Catholicism and the truth about ideology

“Ideology” is the favorite boogey term of intellectual argumentation. Partisans of the Culture Wars and Ecclesial Wars agree on one point: the opposing position—but never one’s own—is always an ideology. “Republican ideology.” “Democratic ideology.” “Pope Benedict’s ideology.” “Pope Francis’s ideology.” The list could go on endlessly—even NFL kicker Harrison Butker was accused of spouting ideology in his now famous Benedictine College commencement address.

How can “ideology” be so malleable a term that anyone can tar his opposition with it? What is “ideology” and what does it have to do with Catholicism? Is Catholicism itself an ideology?

First, ideology is not synonymous with “opinion,” which is a singular idea evaluating an event or person. Nor does it mean “worldview,” as I have heard young people use it; a worldview is closer to a disposition or outlook, be it optimistic, conservative, or passive, to name a few. Nor is it equivalent to “principle,” which is a fundamental tenet for action that derives from nature or experience. The first principle of natural law, for example, is to do good and avoid evil. Synonyms of principle include “precept,” “rule,” and “truth.”

The Oxford English Dictionary’s 1989 definition of ideology hits the mark:

A systematic scheme of ideas, usually relating to politics or society, or to the conduct of a class or group, and regarded as justifying actions, especially one that is held implicitly or adopted as a whole and maintained regardless of the course of events. (Emphasis added)

Whereas principles are derived from the world, an ideology is a harmonized set of ideas, abstracted from theories and collated into a system, which seeks to direct the world according to its vision. That ideology is “maintained regardless of the course of events” is a critical point: it imposes a preconceived way of being and acting on the world and bends the world to fit it. This inverts the proper order of knowledge, where truth follows being—that is, truth is knowledge conformed to reality in the world.

Communism offers the most notorious example of ideology as an abstraction brought together into a theory or system to which the world is forced to conform. It holds that human beings are motivated chiefly by material forces—that is, physical forces. All other motives, including supernatural ones, are irrelevant for building a society. The state harnesses materialistic motives most effectively when all goods are owned in common. To force the world to conform to these ideas, workers should revolt against their capitalist oppressors to inaugurate a just society.

The brutal dictatorships of China, the USSR, and Cuba have all destroyed their respective countries by compelling their peoples to live according to communist ideas. One child policies, forbidding religious worship, and controlling every means of economic production follow from the communist ideology that enshrines materialism as its summum bonum. In time, all these practices have failed, yet, true to the OED definition, the communist ideologues hold their positions despite the glaring evidence to the contrary. Hence, ideology is synonymous with “dogma” and “creed.” These communist dictatorships have both imposed an unnatural way of life and crushed dissent from its orthodoxy with banishment or death.

Catholicism, by contrast, is not an ideology. Rather, as Joseph Ratzinger writes in Introduction to Christianity, the faith “is not a reconstruction or a theory but a present, a living reality.” It offers a way of living that imitates and leads to Jesus Christ. The four components of Catholicism—its creed, sacraments, commandments, and prayers—are not ideas cobbled together to form an arbitrary system of thought. They are the principles that flow from God’s revelation to us and speak to the innermost needs of the human heart. Because Christ unites man with God, the source and end of his being, He, in the words of Gaudium et Spes, “fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (par 22).

For Ratzinger, “the true Christian is not the denominational party member but he who through being a Christian has become truly human; not he who slavishly observes a system of norms, thinking as he does so only for himself, but he who has become freed to simple human goodness.”

If Catholicism is not an ideology, can ideology exist within Catholicism? The answer is yes.

But ideology is not as prevalent as those who use the term may believe. How so?

An “ecclesiastical ideology,” a term Pope Francis used this year, imposes a philosophical system foreign to Christ and Christian living on believers or on the Church. They can arise from outside the Church and be applied to Catholic living and Church teaching. For example, “gender ideology,” the belief that gender is a construct divorced from human biology, one that Francis has condemned more than once, is contrary to Church teaching on the human person and human sexuality. By demanding that the Church change her teachings to conform to its ideas—that women be ordained priests, that same-sex relationships be called good, that traditional roles for men and women in the Church be toppled, that “transgender hermits” be sanctioned—gender ideology would transform the Church into something she is not. In fact, it would transform the Church into what she condemns as false.

Yet the simple desire for any of these ideas, though wrongheaded, is not an ideology, especially when held by those not trained in theology. An opinion or preference is not an ideology, which is grand in its vision, intricately designed with component parts, and divorced from real life experience. Before throwing the “ideology label” around, the interlocutor must ascertain the motive and sources of his opponent’s ideas.

Ecclesiastical ideology can also arise within the Church when believers abstract a theory of doctrine or Catholic living apart from reality. For example, “traditionalism” is often attacked as an ideology. It can be—if it is crafting a view of the Church divorced from lived experience and imposed on Catholics because “that’s how things were once, so they should be that way now.” This traditionalism would be more concerned with externals—ornamentation, decorations, dress—for their look, rather than for their connection to devotional life in the Church.

But preferring and advocating for traditional Church practices is not necessarily ideological—again, motives and sources of ideas matter. For example, there is a difference between requiring abstinence from meat on Fridays because “that’s how the Church once did things” versus “this is an act of penance for our sins.” The former motivation comes from ideology, the latter from a genuine desire for Catholic living that is rooted in the Church’s tradition.

Likewise, preferring the traditional Latin Mass, to name another prominent issue, is no more ideological than preferring the Rosary over the Divine Mercy Chaplet—one speaks to certain Catholics more than others. Desire for a more “traditional” Church in terms of her worship, music, devotions, or practices typically arise from Catholics’ real experience rather than from some alien system of ideas.

Catholics need not care for traditional practices, but they cannot condemn them as symptoms of ideology unless they are certain of their motives. Tarring opposing preferences as “ideology” foments division while distracting from the real issues in play.

Ideology is cancerous to healthy living inside and outside of the Church. Like every cancer, it must be properly identified to be properly treated. But treating cancer where it is not present can severely damage a healthy body. For the health of the Church, let’s abstain from labelling things as ideology unless we are certain of its presence.