Thursday’s post, “The Other Illiberal Catholicism,” became an inadvertent source of confusion—if not scandal—for some well-intentioned folks on Facebook and Twitter. To be honest, I don’t know why. The post was not written, as some have suggested, to dismiss the form, brand, school, etc. of illiberal Catholicism discussed and defended by Patrick Deneen. Rather, the post was intended to highlight the “other wing” of illiberal Catholicism, one which may fittingly be titled “traditionalist illiberal Catholicism” or, if one prefers, “integralist illiberal Catholicism” (or just “integralism”). The lines between the camps can get blurry, however—and that’s a good thing. Too often Catholics of a certain stripe grow complacent with insider speak and preaching to their own choir. They deny that there is anything useful or right to learn from another perspective and so they dismiss it a priori. Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am not, in this instance, referring primarily to traditional Catholics. In today’s mainstream Catholic theological-philosophical environment, contestable positions such as the rejection of natura pura, the dismissal of the commentarial tradition, and the backwatering of Scholastic precision are used as litmus tests of (academic) orthodoxy. Communio, according to some, is the only real bulwark against the theological excesses and errors which broke out in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council and any attempt to “dabble” in the pre-conciliar social magisterium is rendered automatically suspect.
