Catholic Progressives And the Culture War

November 19, 2021
ByGeorge Weigel

Among those in the ultramundane pantheon of communist mega-monsters, Lev Davidovich Bronstein (better known by his Bolshevik nom de guerre, Leon Trotsky) is a more interesting human personality than Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Joseph Stalin or, in the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, “Uncle Joe”). Trotsky actually had ideas, however misshapen, and something vaguely resembling a conscience.

Stalin was pathologically power-mad and had no discernible conscience whatsoever. Trotsky was also clever with words, as in the quote about the class struggle often attributed to him: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Whether or not Trotsky put it that pithily — opinions differ — there is an analogous truth many self-identified progressive Catholics miss. So to my progressive Catholic friends, I say: You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war…