A year ago you would have been forgiven for thinking that, following a successful Brexit referendum, Ukip would begin its slow decline into obscurity. And you would have been quite wrong. “Ukip is a radical party, or it is nothing,” Nigel Farage wrote in the Daily Telegraph last week. His successor as leader, Paul Nuttall, will see to it that Ukip remains radical indeed. An advocate for stricter abortion laws, capital punishment and a burka ban, Nuttall is a sort of Tory’s Tory – a viable alternative for conservatives unimpressed by Cameronism.
But what really drives Nuttall? According to him, his Catholic faith. “On moral issues, we [Ukip], more than any other political party, are more in line with Catholic thought,” he declared back in 2015.
He’s far from an outlier. Radical right-wing movements are cropping up all over the Western world. And, almost to a man, they’re led by Catholics.
In the United States, there’s Stephen Bannon, former publisher of Breitbart and now White House chief strategist. Late last year Buzzfeed published a talk Bannon gave at the Vatican in 2014 in which he extolled an “enlightened”, “Judeo-Christian” capitalism against a “libertarian” capitalism that “looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them”. The whole thing was lifted straight out of Catholic social teaching. (Think more Leo XIII than Francis.)
In France, it’s François Fillon, presidential candidate for Les Républicains. He sent shockwaves through the secular establishment when, during last year’s primary, he claimed a nearly two-to-one victory over his rival, Alain Juppé. Like Trump’s, Fillon’s victory was a huge upset. He won by reanimating catholiques zombies: non-practising Catholics who nevertheless hold strongly to the Church’s teachings on education, marriage, abortion and euthanasia. Even though Fillon is struggling now, his primary blowout was a startling reminder that France hasn’t entirely forgotten her place of pride as the Church’s eldest daughter.
In Germany, there’s Wiebke Muhsal, the young deputy chairwoman of Alternative für Deutschland, which flaunts its support for “old gender roles”. Muhsal, like Bannon, sees a distinct role for Christian teaching in the economy. Her signature bills are pro-natal, encouraging state-backed marriage loans, children’s allowances, marriage allowances, education allowances – you name it. She gained notoriety in the English-speaking world last September when she wore a niqab to parliament as a protest against Islamic veiling. “The intention of wearing the niqab today was to represent this terrible situation for women,” she said. “A ban on such full-face veils is the right way to stop this development and to protect our liberal order.”
Most recently, Australia saw the departure of the devout Catholic Senator Cory Bernardi from the governing centre-right Liberal Party. Frustrated with centrist prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Bernardi resigned his party membership last month and formed the Australian Conservatives. His speeches and writings can only be described as Thomistic. As he wrote in his manifesto, The Conservative Revolution: “The framework of our Western moral tradition can be found in the wisdom of the Ten Commandments, and in the lessons of Christ and the life of the Apostles. Thus, secular or not, our society is based on the principles of religious faith, borne of the natural law that is engraved on our very heart, reflected in our customs and codified in our laws.”
Why is this all happening during Francis’s pontificate? Shouldn’t we expect Catholic politicians to follow the Holy Father’s lead and embrace the European Union, multiculturalism, migrants and environmental protection? In fact, it’s quite possible that the opposite is true: that the ascendance of a liberal-minded pope is precisely what is driving conservative Catholics into the political arena.
The reign of Benedict XVI was marked by an almost monastic air. As the progressive Left made huge gains in politics and culture, parties of the mainstream Right worked furiously to “modernise” and remain near the shifting political centre. With practically no one openly courting Catholic voters, and a clement but staunchly orthodox pope on St Peter’s throne, they retreated from the fray and took refuge in the Church. But when that mild scholar was succeeded by a crusading reformer, monasticism became untenable. Conservative-minded Catholics began to feel uneasy about their standing with the Vatican – and so they set out to re-Catholicise the world.
Ironically, this could be Francis’s lasting legacy. Rather than drawing Catholics into the mainstream, he may have ignited a revolution among the faithful. The Pope who has strong ties to left-wing movements in Latin America may, in fact, be a catalyst for the revival of the Catholic Right.
Michael Davis is a freelance writer based in Boston
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