Interview with Patrick Deneen: Catholicism, Democracy, and the Future of Political Order

Introduction:

Patrick Deneen spoke at the Tocqueville Center on Catholicism in America on April 15-16, 2024.

Deneen is Professor of Political Science and holds the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Chair of Constitutional Studies at University of Notre Dame. He earned his BA and PhD degrees from Rutgers University. Early in his career he worked as Speechwriter and Special Advisor to the Director of the United States Information Agency. He also held positions at Princeton and Georgetown Universities before joining the faculty at Notre Dame in 2012. His books include The Odyssey of Political Theory: The Politics of Departure and Return; Democratic Faith; Conserving America: Essays on Present Discontents; Why Liberalism Failed; and Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. He was awarded the APSA’s Leo Strauss Award for Best Dissertation in Political Theory in 1995, and an honorable mention for the APSA’s Best First Book Award in 2000.

Catholic Social Teaching and the Mixed Regime

Q: Could you describe a bit about your idea of the “mixed regime” in light of Catholicism, and how that connects to Catholicism in particular, if it does?

A:
I think it does. Throughout the long tradition of Catholic social teaching, there’s a lot of concern about how the political and social order can support the flourishing of ordinary people. Going back to Rerum Novarum in 1891, Pope Leo XIII is really focused on that — on the one hand, holding at bay what he sees as the destructive economic and social forces of socialism and capitalism, and articulating what he sees as a truly Catholic vision of a political and social order supportive of the flourishing of ordinary people.

It’s not the claim that we’ll get rid of private property or make everyone equal, as socialism claims. But it’s also not a willingness to say, “Let the market sift out winners from losers.” He’s very supportive of unions, just wages, and public policies that support a greater degree of fairness without destroying the bases of private property.

He was largely writing for aristocrats, not Democrats per se. And so you see in him — and in the broader tradition — a concern for a kind of concord and cooperation between the classes, without either the illusion that all could be made equal or the hostility of class warfare. Catholicism has been one of the great articulators and defenders of this idea of a mixed constitution into the modern age.

Tocqueville, Catholicism, and Liberal Democracy

Q: That connects to another question: Tocqueville famously observed that Catholicism and democracy seemed surprisingly supportive of one another. Could you talk about how you see that relationship today?

A:
Tocqueville observed Catholicism flourishing in 19th-century America. There was a big question in Europe at the time — whether religious liberty would damage the Catholic faith. Tocqueville concluded not only that Catholicism was flourishing under religious liberty, but that it might have been a temporal and prudential mistake for the Church to become so closely aligned with the ancien régime political powers, which were destined for corruption and decay.

In America, he saw flourishing churches operating independently within a liberal democratic order — something that was beneficial, especially for Catholics who were a minority facing much less persecution than in Europe. Bishops in America, at that time, recognized the benefits of religious liberty, even if Rome was more cautious.

But Tocqueville also saw the risk: liberalism would eventually work its way into non-liberal traditions like Catholicism — a universal solvent affecting every part of society. He feared that religious traditions might either transform into liberalized versions of themselves or be eliminated altogether. Over time, he predicted, a society would sift into either all unbelievers or all Catholics. It couldn’t remain in a kind of intermediate state.

Today, we see something similar: liberalism is proving deeply illiberal. It seeks to reshape or eliminate points of resistance — especially family and traditional religion — by subtly or forcefully working its way into all areas of life.

Liberalism’s Internal Contradictions

Q: If I remember your first book correctly, you argued that this solvent effect is inherent within liberalism itself — not an accident. Could you talk about the internal contradiction you see within liberalism, and whether your proposed mixed regime would avoid that problem?

A:
Of course, no political order is going to escape the contradictions of the human soul. There’s no utopia on earth. Even after finishing that book, I regretted not spending more time discussing the internal challenges of my own proposal.

I give a lot of weight to “common sense” — in the Aristotelian sense, the wisdom of ordinary people who know how things work because they live them. Architects, for example, often design houses that make no sense to live in. It’s the users who notice where the light switch should have been. There’s wisdom embedded in common experience.

Aquinas articulates this beautifully in his discussion of law and custom: good custom, shaped over time by common sense, functions like law and should be deferred to by rulers. There’s a kind of proto-Burkean argument here, and you even see it reflected in American constitutional jurisprudence today.

However, the many have their deficiencies too. Democracy, for Aristotle, isn’t the best regime. When common sense becomes degraded — as it has in many ways in America today — it creates challenges. A corrupted ruling class leads to a corrupted populace.

In such moments, we need a well-formed elite: leaders who can tutor, elevate, and recreate the conditions where common sense and civic virtue can flourish again. So there’s a tension: deference to healthy common sense when it exists, but also an acknowledgment that elites have an important role when it has been degraded.

Conclusion: The Challenges Ahead

Ultimately, the mixed regime model is not a utopia. It carries its own tensions between the many and the few. But I believe it offers a better foundation for cultivating human flourishing than the self-consuming contradictions of liberalism left unchecked.