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.