• Home
• Our Books
• All Titles
• Catholics and the American Polity: Approaches and Contestations

Catholics and the American Polity: Approaches and Contestations

by Pieter Vree & Thomas Storck, eds.

   0 reviews

• Product Code: catap
• Publication date: 2025
• Pages: 156
• Size: 5.5 x 8.5

• $16.95

Available on

amazon.com

View

Buy it at

B&N

View

Cover

Paperback

Hardback (+$10.00)

Add to Cart

•   Description
•   Videos

•  

  ★ ★ ★

  ★ ★ ★

   

  ✦

  ✦

  Catholic political life in an exhausted republic?

  Catholics and the American Polity

  Approaches & Contestations

   

  Edited by Pieter Vree and Thomas Storck
  Twenty-five thinkers address Catholic political action, American liberalism, anti-Catholicism, integralism, regime change, and the Benedict Option.

  2025 Catholics and politics American polity Benedict Option · Regime Change · Integralism

  A timely symposium on the place of Catholics in American public life: neither a manifesto nor a party platform, but a serious contest of approaches at a moment when the American experiment, Catholic influence, and the future of civic life are all under dispute.

  anti-Catholicism · republican government · Catholic social teaching · postliberalism · public witness

  “In this book, twenty-five thinkers grapple with the questions of whether Catholics have a ‘place at the table’ of American public life and how we might fulfill our vocation vis-à-vis the structuring and organization of the same.”

  Pieter Vree

   

  ✦ OVERVIEW ✦

  Catholics and the American Polity: Approaches & Contestations gathers twenty-five contributors to consider one of the most urgent questions facing American Catholics: what should faithful civic engagement look like in a country marked by polarization, declining religious practice, anti-Catholic hostility, and growing dissatisfaction with the political order?

  The book begins from the recognition that Catholics have long occupied an uneasy position in American public life. Anti-Catholicism is not an accidental feature of American history; it has shaped the assumptions, suspicions, and limits imposed on Catholic political speech. Yet the lay faithful are still called to act directly in the political structuring and organization of social life.

  The contributors do not agree with one another. Some defend the continued viability of the American founding and constitutional order. Others argue that the deeper premises of American liberalism remain incompatible with the Church’s political and social doctrine. The result is a lively, serious, and unusually useful volume: a field guide to the arguments Catholics are already having, and must continue to have, about America.

  This is not a book of easy slogans. It is a book for readers who want to think carefully about citizenship, the common good, postliberalism, natural law, Catholic social teaching, political prudence, and the public responsibilities of the Church and the laity.

  “Catholics who have not closely examined the philosophical or theological roots of American tradition or the implications of our own Church’s thought, will find in this volume more than one helpful starting point for their own pondering on what it means to be both Catholic and American in the twenty-first century.”

  Thomas Storck

   

  ❦ THE QUESTIONS AT THE CENTER ❦

  Question I

  Is the American experiment an exhausted project?

  Question II

  Can Catholics expect a “place at the table” of American politics?

  Question III

  If anti-Catholicism continues to gain ascendancy, should Catholics build intentional communities, seek regime change, embrace integralism, or pursue another path?

  Question IV

  Is there any hope for Catholics in American political life?

   

  ✦ WHY READ THIS BOOK? ✦

  It frames the debate

  The book places today’s Catholic political questions in relation to the American founding, liberalism, and the Church’s own social doctrine.

  It contains disagreement

  The essays range from confidence in constitutionalism to sharp criticisms of liberalism and the American project.

  It is practical

  The contributors ask what Catholics should actually do: build schools, form communities, engage politics, witness publicly, or organize more deliberately.

  It resists simplification

  No single school of thought is permitted to swallow the whole Catholic question of America.

  The live options considered

  The Benedict Option: strategic withdrawal and the formation of resilient Christian communities.

  Regime Change: replacing the exhausted liberal ruling class with a postliberal elite ordered to the common good.

  Integralism: a rethinking of Church, state, temporal order, and the social kingship of Christ.

  Something else altogether: education, evangelization, local action, Catholic organization, constitutional renewal, cultural witness, or renewed Catholic social action.

   

  ✠ CONTRIBUTORS ✠

  Twenty-five contributors offer sharply varied judgments on the future of Catholics in American public life.

  Virginia L. Arbery · Casey Chalk · Will Hoyt · George Hawley · Kan Ito · A. James McAdams
  Preston R. Simpson · Mark Barrett · Charles A. Coulombe · Christopher Beiting · Karl Keating · Gracjan Kraszewski
  Jude Russo · Marek Jan Chodakiewicz · Christopher Zehnder · John M. Grondelski · James G. Hanink
  Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. · Thomas Storck · Edwin Dyga · Robert McTeigue, S.J. · Jason M. Morgan
  Thaddeus Kozinski · John C. Médaille · Al Kresta

   

  ❦ THE EDITORS ❦

  Editor

  Pieter Vree

  Pieter Vree is the editor of the New Oxford Review, a Catholic monthly magazine in its 48th year of continuous publication, and the father of six children.

  Editor

  Thomas Storck

  Thomas Storck is the host of the WCAT radio/TV program “The Open Door,” a contributing editor of the New Oxford Review, and a member of the editorial board of The Chesterton Review. His latest book is Economics: An Alternative Introduction (XIII Books, 2024).

   

  ✦ BOOK DETAILS ✦

  Title

  Catholics and the American Polity

  Subtitle

  Approaches & Contestations

  Editors

  Pieter Vree & Thomas Storck

  Publication date

  2025

  Pages

  156

  ISBNs

  978-1-998492-58-9 (pbk)
  978-1-998492-59-6 (hc)

  For Catholics willing to think beyond slogans

   

  This volume does not settle the Catholic question of America by decree. It lets serious Catholic, Protestant, and non-Christian voices contest the premises, prospects, dangers, and duties of Catholic existence in American political life.

You May Also Like