Left, Right, And Center

Permalinks aren’t working now, but Fr. Jim Tucker has some common-sense things to say about “centrism” as the strategy of those Catholics who want to oppose “extremism” (scroll down to “Centrism the Answer?”). Another problem with centrism is that it is entirely dependent upon where the shifting extremes of Left and Right happen to be. But Truth, and the prudential judgments that should flow from Truth, are completely independent of an ideological sliding scale. To be a Centrist, therefore, is to be a relativist.

In the near future I want to write something on Catholic humanism. Those who know me well know that I have something of liberal streak, and if I had been alive in any other Catholic milieu I would probably have been considered a liberal. The paradox of our time is that in order to be a genuinely Catholic liberal one must also be a traditionalist. True liberality cannot exist apart from that core of religious and moral principles that, in my opinion, is best exemplified by a movement in the Church now considered “extreme”. Without that essential core — without a center that holds and weathers all storms — the very possibility of a liberal disposition evaporates.