![A statue of Pope Paul V in a position of domination](https://freethoughtblogs.com/daylight/files/2024/08/PaulVStatueRimini2.jpg)
[Previous: We will tell you what you want]
We need to talk about Catholic integralism.
In American politics, it’s usually evangelicals – especially so-called “seven mountains” dominionists – who believe that the Christian church should control and run the state, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens or worse. However, Roman Catholics have their equivalent to this:
The basic position of Catholic Integralism is that there are two areas of human life: the spiritual and the temporal, or worldly. Catholic Integralists argue that the spiritual and temporal should be integrated – with the spiritual being the dominant partner. This means that religious values, specifically Christian ones, should guide government policies.
Like evangelical dominionists, Catholic integralists despise secularism. They want to demolish the wall of separation and replace it with an authoritarian order where the state tells people what to believe. The individual freedom to choose your own beliefs would be heavily discouraged, if not punished.
(The classic problem of theocratic societies is which Christian sect would get to run things and make its particular dogmas into law. Integralists tend to be vague on this point, but it’s not hard to guess who they have in mind.)
This isn’t a new belief – far from it. It’s a medieval idea, literally. It’s the position that Pope Boniface VIII expressed in 1302, in the bull Unam sanctum, which arrogantly proclaimed that the Catholic church should rule the world and all political leaders should bow down to the Pope:
Therefore, both are in the power of the Church, namely, the spiritual sword and the material. But indeed, the latter is to be exercised on behalf of the Church; and truly, the former is to be exercised by the Church. The former is of the priest; the latter is by the hand of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.
The philosophy of integralism came up in this post about Edgardo Mortara, a nineteenth-century Jewish boy who was kidnapped from his family by the Inquisition and forcibly indoctrinated into Catholicism because a Christian servant secretly baptized him. First Things, a conservative religious journal, published an article – in 2018! – defending the church’s behavior in the Mortara case as right and proper. It all but said outright that the Vatican should still do this kind of thing today, if not for the regrettable inconvenience that the Pope no longer has an army to do his bidding.
As I wrote at the time, First Things‘ stance on the Mortara case is a symptom of the sharp right turn that the Catholic church has taken. Pope Francis notwithstanding, the Vatican is stuck firmly in the past. It hasn’t changed its dogmatic stance on any of the issues that people care about – no contraception, no divorce, no abortion, no women’s equality, no gay rights. As a result, it’s hemorrhaging members by the millions, as young people who reject these cruel and irrational teachings leave the church or never join in the first place.
This is a good thing, to be sure. But it means that the remaining Catholics, both the laity and the clergy, tend to be the most conservative ones. They’re the hardcore traditionalists who want to turn the clock back seven hundred years. And in a shrinking church, they have more influence without liberal members around to counterbalance them:
They often stand out in the pews, with the men in ties and the women sometimes with the lace head coverings that all but disappeared from American churches more than 50 years ago. Often, at least a couple families will arrive with four, five or even more children, signaling their adherence to the church’s ban on contraception, which most American Catholics have long casually ignored.
They attend confession regularly and adhere strictly to church teachings. Many yearn for Masses that echo with medieval traditions – more Latin, more incense, more Gregorian chants.
These traditionalists don’t stop at bringing back Gregorian chants or Latin, of course. Many of them want to restore the medieval worldview, not just its trappings: medieval views on women’s equality, on human rights, on law, and how society should be run.
On the national level, conservatives increasingly dominate the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference and the Catholic intellectual world. They include everyone from the philanthropist founder of Domino’s Pizza to six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices.
Then there’s the priesthood.
Young priests driven by liberal politics and progressive theology, so common in the 1960s and 70s, have “all but vanished,” said a 2023 report from The Catholic Project at Catholic University, based on a survey of more than 3,500 priests.
You can already see the influence of the integralist right on American bishops. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is far-right-wing, so much so that Pope Francis fired one of them last year for insubordination. (Conservatives are all in favor of hierarchy until they disagree with the guy in charge.)
It’s also influencing American politics. Kevin Roberts, one of the architects of Project 2025, is Catholic and has close ties to the reactionary Catholic group Opus Dei. Roberts’ dream of America as a libertarian theocracy where Christian morality is enforced on everyone is the end goal of integralism. J.D. Vance has also argued for integralist ideas, including at a 2022 conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
It’s not likely that these wannabe theocrats will realize their medieval dream. Their numbers are dwindling and their goals are simply too unpopular. In all likelihood, the only thing they’ll achieve is to accelerate the decline of the Catholic church. But they can still do damage in the meantime, with politicians and Supreme Court justices in their back pocket.
That’s why sunlight is still the best disinfectant. When Project 2025 was publicized, the voting public was appalled by its noxious ideas, and even Donald Trump felt pressure to publicly back away from it. The same way, the more that ordinary people know about Catholic integralists and other theocrats, the more prepared they’ll be to stand up against religious encroachment on their rights.
Image credit: Herbert Frank via Flickr; released under CC BY 2.0 license