Category: Catholic Social Thought

In glancing back over yesterday’s post, “Neoconservatism and Conceptual Clarity Redux,” along with some unconnected conversations on social media, it occurred to me how little so many “critics of libertarianism” seem to understand about the object of their ire. In the space of approximately five minutes, I saw Libertarian National Committee vice chair Arvin Vohra, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Presidential hopeful Rand Paul referred to as “libertarians.” I suppose that makes John McCain and Mitt Romney libertarians, too. Heck, why not just go the whole nine yards and say that every politician, thinker, or individual who does not support big centralized government, an unwieldy administrative state, and poorly designed social-welfare programs libertarians as well. That way yours truly can finally be back in the libertarian fold after so many cold and lonely years away.

On his blog yesterday, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf called attention to a Reporters Without Borders initiative to compel religious leaders to acknowledge that blasphemy is a right—one which is higher than (the liberal conception of) religious liberty. Today, in the course of his visit to Asia, Pope Francis had some other thoughts on the matter. Here are some excerpts taken from the translation up at Rorate Caeli.

Several days ago I mentioned that Pater Edmund Waldstein’s 2014 talk, “The Politics of Nostalgia,” has been on my mind. Among the many excellent points Waldstein makes in the lecture, the most interesting to me is his refusal to submit to what one might call “nostalgia shaming” or the belief that a position is unreasonable, specious, or invalid because it is nostalgic. Waldstein, whose commitment to Catholic monarchism and integralism is well known, differs markedly from his fellow intellectual travelers insofar as he is neither a hopeless romantic nor a defeatist. Having a deep and intellectually serious attachment to the past, or principles which were still upheld int he past, is not the same as being indifferent to present realities. One of the most often heard — and ultimately unpersuasive — critiques of monarchism, integralism, and the restoration of Christendom is that they belong to the past. That they were all part of the past is a point no one disputes; that they must remain there forever is a bridge too far. People assume that, of course. But then again, people assume a lot of things are permanent which are not. That poor Egyptian, dialoguing millennia ago with his ba, likely didn’t see all that much on the human horizon given what his people had already accomplished.

A few days have lapsed since I posted “Pope Francis and Climate Change.” Between a couple of comments to that post, along with two other discussions which broke out concerning it on Facebook and GChat respectively, it seems important to make a few additional comments which touch not just on the climate-change issue, but where faithful Catholics should stand vis-à-vis ideologically charged issues.