“Would Someone Just Shut That Pope Up?”

I recently read and enjoyed reading Patrick Deneen’s latest at the American Conservative.

His chief (not only) point in this piece  is that American Catholic conservatives can be (and often are) as hostile to what the Magisterium has to say about economics and social inequalities and injustices as American Catholic liberals can be (and often are) to what the Magisterium has to say about sexual ethics.

Deneen’s is an unsettling piece (unless you’ve read his stuff before, in which case it is powerful, but vintage Deneen). In any event, he—like the Pope—does us all a service in reminding us that the integrity of Catholic teaching demands our allegiance over and above any ideological commitments, not vice-versa.