Continuing Failure

Catholic social thinking has long wrestled with the concept of the state. | From the print issue.https://t.co/6k738jYQdf

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) May 14, 2025

MacIntyre on Human Dignity

Beginning at 1:30PM ET: philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's #humaNDignity21 keynote, "Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?" Watch live: https://t.co/Bz29wC5BRc

— de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture (@ND_EthicsCenter) November 12, 2021

Establishment Theologoumenon on the State's Role Regarding Education

DECLARATION BY THE ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS OF ENGLAND AND WALES ON THE SUBJECT OF EDUCATION (1929)
1. It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach.
2. The State is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient to enable them to discharge the duties

— Fr Thomas Crean OP (@crean_fr) October 2, 2021

New Polity Critique of Carl Schmitt

People have asked us why we don't like Carl Schmitt. Here's our response.https://t.co/242xkNKmNf

— New Polity (@PostliberalTho1) July 6, 2021

Sertillanges Was Wrong About the Nation(-State)

He wasn't critical enough in his assumptions or first principles.

Note that Sertillanges, as orthodox a Thomist as there ever was, took for granted that there is such a thing as a nation, a family of families, bounded within borders, a reasonable object of natural political attachment.

Modern cosmopolitan theory didn’t enter his mind.

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) February 2, 2021

The Tragedy of the Republic

I was honored to provide a brief preface to this brilliant essay by the great Pierre Manent. The essay is timely: Manent explores the crisis of representation in the modern republic, an inevitable consequence of modern theories that seek the elimination of virtue from politics. https://t.co/9hzs1KUJHW

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) November 10, 2020

12 Principles of Latin International Thought

12 Principles of Catholic International Thought - OnePeterFive - https://t.co/AMQ2gX7zo9 via @onepeterfive pic.twitter.com/lyJI53g6yq

— OnePeterFive (@OnePeterFive) November 5, 2020

Andrew Latham on the 10 principles.

#4 regarding scale is a questionable claim regarding Aquinas, though probably true of neoscholastics who didn't know any better. #3 re: the end of a state is questionable as well.

D.C. Schindler on Liberalism

D.C. Schindler does the Lord's work, locating the theological meaning of liberalism in the reduction of God to absolute potency.

This too-long-for-online essay is essential reading for anyone who would build a postliberal Christian society.https://t.co/D7nPJIOXF9

— New Polity (@PostliberalTho1) August 21, 2020

New Polity What is needed is not a philosophical analysis but a historical analysis.

Voluntarism? Nominalism?

OUP: Political Theology of International Order by William Bain

Defenses and critiques of modern politics will ultimately come back to the choice between a metaphysics of inherent order or divine fiat, so which should we choose? https://t.co/lgv4xL7DN0

— Richard Reinsch (@Reinsch84) August 28, 2020

Theological Roots of the Secular World Order by Nathaniel Peters

Did people with power and influence really believe in legal voluntarism? Or were they just acting in accordance with their appetites? Is this sort of genealogy, putting the blame on late medieval theology/philosophy for "modernity" really still useful, in comparison with a proper study of history?

Sovereignty RIP by Don Herzog

Yale UP

My review/symposium contribution for Don Herzog's new book, "Sovereignty RIP." https://t.co/74uPMaD43W

— Jack Goldsmith (@jacklgoldsmith) July 6, 2020

EJIL: Talk

Accomodation to the State

The Christian Vitalist International: A translation of “Rescuing the Political” by Catholic philosopher-priest Romano Guardini.

https://t.co/xrwm1l5oj8

— Christian Vitalists 🔥🕊️ (@XtianVitalism) June 12, 2020

But what is the meaning of the state? You say that it should support and protect the wellbeing of individuals and the whole, that it should regulate and develop economic life, support cultural work. You say it’s everything that corresponds to the laws that the state gives, which it grasps by stimulation and creation through people and agencies. And everything is right. The political designates the economic and cultural significance of the state. But that’s still not the political in the special sense of the word.

To me the political meaning of the state actually appears to be sublimity [Hoheit]. It is the incorporation of majesty for its own sake. But sublimity has at its essence God alone. Thus, the political meaning of the state seems to me such that, since it is itself given by God, it demonstrates and validates His majesty among the natural matters and realities of life. Not in moral and religious matters. For those responsibility lies not with the state, but the church. The state has to represent the majesty of God in the matters of natural life.

It does this most of all by way of its presence. It is legitimate. It does not simply exist, but it exists “with right,” by the grace of God, and this rightful existence demands recognition from other states and from individuals. And it does this by way of right in the life of its citizens: it makes right. It does not have a political character insofar as it pursues goals, provides benefits, facilitates commerce, or seeks to bring welfare, but insofar as it carries its meaning within itself. That means that just “being right” is beyond every goal. Said more precisely: the state is the right that God affirms, and that is the essential order itself. It is right, then, as a natural revelation of divine sublimity. It is on this right that the state stakes in its entire legitimate existence, the intellectual brunt of its sublimity, i.e. the state is “authority.” At the end every law proceeds “in the name of God.” The state, however, even stakes its power on right. It coerces obedience to right.

It is a naive judgment of the state, common to Roman Catholic intellectuals, considering it to be a valid or legitimate form of political organization as what preceded it in history. On this they are in error.

What Future for the State?

Source: https://t.co/NRlbnSW9dw

— Aris Roussinos (@arisroussinos) June 11, 2020

Charles Taylor's Liberalism, Again

Happening now: Sociologist José Casanova, a Berkley Center senior fellow, and philosopher Charles Taylor discuss Taylor’s seminal work #ASecularAge (2007) and the divergent religious dynamics that can coexist within our global secular age.

Watch live: https://t.co/KxCnU77kNI

— Berkley Center (@GUberkleycenter) June 11, 2020

Against Bodin's Notion of Sovereignty

Álvaro d'Ors on the way in which the kingship of Christ and the liberty of the Church exclude absolute state sovereignty. pic.twitter.com/DaNqHAAL36

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 31, 2020

It's an argument against a modern notion of sovereignty, but by itself it is not a sufficient check against tyranny.

Thomas Pink on Latin Integralism

Public Discourse: Philosophy, Politics, Religion and the Public Square by Thomas Pink

Integralism, Thomas Pink writes, "involves a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of most current legal and political philosophy." https://t.co/jGwe2SIcnh

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 10, 2020

Brilliant new article by @thomaspink1, explaining why integralism matters even nand especially in our curret, secular age: https://t.co/hkf1ncZfDl

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 10, 2020

Integralism further involves a conception of the church as an authority over religion that replaces the state. The church is a sovereign potestas, with the authority to make laws and enforce these through punishments, just as is the state. Its authority is based not on natural law as is the state’s, but on the revealed law of Christ. Any interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae that denies this conception of the church as potestas over religion runs directly against the interpretation of that declaration given officially at Vatican II by the commission that drafted it. (For more on this, see my “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII”.)

Latin integralism depends upon and promotes Latin maximalist conceptions of ecclesial authority, especially the authority of the bishop of Rome.

It is tempting to suppose that there are two quite different kinds of state: an integralist state that prioritizes the good of the community, and a liberal state that fosters the autonomy of the individual. But perhaps the better view is that there simply exist states that serve the common good in a way that involves enforcing an ethical consensus.  

The questions that should be asked are: what is the common good, what defines a political community, and is any state, integralist or otherwise, able to bring about the common good. Maybe integralists will have a new response to MacIntyre and Cavanaugh--until they do, they theorizing merely serves statism, and at best they serve as controlled opposition, inconsequential and no threat to the status quo.

Démocratie : vers quelle finalité commune ?

More:
Pierre Manent : Pourquoi recourir à la loi naturelle ?

Pierre Manent- La théologie politique et ses légendes : Carl Schmitt et Erik Peterson

Misunderstanding Secular Europe

That rare moment when De Koninck agrees with the reds. pic.twitter.com/6KUAgZKggo

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 26, 2020

The important consideration being that "plures hominum sequuntur passiones"; not that the plures will actually use this right to contradiction, but in that they will, through negligence and indifference for the common good, allow those who do contradict, to seize power. Ex.g.: several European countries today.

An Aristotelian would agree that "absolute democracy" is a bad regime; after all it was Aristotle, following Plato, who distinguished between good and bad regimes. But what of politeia, the "republic"? I cannot see that De Koninck would deny that the possibility of a good form of government by many exists. Aristotle would probably be inclined to there is no "absolute" politeia, whether with respect to the number (rule by all, regardless of qualification) or with respect to what they can legislate.

Thomistic Institute: Dr Andrew Willard Jones, "Before Church and State"

A Critique of Integralism

Church Life: The Integralist Mirroring of Liberal Ideals by Timothy Troutner

I. A quarter century after Francis Fukuyama proclaimed liberalism “the end of history,” it is nearly impossible to avoid stumbling across rumors of its demise. With increasing populist dissent...

Exemplifying What is Wrong with Much of Contemporary Latin Theology

and the understanding of the Church's teaching authority, the Magisterium, especially papal authority.

Making sense of U.S. immigration law, enforcement, and the current crisis by David R. Upham
The teachings of the Magisterium mostly vindicate Sessions’s policies in interpreting and enforcing American law. At the same time, these teachings strongly suggest grave deficiencies in that law.