Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy

If I am ever faced with a situation where I will be stranded on a deserted island and I am only allowed to bring a handful of books, then this will be one of them. The book is extremely pithy for such a large undertaking, and it seems to demand to be re-read after you've finished. There are so many great insights and practical wisdom from past ages that certain sections can leave you staring off into the distance in reflection for extended periods. The footnotes themselves are almost worth the price of the book due to the breadth of source material. This book is just a masterwork of Catholic political thought. It should be used as a Political Science textbook at every Catholic school on the planet.

A sound theologian and philosopher. Beautiful clarity of thought.

As a philosophy, Integralism attempts to direct secular affairs through leaders' educated awareness of and subsequent appeal to sacred standards. Without virtuous leaders, there will be moral and social chaos (cf. Prv 14:34). Crean and Fimister explain the gist of Integralism (think of integer, a positive, whole number) through the use of Scriptural, Magisterial, and Traditional sources, arguing, in essence, that it is to Catholic teaching that nations must repair in order to establish justice and to find peace. They do not argue in behalf of theocracy (see p. 101), but they steadfastly maintain that, in the absence of natural law, civil law will corrode. They quote Pope Leo XIII: "When Christian institutions and morality decline, the main foundation of human society goes together with them" (104n). They raise intractable problems. For example, the ordinary understanding of a complete "separation of church and state" is mistaken (see pp. 76, 102), but should we pursue a secular Christendom? (No, they argue: see p. 271). If the Church should be deferred to in consequential public matters (as in Acts 5:29), what will prevent power from corrupting the clergy, as has happened repeatedly when temporal power was mixed with ecclesiastical authority? As important as education is, can--and should--the Church bear responsibility for education in the state (see pp. 50-51)? Is that feasible? They do not mince words: "Only a Catholic polity is simply speaking legitimate" (p. 101). Even if this were true, how can such a polity be realized today? And how are we to determine Catholics in good standing? So there is much here that is fantastic (a word I use in its original sense--"remote from reality"--not "gee whiz" or "cool") and well beyond what is presently practicable. Crean and Fimister do not write simple prose, and the present volume, to be understood, will need a very careful reading and a full hearing in the presence of a well-read teacher (which, of course, should be a superfluous phrase!). "Christendom," they write in an Augustinian style, "is necessary to protect the Church against the city of the world" (p. 275). For at least a half-century, though, we have seen, not the flourishing of Christendom but, rather, its moral erosion as more and more of its leaders turn to the City of Man and away from the City of God. In many ways, then, this book is a cri de coeur, a jeremiad, against the rise of a secular tidal wave which threatens to engulf all things Christian. They take too little care, I think, about false teachers (as in Ps 55:12-14, Mt 10:35, and Acts 20:30)--and there is not a mention here of Father John Courtney Murray, whose work, until his untimely death in 1967, for well or ill, is one key in this broad debate about church and state. Again: we cannot have a morally sound civil state unless there is divine guidance generally acknowledged and then implemented in state; but where, given the spiritual betrayals of far too many Church leaders, will we find that guidance today? Crean and Fimister write for a Catholic audience but the book will be of interest to all Christians who seek a greater understanding of traditional Catholic teaching. The book is well grounded in multiple sources, and, if well presented and thoughtfully read, it will be a valuable source in college, graduate school, and seminary classes in politics, philosophy, and theology. (This review is necessarily short, but I have expanded it in the 2 July 2020 issue of the Wanderer newspaper.) Crean and Fimister give us an excellent overview of Integralism. Because of its scholarship (and sense of urgency), it's not an easy volume. It requires a serious reading commitment and much thought, and not a little prayer. But we have "guidance" about these matters: we reap what we sow (Gal 6:7). Make the effort with Crean and Fimister. They have much to teach us all.

Crean and Fimister have done an excellent job explaining Catholic political thought in this book. They start from basic assumptions, like common good and family, and work their way up to temporal power and even international relations.

7/10 This is an excellent manual of Catholic political philosophy, but as with Domning in <i>Original Selfishness</i> locating all that is valuable in religion in evolution and all that is despicable in religion in the religion itself, Crean in a few places locates virtue in atheism and vice in religion. These places I cannot follow. In a few places Crean makes unfounded criticisms of capitalism, but even as an anarchocapitalist, I'm open to critique of capitalism: there are things more important than economy. What follows makes this abundantly clear. Loc 4680: "Therefore, while it may be fitting it is not in itself necessary that all groups sharing common descent [i.e. of one race] form a single commonwealth whether singly or in combination with other such groups." Okay. A little twinge here, but it can be agreed that natural reason doesn't demand the ethnostate; natural reason can just as easily lead to the idea of empire due to the noetic effects of sin. However, following: Loc 4709: "Again, since the goods of the earth are given to the human race [false assumption of unity] as a whole, richer nations have obligations of justice to nations marked by material privation analogous to the obligations of the rich to the poor within the same land." Let's unpack this from the end. The rich have obligations to the poor of the same land insofar as that land is exclusively peopled by a group of common descent, a notion already rejected above. Generalising this to heterogeneous states amounts to a redistribution from the best and most capable individuals and groups to inferior and incapable groups en mass, lowering the status of mankind as a whole, squandering our patrimony (and contravening the creation ordinances to multiply and to be good stewards). Returning to the prior clause, Crean is advocating for redistribution from successful ethnic groups to unsuccessful ones of low innate capacity, given that geography and ethnicity are strongly correlated (see Cavalli-Sforza, <i>The History and Geography of the Human Genome</i>, passim), and amounts to direct national and racial suicide, a dispossession that he urges the dispossessed to fund. No. 4720: "Just as the individual and the family, so also the temporal commonwealth has a duty to harbor the outcast and must offer refuge... to those in mortal need." The footnote to this at location 4910 states this applies to economic migrants: 'those who have been forced by revolutions in their own countries [when is an African state not in revolution? People bring the problems of their native lands with them, such as the Jewish communists we previously admitted in such number and rotted our politics and culture], or by unemployment and hunger [to emigrate]... The natural law itself... urges that ways of migration be made open to these people'. Citation is to apostolic constitution Exsul familia of Pius XII in 1952. At this point either Pius had entered in on his final illness and was of unsound mind, or this was being written by the cabal of leftist heretics who managed him in his dotage: either way, we have a canonical example of papal fallibility when speaking of matters not of faith and morals here. For these reasons, with such insidious poison being lightly sprinkled amongst such disarming and generally based truth, the book must be read with greater than normal discernment.

Just a brief note to say Catholics must study our ancient venerable traditions so that we are equipped for the radical reforming of the world around us building the new Christendom to come

Not only one of the best books on political philosophy in decades, but also an important work of Catholic ecclesiology.