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The Holocaust-denying, Hitler-admiring, white nationalist Nick Fuentes recently called for authoritarian “Catholic Taliban rule” in the United States, and though it is tempting to ignore such provocations, that would be imprudent. According to insiders in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, Fuentes’s influence with young Republicans is large and only growing. Right-thinking conservatives – particularly Catholics – must be prepared to argue against his noxious views.
Such a rebuttal could start with the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis humanae) that Pope Paul VI promulgated during the Second Vatican Council, six decades ago. That document made the Catholic Church’s position crystal clear: Every person has the right to religious freedom, and governments must ensure that “no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” Moreover, the Council declared: “This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right.”
The Church teaches that human beings have a moral obligation to seek the truth. For the search to be authentic, it cannot be compelled by political power. The process requires “immunity from external coercion as well as psychological freedom.” Or as Pope John Paul II put it, “The Church proposes; she imposes nothing.”
God does not compel obedience. In the very first pages of the Bible, God did not stop Adam and Eve from eating the forbidden fruit – an act that usurped God’s role as the arbiter of right and wrong. God established covenants with the Israelites, but he did not stop them from straying. Jesus did not seek to use political power or coercion to disseminate his teachings.
The state has no business using its coercive power in matters of conscience. As John Paul II understood, religious freedom is a “bulwark against totalitarianism.” Those, like Fuentes, who are eager to impose their religious views on others are flagrantly contradicting the teachings of the Church they purport to represent. If Fuentes wants people to adhere to Catholic teachings, he should first learn what those teachings are – starting with the Church’s position on religious freedom.
Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t stop with Fuentes. Post-liberalism has been gaining traction among Catholic intellectuals, commentators, and politicians more broadly. While the post-liberal leaders of whom I am aware are not racists and anti-Semites, they do share, to varying degrees, the view that the liberal tradition’s commitment to religious freedom has been a detriment to authentic human flourishing.
Again, it is tempting to dismiss these figures as a fringe group of scholars, commentators, and activists. But prominent politicians flirt with post-liberalism, and some go further than that. Vice President JD Vance, for example, explicitly identified himself as “anti-regime” and “post-liberal” as recently as 2023.
In the long sweep of history, few things matter more than ideas. I strongly disagree with the contention that liberalism – the rule of law, individual rights, personal liberty, free markets – was a mistake from the beginning. I reject the argument that it has outlived its usefulness, and that the system of democratic capitalism (the “regime”) needs replacing. But I do have some sympathy for post-liberalism’s cultural concerns. The secular world has indeed grown less accommodating and more hostile to Christian life in recent decades.
But rolling back religious liberty or advocating a form of soft theocracy – using political power to advance the interests of the Church or a Christian way of life – is not the answer. The roots of the West’s cultural problems lie in a failure fully to appreciate and put first the inherent and inestimable dignity of every human. Curtailing religious liberty would be another affront to the primacy of human dignity, exacerbating rather than ameliorating this root problem.
Instead, Christians should make clear that religious liberty can be fully protected without the government being radically neutral in matters of morality. Christians can strengthen the role the Church plays in civil society – in the domain between the state and the individual. And they can push back against policies that encroach on any community’s ability to practice its own religious faith – as, for example, the Affordable Care Act’s early efforts at enforcing its contraception mandate did.
Importantly, Christians can – and should – enter the public square and advocate for positions shaped by their faith, including in political and legislative debates. But if their views are authentically informed by their faith, they will place the common good and the dignity of the individual at their core. They will not try to roll back religious freedom or place obstacles in the path of those seeking the truth. They will not, in the words of John Paul II, want to “impose.”
They will reject both religious fundamentalism and extreme secularism as manifestations of the same basic error. Each advances a reductive, partial vision of the human person, whereas Christians should insist on a much fuller view.
