Integralism in Three Sentences Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.
Vermeule also goes astray when he jettisons those aspects of the liberal tradition that have been affirmed by the Church. The liberal tradition is the most important ideological movement in history to have articulated and defended human rights, and its influence can be found in Catholic social teaching’s affirmation of the infinite dignity and worth of the individual person, which includes the need for “human rights” (a term adopted without reservation by the U.S. bishops). It’s not merely that Catholic social teaching has serendipitously developed to overlap with important aspects of the liberal tradition: the Church’s engagement with the liberal tradition has actually deepened its understanding of what is required to uphold human dignity.
- GWC
Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule has lately become an intellectual celebrity among reactionary Catholics in the United States. His reputation is due not only to an unusual talent for polemics and public debate, but also to a willingness, rare in elite academic circles, to passionately identify with the Christian faith. He does not compartmentalize or soft-pedal his Catholicism. Vermeule’s work has especially resonated in recent years because he has compellingly articulated a number of important truths about our current situation. He is critical of unrestrained capitalism and shallow materialism, and appeals instead to a politics of the common good. He’s an active—and frequently provocative—participant in the debates about the fate of “liberalism” that have followed the victories of right-wing populist movements both here and abroad.
Vermeule’s prominence in these debates has earned him his share of critics. It’s not uncommon to hear him described as a sophisticated, sometimes slippery defender of theocracy. If I, too, find myself troubled by Vermeule’s work, it’s not because he brings his Catholic faith to bear on contentious political debates. As someone who converted from an ardent atheism to Roman Catholicism over a decade ago while still a graduate student at Berkeley, I appreciate his attempts to draw from Church tradition while addressing high-level questions of political and legal theory. Even so, some of Vermeule’s work is seriously flawed, and some of his ideas are dangerous. And this is because his thinking is not Catholic enough.
Like many conservative converts to Catholicism, Vermeule seems to have been attracted to the supposed salvific political powers of the Roman Catholic Church. In a 2016 interview in First Things, he recounted abandoning a milquetoast Episcopalian faith after he realized there was “no stable middle ground between Catholicism and atheist materialism. One must always be traveling or slipping unintentionally, in one direction or the other.” If civilization was to be rescued from moral decline and collapse, the Church would lead the way. As he explained in a 2017 essay, the Catholic Church “serves as a kind of ark,” saving society from “the universal deluge of economic-technical decadence, and the eventual self-undermining of the regime.”
It’s not surprising, then, that Vermeule reveres such Catholic critics of liberalism as the philosopher Joseph de Maistre (who rejected the French Revolution in favor of monarchy) and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt (who once proclaimed the Roman Church alone was politically capable of overcoming modern individualism). Vermeule seems to enjoy provoking members of the liberal intelligentsia by coyly advancing almost-forbidden ideas.
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