📄 Both Fr. Matthew M. De Benedictus OFM and Christopher Cullen seem...
𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘶𝘴@_bonaventurian
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Sep 23, 2025
~1 min read
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📄 Both Fr. Matthew M. De Benedictus OFM and Christopher Cullen seem to rather shyly concede that if you were to implement St. Bonaventure's social thought directly into politics, you would have what functionally amounts to clerical fascism.
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Cullen and Fr. De Benedictus at least concede the direct theocracy of St. Bonaventure's implicit and explicit political theology. It would be impossible otherwise.
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St. Bonaventure's political theology reworks classical monarchy through divine exemplarism and Franciscan ideals. Election is limited to aristos; authority flows from spiritual order, not liberal consent.
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His vision yields a stable, hierarchical commonwealth—ruled by sanctity, not liberal plurality—unlike modern authoritarian states. But it is truly hierarchical. In the sense both St. Dionysius and Evola speak of hierarchy, inclusive of their own nuances.
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But where of course St. Bonaventure goes far further than Evola, is in giving us a kind of a Eucharistic absolutism of both divine charity and order.
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We can think of it like this:
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Any political theology that advocates a hierarchical, divinely-ordained social order, governed by moral elites under religious authority, with minimal democratic participation and no tolerance for pluralism, constitutes a form of clerical fascism.
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St. Bonaventure’s political theology affirms a hierarchical, divinely-ordained social order governed by spiritual & moral elites, restricts election to the virtuous few (aristos), categorically denies pluralism, subordinates both state & society to ecclesial and divine authority.
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Therefore, St. Bonaventure’s political theology constitutes a form of clerical fascism.
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St. Bonaventure’s rejection of political pluralism is ultimately an anti-liberal authoritarianism. Sacral hierarchy ends up entailing religious autocracy.
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The theological subordination of temporal goods to eternal ends results in a political totality that effects this instrumentally. And of course, moral authority invested in the state for this end does entail coercive rule. Especially if enacted today. ☴
