This panel considers the unique theopolitical nature of the rise of “counter-cultural” Catholicism. The idea of integralism–the claim that public laws and policies should be based on Catholic teaching–has seen a resurgence in the past decade. These papers take up questions of integrationalism in US politics and the place of Catholicism in US public universities. This makes this panel a timely exploration of the idea of “counter-Catholicism,” as defined by a turn to the Right in American Catholic politics.
In the last decade, there has been renewed interest within political theology in a theory called integralism. On an integralist account, the coercive power of the state should be put at the service of the spiritual power of the church to promote a right relationship with God. What I will argue is that to the degree that integralists also identify themselves as classical theists, a contradiction emerges in how they wish to facilitate union with God. In particular, when we understand what classical theism takes to be the divine nature, we will see that the coercive methods proposed by integralism prevent humans from standing in right relation with the deity. My argument will proceed first by giving a general account of integralism, then by giving a classical theist account of the divine nature, and finally by looking at the implications of classical theism for integralism.
As “counter-cultural” Catholicism grows in the United States, public universities are increasingly positioned as “battlegrounds for the minds and souls of young people,” and Catholic campus ministries increasingly reflect trends of theological orthodoxy and “conservative” political alignment. In this paper, I analyze data from Catholic teacher candidates in public universities in the US Midwest (n≈50) to examine: How do Catholic teacher candidates in US Midwest public universities describe their teacher education programs and their Catholic identities in relation to movements of “counter-cultural” Catholicism? I discuss how some participants oppose their public teacher education programs, describing them as “one-sided,” “biased,” and “liberal.” Others, however, align with the justice-oriented curricula in their teacher education programs and disaffiliate or “diminish the label of being Catholic” because of the perception of Catholicism as “conservative.” Through this analysis, I reflect on the implications of rising “counter-cultural” Catholicism on public university campuses for the Catholic Church.
The far-right movement known as Catholic integralism has received repeated media attention in the United States, owing in part to its connection to Vice President J.D. Vance. This paper diagnoses integralism as a politics of despair, seeking to assert for lack of persuasive power on the part of conservative Catholics, with policy planks that would need to be imposed rather than proposed. Key among them is pro-natalism which connects the largely male integralist intelligentsia to more women-oriented conservative movements such as the pro-life movement.
The testing ground for integralist politics has been (Protestant) Viktor Orban's Hungary, and despite its sponsorship of many integralist thinkers its lack of success on many stated goals demonstrates the limits of any such movement. It is difficult for reactionary authoritarian nostalgia to inspire in a world with many options. The paper will conclude by looking to the Augustinian tradition - which precisely emphasizes the limitation and eschatological nature of politics - as a potential corrective to integralism's Thomistic literalism.
| Katherine Dugan, Springfield College | kdugan… | View |