Some initial thoughts: How does #3 of the redefinition avoid a moral judgment? It includes the word “may,” which seems to be a replacement for “ought,” at least in order for #3 to represent integralism.
Also, the links to Pater Edmund’s “Three Sentences” definition include many historical figures and their thoughts about integralism.
Lastly, I don’t think the rejection of liberalism is a formal part of the definition, but serves a more pedagogical purpose. That is, X is not Y (with which an average reader might be more familiar), but rather, X is Z, and if Z, then not Y follows.
I’m looking forward to the time and opportunity to read your forthcoming book!
Thanks so much for popping in! What I mean by avoiding a moral judgment in a definition is what I take Pater Edmund's definition to be doing - condemning liberalism by defining it unsympathetically. I'm trying to avoid that. All I'm doing in condition #3 is to describe a normative statement that integralists endorse. There's no judgment of dismissal of other views built into the definition.
I agree that Pater Edmund's definition includes many historical figures, but I think mine counts everyone his does, and excludes only some he may include. My problem is not so much with the extension of his definition, but the intension. It groups the right figures but for not all the right reasons. So I've tried to improve upon his work. Though maybe I haven't! And thanks for your interest in the book!
Got it, that helps re: moral judgment. It still seems, though, that it’s a moral judgment that follows from the actual core of the definition. That is, an integralist as defined above must reject liberalism and would, coherently, so characterize it. In fact, it seems that to ask for a sympathetic definition of liberalism from an integralist is asking for the view to betray its own nature. At least, insofar as I understand it. I also wonder if the focal point for Pater Edmund is more of “1789 liberalism” in the 3 Sentences definition, and not other moderated varieties of liberalism? That is, he is taking the most authoritative of strongest case.
I just mean a definition where liberals could recognize themselves. It is true that anti-liberalism is built deep into the structure of 21st c integralism, much as it was from the 18th c forward. But earlier pre-liberal iterations I think were clearer, and were more focused on what they were for than what they were against.
On your last point, I think it is a pervasive feature of modern integralism to equate all liberalisms with (I like your term) 1789 liberalism. They say that's what's going on underneath the liberal rhetoric.
Part of the debate, though, is that a definition liberals can recognize (= is intelligible to them) is conditioned upon the terms under debate, no?
From my reading, it was easier for pre-liberal iterations to be for something and not as against because they were pre-liberal. If we keep going far back enough, however, the “integralisms” or adjacent become anti-pagan. A different schema of problems.
As stated, the last sentence of the definition seems wrong because it lacks appropriate qualification; as it stands, it commits a logical fallacy, and perhaps more immediately to the point, its unqualified nature overlooks the fact that many integralists seem to envision a situation in which the relation between the spiritual power and the temporal power is more indirect, the spiritual power taking precedence only when the spiritual ends actually require it. On integralism, the temporal ends and spiritual ends have to be integrated rather than disjoint (which is the most direct thing that makes integralism anti-liberal); the spiritual ends take priority (which is the point on which integralists usually have the loudest gripes against actual liberal societies); but by the very nature of an integralist scheme of government, both the temporal and the spiritual powers have the spiritual ends as ends. The temporal power just has the spiritual ends more indirectly. To hold that the temporal power only has temporal ends would be inconsistent with the whole point of integralism -- it literally would be a rejection of the 'integral' part -- and therefore one cannot immediately conclude that the temporal power is in every way subordinate to the spiritual power on the basis of the superiority of the spiritual ends to the temporal ends. This is a possible form of integralism, but one could also hold that the temporal power may sometimes have superiority where the spiritual ends allow for it to do so, or that the spiritual power only ever has a veto rather than any direct superordination. It's not anti-integralist to hold that the Church can't directly dictate to the State how to regulate traffic, or any number of other standard temporal-power functions.
I accidentally deleted my first response, and when re-writing it, failed to note that my criticism was directed against the three-sentence definition at the beginning of the post. (I do think #3 in your proposed definition is liable to analogous criticisms, and your #1 also fails to do justice to the 'integral' in integralism. But I think it's not surprising that a liberal would make these errors, since liberalism tends to have this sort of disjoint-or-subordinate structure.) Fr. Waldstein's definition is a good definition of his preferred form of integralism, of course; I just think it is excessively narrow if taken as a general definition of integralism.
Thanks for chiming in. If you want to correct my definition, that's fine with me. Having corrected your comment, what problems remain with my definition? It looks like there's a problem with #1, but I follow Pink in thinking that Jesus removed all state authority over religion from the state and gave it to the church, so that any deliberate state pursuits of ultimate spiritual goods require divine authorization, hence the state is limited to temporal ends without the presence of the integration relation with the Church.
It's a logical contradiction for temporal ends to be subordinate to spiritual ends and the pursuit of temporal ends not also to be a pursuit of spiritual ends. If temporal ends are pursued without regard for spiritual ends, then this is as straightforwardly an anti-integralist state as can possibly exist, and thus not relevant to a definition of integralism. On the opposing side, I think someone could at least argue that spiritual ends are a kind of end that must be pursued both directly (hence spiritual power) and indirectly by modifying and modulating the pursuit of temporal ends so as to pursue them in a way that facilitates the pursuit of spiritual ends (hence temporal power). This is perhaps not the only possible way to structure an integralist scheme of government, but it surely would be odd to say that it's not integralist. A general definition may well have to include rather different species of possible integralisms.
Part of the assumption (which I think is also surfacing in Fr. Waldstein's definition and, although I have not read Pink on this subject in quite a while, Pink's account as you describe it) seems to be that spiritual power and temporal power have to be taken as 'blocks', with one institution or set of institutions being 'the temporal power' and another being 'the spiritual power'. This is typically an assumption in liberal societies with separation of Church and State; I don't think integralists are strictly committed to such a thing. An integralist can, for instance, have a view in which spiritual and temporal power are distinct but interwoven at a much finer-grained level (so that many institutions, both civil and ecclesiastical, have something of both), or in which institutions or offices with spiritual power and institutions or offices with temporal power can delegate limited powers to each other for mutual benefit (e.g., consecrating a monarch in a way that gives the monarch some cooperative authority with bishops, like calling councils, or a monarch designating bishops to have advisory or even executive roles in the royal household). Again, whether or not these are the best ways to 'do' integralism, they don't seem inconsistent with being integralist.
Some initial thoughts: How does #3 of the redefinition avoid a moral judgment? It includes the word “may,” which seems to be a replacement for “ought,” at least in order for #3 to represent integralism.
Also, the links to Pater Edmund’s “Three Sentences” definition include many historical figures and their thoughts about integralism.
Lastly, I don’t think the rejection of liberalism is a formal part of the definition, but serves a more pedagogical purpose. That is, X is not Y (with which an average reader might be more familiar), but rather, X is Z, and if Z, then not Y follows.
I’m looking forward to the time and opportunity to read your forthcoming book!
Thanks so much for popping in! What I mean by avoiding a moral judgment in a definition is what I take Pater Edmund's definition to be doing - condemning liberalism by defining it unsympathetically. I'm trying to avoid that. All I'm doing in condition #3 is to describe a normative statement that integralists endorse. There's no judgment of dismissal of other views built into the definition.
I agree that Pater Edmund's definition includes many historical figures, but I think mine counts everyone his does, and excludes only some he may include. My problem is not so much with the extension of his definition, but the intension. It groups the right figures but for not all the right reasons. So I've tried to improve upon his work. Though maybe I haven't! And thanks for your interest in the book!
Got it, that helps re: moral judgment. It still seems, though, that it’s a moral judgment that follows from the actual core of the definition. That is, an integralist as defined above must reject liberalism and would, coherently, so characterize it. In fact, it seems that to ask for a sympathetic definition of liberalism from an integralist is asking for the view to betray its own nature. At least, insofar as I understand it. I also wonder if the focal point for Pater Edmund is more of “1789 liberalism” in the 3 Sentences definition, and not other moderated varieties of liberalism? That is, he is taking the most authoritative of strongest case.
I just mean a definition where liberals could recognize themselves. It is true that anti-liberalism is built deep into the structure of 21st c integralism, much as it was from the 18th c forward. But earlier pre-liberal iterations I think were clearer, and were more focused on what they were for than what they were against.
On your last point, I think it is a pervasive feature of modern integralism to equate all liberalisms with (I like your term) 1789 liberalism. They say that's what's going on underneath the liberal rhetoric.
Part of the debate, though, is that a definition liberals can recognize (= is intelligible to them) is conditioned upon the terms under debate, no?
From my reading, it was easier for pre-liberal iterations to be for something and not as against because they were pre-liberal. If we keep going far back enough, however, the “integralisms” or adjacent become anti-pagan. A different schema of problems.
As stated, the last sentence of the definition seems wrong because it lacks appropriate qualification; as it stands, it commits a logical fallacy, and perhaps more immediately to the point, its unqualified nature overlooks the fact that many integralists seem to envision a situation in which the relation between the spiritual power and the temporal power is more indirect, the spiritual power taking precedence only when the spiritual ends actually require it. On integralism, the temporal ends and spiritual ends have to be integrated rather than disjoint (which is the most direct thing that makes integralism anti-liberal); the spiritual ends take priority (which is the point on which integralists usually have the loudest gripes against actual liberal societies); but by the very nature of an integralist scheme of government, both the temporal and the spiritual powers have the spiritual ends as ends. The temporal power just has the spiritual ends more indirectly. To hold that the temporal power only has temporal ends would be inconsistent with the whole point of integralism -- it literally would be a rejection of the 'integral' part -- and therefore one cannot immediately conclude that the temporal power is in every way subordinate to the spiritual power on the basis of the superiority of the spiritual ends to the temporal ends. This is a possible form of integralism, but one could also hold that the temporal power may sometimes have superiority where the spiritual ends allow for it to do so, or that the spiritual power only ever has a veto rather than any direct superordination. It's not anti-integralist to hold that the Church can't directly dictate to the State how to regulate traffic, or any number of other standard temporal-power functions.
I accidentally deleted my first response, and when re-writing it, failed to note that my criticism was directed against the three-sentence definition at the beginning of the post. (I do think #3 in your proposed definition is liable to analogous criticisms, and your #1 also fails to do justice to the 'integral' in integralism. But I think it's not surprising that a liberal would make these errors, since liberalism tends to have this sort of disjoint-or-subordinate structure.) Fr. Waldstein's definition is a good definition of his preferred form of integralism, of course; I just think it is excessively narrow if taken as a general definition of integralism.
Thanks for chiming in. If you want to correct my definition, that's fine with me. Having corrected your comment, what problems remain with my definition? It looks like there's a problem with #1, but I follow Pink in thinking that Jesus removed all state authority over religion from the state and gave it to the church, so that any deliberate state pursuits of ultimate spiritual goods require divine authorization, hence the state is limited to temporal ends without the presence of the integration relation with the Church.
It's a logical contradiction for temporal ends to be subordinate to spiritual ends and the pursuit of temporal ends not also to be a pursuit of spiritual ends. If temporal ends are pursued without regard for spiritual ends, then this is as straightforwardly an anti-integralist state as can possibly exist, and thus not relevant to a definition of integralism. On the opposing side, I think someone could at least argue that spiritual ends are a kind of end that must be pursued both directly (hence spiritual power) and indirectly by modifying and modulating the pursuit of temporal ends so as to pursue them in a way that facilitates the pursuit of spiritual ends (hence temporal power). This is perhaps not the only possible way to structure an integralist scheme of government, but it surely would be odd to say that it's not integralist. A general definition may well have to include rather different species of possible integralisms.
Part of the assumption (which I think is also surfacing in Fr. Waldstein's definition and, although I have not read Pink on this subject in quite a while, Pink's account as you describe it) seems to be that spiritual power and temporal power have to be taken as 'blocks', with one institution or set of institutions being 'the temporal power' and another being 'the spiritual power'. This is typically an assumption in liberal societies with separation of Church and State; I don't think integralists are strictly committed to such a thing. An integralist can, for instance, have a view in which spiritual and temporal power are distinct but interwoven at a much finer-grained level (so that many institutions, both civil and ecclesiastical, have something of both), or in which institutions or offices with spiritual power and institutions or offices with temporal power can delegate limited powers to each other for mutual benefit (e.g., consecrating a monarch in a way that gives the monarch some cooperative authority with bishops, like calling councils, or a monarch designating bishops to have advisory or even executive roles in the royal household). Again, whether or not these are the best ways to 'do' integralism, they don't seem inconsistent with being integralist.
Did Cardinal Bellrmine use the term “integralism,” or is this terminology modern? Who first uses the term integralism to describe this theory?
The term is modern, beginning in the 19th century to describe the kinds of arrangements I describe, but is sometimes used more broadly.