What the terms mean
Integralism names a current of Catholic political thought that has revived since the 2010s. In a 2023 summary, The Catholic Register described its core claim this way: Church and state are both ordered to the common good, so the Church has authority to direct government in spiritual matters. Integralists speak of the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority as one of "two powers". The phrase is the subtitle of the second anthology of essays from The Josias (Angelico Press), and Edmund Waldstein's essay in that volume is titled "Integralism and Gelasian Dyarchy". Critics at the German theology site Feinschwarz summarise his position as placing temporal government under spiritual authority.
Postliberalism is a broader and looser label. It covers critics of liberalism, many of them Catholic, who argue that politics should be ordered to a substantive common good. The two labels overlap but are not the same. Religion Watch at Baylor University reported in 2019 that critics had tied Patrick Deneen and like-minded thinkers to integralism, and that Deneen rejected the charge. TradWatch™ therefore uses each person's own self-description where one is available.
Origins and intellectual lineage
Observers have connected the current to older papal teaching on church and state. Religion News Service linked Adrian Vermeule's "common-good constitutionalism" to the anti-libertarian political philosophy of Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century. Vermeule himself grounds law in Aquinas's definition of it as an ordinance of reason for the common good (ABA Journal).
The contemporary revival has a clear institutional starting point. The Josias was launched in 2014. The Austrian weekly Falter credits Waldstein, a Cistercian monk of Heiligenkreuz Abbey, with founding it and calls it the movement's central publication. In 2015 the site took up a common objection in its scholastic "dubium" format, asking whether integralism is essentially bound up with racism, nationalism and totalitarianism, and it answered no. Angelico Press published two anthologies of its essays, announced in 2021 and 2022. The Josias's about page refers readers to Waldstein's blog Sancrucensis for a fuller statement of the integralist thesis.
From the seminar to the public square (2016–2022)
Vermeule, a Harvard Law School professor, became Catholic in 2016 (Herald Malaysia). By 2023, The Catholic Register was calling him perhaps the most public intellectual associated with integralism (Catholic Register). The same report noted his acknowledgement, in 2018, that a Catholic state would treat baptised citizens differently from others.
Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed (2018) carried the critique of liberalism to a much wider readership (Public Seminar). In March 2020 Vermeule published an essay in The Atlantic (reprint) arguing that originalism had outlived its usefulness for conservatives. In its place he proposed a constitutionalism that would give rulers the power needed to rule well for the common good (ABA Journal). He developed the argument in Common Good Constitutionalism (2022) (American Prospect).
In 2021 Deneen, Gladden Pappin, Chad Pecknold and Vermeule launched the Postliberal Order newsletter (LARB, UKSW article). Deneen's Regime Change (2023) went further, calling for a new elite committed to what he calls a common-good conservatism (Publishers Weekly).
Critics and debate
The movement has drawn criticism from several directions.
- Legal scholars. In April 2020, Garrett Epps called Vermeule's proposal authoritarian (ABA Journal), and The New Republic described it as part of an emerging right-wing vision of constitutional authoritarianism. Reviewing the 2022 book, Baude and Sachs concluded in the Harvard Law Review that its challenge to originalism fails. Pojanowski and Walsh, who write from within the classical natural-law tradition, faulted its indifference to the enacted Constitution in the Notre Dame Law Review. Randy Barnett accepted part of its diagnosis but rejected its remedy (Volokh Conspiracy).
- Political theorists and classical liberals. Jan-Werner Müller has criticised the movement in the London Review of Books. The Acton Institute's Religion & Liberty examined an "awkward alliance" between neo-integralism and national conservatism, and Discourse argued that Catholic integralism has become one more "-ism" of the New Right. Law & Liberty has examined what integralism implies for religious toleration.
- Critics in German-speaking Europe. Feinschwarz cited a Sancrucensis post as supporting coercive punishment of heretics. A paper by theologian Michaela C. Hastetter, published by the International Theological Institute, notes that the post was later deleted, and also that the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung has warned against integralism, naming Waldstein.
Integralists have answered in their own venues. Waldstein's "Integralism and the Logic of the Cross" in Church Life Journal is one example, and The Josias's 2015 dubium is another.
Links to the courts and to government (2022–2026)
The movement's influence is most visible in the public roles its figures have taken on.
- In the courts and universities. The ABA Journal reported that two federal appeals judges attended a 2022 conference on common-good constitutionalism. In October 2025 The Harvard Crimson ran a cover story asking whether the theory could reshape conservative jurisprudence.
- In Hungary. From 2023 Pappin led the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, which then operated under the Prime Minister's Office. After a new government was formed, Foreign Minister Anita Orbán accepted his resignation on 31 July 2026, and the institute returned to Foreign Ministry supervision (Telex, Hungarian Conservative).
- In Washington. Falter reported in 2024 that JD Vance appeared to be listening to Waldstein. Le Grand Continent reported in 2025 that Vance cites Deneen as a central influence. In September 2026 Pecknold took leave from The Catholic University of America to take a public-outreach role at the Department of Homeland Security (OSV News, National Catholic Register). The appointment came amid conflict between the U.S. bishops and the administration over immigration enforcement.
Canonical status and the Church-teaching questions
Integralism is an intellectual current, not an organisation, and it has no canonical status of its own. Its best-known proponents include a Cistercian priest-monk who teaches at his abbey's theological college (Church Life Journal) and lay professors at Harvard, Notre Dame and The Catholic University of America. The arguments over integralism are therefore arguments among Catholics about how to read the Church's teaching on political authority. The most contested question is how that teaching bears on the freedom of non-Catholics and of baptised Catholics who leave the faith: The Catholic Register and Feinschwarz both point to it. See the religious liberty explainer for the conciliar and catechetical texts at issue and the scholarly debate over them.
Key outlets and voices
- Outlets: The Josias, Sancrucensis, Postliberal Order.
- People: Edmund Waldstein, Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, who rejects the integralist label, Gladden Pappin, and Chad Pecknold.