THE Case Against Integralism

Zmirak is a PJBuchanan guy.  And he thinks clearly.  BIRM.

Anyhow, in this essay, he makes the case AGAINST Integralism, and does it well.

A taste.  Zmirak is having a dialog with a young, on-fire priest:

... (Priest)  But the separation of Church and State, Enlightenment “Liberalism,” has landed us where we are now. With same sex marriage, transgenderism, abortion on demand … . Wasn’t America founded on a shallow creed of individual rights, ungrounded in any profound metaphysics?

The perversion of the American founding, which really kicked in with court decisions between the 1940s and 1960s, is the culprit here. As Mark David Hall shows in his book, the American founders were something like 90% Calvinists. There were just a few Deists and one Catholic in the mix. When those people talked about “Nature’s God” and Natural Law, they meant the real thing. That is, the Natural Law which goes all the way back to Aquinas, the Stoics, and Aristotle. We can legislate on any issue where we can show a strong Natural Law case that something either helps or hinders human flourishing. Within due limits for prudence, liberty, and sanity, of course. Impure thoughts violate the Natural Law, but we don’t want the government monitoring our thoughts. We just want to ban pornography.

Remember, Father, in every single country where the Catholic church wielded political power, the churches are empty. People came to see the church as a branch of the government, like the post office or the DMV. They got out as soon as they could, and mostly haven’t gone back. In the long run, Integralism just scandalizes people, makes the Faith seem like a political ideology. And it attracts to the clergy people who crave the exercise of power — instead of genuine apostles....

There's plenty more at the link. 

By the way, we've been flogging "Natural Law" here for a long time.  There's a reason for that.