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500 Followers Appreciation Thread:
Frederick Wilhelmsen and the Lost Critique (Towards an Incarnational Politics)
"The beads of failure marking Catholic politics in our time could be extended into a rosary of desolation."
Fritz Wilhelmsen, writing for Triumph in 1967... (1/13)
Frederick Wilhelmsen and the Lost Critique (Towards an Incarnational Politics)
"The beads of failure marking Catholic politics in our time could be extended into a rosary of desolation."
Fritz Wilhelmsen, writing for Triumph in 1967... (1/13)
...published what might be his most underappreciated contribution to Catholic political thought, a critique of the position he called "Integrism," "the temptation peculiar to Catholic traditionalists." Integrism is for Wilhelmsen, a worldview which is, in fact, an aberration
Political Philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle onward, has always "looked back," formed conclusions from historical circumstances that clearly reveal men's natures and actions. Wilhelmsen criticizes those who take an "Opus Dei" approach to political life, treating institutions...
...as merely neutral tools in achieving Christian dominance, but the real focus of his critique is the 18th-century confusion of the "Ancien Régime," a product of decades of rationalism, with the authentic Catholic worldview of the Medieval period. So in turn...
"What the Middle Ages did for Greece, the nineteenth-century traditional Catholics did for the Middle Ages."
This reactionary mindset, born out of the horror of revolution, fed right into liberal Romanticism, buttressing a faux-Christendom in the Catholic Consciousness.
This reactionary mindset, born out of the horror of revolution, fed right into liberal Romanticism, buttressing a faux-Christendom in the Catholic Consciousness.
The natural order died, and in its place, came secularization, mechanization, and centralization. In WW1 the romantic facade crumbled.
"The castle loomed large in myth, literature, and politics when the factory glowed as reality."
The ground of the current age (the 60s)...
"The castle loomed large in myth, literature, and politics when the factory glowed as reality."
The ground of the current age (the 60s)...
...for Wilhelmsen has ceased to be mechanical, it became the dynamism of the electronic revolution. From this came the failure of Catholic politics,
"Integrism today is a political figure without a ground... Integrism tends to freeze Catholic political order."
Consequently...
"Integrism today is a political figure without a ground... Integrism tends to freeze Catholic political order."
Consequently...
Catholics would easily fall prey to tribalism, to a mythic standard that ignored the consequences of real life, and isolate as a society from the "other tribes." The Integrists are in constant danger of Jansenism, abandoning evangelization completely. https://twitter.com/MScarince/status/1382820007432753153
True Catholic politics, on the other hand, is incarnational, directed in time and space to the present needs of the Church and the world. To restore all things in Christ requires a "sacramentalizaing of the real," transfiguring the current world to its sacramental vision.
"Politics remains politics; it is not transformed into religion... But to the political ground of life is added a new religious figure, a dimension which internally affects what would otherwise be merely secular."
In sacramentality, Christianity deepens natural institutions...
In sacramentality, Christianity deepens natural institutions...
...the family, human dignity, and promotes societies which allow for a maximum of self-government and personal responsibility.
In a biting critique of my own politics, Wilhelmsen denounces the Integrists as "restorationists," seeking to restore as ground a lost cultural figure.
In a biting critique of my own politics, Wilhelmsen denounces the Integrists as "restorationists," seeking to restore as ground a lost cultural figure.
"Because he is so fascinated by his own tradition's historical models, the Integrist cannot react intelligently - imaginatively and creatively - to his own situation in time."
Those institutions and historical circumstances the Integrist seeks as a ground cannot help failing.
Those institutions and historical circumstances the Integrist seeks as a ground cannot help failing.
The solution, however, is not in despair, but in the question, "Can the new electronic technology be sacralized?" Can we re-sacramentalize the world without appealing to a romanticized historical period, but by seeking eternal principles to shape new technologies?
End of Part 1
End of Part 1
This thread is an extremely condensed version of the article, and there are definitely many points I would love to revisit in future tweets, but I hope it captures the gist of Wilhelmsen's argument.
