An Introduction to Yves R. Simon's "The Doctrinal Issue Between the Church and Democracy"

There are two contexts to be noted in approaching this essay of Yves Simon (1903-61).¹ First, it is important to consider where the essay stands in the development of Simon's Christian-inspired political philosophy. Second, it enriches our reading of the essay to know something about the volume in which it initially appeared and the specific troubles that volume encountered. To explore these contexts will necessarily accentuate the great significance of the essay both in itself and for us today and thus why it is an especially important piece to be reconsidered at this time.

The essay presented here concisely provides the essential elements and structure of Simon's political theory as they are found in his modern classic on democratic theory, Philosophy of Democratic Government. This book appeared in 1951, just a few years before the essay, and was based on Simon's 1948 Walgreen Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago.² The truly remarkable and highly influential Walgreen series also gave rise to very important books by Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, and Simon's teacher and friend, Jacques Maritain, all of these appearing within a few years of one another.³ There is no more profound and philosophically thorough modern examination of the idea of government and the democratic form of it than what is found in Simon's book. It is distinctly the work of a philosopher but one clearly informed by the Catholic intellectual tradition, especially the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. The essay that is reprinted here is the last statement of his political theory in Simon's all-too-short life.⁴ Those who know the book well will want to examine the essay for indications of any developments in his thinking, possibly occasioned by questions and reviews arising from his Walgreen lectures. This writer will explore one such point below. Those less familiar with Simon will find the essay an engaging introduction to his political thinking.⁵

It is important to note, however, that there is a difference between Simon's task and thus his approach in the book and in the essay before us. Despite the characterization of Simon's essay as "a philosophical affirmation of democracy" by the editors, Waldemar Gurian and M. A. Fitzsimons,⁶ that affirmation is not so much the central task here as it was in Philosophy of Democratic Government. In the essay, and appropriate to the title of the volume that contains it, the problematic and framework for inquiry is distinctively Catholic. Clearly one of the great subthemes of this topic of the "Catholic Church in World Affairs" must be, and is in this instance, how this hierarchical Church based on Revelation and in the past often in such comfortable alliance with nondemocratic regimes should stand in relation to democracy.

Simon enters the essay as a concerned man of the Catholic faith as well as a man of liberal republican convictions; the latter we know from other sources, but it will be fully apparent as the essay unfolds. He is concerned that the great divide between the Church and the liberal tradition that emerged from the French Revolution has made all but inevitable a great confusion engulfing supporters as well as enemies of the Church, confusion not so much on how the Church has stood on democracy but above all on how it "must" stand on democracy. Particularly disturbing to Simon is the line of thought that pragmatic accommodation is the best face the Church can turn to modern liberalism and democracy. While that is the stance of a number of Catholic leaders, those who fear the Church, and even her outright enemies, often paradoxically embrace the same essential position, suspicious that at best the Church coexists with democracy as a pragmatic accommodation, and given an opportunity to act otherwise, she would show her true colors. Amid the confusion, many Catholics are simply inclined to want the Church to conform to the democratic spirit of the age and frequently see it as inevitable that the Church...