It’s nice to hear that the Catholic Herald will be opening an American edition. Certainly with Damian Thompson’s involvement the UK original has improved by leaps and bounds. A recent article in the American Conservative, however,  by Michael Warren Davis, billed as the “US editor of the Catholic Herald,”  reaises grave doubts about the direction of the new publication.

Mr Davis, in Joe Sobran, Recovered from the Ashes, indeed has the merit of calling attention to a great commentator whose writings on social topics, especially abortion, are becoming more relevant by the day. But in fact the bulk of this article is a long diatribe against the “antisemite” Sobran – indeed, “there can be no posthumous rehabilitation for the man himself.”  We should embrace the ideas of Sobran, says Davis, while condemning the man. So Davis advocates a rediscovery of “Sobranism” without Sobran just like, after the alleged “scandal” of Charlottesville,  “conservatives” divorced  “Trumpism” from Trump. A view which entirely accords with the party line of  Mr Dreher and company at the American Conservative – where one today finds, with the exception of the contributions of Pat Buchanan, only endless posts denouncing Trump. It is instructive to see how “conservatives ” once more explicitly endorse the tactics of the  left establishment –   the ostracism and  damnatio memoriae of opponents –  just as William F. Buckley and the “pro-life” Human Life Review practiced  them in Sobran’s own day.

But. Mr Davis adds, there is one further great merit of the thought of Sobran: it is a “small-c Catholic” “best defense” against the Catholic “integralism”  of Brent Bozell and the Triumph magazine “crowd.”   You see, Joe Sobran was allegedly one of the few who “addressed the rise of neo-intgralism ” and “have engaged with integralism on dogmatic grounds.”  Amazing, is it not, that the supposedly exorcised ghost of a long-dead Catholic publication still represents a kind of ultimate adversary for Mr Davis  – one so threatening that even Sobran can be welcomed back to confront it.

Aside from its numerous factual inaccuracies, Mr Davis’s article is a remarkable witness to the atavistic drive of  “conservatives” to reach some kind of accommodation with the reigning political and media establishment.  Given the innumerable reverses the conservatives have recently suffered in both politics and the Church one would have expected that, like elsewhere in the conservative movement,  a process of reconsideration of  positions would have set in. But that’s clearly not happened yet in the case of either Mr Davis or the American Conservative. I have serious concerns about the new US Catholic Herald to the extent the views described above will predominate there. But I do agree with Mr Davis on one thing: the writings of Joe Sobran are a treasure of insights that every (real) conservative needs to explore. And in so doing he will rediscover – contrary to the recommendations of Mr Davis –  the personality of the man Sobran himself.

(SOURCE)