If you listen to my podcast or have had the displeasure of speaking to me about politics in the past year, you may have heard me use the term “post-liberalism.” I think the time has come I actually say what that is.

When I was in college, I encountered Catholic Social Teaching for the first time. I learned there were a few basic principles: subsidiarity, solidarity, a preferential option for the poor, universal destination of goods, etc. This experience confirmed what I already knew to be true; that neither Republicans nor Democrats fully encapsulate Church teaching.

It also taught me something new: being “conservative” is not enough either.

The Spectrum is Meaningless

When I learned of political ideologies in high school, it was a linear matrix with conservative on the right and progressive on the left. Later, I learned of the two-by-two matrix (which is more or less simply a meme) that includes a Y-axis of authoritarian vs. libertarian.

Based on this formulation, there is a matrix for what policies you want (conservative or progressive ones) and a matrix for whether you want the state to enforce those policies or not. In my mind, “progressive policy” simply meant permitting moral evils, so I had to be conservative.

But what really differentiates the progressive and the conservative sides, besides mere policy? After all, Catholic Social Teaching has a few basic principles. What are the basic principles of the conservatives and the liberals? It turns out they’re very similar.

Both are champions of individualism. Progressive and conservative pundits both champion freedom, and it is a special kind of freedom. This freedom puts individual freedoms before all others. This individualism assumes we are all lone wolves. Families, cities, churches, etc. are all private associations. All are completely optional and can be dissolved by the state, which is the only necessary entity outside the individual.

Conceiving the Church and the family as private or optional does damage to both. We cannot enter this life without a family, and we cannot enter the next life without the saving action of Christ entrusted to the Church. Individualism creates a worldview at direct odds with the way God established things.

Individualism is a core error of both “sides,” and it is a fundamental tenet of classical liberalism in general. Regardless of how your personal politics play out, if you are an individualist, you cannot advocate for the common good. For individualism, there is no unifying principle of solidarity for mankind and there is no reason for subsidiarity because different groups of people have no intrinsic relationship to one another. On top of that, the practice of individualism leads to a rejection of the preferential option for the poor and universal destination of goods.

Individualism is directly at odds with Catholic Social Teaching, and it is the core principle of liberalism.

Liberalism is an Anthropological Error

Two of the first classical liberals, Hobbes and Rousseau, had very different ideas of mankind, but individualism is what united them. Hobbes believed that, outside of society, mankind was vicious, violent, and selfish. Rousseau believed that, outside of society, mankind was easygoing, carefree, and selfish. For Hobbes, people grouped together purely for survival, and that was good. For Rousseau, people grouped together purely for survival, and that was bad.

These men had no more scientific proof for these pre-historical claims than Christians and Jews have for the Garden of Eden. Yet, their new Edenic claims were quickly adopted (you see them everywhere today) even though they both contained the same mistake; they both assumed mankind can exist outside of a society.

Liberalism is, fundamentally, an anthropological error. It misunderstands the truth that “you are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19) and that mankind was created within a community, for a community.

This error persists only as long as we refuse to take it to its natural conclusion. Families are not optional associations in the same way a bowling league is. Neither is the Church. But in the pure individualist view of mankind, there is only the state and the man. All associations of men are viewed equally. This is the individualism of Hobbes and Rousseau, and we have inherited their error.

Conservative and progressive ideas are both rooted in liberalism. It is possible to call yourself conservative or progressive and not hold this kind of individualism, but that would be a denial of a core element of the ideology. It is this ideology that gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These declarations, born out of liberalism, take into consideration the rights of individuals and the rights of states. Not the rights of families, the rights of the Church, nor the responsibilities we have to one other.

This is not to say liberalism is rotten to the core. Dare I say, (get ready for a hot take) universal recognition of human rights is a VERY GOOD THING. Liberalism has allowed for a robust understanding of individual rights but focusing on those rights alone is not enough. There is a need for a movement that takes the good of liberalism and conforms that good to the truths of the Catholic faith. This is post-liberalism

Where Post-Liberalism Begins

Post-liberalism is an answer to the question of what comes after. It’s a reorientation of the liberal understanding of what it means to be human. There are four foundational principles. The first two can be known by reason alone and the second two can only be known by divine revelation.

1. We are created in the image of God and ordered towards His worship.
2. We have a natural purpose to make our societies and ourselves more just. (This includes the principles of CST.)
3. God has given us a supernatural purpose of beatitude in heaven.
4. God has given us abundant grace, which is necessary to achieve all of the above.

Post-liberalism recognizes these as first principles. Since each person is ordered towards a human good, all human communities should be ordered towards their human good, as well. This includes corporations and cities and sports teams and fraternal organizations, etc.

Post-liberalism is still a school of thought, though. Just like Franciscans and Dominicans, there are different ways to apply those principles. For instance:

• If the Church and states are all public, necessary institutions, how should the Church and State cooperate?
• Which economic system best incorporates Catholic Social Teaching?
• How does a society that believes in these four principles handle people who reject them?
• If grace is necessary to achieve true justice, how do we incorporate grace into governance?

Integralists would answer these questions differently than post-liberals. They have different understandings about how Church and state relate. I have been trying to understand an ongoing debate between D.C. Schindler and Pater Edmund Waldstein. One day, I will try to summarize it here.

I prefer post-liberalism because it incorporates the good that liberalism has achieved while correcting its fundamental error, individualism. As I said, a robust understanding of individual freedoms is important, but not sufficient. In my estimation, integralism fails to take the good of liberalism into account. It is an antiquarian solution, meaning it tries to apply practices from a bygone era to our present day. (Integralists, forgive me if I am being reductive.)

To an outside observer, post-liberalism seems to be conservative because of its stance on moral topics like abortion and marriage. On the other hand, it may appear progressive because of its critiques of capitalism and insistence on the preferential option for the poor. In reality, it is neither. It exists outside of the left-right-authoritarian-libertarian matrix.

At its heart, it is an attempt to put into practice the timeless social teaching of the Catholic Church. A teaching that, if implemented with the help of God’s grace, will work towards the increase of justice for mankind on earth while we await the perfect justice that will come when the Savior does.

Happy Advent!