Catholic Integralism is a little-known and growing threat in administrative law & in the Judicial branch of the US. I first became aware of this danger when I read a piece in The Atlantic about Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard who advocates for the US and UK to adopt Catholic Integralism in place of conservative Originalism in the courts.
The Catholic Integralist position can be found at The Josias, and states that, “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.” In other words, this ideology holds that the purpose of the state is to enforce a Catholic interpretation of the ten commandments on the people who live there.
The piece in the Atlantic set off real alarm bells, because I grew up Catholic and know the jargon. So let me explain some of the terminology:
Catholics who treat their religion seriously typically believe in and endorse the Catholic Church’s teachings across the board. The Church teaches that divorce is forbidden, abortion is murder, contraception is a sin, that homosexual acts are an offence against God, and believe transgender individuals are “going against reality” and against God’s plan. They’re so convinced of the gender binary that they believe intersex people have an “essential” either feminine or masculine nature. Moreover, they believe in strict separation of “duties” according to sex, meaning that they believe that women should only be wives, mothers, or if you’re lucky, a nun.
They justify all of these beliefs through something they call, “Natural law.” Catholic Natural Law sees observing the “natural order” in nature as a universal good. This idea of what that “natural hierarchy” is typically involves some belief that men and women are complementary and serve different functions in life. Homosexuality would be “against natural law,” because sex’s purpose, according to Natural Law, is procreation. Likewise, the beliefs that subjects should follow their rulers, children should obey their parents, and that people should not steal all are claimed to follow from an understanding of Natural Law. This ideology places itself in conflict with commonly held values of equality (they endorse patriarchal hierarchy as right and natural,) and freedom, (they in believe “freedom” as in “freedom from sin.”)
Proponents of Natural Law believe the Natural Law applies to every human, regardless of whether you’re Catholic or not. And they believe that this understanding of proper hierarchies and rational order is “written in the human heart.” In other words, according to this interpretation, all gay people “know deep down” they’re sinners, because being gay is “intrinsically disordered” (that’s what the Catholic Church means when they say “intrinsically disordered” — something done in defiance of Natural Law,) but that a gay person is “choosing” to be in denial about it. The idea is that no one can find true happiness or a “good life” outside living a life in accordance with Natural Law. The Catholic understanding of Natural Law in particular reasons that all ten commandments can be inferred from, and are natural extensions of Natural Law, and that Natural Law implies male headship through a warped idea of “biological” necessity originating in the order of creation. When Integralists talk about acting in accordance with “human nature,” it is likely they mean Natural Law.
Therefore, when Catholics talk about the “common good” under “Natural law,” what they mean is a return to the patriarchy, and the suppression of queers. Catholic Integralism in particular seeks to abolish the line between state and church, and institute religious law as the foundation of administrative and judicial law in the land.
While such a position would typically be nonviable in the US court system, recent events over the last four years have made Right Wing think tanks take notice of the potential of Catholic Integralism as a vehicle to institute Christian Nationalism. The Claremont Institute’s publishing arm produced a smattering of articles on Vermeule’s piece to drum up attention and interest in the topic. This indicates to me that this originally obscure legal position is now gaining the backing and support of the major Christian nationalist movement. And it comes just in time for Christian nationalists:
During Trump’s term, Mitch McConnell and Trump have appointed 197 Artcle III federal Judges through June 1, 2020. He’s also appointed 51 Judges to the US Court of Appeals. Respectively, that’s 21% and 28% of judgeships across the district courts and courts of appeal. They also appointed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, who may not explicitly call herself an Integralist, but her written opinions echo Integralist thought. She’s not the only one, either. Justice Clarence Thomas maintains that “natural law should be readily consulted in constitutional interpretation.” Thomas, a Catholic, talking about Natural Law in the Court is de facto the Integralist position. While Justice Thomas claims he gets his interpretation of natural law from the Declaration of Independence, his read on it strongly resembles Catholic Natural Law.
Catholic Integralists and Christian nationalists both see the change in composition of the courts as a golden opportunity to move the country towards a more Integralist approach to law. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was this year that more than half of the states in the US began seeking to ban transgender athletes from competing. What better way to sneak in arguments from Natural law, than through the suppression of transgender people? Sex-essentialist arguments for the “(common) good” of women’s sports will pave the way.
These alternatives still have scattered adherents, but originalism has prevailed, mainly because it has met the political and rhetorical needs of legal conservatives struggling against an overwhelmingly left-liberal legal culture. … But circumstances have now changed. The hostile environment that made originalism a useful rhetorical and political expedient is now gone.”
– Adrian Vermeule
Now, Vermeule has a soapbox in an Oxford University project that claims to be “exploring the common good from an array of perspectives.” However, the board of this project consists of six people, five of whom parrot Integralist Catholic beliefs on their twitters and other social media. The members of the board are:
- Adrian Vermeule, who we know is a Catholic Integralist from his books, tweets, and blog.
- Erika Bachiochi, a Catholic trans-exclusionary radical “feminist” who also parrots common Integralist talking points on her twitter. And calling her any kind of “feminist” at all is dubious, given that her position appears to be something like, “feminism means getting women back in the kitchen.”
- J. Budziszewski, who has an email address at undergroundthomist.org. (Thomist ideology is an especially regressive form of Catholicism.)
- Conor Casey, who conveniently has a twitter under his real name using the same pic from his academic profile on the linked commongood profile, has an image of the pope has his background image, and shills for Catholic policies on his profile.
- Thomas Pink, a scholar on topics relating to Catholic Natural law.
- and finally, Jack Goldsmith, who does not appear to be writing anything that especially stands out as Integralist.
Sounds like they’ll be doing a great job of “exploring the common good from an array of perspectives.”
Because of people like Vermeule and the appointment of so many anti-LGBT judges during Trump’s term, I’m expecting LGBT rights to be chipped away in the coming years. This isn’t to say that we’re going to see dramatic reversals, but I do expect some states to carve out broad exceptions to anti-discrimination laws on the basis of “religious liberty” and even see Integralist thought introduced more in the courts. For people living in countries where Integralism is being promoted as a valid alternative to secular law, it is important that they recognize the threat Catholic Integralism poses to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
