Franklin Foer, the new top editor at the nation's venerable liberal flagship, The New Republic, seems a tad worried that theo-conservative Catholics are hijacking the U.S. government.
In one of his first issues since taking the helm, he recently published a cover story that was a none-too-subtle swipe at Father Richard John Neuhaus. The article, "The Christianizing of America," written by a former editor of First Things Damon Linker, concludes:
[T]he America toward which Richard John Neuhaus wishes to lead us [is] an America in which eschatological panic is deliberately channeled into public life, in which moral and theological absolutists demonize the country's political institutions and make nonnegotiable public demands under the threat of sacralized revolutionary violence, in which citizens flee from the inner obligations of freedom and long to subordinate themselves to ecclesiastical authority, and in which traditionalist Christianity thoroughly dominates the nation's public life.
Not hard to see why he didn't last long at First Things. For some more back and forth on the article, check out The American Scene.
Foer himself wrote in a recent issue about the influence of what he called a conservative Catholic "brain trust" on the Supreme Court.
In fact, during Bush's campaign for president, Foer opined that Bush was a kind of unwitting papist, a dupe for right-wing Catholics like Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel, who wanted to marry the Church's pro-life stance to a faith in the unregulated capitalism. A quote:
[C]lear ties bind Bush and his proposals to the Catholic neocons. In meetings with Neuhaus, Deal Hudson (editor of the conservative Catholic journal Crisis), and Catholic criminologist John DiIulio, Bush has received tutorials on Catholic social teachings. His speechwriter Mike Gerson, an evangelical, has consumed the works of Neuhaus, Novak, and their comrade George Weigel. And even Olasky says the campaign agenda has its roots in subsidiarity: "Catholic social teachings and subsidiarity have been a strong strain in the shaping of compassionate conservatism.... It has provided a structural framework."
After the election, he worried aloud about all the Catholics promoting "natural law" theory and their influence in the administration. Again, Foer's fear is that they're trying to take over the country: "America, they argue, was founded by men who agreed with Aquinas on the primacy of transcendent divine law. But secular politicians have junked up the founders' system, adding gratuitous and wicked laws."
