Here is an excerpt:

Neoconservatives are tiny in number, yet large in influence due to their prolific writing, thinking, and support from wealthy patrons that locate them close to the corridors of power. It is a small movement of intellectuals that emerged in earnest opposing political trends of the 1960s, without a mass base and with only the power of their ideas and connections to win influence. Their vigorous defense of the free market, capitalism, and a militarist foreign policy wins them powerful allies. Yet other currents run through their thought, including a defense of natural law and the championing of religion.

"Natural law," meaning the rules God set into motion in the world and also instilled in our own natures, has been a central, animating philosophical idea in Christian thought for a thousand years. However it has taken some important turns along the way, and there are now what we might call several branches of thought about the definition of natural law.

One of these, the Classic view, is embraced and promoted by the leading thinkers of Catholic neoconservatives in the United States and their political allies in conservative Protestant evangelicalism. Roman Catholicism as a whole employs natural law principles as a means to rationally explain and interpret the morality of Scripture. However, many in the Vatican have recently pressed to superimpose their particular interpretations on the greater secular society. This is driven by the belief that natural law principles are so universal that even non-Catholics are subject to their tenets.

And as I discuss throughout the piece, reactionary Catholics such as George Weigel, Richard John Neuhaus and Robert P. George also frame many of their ethical arguments within a revisionist frame of America's Founders being proto-orthodox Catholics -- although that was clearly was not the case.
As I say in the article:

Nevertheless, Catholic neoconservatives such as Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel and Michael Novak have seized on this erroneous view of natural law like a cudgel to further a revisionist narrative of American history that supports Religious Right notions of Christian nationalism. To this end, Thomas Jefferson and other of the founders are often portrayed as fervent evangelicals who cited thirteenth century interpretations of Aristotle's teachings; an inaccurate accounting that belies Jefferson's (among others) Arian Unitarianism (a belief in God as a single person as opposed to being three persons in one, a Trinity). "When they [the Founders] are not being denounced as infidels," historian Garry Wills bemusedly wrote, "men like Michael Novak dress them up as crypto-Evangelicals, crypto- Jews, or crypto-Catholics."

I will grant that this isn't exactly light reading.  But, as Fred Clarkson has repeatedly said, the more you know about your opponents the more effectively you can engage them. Hopefully, the article will be worth the wading and help us all better refute the arguments often made by Catholic Right neocons and their allies.

The Catholic Right: A Series, by Frank L. Cocozzelli :

Part One  Part Two  Part Three  Part Four  Part Five  Part Six   Intermezzo   Part Eight   Part Nine  Part Ten   Part Eleven   Part Twelve   Part Thirteen   Part Fourteen   Second Intermezzo   Part Sixteen   Part Seventeen   Part Eighteen   Part Eighteen   Part Nineteen   Part Twenty   Part Twenty-one   Part Twenty-two   Part Twenty-three   Part Twenty-four   Part Twenty-five   Part Twenty-six   Part Twenty-seven   Part Twenty-eight   Part Twenty-nine   Part Thirty   Part Thirty-one   Part Thirty-two   Part Thirty-three   Part Thirty-four   Part Thirty-five   Part Thirty-six   Part Thirty-seven   Part Thirty-eight   Part Thirty-nine   Part Forty   Part Forty-one   Part Forty-two   Part Forty-three   Part Forty-four   Part Forty-five   Part Forty-six   Part Forty-seven   Part Forty-eight   Part Forty-nine   Part Fifty   Part Fifty-one   Part Fifty-two   Part Fifty-three   Part Fifty-four   Part Fifty-five   Part Fifty-six   Part Fifty-seven

Digg
del.icio.us
Newsvine
Reddit
stumbleupon
Facebook