The War Is On For Who Can Lay Claim To Be The "New Right"
Catholic Integralism Has New Boosters But Can Self-Described Intellectuals Actually Lead Men To Do Anything Other Than Attend Conferences & Take Selfies?
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There was a meeting of of self-described "Catholic Integralists" in South Florida on Saturday last. This group includes Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen. Now comes Crisis Magazine's Erin McLaughlin with a review of the event titled Picking Up the Pieces: How the New Right Is Transforming Conservative Politics. McLaughlin's review is overwhelmingly positive and that's good as far as it goes: that there are now Catholics with academic pedigrees pushing back against the woke zeitgeist and the supposed end of Liberalism (per Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed"-see my interview with Deneen in February 2018, here). What McLaughlin fails to observe is what Franciscan University's Michael Hanby observes and in a very detailed essay, debunks this "new integralism" as anything other than a theoretical echo chamber that has no reality based, real-world component. Hanby wrote in part:
After two years of trolling the twitterverse in the name of integralism, Sohrab Ahmari announced on Twitter that he and his postliberal friends were men of action and unilaterally declared an end to the debate over integralism on grounds that it all had become tedious and seemed so very 2017.[44] Now this could simply reflect the strategic calculation that integralism, while a great way to attract the attention of the market, is not really a winning political brand in 2024. It is impossible to say. Nevertheless, Ahmari’s unspoken assumption that integralism raises no philosophical and theological questions of lasting importance or difficulty indicates that his integralism was always a political stance and that he never took more than a journalistic interest in the substantive theological and ecclesiological questions at issue. This would suggest either that postliberal practice has little to do with integralist theory or that contemporary American integralism is really only the new Catholic “brand” of conservative power politics. In either event, the Church has essentially disappeared as a factor in the thought of American Catholic postliberals.
PLEASE take the time to Read Hanby's very lengthy essay and for extra credit you can listen to my take on this most important issue of our epoch. Hanby concludes...
However if, as seems likely, it should turn out that our de-Christianized civilization has already destroyed itself and is simply waiting for the deed to become apparent, that it cannot be “restored” but must be rebuilt from the ruins by our children’s children, then “solving” this disaster will mean undergoing the inevitable consequences of this fateful renunciation in freedom and in faith, and with a patient hope that only a deep trust in the living God can justify. It will mean keeping alive the memory of what it has meant to be human and coming to terms with the real depths of what we no longer believe, that its ubiquitous presence might be rediscovered in the longing engendered by its apparent absence. There is no hope for such a solution in a “clever” world that has renounced understanding or in a Church pervaded with pious atheisms that do not know themselves and are intent on misreading the signs of the times. There is no hope for it, that is, unless we are able to “comprehend on our own time on thought” in the light of a truth, a Logos, that transcends all times. There will be no “restoration,” “rebuilding”—indeed, no salvation—without a renewal of the Catholic mind. “The truth will set you free” is not a platitude but an ontological and theological principle. The Catholic and human future—and it will be both, or it will be neither—depends finally not on political action but on rediscovering the truth of this principle.
Mic drop. Seriously, this actually matters and the lives of hundreds of millions in this hemisphere alone, I will argue, are actually at stake.
It’s a daily challenge to navigate this earthly existence and be removed from it intellectually and spiritually at the same time.
Ite es Ioseph! Consecration is necessary. We need to have a new spiritual father as part of our everyday lives, along with our blessed mother Mary. Holy Families flourish and are transformational for our local communities