This comment does not deserve to be on the blog Halden. Comments like this are simply ad hominem and not argumentation at all. Let this guy go back to his clique and be happy with himself. It does a disservice to Catholics to allow this type of comment that is not very thoughtful at all.

The Latin American Christian Democratic parties come to mind here. (The ones in Europe do tend to be center-right, with some notable exceptions.0

The Pope can certainly counsel his brother bishops in these matters of prudence and justice (and no doubt he did), but the bishops have the responsibility to take the appropriate actions.

As to the Fr. Maciel situation, it demonstrates that a cunning man can deceive the Pope about his character, which says nothing about the Pope’s quality of heroic virtue or lack thereof.

There MUST be SOMETHING essential to Catholicism (and various political philosophies); otherwise, how is it even possible to speak of them intelligently? There may be SOME truth to the non-essentialist reading of religion, but its ultimately an unsatisfactory framework.

I am not familiar with either Baxter or Cavanaugh. I know Burke himself has often been accused propounding some kind of blind historicism, but I don’t feel such a reading does justice to his philosophy.

Which of Kirk’s ten principles do you find inimical to the Catholic tradition? As I understand it, he sees these as a distillation of thousands of years of speculation and lived experience, Greco-Roman-Judaeo-Christian. It seems no accident to me that the Catholic Church, given its history, would be a unique repository for this collected wisdom.

(Oops on the sylllabi! Shows I’m not infallible after all!)

If you’re truly serious about disputing the inherent conservatism of Catholic orthodoxy, I suggest you review the late Russel Kirk’s “Ten Conservative Principles” and let me know which one of them you find inconsistent with that orthodoxy.

http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html

Catholicism is a religious system which holds tradition in VERY high esteem, insists that there is a moral order which transcends the material world (and to which the latter must conform itself to), insists on the falleness of man’s nature, respects hierarchy, teaches the principle of subsidiarity, has a very organic view of civil society, insists that changes in civil and ecclesial society should be prudent and organic, and fosters a love and devotion for the non-rational dimensions of the human experience.

All this is quintessentially conservative, and avoids your error of implicitly mistaking principles for policies.Catholicism’s inherent conservatism is not inconsistent with, say, the bishops’ opposition to the Iraq War, or their support for government-run insurance.

You may well object to my having recourse to Kirk as a conservative litmus test, but I do believe his distillation does justice to the greater conservative tradition, elucidated in his “The Conservative Mind” and contained in the writings of such luminaries as Burke, De Maistre, Newman, most of the American Founding Fathers, not to mention the conservative Big Lights, like William F. Buckley and Richard John Neuhaus.

Finally, you might wanna cut out the name-calling. It’s a sign of intellectual weakness and insecurity, and degrades no one but the one who employs it.

I am afraid it is you, not I, who conflate “conservatism” with the Republican Party platform. The distinction between principles and policies also seems to elude you, which is why you take conception to my characterization of Catholic Christianity as an inherently conservative belief system, which it most certainly is.

You also make assumptions about my beliefs (vis-a-vis doctrinal development, for instance) which are not warranted by my published writing. I certainly am not a “traditionalist” in the sense REAL Catholic “traditionalists” use the term.

The rest of your post is hardly worth responding to: typical professorial ad hominem. Get back to me when you figure out the difference between modernity and modernism, and when you’re honest enough to take your cultural liberalism to its logical conclusion and start renaming the days of the week.

(I’ve browsed through your course syllabi. I’m truly moved by your multicultural sensitivity in employing the BCE/CE dating system. But I remain offended by the fact that my days of the week continue to be named after pagan deities I no longer worship. Be REALLY sensitive to your students and let them know that your Classical Christian Thought I is gonna be meeting on Tridi and Quintidi!)