The Neo-Conservative Delusion: Weigel’s Liberal Prescription for a Dead Church
George Weigel, the house intellectual of the neo-conservative establishment at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, publishes a travelogue on the National Catholic Register portal (September 23, 2026) lamenting the spiritual desert of Quebec and warning Poland against “partisan” entanglement. He diagnoses the Quebecoise collapse as the fruit of a throne-and-altar alliance shattered by the “Quiet Revolution,” prescribing a strict separation of the ecclesiastical from the political as the cure. This analysis is not merely superficial; it is a calculated diversion from the theological bankruptcy of the conciliar sect he serves. By ignoring the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, the loss of the sensus catholicus, and the invalidity of the new rites, Weigel offers a purely naturalistic political solution to a supernatural catastrophe, effectively demanding the Church surrender the Social Kingship of Christ to the secular state—a proposition condemned by Pius IX and Pius XI.