Leon Wieseltier’s long essay on postliberal Catholic integralists, or whatever we should call them, is a mixture of the insightful and the dismissive. (When he writes, “The difference between theology and philosophy is that philosophy inspects the foundations, whereas theology merely builds on them,” that just tells you how little theology he has read.) Mainly Wieseltier demonstrates how different the integralists’ core commitments are from his — but then we knew that already, didn’t we? 

In “Vespers,” the fifth of Auden’s “Horae Canonicae,” the poet imagines a brief crossing-of-paths in the city, at dusk: he, the nostalgic Arcadian, passes his “antitype,” the Utopian. “When lights burn late in the Citadel,” the poet thinks, “Were the city as free as they say, after sundown all her bureaus would be huge black stones”; but the Utopian thinks, “One fine night our boys will be working up there.” The integralists are in this sense Utopian: they think of power chiefly to long for it. 

They tell us what they’ll do when their boys occupy the Citadel; but what they never tell us, as far as I have been able to discover, is how they plan to get there. It’s perhaps understandable that they’re not trying to persuade Leon Wieseltier; but they’re not even trying to persuade me. They’re just talking to one another. Were they ever to begin seeking allies I might well pay close attention; but not until.