Catholic Integralists: American political project to submit to the authority of Catholic theology

Editor's note: This blog is not the only source warning about subordinating America to the authority of the Catholic theology. There is an insidious attempt to reclaim America under the cult of Rome which is the greatest theft of value from the individual most cannot even begin to comprehend. The origin of human and continuous life thereafter begins at fertilization when parental genetic material combines to form a living being, rather than at the moment of birth nine months later. Legal systems create a fiction by defining birth as the point of separate existence and treating the individual as abandoned or lost property through "certifying" birth, which then become instruments for control by entities such as the Federal Reserve and certain institutional authorities. Birthday celebrations are presented as rituals that symbolically erase or snuff out the first nine months of life, while the placenta itself is linked etymologically to a cake (from Greek) representing that earlier origin. Celebrating birthdays is celebrating genocide. Reclaiming legal and personal status requires formally claiming existence from fertilization onward, thereby rejecting the separation between the unborn and the born and restoring rightful ownership of ones DNA and liberty. Americans are warned not to fall into the clutches of the Catholic Church, the institution that has claimed such property and continues to operate against true liberty and religious freedom.

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Catholic Integralism Is a Brutal Dead End. Will Gen Z Repeat It?

A growing subculture is determined to subordinate America to the authority of Catholic theology. But this project has been tried before: it ends in predictable horrors.

By Paul Mueller | October 6, 2026

"Are the kids okay?"

I wonder this often. The answer for a frightening number of them, I think, is "no." Whether it's the allure of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or Black Lives Matter activism or the cynicism of 4chan, 8chan, QAnon and Alt-Right media, an alarming number of young people have been radicalized.

There are many reasons for this. Declining stability of family, reduced religious attendance, weaker communities, and the pervasive influence of social media all contribute. But one lesser-known reason that many intelligent kids on the political Right aren't okay is that they're influenced by a cadre of postliberals known as Catholic Integralists (or Catholic Reactionaries), whose stated goal is to subordinate the American political project to the authority of Catholic theology.

While this may sound like a fringe sect, post-liberal influence has spawned a broad variety of right-wing subcultures and influencers — not to mention that the vice president is a Catholic convert, openly sympathetic to the broader postliberal movement. So if you want to understand seemingly bizarre currents on the Right (like protectionism and economic nationalism as well as antisemitism and even Nazi sympathies), you should pick up James Patterson and Thomas Howes' recent book, Why Postliberalism Failed. [Editor's note: The author uses NPR as a source on antisemitism so readers need to use discernment here. Anytime "antisemitism" is raised most have no clue what they are talking about. Apparently, you can be critical about any other group of people or country except Jews and Israel.]

Post-liberalism is a broad label representing those who believe that liberalism — the philosophy of individual autonomy, equality before the law, and the protection of basic rights — has failed and needs to be replaced with a different regime. There are Protestant and atheist post-liberals, but as conservative Catholics themselves, Patterson and Howes limit their study primarily to the Catholic post-liberals. They use Catholic teaching in their critique as well as political, philosophical, and historical arguments. If you are interested in intellectual history, in the political currents on the right, and in how Catholic Reactionaries have attempted to dominate political regimes in the twentieth century, this book is for you.

The title, of course, is a direct rejoinder to Catholic postliberal Patrick Deneen's influential 2018 critique, Why Liberalism Failed. Deneen offered a respectable, academic indictment of modernity where the hollowing out of local mediating and meaning-making institutions leaves atomized individuals at the mercy of an increasingly powerful state. Deneen argued that the philosophy of liberalism carries the seeds of its own destruction.

But while Deneen diagnosed the symptoms of modern decay reasonably well, his analysis of the cause, and his recommended postliberal solution, leave much to be desired. Patterson and Howes examine, and expose, how every instantiation of liberal Catholic integralism devolved into tyranny.

As its name suggests, Integralism asserts that the temporal authority of the state must be integrated into the spiritual authority of the Church. Catholic theological orthodoxy would govern civil law to enforce an objective common good. Laws and public policy ought to integrate moral, philosophical, and theological virtues. This integration will prevent or reverse what postliberals see as the dis-integration people experience in modern secular or "value-neutral" liberal political orders.

The US Constitution, the rule of law, the protection of individual rights — these are not enough for Catholic Integralists because they fail to promote a substantive social good and therefore are insufficient to promote human flourishing. In fact, in the absence of an organizing or controlling social telos, or uniting goal, these American ideals foster an isolated individualism. This led theorists like Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule to suggest replacing Originalism with Common Good Constitutionalism.

But these ideas have been tried before. In nineteenth-century Europe, Catholic Integralists argued for integrating "throne and altar." Religion, in this case Roman Catholicism, would take its place as the authority over personal, social, and political life. Under such an arrangement, they promised, piety and simple virtue can flourish. This integration, postliberals argue, will reverse all kinds of social ills, from loneliness and depression to low family formation and falling birth rates. They paint a vision of a more “socially conservative” society, directed and reinforced by the legal and bureaucratic apparatus of the morally informed state.

Proponents of Catholic integralism like Deneen and Vermeule focus on the use and unity of power — which is why they are not shy in drawing from Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt and the famously ruthless Niccolò Machiavelli. They criticize free-market, limited government advocates in the US of failing to conserve anything important, because they naively refused to wield political power they viewed as illegitimate. What we need, Deneen has argued, is a willingness to use vicious Machiavellian methods to pursue virtuous Aristotelian ends.

Despite how odd or archaic these ideas may sound to our modern ears, I was surprised by how many Catholic Integralist movements the authors identified. While Catholic Integralists first emerged in post-revolutionary France, these movements show up in countries as different as Austria, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. Most of these movements occurred in the 1920s and 1930s with the development of (and conflict between) communism and fascism. In every instance highlighted by Patterson and Howes in the interwar period, the integralists allied themselves with fascism.

Patterson and Howes are not shy about using the term “fascist.” This, they argue, is the insidious temptation inherent in Catholic Integralism. What else could it be? Not liberalism or classical Republicanism or Democracy or Communism. Perhaps not surprisingly, these Catholic Integralist movements did not end well. Even when Catholic Integralists did succeed in gaining political power (or regime change), which was not frequent, they were quickly sidelined by their secular fascist allies.

The contemporary revival of Catholic Integralism operates on two distinct tiers. At the institutional level, theorists like Adrian Vermeule and Gladden Pappin rehabilitate interwar corporatist models, arguing that the liberal state must be captured from within and redirected toward Catholic moral ends. But while their anti-liberalism is cloaked in high-minded scholastic jurisprudence, their ideas feed into a coarser reactionary culture.

Popular commentators like Tucker Carlson and online extremists like Nick Fuentes boil postliberalism down to raw friend-enemy politics and crude historical revisionism. In this messy milieu, anti-communism serves as a universal solvent for fascist crimes, downplaying Franco's atrocities or romanticizing interwar authoritarianism as a 'lesser evil.' Whether dressed in academic regalia or broadcast over internet livestreams, the fundamental logic remains identical: the ends justify the regime. [Editor's note: There is disagreement about whether or not Winston Churchill was the true villain and not Adolf Hitler. This blog takes the position Churchill was a psychopath and fit nicely into Andrzej Łobaczewski's theory of political ponerology.]

This shocking intellectual move ignores, downplays, or whitewashes grave injustice, tragedy, cruelty, and evil. How can it be justified? Only through a "lesser evil" approach with an even worse enemy or alternative to avoid. While Communism was often the feared alternative, Catholic Reactionaries have also often blamed a "Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy" for societal ills.

Please go to The Daily Economy to continue reading.

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Editor's note: Recent online talk and imagery surrounding the Crusades and Knights Templar, rooted in medieval Catholic history, often romanticizes holy war while serving as coded signals in certain extremist and identitarian circles. People should treat this symbolism with caution, as it frequently blends historical interest connected to the Catholic Church with anti-Muslim or exclusionary politics and can normalize confrontational or violent rhetoric under the guise of tradition or defense. This isn't to suggest Islam should be defended either.  

https://t.co/SXuO7MUiRa

— Knights Templar International (@KnightsTempOrg) October 6, 2026

Brazilian federal police seized seven Israeli-made ARAD-7 rifles last week in Niterói that were headed to the Terceiro Comando Puro drug faction, which controls a Rio favela complex known as Complexo de Israel and has ties to neo-Pentecostal groups that have shut down Catholic churches and Afro-Brazilian religious sites. Catholics in Brazil could face pressure if such groups expand influence by framing local religious conflicts in geopolitical terms that heighten tensions with Jewish communities.

Is Israel arming one of Brazil's largest criminal factions?