In 2018, Vox commissioned me to write a story about medieval Catholic ideas and the radical transformation of American politics that had vaulted Donald Trump to the presidency. I thought it would be provocative to include some call-out boxes at the top that named names.

Exploring the vectors to these Catholic ideas invariably led to places such as Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Supreme Court and the more creepy Trump-infested parts of the federal government. Think Fox News host Sean Hannity, Federalist Society Chair Leonard Leo, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Trump strategist Steve Bannon.

Unfortunately, Vox did not approve, and my editor offered me a kill fee to go away. I subsequently published a list-free version of the story in The New Republic.

At the time, I associated this reluctance to name names with the inability of people who are not Catholic to grasp the central role of the Catholic natural-law tradition in shaping the ideology, institutions, policies and behaviors of this radical right. 

Catholic natural law operates on the premise that humans are created in God’s image, and social order and domestic tranquility require that humans understand, accept and honor the qualities ordained by nature, especially the distinction between male and female.

Catholicism teaches that natural law is “written and engraved in the soul of each and every man.” It is the basis for the capacity of individuals to discern good from evil. It is central to the catechism.

Natural law has been the foundation for Catholic right-wingers’ assault upon Enlightenment liberalism. It is the basis of their “post-liberal” vision for the future, which is largely about restoring the natural order of things on behalf of the “common good.”

Following the elevation of U.S. Sen. JD Vance, a Catholic convert and zealot, to copilot the Trump presidency, everyone is now coming out of the Catholic closet. Where, in truth, they’d never been hiding.

I’ll give you a few examples.

Vance opened a lot of eyes to the reality that there are many Catholics who are less the charitable, loving kind and more the censorious, hating kind. During his conversion experience, he was deeply influenced by Catholic natural law principles. An article of faith for him is that human beings are fundamentally prone to evil, which he attributes to “a society oriented entirely towards consumption and pleasure, spurning duty and virtue.”

There’s also Sean Cooksey, who is in his early 30s. He was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2020 to be the youngest-ever commissioner of the Federal Election Commission.

Cooksey brings into the elections arena the pugilistic temperament of a practicing Catholic with a University of Chicago law degree. Whereas Democrats prefer institutionalist rules of engagement — shake hands, no rough stuff, wear your helmets and mouth guards — Cooksey sees federal elections as bare-knuckle brawls in which contenders take it to the bitter end.

And then there’s Karoline Leavitt, who at the age of 27 is the spitfire, never-back-down White House press secretary for Trump.

In the current Trump regime, of 36 people elected or appointed to key Cabinet, agency and White House staff positions for which information on religious affiliation is available, 16 are Catholic, representing nearly half of the group. (Catholics have fallen to about 20% of the U.S. population.)

Members of Congress also are increasingly Catholic, especially in the Republican Party. In the past 16 years, Catholic representation among House Republicans has increased, while dropping for House Democrats, reflecting the hard turn to the right of political Catholicism, generally.

The same trend applies to the federal courts. Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic, and another was raised Catholic; only one is liberal. Prior to the appointment of Antonin Scalia, a devout Catholic, to the Supreme Court in 1986, only six of the previous 102 justices in the court’s history had been Catholic.

We cannot understand the looming jackboot upon the neck of the nation without focusing on traditionalist Catholic influences that for decades have been invisible to the liberal imagination, leaving it defenseless against the intellectual and emotional assaults upon its foundations.

Catholic natural-law fantasies about the proper ordering of sexuality, reproductive rights, gender roles, the natural family and religious freedom now command the heights of American law and politics.

What’s important here is not that a high percentage of Trump loyalists practice and worship as Catholics in their private lives. It’s that the cultural and intellectual foundations of their illiberal, authoritarian political commitments emerge from reactionary Catholic traditions dating back 800 years.

The Republican creed is MAGA — “Make America Great Again.” The more appropriate creed might be MAMA — “Make America Medieval Again.”

____

Peter H. Schwartz writes at the broad intersection of philosophy, politics, history and religion. He publishes the Wikid World newsletter on Substack.

___

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.