe world cannot destroy him. But man is not alone in theworld also in the original sense, that is, he is in the companyof other men. Thus he remains in his relation to God in thecommunity and its mediation.

The visibility of the Church is based on somethinginvisible. The concept of the visible Church is itself something invisible. Like all reality, it loses its actuality in


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52 THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCHrelation to God because God is the only true reality. Thusthe true visibility of the Church is invisible. There is noinvisible Church that is not visible and no visible Churchthat is not invisible. Thus the Church can be in but not ofthis world.

An arrangement making the invisible visible must berooted in the invisible and appear in the visible. Themediator descends, because the mediation can only proceedfrom above, not from below. Salvation lies in that Godbecomes man (not that man becomes God). Just as Christhad a real body, so must the Church have a real body. Thisoften repeated metaphor assumes an argument of the high-est dignity because it refers to an identity in the logicalstructure of both processes and concretely manifests themarvelous structure of this same "mediation," which con-stitutes the essence of the Church.

One cannot believe God became man without believingthere will also be a visible Church as long as the worldexists. Every religious sect which has transposed the con-cept of the Church from the visible community of believingChristians into a corpus mere mysticum4 basically has doubtsabout the humanity of the Son of God. I t has falsified thehistorical reality of the incarnation of Christ into a mysticaland imaginary process. In so doing, one of course arrives ata postulate of immediacy, namely, that Christ was notmerely born in Bethlehem in Palestine in the year 1 but forevery man everywhere and in every age. But that is nolonger the physical, visible incarnation, which the mostinward of all Christians, [Soren] Kierkegaard, maintainedwith such fervor.

No age, no people, no individual would dare ask thatChrist be born again-in reality. The audacity of such anotion is clear to everyone. The justification of the senti-ment lies in that no one can ignore the fact that the concretehistorical process of the incarnation of Christ is bound with


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THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCH 53the concrete present-the visible institution that bears theunbroken chain.

Although God became man and man heard his Word inhuman speech, the dualism that came into the world throughthe sin of man also affected the Word. It made a means ofearthly aims out of t!le heavenly body of divine thought, evenas right has been deformed into a means of material might,and the identity of good and useful turned into the deceptiveantithesis of autonomy and heteronomy. This ghastly confu-sion, this loss of the transparency of life, of thought andlanguage, is the most effective means of sin, with its total lackof agreement, its veiling of evil in utility, and the irresistiblelogic of its vested interests. Through the horrible contraposi-tion of right and might, it has succeeded in making thevisibility of the Church into something invisible in a materialsense, thereby making it necessary to distinguish betweentrue visibility and factual concreteness.The visibility of the Church derives from its essence,which is mediation. But mediation remains a task that mustbe regenerated constantly. Thus it is possible that anyhistorical reality acts politically, as does the Church, that is,in the general sense of the "official" Church, despite the factit is not identical with the visible Church. Yet the generallyaccepted view is itself already a falsification. The visibleChurch is always the official Church, which means that, asfar as it is concerned, the transformation of spiritual tasksand functions into [public] offices, the separation of theoffice from whomever happens to occupy it, is essential.Should the Church eliminate the distinction between theessential and the accidental, and make an official an-nouncement in the mundane political sense that the ines-sential can become the essential or even that the false canbecome the true, then it would be possible to distinguishbetween the official and the visible Church.


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54 THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCHPersons and measures embodying.power to represent the

Church at any given moment are not identical with thevisible Church. Otherwise, might-the mere factualwould again become right, and the wicked claim could bemade that sin and all its works w o u l ~ disappear with theChurch. What was not admissible with Christ-to bring thehuman into conflict with the divine and concrete-factualreality into opposition with the idea-is possible on the nextlevel of mediation-in the Church, which is exposed to themeans it wants to influence.The religious possibility of Protestantism is based on thedistinction between the visible and the concrete Church,which will obtain as long as there is sin in the world andmen are still sinners-until the Day of Judgment. Yet thejustification for the possibility of Protestantism does not liein the division of the Church. The visible Church alsocontains within itself the protest against what is wickedlyconcrete and merely historical, and it does not require anyother new Church of its own for this protest.

The visibility of the Church can by no means be negatedby a visible Church, because every Church is visible bydefinition. The negation is directed only against what isconcrete and accidental. Everyone is as great as what henegates. Objections raisedagainst the human and concreteChurch have been addressed to the divine and visibleChurch. On the basis of a misunderstood visibility, theconclusion has been drawn that visibility makes reasonablereform impossible and that, as with everything mundane,it is the work of the devil. But the visibility of the Churchis as little the work of the devil as is the creation of theworld. I t always remains a task whose fulfillment makesthe concrete Church visible, but this fulfiflment is alwaysincomplete.

The individual's critique is never deprived of the foundation. As soon as there is contact with God, even through


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THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCH 55many levels of mediatitn, the revolutionary power of faithcan no longer be abolished. Also in the Church, there is themaxim that one must obey God more than man. The provisothat this belongs to the power of every individual is so strongand sublime that it is valid even with regard to the infallibleinstance. Of course, there is always the Jesuit's objection,that the pope was infallible. But whether the given popewas in fact the legitimate pope could not be decided withreference to his infallibility. Among several rival popes,there can be only one legitimate pope.Carried to its logical conclusion, there is even the possi-bility that in times of the utmost confusion the Antichristwould become pope, should God allow it. But he would beno legitimate pope, therefore also no Vicar of Christ onearth, only one with the factual semblance of a "legitimatepope." The incongruity between the concrete and the visibleChurch would then become a clear contradiction-theworst punishment for the evil of man, more terrible thanthe division of the Church, which for both sides is still asevere retribution. However, despite all the obscuring, thefew true believers would remain even then the visibleChurch, would hold to the unbroken chain of the imitationof Christ in the priestly, educational and pastoral offices ina visible, that is, juridical continuity. Then, too, they shouldnot abandon the world and leave it to its own devices. Theend of the world, which they would await and whoseawaiting would keep them steadfast, would not be Nirvanabut rather a new and transfigured world that is neverthelessthe same world.

He who is lost in sin would of course not see the visibleC

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Carl Schmitt Roman Catholicism and Political Form Contributions in Political Science 1996