NOVAE MILITIAE

Laurence Auster's take on the Richard John Neuhaus blog article about the death of Philip Rieff, which I've mentioned in a blog entry below (  http://novaemilitiae.squarespace.com/periodic-musings-blog/2006/7/10/the-new-benedict-the-new-knight.html ). Based on my own interactions with certain neo-Catholics, I have to say that I agree with Auster.   Unless these Catholics rediscover their cultural and intellectual roots, they will turn out to be every bit the enemy of Western Civilization that liberals are.

Read every word of Auster's blog entry and exchange with letter writers.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006031.html

It is time to recognize that certain conservative and neoconservative Catholics—their numbers include Neuhaus, his managing editor Joseph Bottom (a long-time regular at The Weekly Standard), and his contributors George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard University—do not at bottom believe in the United States or in the West. They only believe in the Catholic Church. It’s not just that the Church represents to them, as it ought to do, a higher, spiritual loyalty beyond this world. It’s that the Church represents their highest earthly and political loyalty, trumping any loyalty to the U.S.