The hegemony of the modern liberal state has produced many discontents. In response to a society and a polity that is often hostile to Christianity—despite Christianity being the root of Western civilization—a movement has arisen in American politics to counteract and supplant the current order. Known as “political Catholicism” or “integralism”, it seeks to discard the notion of “separation of church and state” and integrate (hence “integralism”) the political and religious spheres of public life in order to create a more authentically Christian polity and culture.
It is important to set the precise terms of the discussion so as not to be ambiguous. “Modern liberal state” refers not to the policy prescriptions of a political party in the United States, but rather the overarching philosophy that characterizes modern politics as a whole: secularism, the disregard for the spiritual life of man and his ultimate end, positivism, proceduralism, neutrality in the public sphere, an endorsement of the continued progression of individual autonomy maximalism without regard for the moral order, and a skepticism of the moral order and state-enforced morality.
Integralism seeks to flip most of those tendencies of the modern state. According to The Josias, an integralist publication:
Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.
For political Catholics, this movement, although a reaction to the secularization of American society (a society which Rod Dreher calls “post-Christian”), does not merely reflect a force of the human will, but rather a truth about the human person as such: we are spiritual beings who have supernatural ends.
Political Catholicism draws on a rich tradition of political, religious, and moral philosophy developed over the two millennia of Christian thought. In the present day, political integralism has formed a coherent political theory through a growing set of scholarship in integralist publications and summits with scholars and commentators. Publications such as New Polity, The Josias, and Ius et Iustitium offer a space for the development of a theory and praxis that could re-establish Christianity in a political order whose core assumptions strike against the truths of the Christian faith.
In the political realm, authors such as Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule, seek a polity rooted in the common good as understood in the classical legal tradition. “Common good” is understood as “a good that is unitary (‘one in number’) and capable of being shared without being diminished.” Far from merely focusing on the individual, integralists look towards a good that can be shared, and see the role of the civil authority to enshrine that in law and politics. In this way, political Catholicism has a much more expansive view of the role of government, and has a high view of the potential for the public authority to know and effectively implement what is conducive to the genuine flourishing of the people under its care.
But how are we to square the core tenet of the philosophy (integration of religious and political orders) with our understanding of the First Amendment in the United States, which forbids Congress to “pass a law respecting an Establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the Free Exercise thereof”? Christianity forbids forced baptism, so how can integralists expect to cram down their political and religious priorities on non-believers? The answer to this question requires some more political theory, specifically, an understanding of political “neutrality.”
The principle of neutrality in politics holds that the state has no role for affirming a single position on an issue. For a clear example, take the idea of neutrality between two countries in a war: the neutral country stays out of it, and takes no side. In the theo-political sphere, neutrality would hold that the government take no side (“respecting no Establishment of religion”) and let people make those important decisions for themselves (or prohibiting the Free Exercise thereof”).
The problem with neutrality is that it masquerades for the principles of the liberal political order. As Sohrab Ahmari explained to me at a conference:
The conceptual mistake has been to think that all of that is a product of something called culture or something called religion which is innocent of any political dynamics, which is not warped by how people work and how they earn their living, [as if] it’s just its own autonomous thing…there will always be some altar enshrined in the public square—you’ll never have a neutral public square, so as a Catholic political actor, your ultimate aim might be that the True God is worshiped, that the right altar is installed in the public square.
The modern state’s clear-eyed distinctions between the public and private sphere, and a strict separation between what happens in the public and political sphere, versus what occurs in the private, religious and cultural spheres, is what drives the liberal order and the move towards a more and more secularized society. But Gladden Pappin, Ahmari, and others take a more expansive view of the role of state power in informing the views and beliefs of the populace. In other words, that sharp distinction is in reality a lot more blurred than most modern political theorists like to pretend.
Due to its proceduralism, the political theory behind the modern state has no internal mechanism to oppose the creeping integralist tendency towards integration without appealing to some set of norms that characterize political morality. Given this inevitable state of affairs, the masquerade of neutral proceduralism falls away, and the modern liberal state is exposed as being just as norm-laden as the ideal integralist polity, the difference being that integralists are forthrightly declaring their substantive priorities and core assumptions.
Given that some set of norms must predominate, the move towards neutrality is little short of a tyranny pretending to be an anarchy. This stems from the false distinction between facts and values. Replacing religion with “objective science” or some alternative legitimizes one set of ideas (social science and the basic tenets of the liberal faith) while stifling the other in public view (Christianity). So much for neutral.
The final extension of this discussion worth noting here is between the relation of positive and moral law. Pretensions to neutrality in public life bleed into the creation of law. The claim that “you cannot legislate morality” is, according to the integralists, an incoherent babble that misunderstands the nature of law. All law enshrines some morality, a corollary of the refutation of neutrality in matters of establishing a state religion.The only question is which moral content will be given its concrete expression in our law, which political Catholics hope would be a return to the American traditions of natural law. Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism is a detailed, well articulated exposition of that tradition within the larger integralist project.
Just as there is no actual neutral public square or “free marketplace of ideas,” so too is there no “neutral free market” that randomly picks winners and losers without any larger considerations. As Josh Hammer, though not an integralist himself, said at an ISI Conference on American Political Economy: “the state cannot be neutral…this is the conceit of liberalism in its purest, most David French-ist, positivist form. The state should put its thumb on the scale.” While perhaps not being the most efficient method of economic organization, the integralists, still respecting the rights of property ownership, focus on the economic flourishing of the community. Far from being removed from the purview of the state, the economic flourishing of the community must be oriented toward the common good of the whole community, finding its fullest expression in Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus, which inspires Catholic Social Teaching.
It is unlikely that this movement will be successful in its overarching goal of creating a Catholic polity in the United States. As a minority Catholic position in a society whose premises are outside of the American Overton window, integralism’s main hurdle is its widespread appeal. And yet, as Chad Pecknold points out, “woke ideology…has decisively taken over the Western public square, though its true-believing adherents form a miniscule share of the population.” Perhaps as a first step, the move for a cultural Christianity will restore the Faith to a place of prominence, and reverse the aggressive campaign of secularization in America.
To be clear, the claims of the political Catholics in America, though in line with Church teaching, are not official Church teaching, and no Catholic needs to reconcile their politics to the claims of any of the authors or journals mentioned. But its ascendancy amongst many post-liberal Catholics points to how the Church responds to what the world lacks. And specifically, they wager that where the modern political order has become rotten, Christians will reintegrate that order in a way that points to and centers around Christ and His Church.
Tom is a senior in the Lynch School, where he is studying Secondary Education, History, and Philosophy, with a minor in Restorative Justice. He is President of the Boston College Republicans, and President emeritus of the St. Thomas More Society. When not taking too many classes or writing for The Torch or The Free Press, Tom loves to watch sports, listen to metal music, and defend Leo Strauss against (unfair) accusations of Gnosticism.
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