In a recent viral essay, “Insurrection Barbie” alleges that a network of “Catholic Integralists” and “Russian ideologues” are engaged in “a demolition” of the American Right. The author argues that the “theological DNA” of the Republican party – which she defines exclusively as 19th-century Evangelical Protestantism – is being “stolen” by a Catholic fringe.
While the author purports to exempt “ordinary” Catholics (those who “coach Little League” and “vote pro-life”) from her “investigation,” her charity masks a profound, underlying condescension: Catholics are welcome in the American conservative movement only as long as they remain quiet junior partners to a specific, 19th-century Dispensationalist political theology.
The moment we suggest that public policy should be rooted in the broader, 2000-year-old Natural Law tradition rather than the “Left Behind” Millenarianism of John Nelson Darby, we are accused of “infiltrating” our own movement.
I. THE WAY OF BALANCE VS. THE LOUDMOUTHED LUNATICS
As the leader of a movement advocating for “The Way of Balance” in Oregon, I am focused on the neglected “Mild Middle” of Oregonians—the 83.56% of Oregonians who are awakening to the realization that we just might have over-delegated the responsibilities of self-government to the “Loudmouthed Lunatics” of the 16.44% of our fellow Oregonians who expressed religious devotion to the Reactionary (Woke-)Right and the Lunatic (Woke-)Left.1
The concern of all true Oregonians is that both extremes have abandoned what the Scotsman Thomas Reid calls “Common Sense” – and which we in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition call the Sensus Fidelium – in favor of fundamentalist ideological purity tests.2
The author frames the rise of Catholic intellectualism as a “hostile takeover.” In reality, we are attempting a Glorious Restoration by seeking to re-sacralize the three strands of Oregon’s political DNA: Moderation-in-Manner, Consensus-in-Decision, and Live-and-Let-Live-in-Practice.
II. THE DOCTRINE OF DELEGATION (NOT DIVINITY)
The author’s alarming about “Integralism”3 – the idea that Catholic teachings on faith and morals should guide the formation of public policy – is the ultimate act of a “pyromaniac in a field of strawmen.” While she rightly notes a handful of ivory tower Ivy League eggheads (Vermeule, Ahmari, etc.) flirt with ideological post-liberalism, she profoundly misreads the Catholic grassroots—amongst whom I live as the least of them all.
Authentic Catholic Traditionalists are the last people who would ever want Ecclesial rule. Why? Because we actually know our history. We understand that more than zero of the ~267 Popes4 “murdered their way” onto the Throne of Peter.
So we follow the example of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (John 18:10-11; Luke 22:50-51). When Peter cut off the servant’s ear, Christ miraculously restored it and rebuked the sword.
To us, this is the ultimate cautionary message regarding what we call Apostolic Succession.5 Christ delegated His authority to Peter, but He did not delegate His divinity. Therefore, the Faithful have a non-delegable responsibility to hold the “instruments” of leadership accountable, especially those which hold themselves before us in personam Christi.6
III. THE “CIVIL ECONOMY” OF SALVATION
Contrary to the author’s claim that Traditionalists view the state as an “adversary,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that engagement in “God’s Civil Economy of Salvation” is a moral obligation:
● CCC n. 1915: “As far as possible citizens should take an active part in public life.”
● CCC n. 2240: “Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country.”
It was not adherents of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition who decided that “should” was going to be the ne plus ultra (and ultimate tiebreaker) of public policy. All that we are doing is engaging with the adherents of the religion of Modernism on the ground of their own choosing: “If all public policy is going to be justified by ‘should’7 then we’d also like a say in deciding how ‘should’ is defined.”
In our case, the Church helps us define the “should” based on ancient moral principles, refined over 2,000 years of non-stop trial and error. We are taught – and believe with “appropriate deference” to religious authority – that Civil Authority has the final say in matters of “prudent governance”
Under Church law, all Ecclesial authorities are subject to civil authority.8 The Church unambiguously teaches that “Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God…‘Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution’.”9
In fact, Catholic Traditionists are the exact opposite of a “Pro-Sharia Caucus.” Our Dogma and Doctrine encourage us to focus our political energy on the competent and just delivery of government services in accordance with the deepest principles of Western Civilization. “It is not the role of the Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life. This task is part of the vocation of the lay faithful, acting on their own initiative with their fellow citizens.”10
IV. THE AESTHETIC THEFT: FUENTES AND THE GRIFTERS
The author uses Nick Fuentes as a “dog-whistle” to delegitimize the Latin Mass. This is intellectually lazy. It is like using Jeffrey Dahmer to delegitimize the carnivore diet.
But at least Mr. Fuentes is (presumably) an American. The invocation of the Russian nutcase Aleksandr Dugin as a stick to beat her polemical drum is particularly tone-deaf and insane. I grew up alongside the Starovery—the “Old Believers” who opposed Soviet Communism and settled in Oregon’s mid-Willamette Valley. The Starovery are Orthodox, and therefore are natural allies of all Traditionalist Catholics.
I have never heard a single one of my Starovery friends utter anything anyone could even remotely characterize as anti-semitic, and yet it appears that the author has never bothered to ask them what they believe.
The author is correct that online provocateurs are “cosplaying” in Traditionalist aesthetics – Apostles’ Creed scrolling, Christ the King imagery – to poach disillusioned youth.11 But she fails to ask a simple question: Why the Evangelical establishment lost them.
The “Ralph Reed/700 Club” model – not to mention the “Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker” model of Charlatan Televangelism – hollowed Political Protestantism out all on its own.12 Nature abhors a vacuum. When you abandon the deep, historical “Way of Balance” for perpetual outrage and apocalyptic fundraising, you leave your youth vulnerable to any grifter who offers them a sense of sacred purpose.
V. CONCLUSION: THE ROSETTA STONE OF THE PRESENT
Traditionalist Catholics have never been unfaithful to the Conservative movement, but there has been significant infidelity within the relationship. The attempt to gatekeep “Conservatism” as a purely Protestant project – rejecting the Sensus Fidelium13 of millions of Americans – is a recipe for the very demolition the author fears.
We are not “hollowing out” the movement. We are providing the “Rosetta Stone” needed to reconcile past, present, and future in the truest sense of Edmund Burke’s Eternal Society:
Society is indeed a contract…a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.14
We are not the “voters” you are waiting for; we are the neighbors who have been here for 2,000 years, waiting for you to realize that the “Way of Balance” is the only thing that can save the Republic from the “Loudmouthed Lunatics” currently driving the bus.
Traditionalist Catholics don’t say Deus vult!15 as some sort of wacky callback to the First Crusade. We say it for a reason that my adult soldier son now repeats back to me: “Dad, when man does not have a God, he shall invariably make a God of himself.”
I taught Thomas that phrase because it teaches all of us the ultimate source of human dysfunction.
1 Everyone has a brother-in-law or sister-in-law who is a crazy loudmouth, and we just deal with it (while desperately trying to save the family gathering). But Loudmouthed Lunatics are only easy to ignore up until they allow themselves to be herded together. At that point, the True Believers of the Church of the Gullible become an existential threat to all of us. For reasons I struggle to understand, they seem to want to be manipulated by the “Schmoozers and Users” who – for obvious reasons – are reluctant to admit their pathological need to a) gorge themselves (and their cronies) at the public trough while b) keeping the party going until the State is bankrupted.
The Loudmouthed Lunatics don’t just fail to understand the responsibilities of “self-government.” They categorically reject the only reason that normal Americans even tolerate it: “To support the maximization of Individual Autonomy in a manner not inconsistent with the Common Good.” And I, for one, “have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.” Mario Puzo, The Godfather (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969), 412.
2 It’s never a sign of reliability when an obviously fundamentalist like Ms. Barbie denounces “fundamentalism” (placing on the reader the onus of decrypting which utterly inscrutable and idiosyncratic definition is being used in which particular section). So let me offer a working definition of how I define fundamentalism: “A mode of Manicheanism in which the holder claims ‘privileged insight’ into what is ‘actually true’ while simultaneously asserting that ‘actual truth’ is only accessible to a privileged few whom the holder qualifies as ‘believing correctly’.” And if that definition seems insanely circular…well, think back to every “fundamentalist” you’ve ever encountered—regardless of whether they were a Governmentalist, “Christian,” “Muslim,” Secular Humanist, or whatever.
3 In the author’s defense, the Wikipedia “definition” (to which I have provided a cite) is insanely polemical and one-sided (as entries on Wikipedia sometimes are). The problem stems from how each individual proponent (and critic) of Catholic Social Teaching actually means when they say that public policy should be “guided” by Catholic Social Teaching. Anyone who reads the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church cover to cover will quickly realize that Catholicism would be super easy to defend against lazy criticism if Catholics actually bothered to read our own Catechism.
4 Depending on whether you include the countless claimants and various “Antipopes.”
5 Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 75-79, hereinafter CCC.
6 CCC, nos. 1548-1551.
7 And, ultimately, “law” is just a series of statements about public morality.
8 Excepting those accredited diplomats serving under the authority of the Vatican Secretary of State.
9 CCC, n. 2238, citing 1 Peter 2:13,16.
10 CCC, n. 2442.
11 I have had a hard time finding anything from Ms. Maddow or Ms. Owens about the risks of trusting false prophets and charlatans, so it’s no wonder that the adherents of the Church of the Gullible are so easily fooled.
Fortunately, the Faithful have been warned once or twice about the risk of “false prophets” and charlatanism. Cf. Matthew 7:15-20; Acts of the Apostles 8:18-24
12 I actually laughed out loud at the author’s claim that Catholics introduced antisemitism “into evangelical spaces where it has no native roots.” Has the author never heard of the (ultra-Protestant) Ku Klux Klan? Or that Catholics and Jews formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition from 1932?
13 Within the Catholic faith tradition, there are two avenues towards knowing something infallibly. The first, which everyone knows, is where the Holy Father declares as settled a matter of Catholic Dogma “from the Chair [of Saint Peter]” (ex cathedra). Everyone knows that one.
But what even very few Catholics know is the other mechanism by which infallible truths are received by the member of the Universal Church: The Sensus Fidelium a supernatural (and infallible) consensus on the part of the Faithful concerning a matter of faith and morals. CCC, n. 92.
14 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790; repr., New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 85.
15 “God wills it.”
About the Author
