The Democratic Religion (or the Great Reset)

Non novum sub soles.  World War II was in some respects a continuation of World War I.  World War I — according to Pope Benedict XV — was caused by the “new things” (rerum novarum) of socialism, modernism, and the New Age.

Similarly, the proposed “Great Reset” is to all intents and purposes an expansion of the post-World War II economic order derived from the Keynesian New Deal of the 1930s.  Keynesian economics is itself derived from the political and economic theories of Walter Bagehot, which were an application of the new things.

The widespread belief that the New Deal was inspired or directed by the work of Msgr. John A. Ryan of the Catholic University of America has been disproved.  That belief originated in coincidence, astute self-promotion by “the Right Reverend New Dealer,” and President Franklin Roosevelt’s need to shift the Catholic vote away from “the Happy Warrior” Al Smith, and “the Kingfish” Huey Long.

Msgr. Ryan acknowledged that his ideas on social reform came largely from his mentor, Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, a follower of the agrarian socialist Henry George and his associate, Father Edward McGlynn.[1]  Donnelly, an apostate Catholic and a populist who hated William Jennings Bryan, was a primary source for Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy.  He claimed his histories of the antediluvian world had been dictated by his 25,000-year old Atlantean spirit guide and that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays to convey occult messages to his followers in the future.

Ryan’s presumably innovative theories redefining justice and the claim that “distributive justice” and “social justice” are interchangeable was drawn from the socialist movements of the 1840s.  Notable among these was that headed by Thomas Lake Harris, “the Poughkeepsie Seer,” who anticipated George and McGlynn by several decades.[2]  Sometimes credited with helping kickstart the craze for spiritualism that swept the country at the time, Harris regularly received messages from the dead and visits from fairies.[3]

And the new things?  Socialism (which is not particularly social), modernism (which is not modern), and the New Age (which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called new) developed into their modern forms following the financial, technological, and political revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Traditional social, legal, and political institutions, organized religion — especially the Catholic Church — and even marriage and family appeared to have failed.

In response, prophets arose, calling for a “democratic religion”: démocratie religieuse.  The new faith was to be based on the abolition of private property, new political institutions embodying collectivist or elitist rule instead of individual sovereignty and respect for the dignity of the human person, elimination of the traditional family, and radical reform of organized religion, with the Catholic Church a special target.

As Richard Henry Tawney, “the Democratic Socialist par excellence,”[4] noted in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (a follow-up to The Acquisitive Society, considered by some authorities as “the Socialist Bible”), what the world needed was “a change in the conception held of the nature and functions of a Church.”[5]  Essentially, as Fulton J. Sheen explained in his first two books, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy and Religion Without God, the basic theory shifted focus from the human person created by God, to an abstraction (e.g., the capitalist élite or the socialist collective) created by human beings.

That was, in fact, the message delivered by the new prophets.  Under various labels such as “the New Christianity,” “Neo-Catholicism,” “the Religion of Humanity,” “Universal Catholicism,” “the Church of the Future,” and so on, visionaries like François Marie Charles Fourier, the “tormented, headstrong Breton priest”[6] Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais, and, especially, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, relied on changing fundamental Christian doctrines to justify socialism.

What baffles many people today is the fact that the early socialists were not initially anti-capitalist.  Some of them, such as Robert Owen and Friedrich Engels, were themselves capitalists.  Others, such as Fourier, de Lammenais, and Saint-Simon, were moderately wealthy bourgeoisie or aristocrats.  The specifically anti-capitalist element appears to have entered socialism from the only early socialist of note who rose from the working classes, Étienne Cabet.

Two common themes running through all forms of socialism down to the present day were the abolition of private property in capital, and the desire to (re)establish a terrestrial paradise, usually characterized as “the Kingdom of God on Earth.”[7]  Thus, in his last book, Le Nouveau Christianisme, “The New Christianity,” Saint-Simon declared himself the prophet of a “true Christianity.”[8]

Saint-Simon’s conception (on which Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson based aspects of his dystopian novel, Lord of the World[9]) was a universal religion returning to the pure doctrine of Christ with the goal of evolving a rational, scientific, positivist religion.  A global social organization stressing “the spirit of association” and based on peace and the brotherhood of man would direct economic life and bring an end to poverty.

According to Saint-Simon, Christianity had been useful in its day, but that day was now past.  He decided a new religion was needed to replace Christianity, not merely reform it along economic and humanitarian lines.[10]

This would be a society organized like a “medieval theocracy” in which people would all associate on the basis of shared moral values and common social vision.  In place of civil governors or ecclesiastical authorities, there would be an “Industrial Hierarchy” wielding economic, political, and military power, the last of which would soon fade away as society became harmonious.[11]

By putting everything under the Industrial Hierarchy, there would be an end to conflict between classes and universal prosperity and harmony would ensue in a scientifically and morally directed economy.  Democratic only in name, the whole of society, construed as exclusively economic in nature, would be devoted to material improvement, with special emphasis on uplifting the poor.  Saint-Simon summed up his efforts in the precept, “The whole of society ought to strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poorest class; society ought to organize itself in the way best adapted for attaining this end.”[12]

In response to this “New Christianity,” Pope Gregory XVI issued Mirari Vos, “On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism,” the first social encyclical, in 1832.  He followed this in 1834 with Singulari Vos, “On the Errors of Lamennais,” notable for being the first use of the term rerum novarum to describe the new things of socialism, modernism and esotericism (New Age).

Pope Pius IX continued the effort, culminating in calling the First Vatican Council.  To counter the new things, the Council Fathers defined two key doctrines.  The first was an understanding of papal infallibility to correct the exaggerated notion promoted by de Lamennais . . . at least until he renounced Christianity, repudiated his priesthood, and founded his own Religion of Humanity.

The second was the primacy of the intellect, intended to counter the new things in general by clearly articulating the doctrine that while faith is above reason, they cannot contradict one another.  Further, as was repeated later in the first clause of the Oath Against Modernism and in § 2 of Humani Generis, knowledge of God’s existence and of the natural law that is God can be known by the force and light of human reason alone.[13]

In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII took the bold move of proposing a program of expanded capital ownership instead of merely condemning the socialist abolition of the institution.[14]  Because he failed to propose a financially feasible means to fund the proposal, however, capitalists and socialists alike were able to twist or ignore the encyclical.  Capitalists claimed it supported capitalism, while socialists declared it a new manifesto for the New Christianity.[15]

All this, of course, leads up to one thing.  In light of the efforts over the past two centuries by adherents of the new things to transform Christianity — especially Catholicism — to conform to socialism, modernism, and esotericism, the proposed “Great Reset” (at least as described in large part on the website of the World Economic Forum[16]), there appears to be little or no difference between what, e.g., Saint-Simon proposed, and the “components” of the Great Reset:

• Increase the strength of government to create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy,” which would effectively abolish private property except for a small class of “Guardians” (cf. Saint-Simon’s “Industrial Hierarchy”) by imposing centralized control of the market to make it “fairer”; increase redistribution of existing wealth through wealth taxes, withdrawal of subsidies, “and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition”,
• Government control, possibly direct ownership of new capital investment to “advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability,” primarily through government money creation backed by its own debt, to create a “new” kind of public capital investment, and
• Government control of healthcare, education, and other “social challenges” to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good,” as soon as possible instituting “similar concerted efforts . . . in every sector.”

Goals of the Great Reset are difficult to argue with in many respects.  At the same time, the methods and what appears to be the underlying view of human beings and the meaning and purpose of life itself seem to be at variance with traditional views.  In particular, the basic philosophy of the new things and the Great Reset flatly contradicts that of Aristotle, and thus the philosophies of the Christian Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Jewish Moses Maimonides, and the Muslim Ibn Khaldûn.

A viable alternative that concerned people should be examining is “economic personalism,” especially as outlined in the book, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person.

[1] Rt. Rev. Msgr. John A. Ryan, D.D., L.L.D., Litt.D., Social Doctrine in Action: A Personal History.  New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1941, 12.

[2] Adam Morris, American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation.  New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019, 82-83.

[3] Ibid., 76-83.

[4] Ross Terrill, R.H. Tawney and His Times: Socialism as Fellowship.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973, 276.  Emphasis in original.

[5] R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study.  New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952, 8.

[6] Philip Spencer, Politics of Belief in Nineteenth-Century France.  London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1954, 39.

[7] Morris, American Messiahs, op. cit., 6-7, 256.  Nor was seeking the Kingdom of God on Earth restricted to movements in the United States, as the work of Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg University reveals.

[8] Julian Strube, “Socialism and Esotericism in July Monarchy France,” History of Religions, July 2016 (postprint).

[9] C.C. Martindale, S.J., The Life of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, Vol. II. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1917, 65-66.

[10] Strube, “Socialism and Esotericism in July Monarchy France,” op. cit.

[11] “Saint-Simon,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 19: 14^th Edition, 1956, Print.

[12] Ibid.

[13] “If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.” Vatican I, Canon 2.1.

[14] Rerum Novarum, § 46.

[15] Vicomte Eugène Melchior de Vogüé, “The Neo-Christian Movement in France,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 84, No. 500, January 1892, 234-242.

[16] “Now is the Time for a Great Reset,” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/, accessed December 20, 2020.