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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22357 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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I'm coming at this more from a position of ignorance than hostility, so this is a genuine question and not just snark. In what way is "traditional conservative American Catholic nationalism" anything other than a massive oxy-moron? In other words, what is the ultimate goal of this ideology, and how does it not end up being a mess of contradictions?

  1. America has never been a Catholic country. You can argue that it has traditionally been a Christian country, but its Christianity was always Protestant, and often specifically anti-Catholic. What is the "tradition" that we'd be returning to?
  2. In America, Catholic=Mexican. If I'm walking through a neighborhood and I see shrines to the Virgin Mary or Saint Francis in people's yards, I know that this is (shall we say) a rough neighborhood. Do John Senior and his "conservative" followers want the whole country to be like this?
  3. OK, so maybe that's unfair. Catholicism isn't some ethnic club, it's the One True Faith. So, American Catholics find themselves in the position of the missionaries in 100-500 AD trying to convert pagans to Christianity. We'll just need to cut down all their sacred trees, tear down their temples, burn their heathen books, and turn families against each other (Luke 14:26). Once we've radically reinvented America from the ground up, then we can finally have the traditional, conservative society that we always wanted.
  4. "Traditionalist Catholicism" is still decidedly schismatic (see the recent incident with the consecration of new SSPX bishops a few weeks ago) and strongly protests against Vatican II and therefore the authority of the Church and the Pope. Don't we have a word for such people...?

Come to Baltimore. Very Catholic. The kids from the nice families go to Catholic school. (The ones who aren't Jewish, that is.)

And even a few of the ones who are!

Are you a Baltimorean? Didn't know we had more than one on theMotte

America has been Catholic for a 100 years. And the Irish and Italians have been here a lot longer than the Mexicans. The Catholic Great Replacment was a long time ago.

The strawman is real.

American nationalism is more or less incidental to these people's worldview- they believe in a Christian culture, that might be led by the USA or France or Canada or Spain or any other particular country. They are however, Americans who believe patriotism is a virtue and notice there aren't a lot of other candidates. Most of them are probably Catholic supremacists; but they do believe in a broader Christian culture and focus on that. Moreover, many aren't traditional Catholics; American traditional Catholicism exists in a broader landscape of orthodox and politically conservative Catholicism heavily influenced by John Senior and, despite the personal sympathies of John Senior, the traditionalists are not the largest group therein(that would be charismatics). It is extremely possible that John Senior would have preferred a more moderate group had the religious landscape in 90's Catholicism been different; certainly the SSPX is a minority of self-described traditionalist Catholics today in a way it wasn't in the 90's. It is probably fair to say that they have an ideological... predisposition to further integration with Latin America, even if that comes at some cost, and this is probably why they generally oppose strict immigration enforcement- because they think in terms of civilizations and not nations, and they are elites who tend to like western hemisphere integration anyways.

If you're asking 'why does the GOP struggle with American ethnic nationalism' that's a fair answer- they simply do not have access to American ethnic nationalist elites, because America is an empire and doesn't produce ethnic nationalist elites. Instead they have... that.

It's not that the GOP doesn't have access to ethno-nationalist elites so much as ethno-nationalist elites despise civic nationalism in general and MAGA in particular and MAGA returns the favor

I would not call hypenated-Americans ethno-nationalist elites. If you want to say Israel-supporting (and therefore ethno-nationalist) Jewish-Americans, say so. But I do not think that there are a lot of Irish- or Italo-American elites who are meaningfully ethno-nationalist.

Also, MAGA despises elites generally. RFK and Hegseth are decidedly not members of the intellectual elite, and that is precisely why they are in Trump's cabinet.

MAGA does not despise elites generally, though it does despise much of what the Blue Tribe regards as elites. To MAGA, both Trump and Hegseth are elite.

In America, Catholic=Mexican. If I'm walking through a neighborhood and I see shrines to the Virgin Mary or Saint Francis in people's yards, I know that this is (shall we say) a rough neighborhood.

This is the stereotype in the Southwest, and it's what I essentially believed as a Protestant. In the northeast and sprinkled throughout the country, there are a lot of Irish and Italian Catholics; one was my neighbor growing up, with the Saint Francis statue and everything. Another is a business owner and gives a lot of money to local charities, and of course church organizations. In the midwest, there are many German Catholics (alongside many German Lutherans, and historically-united-church Germans, of course), and in those parts of the country historically Catholic towns are often the nice, well-tended areas where people have civic pride, with "Jesus I trust in You" signs and Saint Francis statues in well-kept, green lawns with flower beds.

"Traditionalist Catholicism" is still decidedly schismatic

The SSPX is very loud, but most traditionalist Catholics are much more common than SSPX afficionados -- especially if we look at beliefs rather than strict "Traditionalist Catholic" identification. In Catholicism, traditionalism is something closer to, say, fundamentalism among Protestants: much maligned, often a boo-word, but descriptive of many conservative members in point of fact. Evangelicals are, almost to a man, fundamentalists, because they believe in the "Five Fundamentals," Biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth, atonement for sin, the resurrection of Jesus, historical reality of miracles, even if they wouldn't describe themselves using the word. (And the current strain of neo-evangelicalism emerged essentially as an ecumenical movement among Protestants designed to resist the sepratism inherent in historical fundamentalism while preserving fundamentalist beliefs; many evangelical leaders like Billy Graham were known for warm relations with Catholics, as well as explicit outreach to Black Protestants.) In Catholicism traditionalism is tied up with the Latin mass, such that a guy who attends a Latin mass celebrated by a local priest with permission of the canonical bishop would likely be described as a traditionalist even if he thinks Vatican II is the best thing since sliced bread. Whereas, in fundamentalism... well, liturgy isn't considered as important as "pure Biblical preaching", although I suspect self-identified fundamentalists may be more likely than self-identified evangelicals to prefer old hymns and congregational singing.

"Traditionalism" in Catholicism emerged as a concept during the Catholic version of the same crisis that produced "Fundamentalism" in Protestantism: the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. As secular Bible scholarship and more liberal theologians wanted to "update doctrine to reflect modern concerns," Protestantism responded with polemic, schism, and bitter rhetoric, and Catholicism responded with Pope Pius X (much beloved by the SSPX) declaring a loyalty oath. Vatican II, and some scholars would argue this just as some conservative Catholics would disagree, served as essentially the partial victory of Modernism in Catholicism, although at the level of pure doctrine relatively few things were really changed. The "Fundamentals" remained intact, and it was essentially some elements of moral theology, especially around the rights of man against the state, that were revised, though the level of practice went far further than Modernists in the early 1900s would have ever imagined.

Protestant Fundamentalists and Catholic Traditionalists, are, of course, often bitter enemies, because Protestant and Catholic doctrine is traditionally, fundamentally (heh) opposed to the other. But their concerns, the denominational specifics aside, were very similar: preserve fundamental supernaturalism in the Christian faith against scientism and metaphysical naturalism, preserve the inspired nature of the Biblical text against higher criticism, preserve the objective existence of the historical Jesus-God against Jesusism that attempted to proffer a Jesus not featured in the Gospels.

I take no position on the coherence of "traditional conservative American Catholic nationalism." Such a thing would splinter the religious right into many tiny pieces at the very thought of it.

This is the stereotype in the Southwest, and it's what I essentially believed as a Protestant. In the northeast and sprinkled throughout the country, there are a lot of Irish and Italian Catholics; one was my neighbor growing up, with the Saint Francis statue and everything.

Yeah, in my experience in the Northeast, the shrine & statue garden decor is absolutely Italian-coded.

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