The sons of giants.

The American Catholic right, then and now.

The Liberator.

A friend notes the presence of a critical mass of (politically) conservative American Catholics among the signatories of the Compact letter advocating against escalation (but in effect, if not intent, against the United States) in Ukraine. It is a very interesting phenomenon, especially for those of us who remember the preceding generation of conservative American Catholics. That older cohort was, well, not this: they were tremendously in favor of engagement in the world, and very much mindful of the examples of men like Cardinal József Mindszenty, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, and Pope St John Paul II. My own recollection of conservative American Catholicism in that historic context involves refugee Poles, and throngs in Warsaw defying Communist authorities chanting, “We want God!” I remember firsthand the Papal visit to Korea in 1984, and (secondhand, because we did not go) the beatification of the Korean martyrs at the Mass at Yeouido, which was very much continuous with local anticommunist nationalism there. 

Basically, if you were a right-of-center Catholic about a generation back, it was overwhelmingly probable that you favored the liberation of oppressed nations, their defense against aggression, and American action toward those ends. Nearly all of them, confronted with a hypothetical involving Russia invading a neighboring country and executing the local population, would have responded with some variation on: send them guns.