‘Postliberalism’ will not strengthen the Catholic Church, authors of new book say
Authors James M. Patterson and Thomas D. Howes released "Why Postliberalism Failed" arguing that the postliberal ideology will lead to governmental failure and damage the Church’s public image. The book, published by the Acton Institute, draws parallels between postliberalism and authoritarian regimes such as Francoist Spain, warning that it compromises individual liberty. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone wrote a foreword, expressing concern that younger Catholics are attracted to postliberal ideas that could weaken the Church. The authors define postliberalism as an ideology, institutional strategy, and political program that relies on a small group of cohesive individuals to advance their interests.
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‘Why Postliberalism Failed,’ a new book published by the Acton Institute, argues that the post‑liberal political vision—defined by its authors as an ideology, institutional strategy, and political program—has historically led to authoritarian regimes and harms the Catholic Church’s public standing. The work, co‑written by James M. Patterson and Thomas D. Howes, includes a foreword by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, who warns that younger Catholics are increasingly drawn to this “failed” vision and urges the Church to remain sober about political projects that claim its name. 1
The volume, released on June 22 2026, mirrors Patrick J. Deneen’s 2018 Why Liberalism Failed and critiques post‑liberalism as a system that concentrates power in a strong executive, pursues economic autarky and isolationism, and uses Catholic rhetoric to legitimize authoritarian governance. 1
Patterson describes post‑liberalism as an “institutional strategy” where a small elite secures key positions to implement its agenda without broad popular support. He adds that the political program seeks an “executive unbound” to defend the Church while advancing autarkic and isolationist policies. 1
Howes concurs, noting that post‑liberal movements often result in “autocratic rule with a strong bureaucracy.” He points to historical examples—Franco’s Spain and other European and Latin American regimes—that collapsed and left the Church with damaged credibility. 1
Archbishop Cordileone, recently appointed by Pope Leo XIV to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, cautions that the “growing attraction to the post‑liberal vision of some younger Catholics” must be taken seriously. He characterizes the ideology as using Catholic tradition to defend an “unconstrained executive” and stresses that the Church should not become a legitimizing body for authoritarian projects. 1
The authors argue that when the Church aligns with authoritarian regimes, it suffers a “public perception issue” after those regimes fall. They contrast Poland—where the Church opposed oppression—with Spain, where the Church’s cooperation with Franco created lasting reputational harm. 1
Patterson links post‑liberalism to recent American politics, citing JD Vance’s 2023 identification as a “post‑liberal right” figure as evidence that the ideology already influences U.S. elections. The book also references the defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whose illiberal governance was once praised by post‑liberals, to illustrate the inevitable collapse of such regimes. 1
Cordileone concludes that “illiberal church‑state regimes are not the solution,” urging Catholics to witness the Gospel within “the imperfect, but reformable, structures of modern democracy” rather than pursuing failed political ideologies. 1*
Assess Catholicism’s response to postliberal ideology
Catholicism’s response to postliberal ideology is best described as critical engagement rather than simple acceptance or rejection. The Church shares postliberalism’s concern that modern liberalism can become relativistic, technocratic, economically unjust, and hostile to religious conviction. Yet Catholic teaching does not endorse abandoning constitutional liberty, democratic participation, religious freedom, or pluralist cooperation. It seeks instead to purify political liberalism through truth, virtue, human dignity, and the common good.
“Postliberalism” is not a single, officially defined school. In contemporary Catholic debates, it generally refers to arguments associated with thinkers such as Patrick Deneen, John Milbank, Adrian Pabst, and D. C. Schindler. Its central claim is that liberalism is not merely a neutral political arrangement but a comprehensive way of life—one that shapes families, education, economics, law, and moral imagination.
Catholic postliberals argue that liberalism’s promise of a neutral public order, in which individuals freely pursue their own conceptions of life so long as they do not harm others, has proved unstable. According to this critique, liberalism has produced not only liberty but also inequality, cultural homogenization, materialism, and new forms of coercion. James Keating summarizes the postliberal diagnosis as the claim that liberalism has “failed because it has succeeded”: its internal logic has generated consequences contrary to its stated purposes.
A deeper philosophical objection concerns the status of truth. D. C. Schindler argues that liberalism changed the terms of public reasoning by displacing truth as the standard by which reality is judged. In its place, the individual will or procedural choice becomes decisive. This criticism has a clear affinity with Catholic anthropology: human freedom is not the power to invent reality, but the capacity to pursue the good and to respond to truth.
The postliberal critique is therefore strongest when it exposes the anthropological assumptions of liberalism—its understanding of the human person as primarily autonomous, choosing, consuming, and rights-bearing. Catholic theology can recognize that political institutions are never morally neutral when they are built upon an inadequate account of the human person.
Catholicism agrees that public life cannot be sustained indefinitely by the belief that truth is inaccessible or purely subjective. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, drawing on Joseph Ratzinger, describes the cultural crisis produced when truth is bracketed out and reality is treated as something determined by the individual. He calls for a recovery of “the primacy of truth,” grounded not only in philosophy but in Christ, who is the true light enlightening humanity.
This is compatible with the Catholic conviction that politics cannot be separated from morality. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith teaches that the lay faithful must bring Christian values into public life while acting according to a properly formed conscience. Political participation is not an optional concession to secular society but part of the Christian responsibility to serve the common good.
Postliberalism rightly emphasizes that a society cannot be maintained by laws and procedures alone. Democratic institutions require citizens capable of self-restraint, solidarity, justice, sacrifice, and concern for the vulnerable. Catholic tradition therefore welcomes the postliberal emphasis on virtue, provided virtue is understood in relation to truth, grace, and humanity’s final end in God.
Cordileone presents Catholic education as ordered not merely toward employment or worldly success but toward beatitudo—human fulfillment in God. He identifies faith and reason, virtue, and the sacramental worldview as essential pillars of Catholic education. This offers a constructive Catholic alternative to both liberal individualism and purely political attempts to restore social cohesion.
The Church’s answer to a fragmented culture is consequently not only electoral or legislative. It includes families, schools, parishes, religious communities, works of mercy, and habits of worship. Catholicism seeks to form persons and communities capable of living the truth before it seeks to control political structures.
Catholic social teaching shares postliberalism’s dissatisfaction with a society organized around isolated individual preference. The common good is not simply the aggregate of private interests; it includes the social conditions necessary for persons and communities to flourish.
Bruce Marshall emphasizes that Catholics are called to work for the good of the whole society, including non-Catholics. The Church’s hospitals, schools, shelters, and works of mercy manifest this universal social responsibility. Human dignity and rights are not creations of the state but arise from the person’s being made in the image of God.
This point both supports and corrects postliberalism. It supports the critique of excessive individualism, but it prevents the common good from becoming a project for the benefit of only a religious or cultural majority. The Catholic common good includes every person, especially the poor, vulnerable, unborn, elderly, disabled, and socially excluded.
A major danger in some postliberal rhetoric is the tendency to treat liberal democracy as intrinsically illegitimate. Catholic teaching does not permit such a blanket conclusion.
The CDF states that democratic societies provide a genuine form of participation in directing the political community. Catholics may vote, hold office, deliberate, advocate, and cooperate with others in seeking political solutions for the common good. The faithful are “never to relinquish” participation in public life.
This does not mean that every liberal principle is compatible with Catholicism. The Church rejects doctrinaire liberalism when it absolutizes autonomy, denies objective moral truth, or excludes religion from public life. Nevertheless, it can recognize genuine goods in constitutional government: accountability, legal protections, participation, limits on state power, and peaceful transfer of authority.
Catholicism therefore distinguishes between liberalism as an ideology and particular political institutions or rights that may exist within societies historically shaped by liberalism. The distinction is important. A Catholic may criticize liberal anthropology while defending certain legal and political arrangements that protect human dignity.
Catholicism also resists the postliberal temptation to regard religious freedom as an abandonment of truth. The source material notes the continuing debate over the meaning of Dignitatis Humanae: some interpret it as a juridical accommodation to modern political arrangements, while others see a development toward a more personalist account of freedom. What is common to these interpretations is that the Council did not embrace doctrinaire liberalism.
The Catholic understanding of religious freedom is not that all claims are equally true. Rather, the human person must not be coerced in religious matters, and the search for truth must respect the dignity and responsibility of the person. Freedom is ordered to truth; it is not liberation from truth.
This is a crucial corrective to both extremes:
The Church’s position protects the public significance of truth without making forced religious conformity the basis of political order.
Some Catholic postliberal arguments favor a strategic withdrawal from liberal public life in order to strengthen Catholic institutions and identity. There can be prudential value in building robust Catholic communities, schools, families, and forms of economic cooperation. However, withdrawal cannot become indifference toward the wider society.
The CDF teaches that Catholics must cooperate with other citizens, respecting the rightful autonomy of the temporal order. Catholic involvement in politics is not intended to exercise ecclesiastical power or eliminate legitimate freedom of opinion on contingent matters.
The Church’s mission is therefore neither cultural surrender nor political domination. It is evangelization, sanctification, service, and the moral transformation of society. Catholics must engage the public order without identifying the Gospel with any particular political regime, party, nation, or civilizational myth.
A Catholic response to postliberalism should have four elements.
The Church must resist relativism and confidently proclaim objective moral truth. Pope John Paul II urged bishops to teach Catholic moral doctrine clearly and to present “the inviting splendor” of truth, which is ultimately Jesus Christ himself. At the same time, he stressed that all people struggle with sin and require grace.
This prevents Catholic political witness from becoming merely punitive or triumphalist. Truth is not a weapon for humiliating opponents; it is a reality ordered toward human liberation and communion with God.
Catholicism should defend genuine freedom while rejecting autonomy understood as self-creation. Freedom requires moral and spiritual formation. A person is freer when capable of truth, love, self-command, and self-gift—not merely when protected from external restrictions.
This approach allows Catholics to criticize both libertarian individualism and collectivist coercion. The human person is neither an isolated atom nor a mere instrument of the state, nation, market, or religious community.
Postliberalism correctly emphasizes the importance of institutions between the individual and the state: families, churches, schools, associations, local communities, and professional bodies. Catholic social thought can endorse this emphasis through its concern for solidarity and the social nature of the person.
The family is especially significant. Pope Leo XIV describes it as the basis of society and a “domestic church” essential for transmitting the faith. He also calls for pastoral accompaniment of families amid cultural change, fragility, poverty, and violence. A Catholic response cannot be reduced to restoring past political arrangements; it must renew the concrete communities in which Christian life is actually learned.
The postliberal critique often identifies real failures, but its polemical style can become corrosive. Catholic public argument must not imitate the contempt, absolutism, or factionalism it criticizes.
Pius XI instructed Catholic writers to combine strength with moderation and charity: they should neither compromise truth nor disguise it, but must refute error in a way demonstrating that they are moved by Christian charity. This principle is particularly important when postliberal movements portray political opponents as enemies of Christianity rather than as fellow citizens who may possess partial insights and legitimate concerns.
The Church’s opposition to ideological confusion must also remain joined to respect for persons. For example, the CDF condemns violence and malice against homosexual persons and insists that their intrinsic dignity must be respected in word, action, and law, while maintaining Catholic moral teaching. The general lesson is that doctrinal clarity and personal charity are not alternatives.
Catholicism’s response to postliberal ideology is affirmative in diagnosis but selective in prescription.
Postliberalism offers a valuable critique of:
But Catholic teaching cannot accept postliberalism when it:
The most faithful Catholic position is therefore neither “more liberalism” nor “postliberal political conquest.” It is a public theology of truth, virtue, solidarity, subsidiarity, human dignity, religious freedom properly understood, and participation in the common good. Catholics should challenge the false anthropology of liberalism while preserving whatever political arrangements genuinely protect persons and enable peaceful cooperation. They should build strong Catholic communities, but not abandon society; defend moral truth, but not coerce belief; and engage public life, but without confusing the Kingdom of God with any earthly regime.
The Catholic response to postliberalism is ultimately a call to make society more human by directing freedom toward truth and truth toward charity.