Editorial: We Do Not Need a Conservative Revolution. We need a Christian Revolution

When Barack Obama was elected President Sean Hannity began a steady drumbeat of calls for a conservative revolution.

P>WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - The moment Barack Obama was elected to the Presidency of the United States, Radio/TV commentator Sean Hannity began a steady drumbeat of calls for a "conservative" revolution. Soon, he will release his plan for America. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is leading a group of "conservatives" in releasing what they will call a "Conservative Manifesto" at the CPAC convention next weekend.

As a veteran of efforts to enlist faithful Christians into political, social, and cultural efforts to build a new culture of life I fear we are experiencing another effort to enlist us into a kind of resuscitated "religious right" which will continue false dichotomies such as "fiscal" and "social" conservatives. Only a moral people can ensure that a market economy remains free. The division between social thought and economic application is a false one. The market was made for man and not man for the market.

Make no mistake, I am NOT a liberal. Nor am I what is masquerading as "progressive" these days. I would welcome a debate over whether the so called "right" to reach into wombs and kill our youngest neighbors and to give homosexual practice equal legal status to marriage is really "progressive" at all. I contend that those claiming the label "progressive" are really "regressive."

However, I will leave that debate for another day. I do not want to get distracted in the conspiratorial theories which are the mainstay of another popular conservative radio personality. He seeks on a daily basis to "reveal" the "hidden" progressive agenda as if this is something new. Though some of his insights are valuable, I fear they distract us from the real work of offering an alternative vision of progress - as the Christian Church has always done.

I am 55 years old. An aging "former hippie" whose rejection of the misguided values of a consumerist, secularist culture led me to re-embrace the Catholic Christian faith, I looked forward to hearing one of my favorite old rock groups, the Who, at the Super Bowl. They tried hard to summon up their aging voices at that Half Time Show. I rooted for them. I was struck with the haunting words of one of their songs, "We don´t get Fooled Again." I am afraid we will be fooled again if we buy the idea that a "conservative revolution" is the solution to what is needed in this nation.

The collapse of Western civilization will not be remedied by "conservativism" or "neo-conservativism." They are inadequate for the task. Crippled by the lies of the culture of death and indoctrinated by what Pope Benedict XVI rightly called a "Dictatorship of Relativism", we need so much more. We do not need a "conservative revolution" we need a Christian revolution. It was the Christian Church which gave us the understanding of the dignity of every human person created in the Image of God. From that foundation came the core conviction that we all possess fundamental human rights which were endowed upon us by the God who created us. Those rights are not given by any Civil Government. They must be recognized by Civil Government or it is an unjust government.

The American founders carried such a vision into the experiment in ordered liberty called the United States of America. However, they did not come up with this ennobling and enabling vision on their own. They received it from the treasury of Western civilization which is found in Christendom. It is the Jewish and Christian vision of the human person, the primacy of marriage and the family founded upon it, and the acknowledgement of the existence of normative, fundamental moral truths, which guarantees the future of Western civilization.

These truths are revealed by the Natural Law and knowable through the exercise of right reason. They have fueled our determined efforts to build truly just societies. They have ensured our survival against totalitarianism of every ilk and every political persuasion.  When embraced and welcomed, these principles can properly govern our lives together and help us to form genuinely free societies.

Freedom is a "good" of the human person - not some ethereal disconnected concept. Freedom brings with it obligations to do what is right and true. For example, we have an obligation in solidarity to care for one another and, in particular, to care for the poor. We truly are our brother/sister´s keeper. However, this effort must be informed by a social ordering principle, the principle of subsidiarity. This principle insists that governance must be exercised at the lowest practicable level, beginning with the family. Larger governing entities must never usurp the rightful role of families and mediating structures.

Statism never works, whether of the rightist or the leftist version. It squelches freedom, creativity, initiative and genuine human compassion. Not because "government" is somehow intrinsically evil, it is NOT. The the distrust of governance is a weakness of the conservative/neo-conservative/libertarian coalition. The current conservative/neo-conservative/libertarian rhetoric needs to be carefully examined by Christians. We are not libertarians. Freedom is not found in the isolated individual. It is found in the family. Freedom is a relational reality.

The real questions concerning whether government is "good" is who does the governing, where it happens and whether such governance reflects truly moral values. Such an analysis does not begin with the isolated individual. In the words of the first book of the Bible we read "it is not good for man to be alone". It all begins with the family. We can only be fully human - and experience human flourishing and freedom - in relationship with one another. We are by nature - and by grace - social creatures. 

We need a movement for true freedom. We need men and women who can champion this philosophy in a way that inspires people to sacrifice for it. It must present an authentic vision of human freedom - not a libertinism masquerading as liberty or a selfish Individualism rejecting our obligation to one another. It must insist upon the moral foundation of any exercise of freedom. For example, we may be free to choose, but some choices are always and everywhere wrong. We ALL know this is true because it is written on the human heart. It does not require religion to reveal it or make it obligatory. It is a part of our common morality.

For example, the shared knowledge of what is right is the basis of our criminal justice system. For example, we all know it is always wrong to kill an innocent neighbor. That is not a proper exercise of human "freedom". This is true even if that neighbor lives in the first home of the whole human race, their mothers womb. We may hide voluntary abortion behind Orwellian language such as "choice" and "abortion rights" in a failed attempt to make it sound noble, but it is barbarism. It does not free us, it enslaves us as we kill our neighbors.

I have written of the "two step" of the new censors. It is a threat to freedom. The secularist censors seek to relegate our truth claims concerning the dignity of every human life and our defense of marriage and the family founded upon it as being "religious positions." They insist that these positions are therefore not an appropriate subject for public policy or political discourse. They want these truth claims to be confined within our Church Walls. They try to use the Police power of the State to silence us.

This is not freedom it is tyranny. There is a difference between a "secular" State, a State which welcomes all religious expressions, or none at all; a State which is not identified with one religious institution - and "secularism", an oppressive anti-religious regime which seeks to censor out of the public forum the wonderful contributions of the Church, people of faith, and of the great ideas informed by faith.

There is a Cultural Revolution underway in the West. This revolution is a threat not only to Christians but to all freedom loving people. For example, there are two conflicting visions of the human person, human freedom, human flourishing and marriage and the family founded upon it as the first cell of a truly just society contending for the future. These visions are incompatible with one another. Only one will triumph.

The collapse of the West can be averted; but only through the influence of the Church. It is her vision of the person, the family and the common good which will pave the way for our true and genuine liberation. It is the Church which is the vehicle of true progress. Christianity is the antidote to the descent into barbarism arising out of the neo-paganism masquerading as liberation.

We have lived through word games which portend the creeping oppression of dangerous and inhuman regimes in the last few decades. The misuse of the word "progressive" is another example of "verbal engineering"; what the late, great C.S. Lewis in his "Studies in Words" called "verbicide." There is a concerted effort to paint those who adhere to orthodox Christianity as "backward." Nothing could be farther from the truth. We are the true progressives!

It has been the contributions of Christianity throughout modern history, such as its´ insistence on the inherent and inviolable dignity and worth of every human person, that have set people - and cultures- free from the bondage of totalitarianism and produced true human progress. It has been the truth proclaimed by the Christian Church that has exposed and brought down errant philosophies which enslaved whole Nations. It has been a Christian world view and anthropology that have helped to advance true human liberation. It will be the Church that leads the world to a future of real progress. She is its champion.

We do not need a "conservative" revolution. We need a Christian revolution.

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