I want to thank Law & Liberty’s editors for hosting an excellent symposium on my new book. I did not expect All the Kingdoms of the World to receive this much attention. So, again, I am grateful for their support. The editors have also kindly allowed me to post a response to my critics. Even better.

The point of AKW is two-fold. First, I want to examine the pros and cons of a popular new anti-liberal doctrine. This doctrine, Catholic integralism, proposes a unique church-state union. In the ideal, the Church can sometimes direct the state to help support its spiritual agenda. 

I give two arguments for integralism and three arguments against it. I then conclude that the integralist ideal is false. My second goal is to show that integralism’s strengths and weaknesses recur in other faiths. I argue as much for Sunni Islamic and Chinese Confucian anti-liberalism.

Historical Considerations Set Aside

Because the symposiasts don’t discuss chapter 7 on Islam and Confucianism, I won’t mention it in my critique. But since all three pieces critique my historical defense of integralism in Chapter 2, a few replies are in order. First, the historical argument compares integralism to a nearby form of Catholic establishment that is not integralist. I wish I had the space to address other, more distant alternatives. Tom Howes, for instance, likes Martin Rhonheimer’s approach to integralism. Rhonheimer acknowledges a tension between medieval and modern Catholic political thought. But Rhonheimer argues that the discontinuity is not problematic because the medieval teachings are not doctrine. Unfortunately, I had no space to examine his case. 

The book is more focused on critiquing integralism than defending it, and the authors seem to agree that my “transition argument” represents a successful response to Adrian Vermeule’s misguided recommendations for achieving integralism under modern conditions. I will accordingly set the Transition Argument aside here. Other reviews criticized the Transition Argument, but I responded on my Substack. Check out my post at The Liberal Tortoise here.

That leaves us with two arguments from Chapters 5 and 6. The Stability Argument says we can’t maintain the integralist ideal even if we reach it. Kai Weiss raises two concerns, which I’m afraid rest on misunderstandings. The first is that I am unfair to integralists at a few points. For example, I point out that American integralists spend too much time creating a sect of followers than converting Catholic bishops to their cause, which seems gratuitous in chapter 5. But I make these remarks in Chapter 4. Chapter 4 concerns strategy and I raise their focus on sect-building to indicate their poor strategic vision. I do not think I’m being unfair in pointing this out. Weiss also thinks I make unfair comparisons between integralists and communism and fascism. But neither of those claims appears in Chapter 5. They appear in Chapter 4, where their relevance is plain. I’m afraid Weiss has fundamentally misread me. Chapter 5 has no potshots.

Further, in Chapter 5, I make no comparison with fascism and communism, contra Weiss. Chapter 5 has one reference to China at the very end. There is no reference to fascism. I have only two brief references to communism. I’m afraid Weiss has fundamentally misread me.

Graphs as a Mode of Assessment

Some criticize my stability argument by poking fun at the graphs I have used. The purpose of the charts is to help show how an integralist regime will destabilize. I am not sure some critics in other venues understand my method. I’m happy with the jokes, but they should make good points. 

Integralists make qualitative predictions that integralism will decay more slowly than other regimes. Deploying grace in politics will help save society from many bad outcomes. How are we to assess these qualitative claims? We don’t have any serious empirical evidence that speaks in their favor. The best we can do is build a formal model.

But formal models often work as follows. The modeler converts qualitative claims into quantitative claims to test them. Quantitative claims help determine the parameters under which the qualitative claim is true. If the range of parameters is small, one can conclude that the qualitative claim is false. If the range of parameters is large, then the qualitative claim looks more credible. 

I indeed discuss the “grace rate” at which decay will slow. But I do so because integralists have said grace will have a concrete effect. Grace will slow down deterioration. That is a claim about a grace rate versus the rates that pluralism will destabilize the regime. The integralist has made a claim about grace rates. I have merely formalized the claim to evaluate it. 

Integralism, Equality, and Religious Minorities

James Dominic Rooney wanted me to critique the ideal integralist regime’s treatment of religious minorities. In his view (and mine), integralism deprives religious minorities of equal decision-making power. Rooney thinks I should have included this argument in my critique of the ideal.

I did not focus on that argument for two reasons. First, I wish to engage integralists on their own terms, granting for the sake of argument that their ideal state would follow its own moral principles. I wanted to show that integralism permits injustice even in that ideal case. One idealizing assumption is that the integralist state will protect the unbaptized from harm and treat them as equals. Of course, this would not happen in practice. But I want to critique integralism even in theory. 

Rooney worries that “the injustice of the integralism system is that it de jure involves limiting their participation in politics on equal footing with Catholics.” Integralism then implies that Catholics will hold more political power than others. That makes non-Catholics second-class citizens. But integralists could argue that no one has a fundamental right to participate in politics. In that case, there’s no unequal treatment because no one has inherent political rights.

Now, that claim puts the integralist in a difficult position. How does anyone acquire the right to rule? Why would God grant authority to any one person? As Bellarmine once argued, that would make God partial. It seems that integralists must embrace some kind of divine right of kings. Or perhaps there could be a divine right of republics in which God singles out specific individuals to rule. Yet, even in the ideal, that invites standard concerns about the behavior of monarchs. Remember, people still sin in the integralist ideal, and so will rulers.

That is an unattractive position for integralists. But I can still see them embracing it.

Nonetheless, Rooney raises a good point, though I did not think I needed to address it in that context. Integralism has many flaws! I hoped to state but three of them.

I have elsewhere discussed another argument Rooney finds attractive. The central claim is that integralists must justify restrictions on religious minorities to protect the majority. Minorities can poison the majority with heresies and temptation. This is perhaps more responsive to Rooney’s reasonable concerns. But in AKW, I assume the ideal state can balance each group’s rights. It can respect the unbaptized, per Dignitatis Humanae, and protect the majority. That said, even ideal regimes will struggle with this balance. They will find it easy to err on behalf of either group. So, I agree with Rooney, but I omitted that argument in the book.

Pointing the Way to My Next Project

Weiss and Rooney also criticize my brief comments on liberalism at the end of the book. These remarks appear in the epilogue. I did not mean them as anything more than suggestions. I will follow up on these ideas in my next book, but my goal is to whet appetites. Weiss and Rooney have excellent questions that I will address in time. I wish I had been more explicit on this point, as it might have helped focus the discussion. But I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Once again, I thank the symposiasts for their insightful criticisms. Many of the criticisms stick, especially the objections to the history argument. A few of Weiss’s criticisms of the stability argument misfire. Rooney’s concerns are well-taken and worth addressing in other venues. I am grateful to Tom Howes for his contribution as well.