Cold War Catholics

This Pope and the last one have been making great progress in co-operation with Russia on everything from protecting Arab Christians to upholding the traditional definition of marriage; there is no possibility of ecclesial rapprochement with the Orthodox, but that is not what this is about.

But a certain type of Catholic, the kind that thinks that this Papacy constitutes some kind of unwelcome rupture with the last one, is cheering on the attempted relaunch of the Cold War.

There are quite a lot of people to whom the world only made sense in terms of the Cold War.

Among English-speaking Catholics, hardline Cold Warriorism made some of them Republicans when their families had always been Democrats, Conservatives when their families had always been Labour, and so on

The Democratic and Labour Parties contained many hardline Cold Warriors, and were run by them, but that is by the by.

Moreover, those Catholics' own entry turned those parties into almost monolithic vehicles for the hardline Cold War position.

Giving up all of that, and giving it up so quickly and so unexpectedly, was a terrible wrench for them.

They are relishing the chance to resume normal service.

But they are wrong.

The thing that makes sense of the world is the Faith.