What is a “Conservative” Catholic?

70 years ago, Frederick Wilhelmsen, the enigmatic philosopher and prolific Catholic writer, took to the pages of Commonweal to describe, in a symposium on the topic, “The Conservative Catholic.” Fritz, as his friends called him, was a strident traditionalist whose heart resided in Spain, where he earned the doctorate in 1958. For decades he advocated a conservatism and Catholicism that can only be described as sui generis: monarchist in allegiance, anti-communist and anti-capitalist in equal measures, provincial in disposition, medieval in aspiration, anti-modern and anti-progress to the hilt. Together with L. Brent Bozell, his fellow lover of Spain’s Carlist monarchy, he edited Triumph magazine, where he once wrote, in a programmatic statement of cause, “Catholicism is about an army marching through history chanting the Te Deum. Catholicism is about swords.”

There was nothing puzzling, though, about Wilhelmsen’s characterization of the conservative Catholic in Commonweal, which, then as now, has exhibited a curious fascination with the species known as conservative. Wilhelmsen made distinctions at the start to avoid the temporal and geographical slipperiness associated with the terms “liberal Catholic” and “conservative Catholic.” He also noted, with a warning presciently relevant for today, that “[t]here can be no disagreement among Catholics about racism, segregation, trial by law as opposed to condemnation by innuendo, and analogous issues. There is only one possible Catholic principle on such things: the principle of justice.”

In seeking universal meanings for “liberal” and “conservative” that transcend ephemeral politics, Wilhelmsen fixated on “zones of thought and action” where “the Catholic is bound neither by natural law nor by the Gospel.” The terms must describe “independently conceived convictions actually operative within the minds and lives of responsible Catholics.”

The conviction for the liberal Catholic, Wilhelmsen observed, is eschatological. Captivated by the drumbeat of Progress, he sees history marching forward, beyond the religiously shaped societies of Christendom into the intoxicating promise of Modernity teeming with scientific and technological discoveries. As the world hurries toward its final consummation, Christians, rather than seek a lasting home here below, must come together in solidarity to bear life’s burdens as they wait. The patron saint of Wilhelmsen’s liberal Catholic is G.W.F. Hegel.

The conviction of the conservative Catholic, by contrast, is incarnational. He “looks to a tradition that has ever found in the Incarnation of the Logos the patent letter of nobility for the erection of a civilization that will incarnate the Faith, make it flesh, down to the very gestures of a man.” In “[t]his conception of Christian humanism,” Christians do not adapt to the world. Rather, “the world itself must be structured so that it might bring forth men worthy of their supernatural destiny.” The patron saint of Wilhelmsen’s conservative Catholic is Augustine of Hippo.

An incarnational society safeguards the family as the primary human community. Property “personally and familially held” ought to be distributed widely to support families’ needs. Imitating God, man by nature longs to create, and for this he must be close to “physical nature,” from which arises his commitment to philosophical realism; economic and industrial advances ought to foster, not alienate, this primordial connection. Lastly, “[t]he conservative Catholic, the traditionalist, sees such a culture—an indigenous culture—as a social good that is absolute: absolute because it makes men whole.”

From this Wilhelmsen concludes that the conservative “sets before himself the twin goods of a political legitimacy and an organic, personalist culture.” The former does not mean election integrity, but the acceptance of American “political traditions as unquestioned legacies.” The latter embraces “an organic unity of life with nature.” These two, he insists, “are traditional values, conservative values.”

In the 70 years since Wilhelmsen articulated this vision of the conservative Catholic, both America and the Church have changed radically. Urbanization, technology, globalization, the Sexual Revolution, and the decline of the family have made American life anything but an organic unity with nature. More recently, progressive forces have undermined the entire American political tradition with the accusation that it is racist to its core. In 1953, the Catholic Church was a fortress against Modernity whose internal doctrines were believed to be fixed. A decade later, the Second Vatican Council transformed her into, sometimes willingly and sometimes begrudgingly, the world’s largest contractor with Modernity, while her own doctrines—and, of late, even her own self-understanding as Church—have been called into question.

These upheavals to American and Catholic life have been so dramatic that the term “conservative Catholic” is today a well-known cultural and political moniker. The term generally describes church-going Americans disgruntled with the nation’s slide from a Christian worldview. They are pro-life, pro-capitalism, opposed to big government, and vote Republican.

But, in the spirit of Wilhelmsen, what are the twin goods of the conservative Catholic today that transcend the political moment?

Wilhelmsen’s first, the acceptance of American political traditions, remains as relevant today as it was then. The laws, institutions, culture, and practices codified by the Founding Fathers and lived by the American people in various ways and times throughout the land shape who we are. As Wilhelmsen advises, “[w]here such are still to be found, [the conservative Catholic] will shore them up. Where they have decayed, he will rebuild them.” To these, we now include: where they have been undermined, he will defend them.

Unlike in 1953, today we must add that the conservative Catholic also accepts the Church’s traditions, teachings, and practices as inherited from centuries past, and responds to them in the same manner: he shores them up, rebuilds them, and defends them from those who wish to remake the Church in mankind’s image and likeness.

Wilhelmsen’s second good has shifted for a people who live largely severed from the demands of nature. Today the conservative Catholic upholds a culture shaped by belief in God as natural and beneficial to human flourishing. Life comes from God, the conservative Catholic insists; all aspects of communal living must reflect that reality in a unified way.

The conviction of the conservative Catholic in a changing modern world remains consistent through the ages. This is not because his vocation is to stop the march of history, but because the things he cherishes—religion, family, law, tradition, custom, community—are permanent. He also recognizes that they are gifts from God. The conservative Catholic will ever labor to defend and promote the permanent things because they are means to the Ultimate End.

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