# Integralism The Catholic political theology that holds civil authority should be ordered to — and ultimately subordinate to — the spiritual authority of the Church, because temporal and spiritual power both serve the same final end: human beatitude in God. In practice, integralism calls for a confessional Catholic state, the legal recognition of Catholicism as the true religion, and the use of civil power to promote the common good as understood through Catholic natural law and magisterial teaching. Dormant for most of the twentieth century after Vatican II's *Dignitatis Humanae* (1965) appeared to accept religious liberty as a civil right, integralism has been revived since roughly 2015 by a network of American and European Catholic intellectuals — most consequentially [[Adrian Vermeule]] at Harvard Law, whose "common good constitutionalism" translates integralist principles into American legal doctrine. ## Core Tenets - Every political community is ordered to some final good; there is no neutral state - Human beings have both a temporal end (earthly flourishing) and a supernatural end (eternal beatitude); both ends must be served by the political order - Civil (temporal) authority and ecclesiastical (spiritual) authority are distinct but not equal — the temporal is subordinate to the spiritual because the temporal good is subordinate to the supernatural good - The civil magistrate has a duty to recognize and support the true religion (Catholicism) and to suppress public expressions of error when prudent - Natural law, as authoritatively taught by the Church, is the proper foundation of civil law — not individual autonomy, not popular sovereignty, not the consent of the governed - Liberalism — understood as the political philosophy that treats the state as neutral between conceptions of the good — is incompatible with Christian social teaching and must be rejected, not reformed ## The Two Swords Doctrine Integralism is built on the medieval "two swords" doctrine, drawn most clearly from Pope Gelasius I (494), Aquinas's *De Regno*, and the Bull *Unam Sanctam* (Boniface VIII, 1302). The temporal sword (civil power) and the spiritual sword (Church authority) are both wielded by Christ; the temporal is held by the prince but operates under the "indirect" supervision of the Church on matters touching the common good of souls. Pope Leo XIII's encyclical *Immortale Dei* (1885) is the modern touchstone. This is not the theocratic caricature integralists are often accused of. The Church does not govern directly. But the state is not free to legislate contrary to the Church's understanding of the moral law, and in a properly ordered polity, the state actively assists the Church in its mission. ## Key Thinkers ### [[Adrian Vermeule]] Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Converted to Catholicism in 2016. The single most consequential integralist intellectual in the American public sphere — and the reason integralism has moved from seminary-basement debate to Supreme Court-adjacent legal theory. Author of *[[Common Good Constitutionalism]]* (Polity, 2022). ### [[Thomas Pink]] Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. The dominant academic integralist theorist, best known for his detailed theological argument that *Dignitatis Humanae* is compatible with traditional integralist doctrine — that the Council changed the prudential prescription but not the underlying principle. If Vermeule is the public-facing American integralist, Pink is the movement's most rigorous systematician. ### [[Edmund Waldstein]], O.Cist. Cistercian monk of Stift Heiligenkreuz (Austria). Co-founder of *The Josias*, the online integralist journal that functions as the movement's intellectual home base. Provides the explicitly Thomistic and traditionalist theological grounding. ### [[Chad Pecknold]] Associate Professor of Theology at the [[Catholic University of America]]. The most public-facing American integralist theologian. Frequent contributor to *[[First Things]]*, *Compact*, and *American Affairs*. Key ally of Vermeule in American debates. ### [[Gladden Pappin]] Political theorist, co-founder of *American Affairs*. Appointed Deputy Undersecretary of State under [[Trump II]]. The integralist movement's representative inside the executive branch and its strongest link to Hungarian NatCon circles (he spent years at Hungary's Mathias Corvinus Collegium). ### [[Patrick Deneen]] Not strictly an integralist but fellow-traveler — his *[[Why Liberalism Failed]]* (2018) and *Regime Change* (2023) supply the political diagnosis that integralists accept wholesale. The integralist-postliberal distinction is largely one of theological explicitness: Deneen and [[Sohrab Ahmari]] operate in the same intellectual milieu but frame their proposals in more ecumenical language. See [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]]. ## Common Good Constitutionalism Vermeule's signature contribution — the translation of integralist political theology into a constitutional method. The argument, in compressed form: - American constitutional interpretation is dominated by two approaches — originalism (conservative) and living constitutionalism (progressive) - Both are liberal frameworks: both treat the Constitution as essentially about delimiting individual rights against state power - The older Western legal tradition — the *ius commune* and classical natural law — understood law as "an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by one who has care of the community" (Aquinas) - American constitutional text, history, and structure are fully compatible with this classical reading - Therefore: read the Constitution not to maximize individual liberty but to authorize robust state action aimed at peace, justice, and abundance — the classical triad of the common good The practical upshot: a constitutional theory that authorizes aggressive federal power to promote moral ends (restrict pornography, regulate corporations, protect traditional family structures, suppress "liberal" cultural hegemony) while resisting progressive expansions of individual autonomy rights. Critics — including many originalists who ought to be Vermeule's allies — argue that common good constitutionalism is unfalsifiable natural-law intuition dressed as legal method, and that it cannot be operated by judges who are not themselves committed Catholics. The [[Federalist Society]] split over Vermeule is a quiet but significant fault line inside conservative legal networks. ## Institutional Infrastructure - **[[The Josias]]** — online journal, the movement's intellectual home base (thejosias.com) - **[[Postliberal Order]]** — Substack and collective (Vermeule, Pappin, Pecknold, Ahmari) - **[[New Polity]]** — magazine and institute, more oriented toward communal/parish-level integralism - **[[American Affairs]]** — Pappin-founded journal, the crossover venue between integralism and national conservatism - **[[Compact Magazine]]** — Ahmari/Pappin/Slavoj Žižek project, the movement's broadest public-facing outlet - **Catholic University of America** — faculty home to Pecknold and a cluster of sympathetic theologians - **Harvard Law School** — Vermeule's perch, the beachhead in elite American legal academia - **Mathias Corvinus Collegium (Budapest)** — the Orbán-funded institution where Pappin and other American integralists have incubated, and the model for Hungarian-American NatCon exchange ## The Integralism / Post-Liberalism Distinction These are frequently conflated, including by their practitioners, but the difference matters: | | Integralism | [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] | |--|--------------|------------------------------| | Theological explicitness | High — explicitly Catholic confessional state | Lower — often ecumenical or secular-compatible framing | | Audience | Catholic intellectuals, conservative legal academy | Broader conservative movement, Senate Republicans | | Ambition | Eschatological / civilizational | Political / policy-oriented | | Key text | Vermeule, *Common Good Constitutionalism* | Deneen, *Regime Change* | | Home institution | The Josias, CUA | American Affairs, Notre Dame | | Gradualism | Long-horizon theological project | Counterrevolutionary and near-term | The simplest way to put it: every integralist is a post-liberal, but not every post-liberal is an integralist. Post-liberalism is the broader tent; integralism is the Catholic-maximalist core. ## Political Footprint Integralism has no mass movement — polling support is statistically invisible — but its institutional footprint is disproportionate to its numbers because of where its adherents sit: - **Executive branch**: [[Gladden Pappin]] at State; integralist-aligned appointees scattered through HHS, DOJ, and the White House [[Domestic Policy Council]] - **Judiciary**: Vermeule is a public advocate for integralist-aligned judges; his influence on the Federalist Society pipeline is contested but real - **Legislative**: [[JD Vance]] — a Catholic convert embedded in the integralist/post-liberal milieu since his conversion — is the movement's highest-profile political figure - **Intellectual**: the movement has captured substantial space in *First Things*, *American Affairs*, *Compact*, and *Law & Liberty*, and has a standing presence at NatCon conferences The movement's strategic bet: American liberalism is exhausted and will collapse; when it does, the competing post-liberal visions (progressive-authoritarian, nationalist, integralist) will contest the succession, and the side with the most coherent intellectual and theological scaffolding will win. ## Controversies and Internal Debates - **Is integralism compatible with American constitutionalism?** Critics (Robert George, Ryan Anderson, most originalists) say no — that religious-liberty guarantees and the disestablishment clause make the integralist vision a non-starter. Vermeule's response is that these provisions can be read through the classical tradition rather than through liberal neutrality. - **Is integralism compatible with *Dignitatis Humanae*?** The central theological question. Pink argues yes (the Council changed prudential prescriptions, not principles). More liberal Catholics argue the Council accepted religious liberty as a natural right, which is flatly incompatible with integralism. - **Is it achievable, or just a mood?** Several former sympathizers (including some *First Things* contributors) have argued that integralism is functionally a posture — there is no serious roadmap from the current American order to a confessional Catholic state, and the absence of one makes the project more aesthetic than political. ## Connection to Defense Tech and the Thiel Network Less direct than [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]]'s — integralists are theologians and legal academics, not technologists. But the funding and institutional overlap is real. [[Peter Thiel]] has funded [[JD Vance]] (the integralist-adjacent political figure par excellence) and the network of journals (*American Affairs*, *Compact*) that publish integralist writers. The mutual interest is institutional capture: the integralists supply a theory of legitimate state power that is compatible with the Thiel / [[Curtis Yarvin]] critique of liberal proceduralism, even when the two traditions disagree sharply on what that power should be used for. ## See Also - [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] - [[Christian Nationalism]] - [[National Conservatism]] - [[Dark Enlightenment]] - [[Adrian Vermeule]] - [[Patrick Deneen]] - [[JD Vance]] - [[American Affairs]] - [[The Unholy Alliance]] - [[Crusader Complex]]