Corrado Gnerre
I am a young man and I always read to you with pleasure. I have to ask you a question that – I think – many ask themselves these days. To put it more appropriately: these are two questions concerning the so-called “sovereignty.” The first question: why is sovereignty talked about so much? The second: what judgment can we make of sovereignty from a Christian point of view? Thanks in advance.
Dear …, I try to answer as simply as possible the two questions you have kindly asked. I do not hide the fact that it will be very easy for me to do so, because these days I have had the opportunity to deal with these topics elsewhere too.
First question: why is sovereignty spoken of so often? The answer is very simple, but it requires referring to some historical reminiscence. The economy of high finance has in recent centuries worked for the abolition of borders and customs duties (the same enlightenment cosmopolitanism also responded to this desire). It is a “dogma” of supercapitalism (which some also define with the happy expression of marketism), which is functional to the claim of submitting the community dimension to the economy and not vice versa, as was the case in traditional Christian society. The financial and entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, which was the protagonist of the hyper-capitalist turn of modernity, has always favored overcoming national identities in order to transform real estate from assets “represented by money” into assets “representative of money”. The transformation took place with the Le Chapelier law (in the year 1791) during the French Revolution.
Having said this – and I come to your second question – we also understand why sovereignty is not only perfectly compatible with Christian social thought, but it is also a value in itself. As stated previously, I have had the opportunity to write it elsewhere: it is a grave mistake to confuse sovereignty with nationalism. The first has a defensive dimension, the second expansive. The latter (nationalism) is an attempt to foist one national identity over others. It is no coincidence that nationalism exploded in full modernity, precisely because it was functional to the project of abolishing territorial diversity. In short, the national model was required because it had to correspond to a precise economic model.
Sovereignty, on the other hand, has another meaning: defensive and not expansive. The defense of one’s autonomy to defend (we apologize for the repetition) the priority of the community dimension over economic, financial and market interests. Hence, here is my answer to the fully Christian value of sovereignty. A value that recovers the need and importance of the family model. A state that deprived the family would be morally unacceptable, so an economy that deprived the state would be equally morally unacceptable. Hence also many naive Catholics who think that, by attacking sovereignty, they are rendering who knows what good service to the cause of solidarity, when it is quite different. In short, sovereignty is natural, just as it is natural for the family to enjoy autonomy and be granted freedom; and just as intermediate social bodies are natural without them being totalitaristically swept away.
(From La buona battaglia. Apologetica cattolica in domande e risposte, 2019©Chorabooks. Translated by Aurelio Porfiri. Used with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved) (Image: State Dept./D. Thompson from share.america.org)
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