The Church and the Public Conscience

IS THE CHURCH THE CONSCIENCE OF AMERICA?

BY GUSTAVE WEIGEL, S.J.

THE Church in any civil society has a dual reality. She conceives hersell to be in a kingdom not of this world, and she keeps her eyes on the heavenly Jerusalem. And yet, precisely because she insists that she is a visible society, she is incorporated in the cities which were built by man. She may sigh for the other-worldly Jerusalem, but her work is definitely in Paris, New York, and Tokyo.

What are the obligations of the Church to the cities of men? Some believers and many nonbelievers would like to say that she has none and therefore must not meddle; but this answer is too simple. She cannot detach herself from the soil in which she is planted, even if her roots go deeper. She is not merely unworldly, but quite worldly as well. Like her Lord, she may not pray for the world, but she certainly prays in the world.

Therefore the Church has obligations to the world. In any secular situation the Church must at least give witness to the good news that in the Christ-event, salvation has come to mankind, and that this salvation is available to all. Whether the environment be hostile or friendly, this primal obligation is pressing. It derives not from the rights of the secular community but rather from the imperative imposed on the Church by the Christ.

However, this role of the Church in seculai society is not secular. It is sacral and transcends the concerns of the temporal society of men. But it is not something abstract or merely Platonic. The idea of salvation includes a way of life on earth, here and now. A way of life produces a visible comportment affecting others, and that must be a concern of the directors of the visible order of the commonwealth. The very fact of the distinction between church and state produces tension. But this tension need not induce conflict. Anode and cathode are not at war with each other. Tension can be a dynamic for heightened activity. Though this is so, and a consummation devoutly to be wished, the possibility of conflict is inherent in the basic distinction.

The Church is inevitably interested in the world because her members are necessarily citizens of the world. If the Church is interested in the whole man who is her member, she cannot be unconcerned about the worldly component of his being. She must seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, but that righteousness has a terrestrial mise-en-scène.

One obligation which has often been suggested is that the Church is the conscience of the secular community. Because this proposition seems to please many men, it wall be necessary to analyze it with care. We might have a civic community, for example, in which the overwhelming majority of citizens seriously belong to one church. In such a situation, Church and civic society would be so fused that it would be difficult to say whether the community at any moment was acting as Church or as a republic.

Congregationalist New England in the seventeenth century was so structured. The town meeting was held in the building which was both a church and a town hall. The religious dimension of the citizens was manifest in citizen action all the time. The common effort was simultaneously religious and secular. In fact, the Puritans considered their whole collectivity to be the gathered elect, whose fellowship was more of heaven than of earth. In these circumstances there cannot be the slightest doubt that the Church was the conscience of the community. It was precisely in function of that conscience that the community was formed and operated. He who did not belong to the Church had no real place in society and was treated as a transient guest or a tolerated stranger — or ejected.

It seems to me that such a community is a viable form of society, provided that circumstances in the world allow the existence of a closed collectivity. If by the nature of the interrelationships of politics, culture, science, and economy a closed society is out of the question, the absolute sovereignty of the circumscribed community must relinquish some dimensions of its autonomy. It is here not a question of ideology but a matter of necessity. Whether you are for or against an open society is irrelevant when circumstances make only the open society possible. In our time the interpenetration of all human action makes a closed society in any one geographic area out of the question. It is not to the point to say that society should be open or that it should not be. It is simply a fact that it is. Obviously this openness admits of degrees, and it will not be identical in every place.

IN SUCH a situation, in what sense can the Church be the conscience of the community? First of all, it must be recognized that the world visions functioning in the citizens of any current particular society are not one but many. The open society is pluralistic. In consequence, there will be some citizens who feel no concern for religion, while others are sincerely attached to religious values. Nor will all the religious citizens belong to one church; some will belong to none. There will be many churches, and the Church will be a shorthand symbol for religion insofar as it is active in the community. Even if one church is by law established, as is the case with the Church of England, the religious influence on the nation cannot be identified exclusively with that church. The nonconformists and the free churches are also included under the term “Church.”

If we understand “Church” in this large sense, is it meaningful to call the Church the conscience of the nation? Certainly not, if a large portion of the citizenry is not religiously concerned. This may be the case in Russia. The available facts are so confusing that it is difficult to decide. It is well to remember that genuine Communist ideology has nothing to say about God, nor does it wish to prove that there is no God. It merely considers the whole issue to be irrelevant. The unreality of a divine being is postulated, and in consequence religion, because it distracts man from his proper creative action, is declared baneful.

The Communists do admit the reality of an absolute — matter evolving according to a dialectic; but since this is not spiritual, no religion can be derived from it. Yet religion is tolerated in Communist countries, provided it is purely internal and does not interfere with the activities of the socialistically organized community. This toleration is justified by the system on the grounds of the evolutionary process in society. Religion is a historical fact prior to Communist control, and when Communism takes over, it finds religion there as a residue of an earlier stage of evolution which will be transcended automatically as socialism continues. Religion will inevitably wither away, and there is no call to use violence against it.

Communist theory will not permit the Church to be the conscience of the united people. Yet one of the weaknesses of any government which tries to operate rigorously by a blueprint based on a priori postulates is that facts may ignore the a priori. Poland is a Communist state, and the Church there may well be the conscience of the people, government notwithstanding. De jure the Church can have no influence on public life, but de facto it can be very important indeed.

The Communist situation is not universal. In the greater part of the world the state is not opposed to religion. Communist hostility to it helps to produce an opposite reaction in the states which feel themselves threatened by the Reds. The Russian astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, found no god in space, but the American, John Glenn, set out for space in a prayerful mood. What is the role of religion in a commonwealth like America?

First of all, the American Constitution, bolstered strongly by the American tradition, demands the separation of church and state. But as has been pointed out in the Supreme Court, the American tradition never separated public life from religion. The resulting situation is inevitably paradoxical. The institutionalized corporations of religion have no privilege in American public law, but since the corporations are religious, they indirectly enjoy the general goodwill toward religion. The armed forces have chaplains who are always commissioned officers. Chapels exist in most of the army, navy, and air force centers. These chapels are all supplied and maintained by the republic. Civic events and even political rallies begin and end with prayer by a clergyman.

Church properties, owned by institutionalized societies, are exempt from tax. This consideration is always directed toward religion and never to its privately organized societies in their distinct individuality. The Church, if understood exclusively as generic visible religious action, is palpably privileged in America, but Church, it understood as a specifically structured particular community, is always treated in law with nervous aloofness.

In America, is the Church, no matter how you understand the term, the public conscience? Certainly there is no explicit or implicit contract existing between Church and general society to this effect. Neither in law nor in fact is religion an ultimate norm whereby legislators, executives, or judges go about their tasks. No court would accept a plea based on the illegality of a statute because of its violation of some religious principle, though the courts do accept pleas based on the claim that certain legislation or governmental action deprives the citizen of his recognized right to be religious. In this country religion is considered a private thing producing a public fact; religion precisely as such has no juridical standing, though the religious fact is admittedly relevant to public policy.

RELIGION, then, cannot be the official conscience of this land. Is it in fact the moral guide of the people? Americans think that religion is bigger than any church and bigger than the sum total of churches. A natural religiosity, which functions without much reference to the individual churches, docs operate in many citizens who are unaffiliated with any existing church society or whose affiliation is only nominal. This kind of religiosity goes no further than recognition of a Supreme Being.

If we consider the individual churches, the organized fellowships with a definable doctrine and practice, we run into a dismaying phenomenon. There are more than 250 sects and denominations in the land, and they are all different. The unity of God means something quite different to Unitarians, Jews, Lutherans, and Catholics. The moral code held by each separate religious community can reductively be unified, but the consistent particular believer wants no such reduction.

We must certainly admit that each church has the civil right and the obligation to teach and demand a code of behavior for those who are in its union. If it does not do this, it is obviously unfaithful to its own mission. .Those outside the membership may consider the moral directives given unfortunate or unreasonable, but if the teaching shows no clear and present danger of undermining the common good, they must in the spirit of political freedom respect the rights of the fellowship, which is a tree union of tree citizens.

When the individual church urges certain norms of conduct on its members with the penality of expelling the nonconforming member, it is acting according to its civil rights. Its action cannot be a valid concern for those outside of the fellowship. Outsiders are free to form and voice their disagreement with the church in question, but they cannot suppress its right to teach its own free constituency. Suppression violates the guaranteed freedom of the citizen. If there should be a general hostility directed toward a particular church, this fact will inhibit the church in its action, but the inhibition derives from a fact and not from any legal infringement of right.

But a church’s civil right goes beyond the confines of its own closed fellowship. Its members, singly or together, can urgently propose their specific vision of life and reality to the community at large. A single man or a group of men can speak their minds to the whole body politic. They can try to convince and persuade others of the rightness of their views or of a program of action deriving from such views. The only restriction placed on this right is that the arguments must be fair. Offensive and annoying proselytizing, slanderous attacks on others, lobbying for power, and the abuse of legal technicalities in order to favor partisan programs are unfair. In the popular mind, no church has the right to use such means. But that it should speak its mind in public with the intention of enlisting the support of the community is in principle, if not always in lact, welcomed by the citizenry. This welcome derives from a general, though not universal, conviction that all who have worthwhile insights for the common welfare should make them known. However, the community wants such ideas proposed, not imposed. The republic will decide; it refuses to have decisions made for it.

Is the Church — understood as one church, or the totality of all churches or religion in general in fact the conscience of the commonwealth? Realism makes us tend to say no. In our kind of democracy, neither in law nor in lact does the community give the Church the right to be the arbiter of the nation’s ethics. There is a common belief that the Church’s word is relevant to civic concern, but although the Church is one of the genuine factors which help to form conscience, it is not the sole factor.

There arc two different groups present in our country. The first group, in its strong adherence to religion, thinks that some definite religious dogma is binding in conscience on all Americans. We hear from time to time the phrase: “After all, America is a Christian nation.” This statement is ambigtious. If no more is meant than the statistical fact that the majority of citizens claim to be Christian in their religious commitments, be these strong or weak, the statement is true but hardly to the point. If the statement wishes to insinuate that the American is somehow bound in conscience to accept certain Christian dogmas as directive of our national life, it is false.

A second group operating in our midst is antireligious. Since there can be no religious test in our way of life, these men and women are genuinely and validly citizens no less than the Americans who are believers. Our laws and our tradition do not demand that they be converted. Vet such men and women must not confuse two different ideas. Separation of church and state does not mean the relegation of religion to the invisible recesses of the human heart. The American idea is rather that religion has a public function. It must speak out, and it must be heard, though its voice is not necessarily decisive. It can be decisive only when the people as a whole accept definite religious guidance, but even then it is decisive only because the people will it, not because of any religious premise involved in their achievement of the decision.

In the American scheme, the republic cannot impose a religious obligation on any citizen. The opponent of religion has the right to protest any governmental pressure exerted on him in order to make him engage in a religious act. But he has no right to protest when the government acts to foster the relevance of religion to the national existence. Separation of church and state in Russia means the complete and utter irrelevance of religion to communal life. Separation of church and state in the United States implies the relevance of religion but grants it no juridical authority. Relevance will be protected: church domination will be resisted.

SINCE no moral vision can be legislated, and yet morality is so relevant to legislation, the spontaneous moral consensus of the people as a whole is very important. This consensus is a fact, and different influences combine to make it real. Groups can use propaganda shrewdly and effectively to produce a consensus; tyranny, if it endures for a long time and uses collective brainwashing, can induce a precarious consensus. However, the consensus is the flower of human freedom; it is not the fruit of a legislator’s fiat or dictator’s club. Even the legal formulas of past consensus cannot override its present shape and autonomy. The consensus which operates is a living thing in the now. The past helped to form it, but the present gives it its being.

Nor are we dealing with ephemeral cults, fads, modes, and movements. These are superficial; their action is not profound. Moral consensus is the public philosophy of a community, which is there just as the weather is there. You may not like it; you may want to change it; but you will also have to resign yourself to the fact of its existence. It is the public philosophy which people use in their collective interactions without having achieved it by any philosophic method. It is common sense, which, even when it is not conspicuous as sense, is undeniably common. It takes a keen observer to find its essence, because it is not reflective, nor are its principles necessarily verbalized or its consequences articulated.

It is this common felt conviction which makes the society alive. The laws do not make it. but it gives the precise meaning of law. Law can function only to the degree that consensus gives it energy. Where consensus embraces a vast area of public concern, written laws arc not necessary, because the living common will does easily and simply what complicated laws could achieve only inefficiently. It is this consensus of the people which is truly the conscience of the nation.

One might ask whether consensus is really a national fact. The answer is that its truth is inescapable. Men and women do collaborate in a given area; they do live together; they do interlace their existences one with the other, Not every single individual in the community will subscribe to the consensus, but when a predominant majority of the people do subscribe to an opinion, the consensus becomes clearly defined. The wider the moral area of consensus, the greater will be the harmony of national life. Even when the area is not very large, there must always be a minimal consensus on basic moral issues, permitting collaboration and living together. That there are not more murders in our land is due not merely to the efficiency of our police. There are small communities where, practically speaking, there is no police force, and yet there are no murders at all. The American people by consensus reject murder because they believe it is inadmissible. This, rather than any written decree in the statutes, is what ultimately outlaws murder. The average American cannot philosophize about murder, but he certainly is against it, and in no uncertain terms. This is not merely an individual stand; it is a common persuasion, operating as the social will rather than as the consequence of adding up a large number of individual wills. That is consensus.

WE ARE faced by two great problems in the matter of our American consensus. I he first is that its area is small and constantly shrinking. As a result there is no effective general guidance for our young people and for our morally obtuse citizens. Honesty, sobriety, industriousness, selfreliance, and regard for the neighbor’s personal dignity certainly were elements in the American consensus of the past. I wonder just how much is left of these moral ideals in the actual consensus of our day. They certainly have not disappeaied altogether, but obviously they are much thinner than they were. In the past, religious morality helped to make these factors strong in our consensus. The attraction of church laws is weak today, and they do not function as they did in the past.

Yet the relaxation of moral bonds is hurting us. We speak of our vacillating sense of national purpose. The government is searching lor morale builders and boosters. Everywhere we hear complaints that the public, schools have failed to teach moral principles. Actually, the present consensus is not sturdy enough to communicate a healthy moral framework lor our national existence. The signs are without number: workshirking, evasion of obligation, sloppy craftsmanship, shrill demand for pleasure and comfort, scorn for asceticism, uninhibited sensual and sexual indulgence, hostility to obedience, and oblivion of communal responsibility. These things are never altogether absent in any society, but they are dismayingly visible in our own.

What can we rationally and democratically do about our inadequate consensus? One solution offered by many good men is to urge the people to go to church. We see advertisements in buses and on billboards attempting to do so. Yet there are enough arguments to make us doubt the efficacy of this tactic. It is not that widespread religious commitment could not better our situation, but rather that in principle it would be no solution.

I should like to make a tentative suggestion. I should like to see our pundits of the press and on the campus investigate once more the idea that morality is structured objectively no less than the human body. If it is, just as medical scientists can draw up rules for bodily health, so our moralists could set forth rules for our public philosophy. In a discourse of reason, which is the universal possession of all men, no matter what then attitudes toward religion may be, a reasonable moral code can be proposed persuasively to the whole commonwealth.

The reader will smile and say that I am trying to bring back the notion of’ natural law. Of course that is what I am doing — but with a variation. Too long have defenders of natural law supposed that this concept was either a mystical achievement or a rational discovery of a complete code written somewhere in the Platonic sky. The mystic found it without critical research, written in the fleshy tablets of the heart. The a priori Platonist thought it was something which could be deduced to the last detail with mathematical rigor. Neither way seems helpful in our predicament. The mystic appeals to a vision which is not available to the commonality of men, and the rationalistic deontologist is too far removed from the empirical realities of existence.

But a rule of reason can be established without adopting either of these positions. Reason does achieve reality — metaphysical, physical, and moral. The technician accepts what the physicist says about iron, and he will not use it in a way counter to its structure. Iron can be employed to satisfy human needs. The physical, psychological, sociological, and spiritual factors in men can be and are being studied. The moralist, who is a kind of technician, can study the human structure and the human environment. He can, in terms of sound inference trom right reason, construct a practical code for human action. We do not expect a perfect scheme from such thought. Let it only be adequate for our needs, and let its principles be open to a discussion based on sound premises. A scheme so formed will not be a onceand-for-all achievement. The changes which constantly modify our environment will demand new codes. This is not an affirmation of relativism, but it is a plea for relevance.

The Church is not the conscience of the American community, though it plays an influential role in the formation of such a conscience. The conscience itself is the consensus of the nation. This consensus will not be healthy unless it is constantly put under the searching light of the criticism of the qualified observers of the national scene. To be a qualified observer one must be a moral philosopher working on rational principles, rather than on mystical intuitions or sheerly pragmatic assumptions. Morality is a structure of its own, utterly real and true to intrinsic principles of abiding applicability.