The Political Thought of Frederick D.

Wilhelmsen
M a rk D. Popow ski

It is uncommon, especially in the United States o f America (the

vanguard o f our democratic age), fo r people to oppose the supposed
sanctity o f democratic government—American Catholics included.
They have tended toward, especially during the Cold War, the long-
held evangelical Protestant view that democracy was God's system
(or at least was compatible with Catholicism). The Roman Catholic
philosopher and public intellectual Frederick D. Wilhelmsen (1923­
1996) lamented this liberal-democratic consensus; fo r him, American
democracy was potentially anti-Christian, incompatible with the
Kingship o f Christ, in that ultimate authority in the social order tended
to reside in the people, not Christ.

nown in academic circles mostly for his Thomistic philosophizing

K about m an’s existence and knowledge (from the mid-twentieth cen­
tury until its last decade— principally as a philosophy professor at the Uni­
versity o f Dallas), Frederick D. Wilhelmsen (1923-1996) was less well
known for his political views, although they were prevalent in his corpus,
most certainly because he contemplated American politics through the ex­
oticness o f both the ideal o f a Catholic confessional order and the Euro­
pean monarchical tradition.1The historical context for Wilhelmsen and his
uncommon political views was the Cold War, which fomented, because it
was perceived to be a deadly challenge, an interest in political self-defi­
nition, a collective “know-thyself” moment. Exceptional and tumultuous
transformations in American society in the fifties, sixties, and seventies
also spurred this collective introspection. For the Catholic Wilhelmsen,
the convergence o f these developments with profound change within the
Roman Catholic Church, including the mainstreaming o f Catholicism in
American society, revived a long debate over the compatibility o f Catholi­
cism with Americanism and thus intensified his quest to know America.
Wilhelmsen stood apart from both the liberal Catholic position, which
seemed intent on baptizing American democracy (via liberal outlets such
as The Commonweal), and conservative Catholics (via National Review),
who celebrated the American system but wished to define it differently
than liberal Catholics. They viewed the American system as a republic: as
anti-majoritarian (an emphasis on the law over a majority o f the people,
especially including the trumping authority o f the Natural Law), as anti-
©2015 The Catholic Social Science Review 20 (2015): 21-38
Mark D. Popowski

egalitarian (social hierarchy was natural), as a trustee system for political

leadership, and as one of religious liberty, but also needing Christianity.
For Wilhelmsen, the American system, whatever its original appearance,
had within its nature a potency that flowered into a democratic absolutism.
Such a system was incompatible with the Catholic faith, given Christ’s
injunction for His Church to transfigure the world “in the name o f the Fa­
ther, and o f the Son, and o f the Holy Spirit.”2 Given that Christ is “the way
and the truth and the life,” this system militated against what was consub-
stantial with m an’s existence, the urge to live within a sacral society, one
essentially Christian, crowned by a political order that confessed Christ’s
sovereignty.3

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
For Wilhelmsen, there were two intertwining problems with the Ameri­
can political system— a faulty governing mechanism (the actual mecha­
nism established by the Constitution that rooted authority and power in
the people, not God) and a flawed public orthodoxy (the core beliefs o f
a society which increasingly deified man).4 If the governing mechanism
was subordinate to the public orthodoxy, each component was important
to the existence of the other; they were interrelated, but they were not
the same. Their acting and reacting upon one another, a natural process,
eventually fostered a democratic absolutism in the United States in which
the people— acting as a majority— assumed an absolute power, which, in
effect, was a denial that power came from Christ and an assertion that it
should not be specified by His moral authority (via His Church).
The governing mechanism was flawed in a threefold— but intertwin-
ing—manner. The framers did not institute a Christian establishment, and
they rooted authority and power in the people (not God), and constructed
a system designed to pit varying interests against one another to diffuse
power to protect and promote liberty (as the end o f government). The latter
was a secular proposition as it was a rejection o f aiding obedience to God
as a purpose o f government (the objective, Wilhelmsen maintained, o f a
Christian politics).5Yet, what if the creators supposed— or assumed—that
as a people Americans generally were Christian (or, at the least, mono­
theistic) and would infuse obedience to God into the governing system?
(The religious clauses o f First Amendment, for example, should be under-
stood— considering the historical context— as establishing religious lib­
erty, not as completely separating politics from religion.6) Possibly, then,
the people would put their power under God’s authority if Christianity
remained the substance o f belief o f the republic. The founders created a
framework, however, in which the people could do the opposite (liberty

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

for the people— via competition— was its ultimate end). W hat if the peo­
ple decided to abandon their Christian faith? In any case, they developed a
system that did not recognize an authority higher than the people.
Given this analysis, Wilhelmsen contended that the Constitution was
a mechanism that facilitated a democratic absolutism. The creators rooted
power and authority in the people. Seemingly, they designed the system
to restrain the people (the power) through written— so-called fundamen­
tal— law (the authority) and instituted institutional checks and balances
to specifically prevent democratic absolutism, or any kind o f absolutism.
Yet, “the People” o f the Constitution assumed an absolute power, because
they identified themselves as the font o f this governing charter, which was
a contract with an implied violability (because o f their absolute sover­
eignty). They created a system that did not recognize an authority separate
from the power, the people. For Wilhelmsen, the power in a social order
must be, in order to avoid becoming an unlimited power (and thus tyranni­
cal), informed, checked, or specified by an authority outside itself.7
Frederick Wilhelmsen, furthermore, did not believe that the fram­
ers’ tripartite mechanism— in which the people could check the people—
thwarted a democratic absolutism, but thought it was an attempt to check
an already absolutist conception o f government. “Montesquieu,” he wrote,
“tried to find freedom within the content o f the state he knew.”8 “If power
is so divided into three that any one or two o f these powers can check
excessive encroachments by the third,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “then that
power—be it legislative, judicial, or executive— is both what it is as a
constituted power, plus its being an authority over neighboring powers
that it pretends to judge.”9
Mechanically, then, the American political system was faulty. Yet,
what o f Father John Courtney M urray’s thesis that the Natural Law in­
formed the American founding?10 It was non-existent operatively as there
was no enforcement mechanism for it in the American system. If a society
“wishes to safeguard the natural law in a political fashion,” he wrote, “then
it must contrive some institution, itself having the force o f positive law and
the power o f the sword, entrusted with ensuring the public acceptance o f
natural law.”11 “The American Constitution was an instrument which at­
tempted to resolve fundamental problems not by creating a tribunal which
represented the natural law in its universal and ultimate character,” Wil-
helmsen wrote, “but by planning in tension the diverse interests o f the
people.”12 There “was,” then, he noted, “no ultimate authority in the whole
Federal system capable o f defending the natural law. The system was built
to avoid an appeal to an ultimate authority,” including— most important-
ly—the Natural Law’s interpreter, Christ’s Church.13

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Mark D. Popowski

Yet, this mechanical failure to encapsulate the Natural Law pointed

to a more fundamental problem in the American system, a flawed public
orthodoxy. For Wilhelmsen, laws or charters do not govern, but rather hu­
man beings, and usually they govern according to a network of core beliefs
(in this sense, all political systems were representative o f their societies,
if not representative democracies). This public orthodoxy informed— if it
was not the governing form —the governing mechanism and the way men
governed.
He viewed the public orthodoxy o f the founding period— even if it had
Natural Law underpinnings and a societal deference to Christ— as bur­
dened by the influence o f the concoction o f Calvinism and Enlightenment
rationalism. Both elements informed and thus corrupted the American po­
litical tradition’s commitment to Natural Law. Calvinism emphasized “a
total corruption o f man by original sin,” while Enlightenment rationalism
posited a “historicism,” both o f which undermined faith in the Natural
Law. “Unless human nature enjoys a certain stability the center o f which
is intrinsically good and not corrupted by sin,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “it is
useless to speak about a common good rooted in a finality supposedly dis­
covered within the substance o f man.”14
The anti-Catholic Christian trajectory o f modernity exacerbated the
latent anti-Natural Law tendencies in the founding American public ortho­
doxy, which in turn informed the actual system with an unbounded faith
in the majority as an absolute power—that a document supposedly created
the American governing system intensified this interaction. “America— in
quite a literal and literary sense o f the term— was founded as a nation by
being written down on paper. . . . America,” he wrote, “hammered out its
corporate meaning in print.”15 Meaning, then, not being (a lived arrange­
ment), was vital to the understanding o f the Constitution, which was sus­
ceptible to reinterpretation or manipulation “as are all written objects. . . .
America,” he wrote, “has been one long and often-brilliant debate about
her own meaning.”16 The United States, he implied, could be born again in
each successive generation.
The predominance o f liberalism in contemporary America (the cause
o f individual liberty), in part, spurred this anti-Catholic trajectory. The lib­
eral faith in government’s ability to remake society according to abstract
conceptions o f rights in nature, as ends in themselves, not only advanced
the absolutist state practically, but unchained man morally and helped pro­
duce “the solipsistic totalitarianism o f the individual conscience claiming
its ‘rights’ against the common good,” and over any authority outside itself
(namely God).17 The latter contributed to m an’s ordination o f him self as
ultimately sovereign—thus ignoring or banishing the God-man in favor

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

o f the man-god— and generating democratic absolutism (the man-god

writ large). Yet, liberalism was a mere part of an even more encompassing
problem.
For Wilhelmsen, America, like the rest o f the modern West, suffered
from an alienation from being, which was a developmental occurrence
that had many causes, which entailed either an intended rejection or ig­
norance o f existence (being) as an act o f God. That is, man is because
God Is. Yet, this gift, being, in W ilhelmsen’s Thomistic metaphysics, “is
better understood vertically as an act which is being done, exercised by
the Lord God, in the present moment. He gave me being in the past but
that being,” he wrote, “must not be imagined as though it were the gift
o f a coat handed me yesterday and worn today.”18 The loss o f be-ing is
the loss o f our awareness o f our dependency on God, that our existential
identity is God (we are the beings o f God—though not o f God’s being),
which frustrates our ontological urge to return the love that is the cause
o f our existence, o f creation—which is the effluence o f God’s love—to
seek Him in Whom we are. The loss o f be- i n g , then, distanced man from
God and His creation. Man, without an awareness o f be- i n g , began to pro­
claim his own divinity, viewing him self as existing in his power to become
something other than what he was, and believing that creation (imagined
without— or disconnected from— God) was at his behest, which he sought
to remake in his image, his new god. Remaking the world in his own im ­
age included constructing a political order over which he, not God, was
sovereign. Democratic absolutism comported to the metaphysics o f a man
holding his existence in his own power; it was the (political) extrapolation
o f man as his own absolute sovereign, a self-ruler.
Severed from Christ in both the non-Catholic confessional mechanism
established by the framers—that did not proclaim even some vague mono­
theism, let alone Christ’s Kingship— and given an anthropocentrically
seeded public orthodoxy that increasingly confessed m an’s divinity, an
adherence to the Natural Law withered. The Natural Law in the American
context lacked authority, then, because it lacked legitimacy, legality, and
loyalty, because it was not rooted in a transcendent personality— it lacked
a link to the Person o f Christ, His Authority (via His Church), both politi­
cally and socially.19 The Natural Law remained an abstraction— a gossa­
mer, to be swept away in the historicist and positivist winds o f modernity.20
Without the Natural Law, the rule o f the majority exceeded any merely
procedural understandings o f its power and morphed into an absolutist
power, assuming all authority and power unto itself, which “meant that
there is a ‘law ’ superior to the ‘natural law,’ that law o f the will o f the fifty
per cent plus one,” which “becomes the very first o f laws.”21 The absolute

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Mark D. Popowski

power o f the people, therefore, was both cause and effect o f the demise o f
the Natural Law— without it, the people were supreme (both the author­
ity and the power) and as an absolute power they could not recognize any
law anterior and superior to their authority.22 “The democratic principle ,”
Wilhelmsen concluded, “is unwritten orthodoxy in the United States. . . .
This principle has simply taken the place o f all older orthodoxies and to ­
day plays the role that natural law once played in Western civilization.”23
In any case, the Natural Law would remain a stunted guide in secular
and Protestant America (the Reformed tradition, as noted, could not affirm
a moral understanding in our reasonable nature). Yet, even more impor­
tantly, secular and Protestant America—the Reformed tradition did not
view creation as a potential means o f grace—did not provide sufficient
access to actual and sanctifying graces (which help us adhere to the Natu­
ral Law). It “is the grace o f God that gets us through the adverse tides o f
temptation and the storms around. Although we might well be guided by
the natural law,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “it is the Grace o f God proffering His
Divine Will, united always with the Cross o f Christ, which saves and alone
saves, that pulls us through.”24

MODERN POLITICS
For Frederick Wilhelmsen, the United States’ governing mechanism and
the public orthodoxy that informed it was and was not a so-called new or­
der o f the ages. On the one hand, he viewed the American political system
as a continuation o f the European political trajectory to an absolutist state
since the sixteenth century, fostered by the convergent developments o f
political theories justifying the terrestrial acquisition o f absolute power
(which denied Christ’s sovereignty) and the Protestant Rebellion (which
shattered Christ’s authority, via His Church). He wrote, for example, “That
the French Revolution”— supposedly the spawning moment o f the Age
o f Liberty—merely “converted the Will o f the Prince into the Will o f the
Majority,” which “was simply a democratic flourish to a. . . [development,
which] had already largely been written.”25 It was about the “peoples’ will
to power,” not about limiting power.26 The French Revolution, the essence
o f which, Wilhelmsen wrote, was “the denial o f m an’s relation to the Tran­
scendent, the assertion o f man as autonomous, him self the source o f all
rights,” championed absolutism via the concept o f government as repre­
sentative o f the people and seeking to establish their individual, absolute,
and autonomous rights.27 The French Revolutionaries merely murdered
the monarchical form, but embraced absolutism; they rooted power not
in divine right, but solely in m an’s (rational) authority. Yet, it is also true
that at times he tempered this view, conceptualizing the United States as

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

somewhat different from European absolutism. This could have resulted

from his friendships with Russell Kirk and especially Melvin Bradford, a
colleague at the University o f Dallas. These intellectuals posited, in vary­
ing ways, that the Constitution was principally procedural— rather than
a document defining rights— and anti-majoritarian, non-egalitarian, and
rooted in Classical and Christian antecedents via the English political tra­
dition, and thus not a new order for the ages, born in abstract Enlighten­
ment conceptions of man and the political order. Occasionally, then, both
culturally and politically— if not metaphysically, morally, or religiously—
Wilhelmsen found the American political system to be medieval. Regard­
less, he believed that such a founding still was “wounded by the crippling
influences o f a Puritan soul, [and] damaged by the influence o f the ratio­
nalist Enlightenment.”28
On the other hand, Wilhelmsen viewed the sixteenth-century develop­
ments that ushered in absolutism as different from government in the pre­
ceding Middle Ages. He posited that medieval, dynastic monarchy m ain­
tained a division between authority and power. In such a system, the king
held all power, but he and society recognized it as delegated by Christ and
thus ultimately subject to His moral authority (via His Church— “God’s
Authority on earth”).29 Authority also resided in varying degrees— be-
cause the king was not the authority, but the power at the service o f the
commonwealth— in the aristocracy, the common law, the free universities,
the guilds, the regional assemblies, the regional laws, the self-governing
townships, and the peasantry. The king was not dependent upon these
authorities, he held all power, but his power was restrained, Wilhelmsen
wrote, as “all authority— multiple and hierarchically structured— belonged
to Society itself.”30
This separation o f authority and power was the key point in the supe­
riority o f medieval over modern politics, as it authentically restrained the
power o f government and prevented it from becoming an absolute power.
This separation reached its optimum division during the Middle Ages, be­
cause the Christian faith informed society, which fostered what Wilhelm-
sen labeled the “Christian politics o f transcendence.”31
Medieval man accepted the Trinitarian God as sovereign.32 If only
God was sovereign, then medieval man reflexively viewed any terrestrial
power as delegated by God and thus subject to His authority. God’s ul­
timate power comes from— is— His ultimate wisdom (or authority). “If
sovereignty pertains to the fullness o f authority,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “then
only God is sovereign because only he speaks with an underived author­
ity,” which cannot be delegated but only communicated (as all authority
is personal).33 In this way, secular power, not being Christ (the underived

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Mark D. Popowski

Wisdom/Truth o f the Father), could not invoke His authority itself, but
only a power delegated by Christ (Who inherited power from His Father in
His victory over Satan upon the cross).34 That is, Christ delegated all tem ­
poral power (all power is delegated as it comes from a power greater than
itself), but this was not a theocracy, this was delegated power, intended to
guide men to their temporal happiness, while the spiritual realm, governed
by the Church, “guides men to their salvation: this is its finality.”35 They
were two distinct realms— yet, ideally, “the political order must be quick­
ened, vivified,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “by the moral principles proclaimed by
the Church whose Head is Christ.”36
The transition away from such a division o f sovereignty, Wilhelm-
sen argued, began with the French political theorist, Jean Bodin, who im-
manentized sovereignty by locating it “within terrestrial existence, within
politics as such.”37 Bodin, Wilhelmsen wrote, “identified the power o f
the Prince with an Authority which was Absolute and which resided in
himself. He thus rendered the Prince a Sovereign in the full ontological,
and not merely in the ceremonial sense o f the term .”38 “The new Prince
governed according to a Sovereignty,” he noted, “which was his own, a
Power united to an Authority which was unbounded and unlimited. [He
was] the font o f law as well as o f Authority.”39 This led to the “diviniza-
tion of political existence.”40 This process o f the prince assuming all au­
thority and power unto him self smashed the dichotomy that existed in the
medieval conception o f sovereignty. “Any harmonizing o f Power and the
Wisdom from which comes Authority is possible only under two condi­
tions: 1) either Power is identically Wisdom . . . or 2) Power is limited
from outside itself. Power,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “can remain absolute and
good only when it is Divine. If Power is to act other than in a merely
powerful way, if Power is to act wisely and prudently in harmony with
justice and truth,” he noted, “then Power must be specified or limited by
dimensions o f being that are not formally identified with Power as such.”41
He deduced this from his Thomistic metaphysics. “Power must live on the
side o f existence. . . . In God, Power is one with Being, but nowhere can
we discover— within Being itself— any specification or determination o f
Power. This specification,” he wrote, “itself always some limitation, must
come from a principle not identically Power: i.e., the order o f essence or
the determination o f existence. An unlimited Power, which is not God, is
a metaphysical monstrosity.”42
Absolute terrestrial power was a moral abomination, “ ‘essentially [an]
Anti-Christian Power and . . . simultaneously’”—Wilhelmsen quoted the
Spanish political theorist, Juan Donoso Cortes— “‘an outrage done the
majesty o f God and the dignity o f man. . . . Unlimited Power is also an

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

idolatry in the subject because he adores the king; idolatry in the king be­
cause he worships himself.’”43 Explicating the views o f Donoso, W ilhelm­
sen noted that this conception o f power violated the Trinitarian structure
o f existence, “the law o f unity in variety and variety in unity” which com­
ported to W ilhelmsen’s Christian metaphysics o f a paradoxical structure
o f existence that was complex, diversified, but unified in its being because
o f God.44 “Whereas uniformity and univocity govern the rationalist and
liberal universe,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “variety and unity rule the Chris­
tian traditionalist world.”45 Donoso “finds his supreme principle o f being
working within political existence in the following fashion,” Wilhelmsen
wrote: “‘in society unity manifests itself through Power, and variety mani­
fests itself through hierarchies [of authority from the Church to medieval
parliaments].’ Both are,” he noted, “inviolable and sacred. ‘Their co-exis­
tence is simultaneously the fulfillment o f the will o f God and the assurance
o f the liberty o f the people [as power is restrained by an authority outside
itself].’”46
The Protestant Revolution aided the development o f the absolutist
state.47 It undermined the moral authority o f the Roman Catholic Church—
its claim to speak for God on earth—which precipitated the state’s absorp­
tion o f moral authority unto itself. The Protestant Reformation’s trajec­
tory to both “immediacy” and an emphasis on the individual conscience
(informed by personal interpretation o f the Bible) over the Church and its
understanding that grace was non-mediated, undermined the confessional
political order (that political power should be put at the service o f Christ’s
moral authority via His Church). There was no need in the Protestant view
to enforce the preeminence o f the Roman Catholic Church or ensure ave­
nues to its sanctifying grace if the Church was supererogatory to salvation,
indeed such an order might frustrate religious belief and worship by at­
tempting to bind the individual conscience in matters o f faith and morals.
Indeed, American Protestants became leading advocates o f the “separa­
tion” o f church and state— not merely religious liberty— because they in­
creasingly could not tolerate any faith’s claim o f moral authority over the
individual (especially the Roman Catholic Church’s claim), which seemed
tyrannical. Protestantism, then, “separated religion from politics by allow­
ing a ‘totally vertical and individualist’ relationship with God and denied
any ‘horizontal’ role for religion for ‘fashioning the social and political or­
der.’”48 The modern, secular state sought to fulfill the civilizing role once
reserved for the Church.

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Mark D. Popowski

CONFESSIONAL ORDER
The ultimate solution to these political ills, which were leading to anarchy,
was the Catholic-Christianization o f society—to restore a faith in Christ’s
moral authority (via His Church) over man and society. The latter would
entail the construction o f a confessional order, to seal this commitment
to Christ in the public order. This new order was a theoretical construct,
but derived from W ilhelmsen’s conception o f historic Christendom, which
could never be restored in its actuality, but rather could serve as inspiration
for a future Christendom.
The wellness o f this new civilized order would depend upon the politi­
cal order representing the public orthodoxy. For Wilhelmsen, the health o f
this political order, most importantly, would depend upon how closely the
public orthodoxy (given that at their heart, public orthodoxies were a soci­
ety’s view o f its existence and purpose) conformed to a Catholic-Christian
view o f being, that o f viewing “all things as holding existence on suffrage
from the Lord.”49
This metaphysical view perpetuates fidelity (out o f love) to God from
Whom man— because o f love— is. This Divine love was made flesh in
Christ, Who through the Cross redeems creation. This love beckons man
to imitate the Incarnate God, Who, because o f love, lifts up the world in
the Spirit by giving H im self as an offering to the Father to redeem man.
Man, then, because o f love, gives o f him self to redeem the world (to take
part in Christ’s redemptive mission), incarnating this love, gesturing it
forth to the world by signing it with the cross and thereby carrying it back
to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.50 The injunction o f the
Incarnation is, Wilhelmsen wrote, “to fashion creation anew and to hallow
all things so that they might participate in the Redemption o f our Lord
Jesus Christ . . . to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings o f the Cross.”51
This sacralizing mission, to hallow all things in Christ, is intrinsic to
man, an ontological urge to return to the Trinitarian God, from Whom,
through Whom, and in Whom he is. This redemptive-sacralizing mission
would generate a sacral society, one marked with the faith o f the cross
and thus filled with symbols o f salvation in Christ, sacramentals or actual
graces, that direct man to Christ, especially the sanctifying grace poured
out through His Church— also made more prevalent in a sacral society—
that saves man and brings him to Christ. “I take as revealed the following
proposition,” Wilhelmsen wrote: “God wills every man to be saved. I take
it as evident that he is more easily saved in a society that buoys him self
up in the Faith, that surrounds him with symbols o f his salvation.”52 This
is because grace, although it always perfects nature and “can operate in

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human nature at any time and under any conditions,” “operates the better,
the more perfected man is on the natural level.”53 Therefore, he concluded,
“man is better off in a sacral order than out o f it.”54
The confessional order would develop naturally from a sacral society.
As a Christian man gestures his faith to the world, as his fidelity to Christ
and his living are one, so a sacral society, analogously, would publicly
confess its devotion to Christ, as its allegiance to Him and its existence are
one. Man is a “unity in existence;” he could not sanely compartmentalize
his faith in Christ and live it only in something called the “private sphere.”55
He is not divided within himself, a duality in existence, both a temporal
and a spiritual being, because he is neither, but rather an “enfleshed spir­
it.”56 If man is the faith (though the faith is not him), if grace weaves the
Cross into his heart and mind, and if man communicates him self forth to
the world, then his faith and living are necessarily one.57 Catholic men,
then, would construct a political order that is an extension o f themselves,
in the service o f the “God-Man.”58 The confessional order would serve
as a further aid in directing man to Christ. It would reinforce and shield
the sacral society. This political order, separate from the spiritual order
governed by the Church, would subject its power to the moral authority o f
Christ’s Church, adhere to the moral law, and generally confess the Roman
Catholic faith, including enforcing its preeminence in society.
The confessional order would be truly legitimate because it would
recognize the true sovereign o f creation, Christ. Christ’s Kingship over
existence exists, whether recognized or not. Christ, as St. John notes, is
“prince o f the kings o f the earth” and, St. Matthew writes, “all power in
heaven and on earth,” is given to Him.59 “Christ is King o f all Kings,”
Wilhelmsen wrote, “Lord o f Creation. He has inherited His title from His
Father; He has won His title on the cross by His victory over Satan; and He
has been recognized in His title by his Infinite Wisdom and Goodness.”60
The purpose o f confessional politics would be love, which was the ba­
sis of Christ’s mission; he came, as St. Mark writes, “not to be served, but
to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”61 The political order
that confesses Christ’s sovereignty aids man in his quest for salvation (his
ultimate purpose) by proscribing vices and providing inducements to obey
God and by protecting and aiding the Church’s mission to carry the Cross
to the world.
W hat o f liberty and equality in a future confessional order? The rec­
ognition o f Christ’s sovereignty would check the rise o f an absolutist state.
First, the political order’s power would be restrained by Christ’s author­
ity (communicated through His Church). Second, such an order would
respect and protect the transcendent dignity o f the person, who belongs

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to God, not the state. Third, following the logic o f Christ’s delegation o f
power to lower governing entities, the confessional order would delegate
power to the smallest possible political unit capable o f fulfilling “ends
consubstantial to itself.”62 Fourth, the confessional order would foster
greater devotion to the law and a more self-governing citizenry, and thus
require a less obtrusive government. By helping man obey God, such an
order would help liberate him from the slavery o f sin. Furthermore, obe­
dience to the law— in conformity with Christ’s authority— would have a
higher purpose, love for the Person o f Christ, not merely the objective o f
adhering to a majority, or to the power o f some particular class or ruler, or
to the law as an end in itself.63
In the Roman Catholic context, man has an inviolable free rational­
ity and will, which roots his liberty in his existence (his ability to choose
God), not a charter or tradition. The rights derived from this moral exis­
tence are not conceptualized as absolute or unlimited rights, but bound by
G od’s authority.64 In any case, liberty— understood simply as choice (not
the ability to choose)— “could never be an end in itself” for the individual
or society, who and which, otherwise, would have to be in perpetual stasis
(to maintain choice).65 Choice could never be an end. The “end” or objec­
tive o f a society should be love, which meant establishing an order com­
mitted to helping people act morally, which would birth a greater liberty,
“liberation from evil.”66 The confessional order, then, could limit choice
to ensure the good o f the individual and the commonweal. “Love opposes
liberty,” Wilhelmsen noted, “only when liberty opposes love.”67 Yet the
latter would not be as oppressive as the modern world would assume, be­
cause the actual issue o f religious liberty “is a tautology,” he wrote, “when
subjected to philosophical analysis. No one can coerce assent to the Faith,
not even God Himself.”68Anyway, all societies have a certain orthodoxy.69
The so-called “open society” is a myth. Even the pluralist United States
enforces an orthodoxy—the “agreement to disagree.”70
Furthermore, the confessional order would not adhere to any abstract
concept o f equality, but respect the dignity o f all persons (for whom Christ
died). “We are all equally men but not equal men,” Wilhelmsen wrote.71
They could neither be equal before the law, nor even have equal opportu­
nities. Man is valuable because he is, because God loves him. Inequalities
could offend human dignity, but they do not give or subtract dignity from
the person. Given that men are not equal (and are plagued by a fallen na­
ture), and that hierarchy conforms to the divine pattern and that society
is engendered not out o f the individual, but the family, an “ordered hier­
archy,” then a hierarchical ordering to society is naturally necessary for
order and harmony.72

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

Yet, in the Christian context, such individual and social differences

indicate an obligation to use any advantages to serve others, to imitate
Christ. The redemptive mission—to carry the cross to the world— most
importantly, includes serving “the least brothers” o f the King.73 Such dif­
ferentiation among persons and classes also evidenced the need for com-
munity—that man needs a “we.” He is stunted as a solitary individual or
class.

DYNASTIC MONARCHY
Frederick Wilhelmsen believed that a dynastic monarchy would be the
political system most conducive to a society that would confess Christ’s
sovereignty. As the confessional order needed a society faithful to Christ
to work, so Wilhelmsen knew that a monarchy would be dependent upon a
monarchical tradition. He believed that a monarchy would be more faith­
ful to— and communicative of— a corporate and organic understanding o f
society, that the monarchy would be the head o f a political body, each
dependent upon one another.74 More importantly, he believed that a m on­
archy was patterned on the Kingship o f Christ.
The confessional-dynastic monarchy would be “analogous to the
kingship o f Christ,” in a threefold manner.75 First, in the monarchy, power
would be unitary— as is Christ’s sovereignty—providing the unity o f ac­
tion in the political body necessary for order. Power could be delegated—
as Christ delegates power— but the king, in the political realm, like Christ
over creation, would be the final power. Furthermore, because the m on­
archy held all power, it would not be a dependent power; the king would
tend to be above the political fray and not subject to partisanship or inter­
est groups, which also pointed to the transcendence o f the rule o f Christ,
Who was above all earthly power.
Second, monarchical power would be personal, like the sovereignty
o f Christ, which also is personal. Christ is a Person. Laws or abstractions,
Wilhelmsen was adamant, do not govern men; rather, a person governs
them. Men could be more loyal to persons who wield power than to a law
or a faceless majority.76 Such a personal rule would be superior in that it
transcends— if beneficially conditioned by—the more abstract and anony­
mous rule o f law.77 Paradoxically, a monarchy (with all o f its otherness
from the ordinary subject), would be a more personal form or rule, as the
king, a person, rules; whereas democracy, (with all its relatability to the
people as it is the people who govern), is a more anonymous rule, as the
masses rule.
Third, the basis o f legitimacy for monarchy would be dynastic inher­
itance, like Christ Who inherited his sovereignty from His Father. The

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Mark D. Popowski

source o f legitimacy o f such a rule “is paternity,” an ontological ordina­

tion in that such power is—the king’s power is in his being (the son o f his
father)— it would not be derived from or dependent upon an election or
legal enactment; it would tend toward the inviolable.78 This ontological
legitimacy would point toward the transcendent origin o f power.
Dyanstic monarchy, furthermore, would be rule by a family (the king’s
power would be in his familial name), and thus would recognize and
shield the family—the “basis,” itself, “for political existence.”79 A man
is not born a man, nor does his identity come solely from within himself.
Men are born into families— structures that “are anterior to all choice,
deeper than all law, more profound than any philosophy”— mini body pol­
itics, incarnating the principles o f order, the monarchical, aristocratic, and
democratic elements necessary for political order, power, authority, and
communion (respectively). The latter because man discovers in his family
that his identity is intrinsically communal (or relational)— it is a “we,” the
family, that names him.80 Dynastic monarchy not only would be rule by a
family, but a rule patterned on the structure o f the family, hierarchically
and paternalistically ordered. “Where fathers are kings in their own fami­
lies,” Wilhelmsen wrote, “one o f their own— a dynastic king— is father o f
all the fathers.”81
In a social order composed o f families, which are represented in the
body politic, personhood comports to its ontological structure. “The basic
theological and metaphysical issue at question concerns the very structure
o f personhood. If I am principally who I am and not what I am,” W ilhelm­
sen wrote, “then society ought to be structured around the family: I am
the Name that I am thanks to my parents. If, on the contrary,” he noted,
“who I am is irrelevant; if the principal question concerning me has to do
with what I am, then democratic individualism ought to have its way.”82
Maintaining the integrity o f the family, better ensured by a dynastic m on­
archy, would better safeguard the true dignity o f man that his value is (in
his being— it is existing), an identity inherent in familial identity. Con­
versely, m an’s identity without family, but deriving solely from himself, is
necessarily transient, because it is principally rooted in the exigencies o f
his life. This is the individual cultivated by democracy, which recognizes
only solitary individuals. “One man— one vote! This is the cardinal dogma
o f liberal democracy,” Wilhelmsen wrote.83 Democracy, then, did not re­
spect personhood and forfeited order for an individualism only fulfilled in
becoming— rather than being. The solitary life “lived outside the family,”
Wilhelmsen wrote, “permits a man to assume any and every role from
saint to sinner because it never allows that man to be.”84

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

W ilhelmsen’s criticism o f American democracy and his promotion o f

a confessional order, in addition to his preference for a dynastic monarchy
as the governing form, certainly made him an anachronism to both Cold
War conservatives and liberal American Catholics. Yet, he would argue
that the American government has become an absolute power— and that
this development can never be reconciled with Church teaching. What, he
would ask, trumps the positive law o f the state? W hat separate authority
qualifies its power? That fifty-one percent o f the population might change
its mind every election does not solve the problem (of checking the state).
Indeed the problem is that a majority decision has become conceptualized
as more than procedure but as the final authority in society. How, he would
plead, could this be reconciled with the Kingship o f Christ? Wilhelmsen,
if an old voice, urges reappraisal o f American democracy, which was the
fundamental purpose o f his political commentary.

Notes
1. Thank you to the two reviewers from the Catholic Social Science Review
and to Dr. David Cullen, Dr. Alexandra Wilhelmsen, Dr. David J. Popowski, and
Amber M. Popowski for reading this paper and providing helpful suggestions.
Thank you also to Dr. Carl Hasler for providing his thoughts on Wilhelmsen. A
number of authors have examined Wilhelmsen’s thought: Patrick Allitt, Catho­
lic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-1985 (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1993); James J. Lehrberger, “Christendom’s Trouba-
dor: Frederick D. Wilhelmsen,” The Intercollegiate Review (Spring 1997): 52-55;
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (New York:
Basic Books, 1976); Jeffrey O. Nelson, “Wilhelmsen, Frederick D.,” in American
Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, ed. Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O.
Nelson (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006), 921-23; Michael Henry, introduc­
tion to Christianity and Political Philosophy, by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2014), ix-xxi; Mark D. Popowski, The
Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine,
1966-1976 (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2012); R. A. Herrera, James Lehr­
berger, O.Cist., and M. E. Bradford, eds., Saints, Sovereigns, and Scholars: Stud­
ies in Honor o f FrederickD. Wilhelmsen (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.,
1993); Craig Schiller, The Guilty Conscience o f a Conservative (New Rochelle,
N.Y.: Arlington House Publishers, 1978); Unsigned, Frederick Daniel Wilhelm­
sen (Eminent Professor and Catholic Intellectual): A Tribute from the University
o f Dallas (Irving, Tex.: University of Dallas, 1998); and please see the 1996 win­
ter issue of Faith and Reason 22:4 (Winter 1996): 233-67.
2. Matthew 28:19.
3. John 14:6.

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Mark D. Popowski

4. For “public orthodoxy,” please see Frederick D. Wilhelmsen and Will-

moore Kendall, “Cicero and the Problem of the Public Orthodoxy,” Intercolle­
giate Review 5:2 (Winter 1968-1969): 84.
5. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Hallowed Be Thy World,” Triumph 3:6 (June
1968): 13.
6. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Civil War in 1984,” Southern Partisan (Win­
ter 1984): 37.
7. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Donoso Cortes and the Meaning of Political
Power,” Intercollegiate Review 3:3 (January-February 1967): 122.
8. Ibid., 115-16.
9. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,”
The Political Science Reviewer 20:1 (Spring 1991): 165. Also, please see Wil­
helmsen, “Donoso Cortes and the Meaning of Political Power,” 122.
10. Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,” 173. The
“American Proposition,” Father Murray argued, was that God was sovereign over
nations and individuals. Please see John Courtney Murray, S.J., We Hold These
Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Garden City, N.Y.: Im­
age Books, 1960).
11. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The Natural Law Tradition and the American
Political Experience,” The Occasional Review (February 1974): 19.
12. Ibid., 24.
13. Ibid., 25-26.
14. Ibid., 25.
15. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen and Jane Bret, The War in Man: Media and
Machines (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1970), 59.
16. Ibid.
17. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Transcending the Dialectic,” Triumph 4:9
(September 1969): 17.
18. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “A Philosopher’s Meditation: Creation and Its
Enemies,” The Angelus 16:2 (February 1993): 24.
19. Ibid., 17-28.
20. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “John Courtney Murray and the Optimism
of the 1950s,” in We Hold These Truths and More: Further Reflections on the
American Proposition, The Thought of Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J., and Its
Relevance Today, ed. Donald J. D ’Elia and Stephen M. Krason (Steubenville,
Ohio: Franciscan University Press, 1993), 29; and Wilhelmsen, “The Natural Law
Tradition and the American Political Experience,” 20-30.
21. Wilhelmsen, “John Courtney Murray and the Optimism of the 1950s,”
29; and Wilhelmsen, “The Natural Law Tradition and the American Political Ex­
perience,” 20.
22. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, Citizen o f Rome: Reflections from the Life o f a
Roman Catholic (La Salle, Ill.: Sherwood Sugden & Company, 1980), 335.
23. Wilhelmsen, “The Natural Law Tradition and the American Political Ex­
perience,” 27.

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 The Political Thought of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

24. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Sign, Faith and Society,” Faith & Reason
20:2 (Summer 1994): 159-60.
25. Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,” 164.
26. Irving Kristol, “The Most Successful Revolution,” American Heritage
25:2 (April 1974).
27. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Otto von Habsburg and the Future of Eu­
rope,” Modern Age 2:3 (Summer 1958): 270.
28. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The Sovereignty of Christ—Or Chaos,” The
Wanderer 100:43 (October 7, 1967): 12.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Wilhelmsen, “Donoso Cortes and the Meaning of Political Power,” 112.
32. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The Conservative Vision,” The Commonweal
(June 24, 1955): 297.
33. Wilhelmsen, “Donoso Cortes and the Meaning of Political Power,” 112.
34. Ibid., 113.
35. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “A Philosopher’s Meditation: Quas Primas,”
The Angelus 16:10 (October 1993): 30.
36. Ibid.
37. Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d’Ors,” 174; and Wil­
helmsen, “Donoso Cortes and the Meaning of Political Power,” 113.
38. Wilhelmsen, “The Sovereignty of Christ—Or Chaos,” 12.
39. Ibid.
40. Wilhelmsen, “Donoso Cortes and the Meaning of Political Power,”
13-14.
41. Ibid., 114.
42. Wilhelmsen, ““The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,” 166.
43. Ibid., 122.
44. Ibid., 119-20.
45. Ibid., 121.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 174.
48. Wilhelmsen, “Hallowed Be Thy World,” 12-13; quoted in Popowski,
The Rise and Fall of Triumph, 69.
49. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The Good Earth,” Triumph 4:2 (February
1969): 13.
50. Wilhelmsen, “Sign, Faith and Society,” 156.
51. Wilhelmsen, “Hallowed Be Thy World,” 11.
52. Wilhelmsen, “Sign, Faith and Society,” 158.
53. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, Hilaire Belloc: No Alienated Man, A Study in
Christian Integration (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953), 85.
54. Wilhelmsen, “Sign, Faith and Society,” 158.
55. Ibid., 161.
56. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Angels,” The Angelus 18:12 (December
1995): 39.

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Mark D. Popowski

57. Wilhelmsen, “Sign, Faith and Society,” 160.

58. Wilhelmsen, Hilaire Belloc, 32.
59. Revelation 1:5 and Matthew 28:18.
60. Wilhelmsen, “A Philosopher’s Meditation: Quas Primas,” 30.
61. Mark 10:45.
62. Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,” 161.
63. Wilhelmsen, “The Sovereignty of Christ—Or Chaos,” 12; and Wilhelm­
sen and Kendall, “Cicero and the Problem of the Public Orthodoxy,” 84-100.
64. Wilhelmsen and Bret, The War in Man, 58; and William H. Marshner,
“Liberty and the Social Order,” Triumph 8:5 (May 1973): 24-26.
65. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Love versus Freedom,” Intercollegiate Re­
view 30:2 (Spring 1995): 9-10; and Marshner, “Liberty and the Social Order,”
24-26.
66. Wilhelmsen, “Love versus Freedom,” 8-10.
67. Ibid.
68. Wilhelmsen, “Transcending the Dialectic,” 17.
69. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “My Doxy is Orthodoxy,” National Review
(May 22, 1962): 365.
70. Ibid.
71. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Friendship and Equality,” The Angelus 18:8
(August 1995): 38.
72. Ibid.
73. Matthew 25:40.
74. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The King: Sir John Fortescue and the English
Tradition,” Modern Age 19:3 (Summer 1975): 255.
75. Popowski, The Rise and Fall o f Triumph, 112.
76. Wilhelmsen, “The King: Sir John Fortescue and the English Tradition,”
251-52.
77. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Royalist Revival in Central Europe” Nation­
al Review (January 18, 1958): 61-63.
78. Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,” 151.
79. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “The Family as the Basis for Political Exis­
tence,” The Intercollegiate Review 26:2 (Spring 1991): 10.
80. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “Respondeo Dicendum: Family Politics,” Tri­
umph 10:2 (February 1975): 43.
81. Ibid.; also, see Wilhelmsen, “The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d ’Ors,”
153.
82. Ibid.
83. Wilhelmsen, “The Family as the Basis for Political Existence,” 12.
84. Wilhelmsen, “Respondeo Dicendum: Family Politics,” 43.

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