Extramental Existence

For ordinary Christians, particularly Catholics, the mixed messages sent by clergy in regard to issues of race have been confusing to say the least.

What does the Church really teach about race? The brilliant Classical Theist has thankfully done the heavy lifting to shed Magisterial light on the subject.

If the George Floyd riots have taught us anything as Catholics, it’s that the Catholic discourse on race is severely lacking. It seems as though over the course of just a few weeks, with little to no resistance from the conservative Catholic media, the underlying premises of Black Lives Matter have become the default position on race for mainstream Catholicism. 

NB: Anytime you see a member of the hierarchy invoke “the sin of racism,” it’s a good bet his statement is more influenced by the World than by Church doctrine. You won’t find racism per se listed as a sin in any Catholic moral theology manual.

Part of why this is the case, I suspect, is because unlike issues such as homosexuality and abortion there does not seem to be a clear and definitive Magisterial formula to adjudicate issues pertaining to racial conflict. To average faithful Catholics, this makes them especially susceptible to cultural and social institutions who are bent on pressuring them into anti-racist activism.  

For Catholics who have a left-leaning ideological ax to grind, this magisterial ambiguity is weaponized to presume a natural alliance between, say, Catholic Social Teaching and the ideological wish-list of Black Lives Matter. 

Looking at you, James Martin, SJ.

[A] Catholic who rightly feels uneasy with the shameless baptism of critical race theory we are seeing in Catholic media would likely find it difficult to effectively challenge their assumptions by appealing to the Magisterium themselves. For that reason, it is necessary to set the record straight on what precisely the Magisterium has to say about the value of race in a just human society.

In order to make sense of what the Magisterium has to say about the value of race, however, we should first establish a sensible conception of the ontological status of race as such. That racial differences are not reducible to social constructions should be uncontroversial for any devotee of scholastic philosophy, really. The soul, as per the Council of Vienne, is not a Cartesian ghost-in-a-machine but is the form, or immanent active principle, of the body. Because of this, hereditary characteristics that are passed on generationally diversify according to the disposition of matter receptive to the soul.

In short, Scholastic theology teaches that race is real, it’s more than skin-deep, and the variety of races extant in the world is a natural good willed by God.

Not only can acknowledging the diversity and dignity of races be defended on the grounds of scholastic philosophy, it is also backed by the Magisterium itself. In the very encyclical where Pope Pius XI condemns the race idolatry of the Third Reich, he explicitly acknowledges in no uncertain terms the inherent value of race to the common good,

“Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the word planned and created by God” (Pope Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge).

Note Pius IX’s use of the quintessentially Catholic both, and principle here. Honoring one’s race is a good ordained by God. Worshiping any race, or depriving anyone of due charity based on race, is sinful. It’s not an either/or proposition.

Thus here we have encoded within the cells of the Magisterium itself a recognition that race not only has extramental existence, albeit as an emergent property, but that it is a fundamental value to the human community. And if it is to be counted among the fundamental values of the human community then this necessarily implies the right to preserve and defend it as such. As South African theologian Fr. P Bonaventura Hinwood in his treatise Race: the Reflections of a Theologian has put it, explicating the wisdom of Pius XI,   

“Since being and goodness are convertible, race, like any other human factor not inherently vitiated by error or evil, being a positive good, has the right to existence and identity. But race is not an end in itself, because it exists for the enriching of mankind, to which it is subordinate, and so necessarily relative. It is not, therefore, the immediate cause of the rights which accrue to it, but the occasion of them, for the sake of mankind as a whole. The fullness of which will be enhanced by these particular racial potentialities being brought to maturity. Since mankind has a right not to be mutilated by the violent destruction of any race, it is licit for a person even to lay down his life for the conservation of his race.”

Now if one’s immediate response is to write this off as the irrelevant ramblings of an obscure theologian, he is simply echoing the sentiments of what Popes Pius XII and John XXIII have said on the matter. In Pius XII’s encyclical Summi pontificatus, which was quoted by John XXIII’s Mater et magistra, he says, immediately following his explicit praise of national pride in one’s heritage, 

“The Church readily approves of, and follows with her maternal blessing, all regulations and practical efforts that, in the spirit of wisdom and moderation, lead to the evolution and increase of the potentialities and powers which spring from the hidden sources of life of each race. She does, however, lay down one provision, namely, that these regulations and efforts must not clash with the duties incumbent on all men in virtue of the common origin and destiny of all mankind” (Pope Pius XII, Summi pontificatus).

The whole article is a definite must-read.

Armed with Magisterial teaching, laymen will find combating the resurgent heresy of race idolatry much easier. The next time your pastor brings up the “original sin of systemic racism,” refer him to the ecumenical Council of Vienne, Piux IX, Pius, XII, and St. John XXIII.

A great way of addressing and viewing our current culture war, as well as advice for how to fight it.