The push to wed the American right to Catholicism is not new, but it has reached a fever pitch. I’m a friend of both — by all means be Catholic, and by all means be right-wing — but please do not imagine that this marriage is anything short of a blunder.

The vows are all but ready. JD Vance has just released a conversion memoir, Communion, in which he attributes his rise to capitalizing on “the fusion between Republican politics and the Christianity of my youth.” A cadre of intellectuals — notably, Patrick Deneen, whom Vance cites as a major influence, and Adrian Vermeule — are busy drafting the philosophical foundations for this union. The popular National Conservatism manifesto declares that in a Christian-majority nation, a subtle way of saying “America,” “public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision.” The Dispatch, in its documentary on all of this, asked in earnest whether Catholicism has become “the backbone” of the right.