The rise of the Catholic senator JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president of the United States, has led American Catholic fundamentalism to reach the highest political position in its history. The creation of the Moral Majority in the 1970s and the conservative drift that was forced upon the entire American Catholic community has resulted in the consolidation of a powerful fundamentalist bloc.
A self-proclaimed integralist doctrine has been formed, with very strong intolerance towards other sensibilities and ideas within the Catholic Church. In the face of the process of synodal reform, universal brotherhood and ecological commitment, American conservative nationalism has reacted with a sense of undermining the monopoly and patrimonialization that it has come to have on Christianity.
A doctrine has been formed in the American Catholic world nourished by thinkers such as Patrick J. Deneen o Adrian Vermeuleof anti-liberal, authoritarian, anti-cosmopolitan and nationalist orientationThe high point of visibility of the integralist alternative was the meeting of fifty activists and thinkers in the fall of 2022, at the Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio), where Vance had a prominent role as a speaker.
Integralist response
They proclaimed as their guiding idea that temporal power must once again be subject to the eternal power exercised by people who, like Vance, act in a religious capacity. The integralist current yearns for a theocratic emperor. This is the role that Putin already plays for the far right and Catholic fundamentalism in Europe.
Vance already represents the most visible integralist response to the crisis of civilization, But it does so without questioning anything about hypercapitalism, but rather by intensifying plutocracy. It seems that he is not being held accountable for having promoted the use of the abortion pill as a senator from Ohio.
