The National Catholic Register reports on the launch of CatholicPOST, the Association for the Renewal of Catholic Political and Social Thought, whose inaugural conference “The Renaissance of Catholic Social Teaching” was held at Budapest’s Ludovika University of Public Service on March 9–10, 2026. The initiative, spearheaded by Hungarian philosopher Ferenc Hörcher, brings together European and American academics who claim that the COVID-19 crisis exposed “anthropological confusion” in Western societies and that Catholic social teaching offers the remedy. The article presents the project as a nonpartisan scholarly platform aimed at restoring Catholic intellectual influence in public discourse, with plans for a second conference in Kraków and ties to institutions such as Princeton’s James Madison Program and the University of Notre Dame. The initiative explicitly invokes the legacy of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and claims continuity with the trajectory of Pope Leo XIV, portrayed as synthesizing the teachings of Leo XIII and Pope Francis through the framework of “integral human development.”
A Project Born of Lockdown Desperation, Not Supernatural Faith
The very genesis of CatholicPOST reveals its fundamentally naturalistic orientation. Its founders trace their inspiration not to prayer, the sacraments, or the Church’s perennial magisterium, but to the COVID-19 lockdowns — a moment of secular crisis that prompted them to “think back again on the basics of social life.” That Hörcher frames this return as something best done “on the grounds of the Catholic tradition, pointing back to Aristotle and forward to the social teaching of the Church” is itself revealing: Aristotle, a pagan philosopher, occupies pride of place as the starting point, while the supernatural deposit of faith is reduced to a tradition useful for social organization. This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: the elevation of human reason as the ultimate standard by which man arrives at knowledge, with divine revelation serving merely as an auxiliary to philosophical investigation (proposition 4: “All the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason; hence reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at the knowledge of every kind”).
The project’s self-presentation as a “nonpartisan platform” open to all thinkers “willing to engage seriously with the tradition” further exposes its departure from Catholic ecclesiology. The Church is not a debating society open to all comers; she is the Mystical Body of Christ, the one ark of salvation, outside which there is no redemption. That CatholicPOST welcomes non-Catholics as equal participants in shaping Catholic political thought is a direct consequence of the religious indifferentism condemned by Pius IX (proposition 17: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those are not at all in the true Church of Christ”) and the latitudinarianism anathematized in the very same document.
“Catholic Social Teaching” as an Evolving, Living Tradition
Perhaps the most dangerous claim advanced in this article comes from Father Avelino Chico of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, who presented Catholic social teaching as “a living intellectual tradition still evolving in response to the ‘new things’ of each age — from industrial modernity in the time of Rerum Novarum to contemporary social challenges such as artificial intelligence, migration, ecological crisis, and widening inequality.” This language of a “living” and “evolving” tradition is not Catholic; it is Modernist. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the proposition that “the dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (proposition 22), and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58).
The Church’s social doctrine does not “evolve.” It is rooted in the immutable truths of faith and morals, applied by the Church’s teaching authority to changing circumstances. Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum did not introduce a new doctrine; it applied the eternal principles of justice and charity to the novel conditions of industrial capitalism. To speak of social teaching as “evolving” in response to artificial intelligence or ecological crisis is to reduce the Church’s magisterium to a kind of philosophical think-tank that adapts its conclusions to the spirit of the age — precisely the error Pius IX condemned when he rejected the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Syllabus, proposition 80).
The Ghost of Jacques Maritain and the Human Rights Heresy
Hörcher’s invocation of Jacques Maritain as a historical precedent for CatholicPOST’s project is deeply telling. Maritain was one of the principal intellectual architects of the post-World War II human rights framework, particularly the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His contribution to this document is celebrated in the article as a positive example of Catholic influence on political life. Yet the entire edifice of modern “human rights” is built upon the liberal revolutionary principle that rights inhere in the individual as such, anterior to and independent of God — a proposition directly contrary to Catholic teaching.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established with crystalline clarity that Christ the King possesses supreme authority over all men, nations, and states, and that “there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” The modern concept of “human rights,” by contrast, places the autonomous individual at the center and treats divine law as one opinion among many in the public square. Pius IX condemned the proposition that “Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith and the power of the Church” (Syllabus, proposition 48), yet this is precisely what Maritain’s human rights framework accomplishes in the political order: it constructs a public space from which the Church’s authority is systematically excluded, while inviting Catholics to participate as one interest group among many.
That CatholicPOST explicitly models itself on Maritain’s precedent reveals that its project is not a restoration of Catholic social doctrine but a continuation of the very apostasy that the pre-conciliar popes identified and condemned. The “postwar rise of the human rights framework” is not a triumph of Catholic thought; it is the Trojan horse by which naturalism and religious indifferentism captured Catholic intellectual life.
The Princeton Connection: Natural Law Without Supernatural Faith
The article highlights CatholicPOST’s ties to Princeton’s James Madison Program, led by Robert George, and to the University of Notre Dame’s natural law tradition associated with John Finnis. These connections merit scrutiny. The natural law tradition as developed by Finnis and George, while employing Thomistic language, operates within a framework that is fundamentally philosophical rather than theological. It seeks to ground moral and political norms in reason accessible to all men, without necessary reference to divine revelation, the sacraments, or the Church’s magisterial authority.
This approach, however sophisticated, is inadequate from the perspective of integral Catholic faith. The natural law is not a self-sufficient moral system; it is the participation of rational creatures in the eternal law of God, and its correct understanding requires the light of faith and the guidance of the Church’s magisterium. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas, Christ’s kingship is not merely a philosophical principle but a divinely established reality: “Christ has authority over all creatures… through the hypostatic union, Christ has authority over all creatures.” A natural law program that operates in the secular academy, divorced from the Church’s sacramental life and teaching authority, inevitably degenerates into a form of rationalism — precisely the error Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus (proposition 3: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself”).
The Usurper on Peter’s Throne: Leo XIV as False Prophet of “Integral Human Development”
The article’s portrayal of Pope Leo XIV as continuing the trajectory of Leo XIII and Pope Francis through the lens of “integral human development” deserves particular attention. The concept of “integral human development” is a post-conciliar fabrication, rooted in the modernist theology of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio and further developed by Benedict XVI and Francis. It represents a shift from the Church’s supernatural mission — the salvation of souls through faith, the sacraments, and obedience to divine law — to a naturalistic program concerned primarily with economic, social, and environmental well-being.
Pius XI, writing in Quas Primas, made abundantly clear that Christ’s kingdom “is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters.” While the Church does not deny Christ’s authority over temporal affairs, she has always taught that the temporal order is ordered toward the supernatural end of man. The post-conciliar concept of “integral human development” inverts this hierarchy, treating the spiritual and temporal as co-equal dimensions of a single “integral” whole. This is not Catholic teaching; it is the theological equivalent of the “integral humanism” of Jacques Maritain, which sought to construct a “new Christendom” on the basis of shared naturalistic principles rather than the explicit profession of Catholic faith.
That Leo XIV is presented as synthesizing Leo XIII with Francis is itself a scandal. Leo XIII authored Rerum Novarum, a document firmly rooted in the Church’s supernatural mission and her authority over the moral order. Francis, by contrast, propagated a vision of the Church as a “field hospital” focused on inclusion, dialogue, and environmental activism — a vision fundamentally at odds with the Church’s perennial teaching on the necessity of conversion, the reality of sin, and the primacy of eternal salvation. To claim that these two trajectories can be synthesized through “integral human development” is to engage in the very hermeneutics of continuity condemned by the pre-conciliar magisterium.
Kraków and the Weaponization of John Paul II’s Legacy
The choice of Kraków for CatholicPOST’s second conference is presented as an homage to Poland’s Catholic intellectual tradition and the legacy of St. John Paul II. Yet this invocation is profoundly dishonest. John Paul II was, by any measure of pre-conciliar Catholic orthodoxy, a heretic and apostate who propagated the errors of the conciliar revolution throughout his pontificate: the Assisi interreligious gatherings, the embrace of religious liberty as articulated in Dignitatis Humanae, the systematic dismantling of Catholic liturgical tradition, and the advancement of a “new evangelization” that was in reality the abandonment of the Church’s missionary mandate in favor of ecumenical dialogue.
To invoke John Paul II’s legacy as a foundation for the renewal of Catholic social thought is to build on sand — or rather, on the ruins of Catholic Tradition that his pontificate did so much to demolish. The true Catholic intellectual tradition of Poland is found not in John Paul II’s personalist philosophy, which drew heavily on modern phenomenology and existentialism, but in the uncompromising witness of the Polish martyrs, the solid neo-scholastic theology of the pre-conciliar seminaries, and the integral Catholic faith that sustained the Polish people through centuries of persecution.
The Absence of the Supernatural: The Defining Silence
What is most striking about the entire article is what it does not say. There is no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the source and summit of Catholic life. There is no mention of the sacraments as the ordinary means of grace. There is no mention of the necessity of baptism for salvation. There is no mention of the reality of sin, the necessity of contrition, or the final judgment. There is no mention of the Church’s infallible teaching on the social kingship of Christ. There is no mention of the obligation of Catholic states to profess the faith and submit to the Church’s authority in matters touching the moral order.
In short, there is nothing distinctly Catholic about this project at all. It is a naturalistic, humanistic enterprise that uses Catholic vocabulary as a marketing strategy — a “munition” for young people, as Hörcher puts it, but munition of a purely intellectual and political kind. The supernatural order, which is the very reason for the Church’s existence, is entirely absent. This silence is not accidental; it is the defining characteristic of the post-conciliar apostasy. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the Modernists “proceed to act as if God did not exist,” reducing religion to a matter of human experience and social utility.
Conclusion: Not a Renaissance but a Capitulation
CatholicPOST represents not a renaissance of Catholic social teaching but its final reduction to a secular political philosophy dressed in ecclesiastical language. Its founders invoke Aristotle before the Gospel, natural law before supernatural faith, Jacques Maritain before the Church’s magisterium, and the legacy of usurpers before the immutable Tradition of the Church. Its vision of Catholic social thought as a “living,” “evolving” tradition responsive to artificial intelligence and ecological crisis is a direct repudiation of the Church’s teaching on the immutability of dogma and the primacy of the supernatural end.
The true renewal of Catholic social thought will not come from academic conferences at secular universities or from visiting scholarships at Princeton. It will come from a return to the integral Catholic faith: the unchanging doctrine of the pre-conciliar magisterium, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the traditional Latin Mass, the sacraments administered with reverence and orthodoxy, and the uncompromising proclamation of the social kingship of Christ the King over all nations, families, and individuals. Until CatholicPOST and its founders are willing to submit to this authority — the authority of the true Church, not the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican — their project will remain what it is: another exercise in naturalistic humanism, contributing not to the restoration of Christendom but to the consolidation of the abomination of desolation.
Source:
From Budapest to Princeton, Catholic Scholars Mobilize to Reconnect Faith and Political Life (ncregister.com)
Date: 18.05.2026