The Conservative Catholic Project: Past, Present, and Future

The day before his elevation to the Sacred College of Cardinals was announced, Archbishop Francis George of Chicago, delivering an unprepared homily at a Saturday evening Mass, threw down a challenge to “liberal Catholicism.” He called it “an exhausted project” that “no longer gives life” to a Church it was so bent on critiquing. But just as quickly, he cautioned that the answer to this “turning point in the life of the Church” is “not to be found in a type of conservative Catholicism obsessed with particular practices and so sectarian in its outlook that it cannot serve as a sign of unity of all peoples in Christ.”

Having criticized both warring camps within the Church, the cardinal-designate offered what he thought the faithful needed most: “The answer is simply Catholicism, in all its fullness and depth, a faith able to distinguish itself from any cultures and yet able to engage and transform them all, a faith joyful in all the gifts Christ wants to give us and open to the whole world he died to save.”

Cardinal George is not the first to call for “simply Catholicism” or a “pure Catholicism” untainted by labels or untorn by factions. St. Paul berated the Corinthians for choosing him or Apollos, the Council of Constance sidelined three rivals for the papacy so it could elect the new and unifying Pope Martin V, and Pope Paul VI lifted the excommunication of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to reconcile Eastern and Western churches. Other bishops and commentators have reminded Catholics that their sensibilities should be neither left nor right: they should belong to the Lord. “Catholic” means “universal.” Sectarian squabbles should be antithetical to Catholicism.

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Such squabbles, however, are as innate to Church life as dogmas and sacraments. They have often crippled her works and compromised her witness, as Cardinal George pointed out. They arise from a paradox: the universal can only be expressed and grasped through particulars. There is indeed one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, but “pure Catholicism” does not exist. Believers receive and interpret the universal faith in different ways depending on time, language, culture, and circumstance. Varied interpretations, though not typically fatal, can potentially give rise to heresy and schism if pushed beyond the bounds of the Church’s dogmatic definitions.

Yet differences in theology and practice can, in fact, be valuable. When balanced as an aspect or expression of the universal, alternate accents on the one mystery of salvation enrich the Church and the lives of the faithful. Some differences are cultural: there are eastern and western theological traditions, multiple liturgical rites, national hymns, and practices. Other differences stem from emphasizing a particular dimension of the Gospel, called a charism: Dominicans preach, Franciscans embrace poverty, Benedictines pray without ceasing, Vincentians perform works of charity. Still others are ways of living in the world animated by a specific spirit: religious third orders, guilds of Catholic professionals, the Knights Templar, the Knights of Columbus, Opus Dei, charismatic movements, Communion and Liberation. Each was born at a particular time to serve a particular need within the Church and within the world. Each seeks, in its unique way, to advance the kingdom of God.

The pressures brought upon the Church by modernity have given birth to another way of living in the world: conservative Catholicism. Amid Modernity’s ambitions to upend governments and the Church herself in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, conservative Catholicism offers time-tested teachings, practices, and moral laws as the means for building the kingdom of God. Its mission is twofold: to sanctify the world that has forsaken Christianity as its cornerstone, and to buttress the Church lest she bend her knee to the world’s commands. Its means are the “permanent things” of the faith: Scripture, tradition, the Mass and the sacraments, the rosary, the saints, the teachings of the Magisterium, and the authority of the pope.

Because of its opposition to political and ecclesial innovation, and because of its association with right-wing politics, conservative Catholicism has drawn ire from other groups within the Church—including the Vatican during the twelve-year reign of Pope Francis. Critics insult it as “the Republican Party at prayer” or “Christian nationalism.” A kernel of truth exists in these invectives, for conservative Catholicism possesses a dual orientation: it seeks not only the things that are above, but also the incorporation of divine ideals into the social and political orders, often through the use of secular means and arguments. These worldly efforts open conservative Catholicism to its most tantalizing temptation: to allow political forces—and not the faith—to drive its motives and priorities.

When rightly lived, however, conservative Catholicism is neither divisive nor backwardist nor out of touch with the needs of the ordinary faithful. It may not be a charism given by God, but it has a mission, a vocation, a project: to incarnate Christ into the social order through traditional means so faith, rooted in healthy soil, can bear fruit in a hostile world.

Conservatism: Preserving the “permanent things” of, and for, society

Catholicism is not merely a set of doctrines and religious practices. It is a way of being so that, in the words of St. Paul, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). It was formed in response to God’s revelation; its indefectible Church guarantees its doctrines and sacraments as the means of salvation.

Conservatism claims neither revelation nor ideology. It is, as described by Russell Kirk, “a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.” It identifies certain dispositions within human nature, including preferring the established modus vivendi, and offers them as models for humane living. Lacking an authoritative organ of interpretation, competing schools of conservatism crowd the landscape. Yet all these schools believe that the wisdom of the past, the tried and true—what the Romans called the mos maiorum, the custom of the ancestors—offers the firmest foundation for domestic peace.

Conservatism grew from a type of character into a social and political movement when the French Revolution sought to destroy the government, the social order, and the Church under the aegis of Reason. Revolutionary ideals swiftly swept through Europe and then to America. In response, adherents of what was pejoratively dubbed the ancien régime found a champion in English statesman Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France articulated a conservative vision for societies anchored in a divine plan.

“Each contract of each particular state,” Burke wrote, “is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by an invisible oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place.” In Burke’s conservative state, customs, religions, traditions, laws, and institutions—what Russell Kirk, following T.S. Eliot, called the “permanent things” of healthy society—direct men’s rebellious wills toward good ends and ensure social stability; to eradicate these things or replace them with alien inventions brings inevitable doom. For a society to change, as it must, it has to remain anchored in its past. Permanence and change, preservation and reform, continuity and progress exist in healthy tension; however, the former must shape the latter.

Catholic life: Tensions between permanence and reform

By its nature, Catholicism is a conservative religion: it conserves a revelation it received from God. As Vatican II’s Dei Verbum puts it, “the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.” St. Paul, though preaching as if we have no lasting city, established churches wherever he traveled, saw to their longevity by appointing elders to govern, and chastised those who lived in idleness rather than toiled for their daily bread. “So then, brethren,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess 2:15).

As centuries passed and the Gospel spread, the Church’s teaching, life, and worship all developed. That is, they changed in continuity with their initial forms, often at the impetus of doctrinal challenges and secular assertions of power. Debate over how faithfully this development remained to its original revelation sundered Christendom into Catholic and Protestant camps. From 1545 to 1563, Catholic bishops convened at Trent, where they re-articulated and further developed the beliefs they had received from the apostles. Reforms were proposed and adopted, but the essence of Catholic life continued.

In this sense, Catholicism in practice was traditional rather than conservative: it functioned according to a set way of living that was handed on from one generation to the next. “Conservatism,” writes Daniel McCarthy, “is what is required when the foundations of society can no longer be taken for granted.” Even amidst the political upheavals that commenced in 1789, the practice of Catholicism changed little from the perspective of the faithful: worship, sacraments, and catechetical instruction remained largely constant, even as they were transported to the United States.

Then Catholicism experienced its own revolution.

After being carried through St. Peter’s Square robed in ecclesial pomp, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with a masterful speech that described his conservative purpose: to introduce reform within the context of permanence. The council’s “greatest concern,” he declared, was “that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be more effectively defended and presented.” What was necessary, the pope continued, was “that the whole of Christian doctrine, with no part of it lost, be received in our times by all with a new fervor.” Unchangeable doctrine to which all Catholics must loyally submit should be “investigated and presented in the way demanded by our times.”

For decades prior, Catholic theologians had warred beyond the sight of the ordinary faithful over the most appropriate approaches to doctrine, including whether a ressourcement to the Church Fathers should supplant the dominant scholastic methodology. These theological disputes burst into the open as the conciliar documents were publicly debated in the press. Pope John’s desire for doctrinal aggiornamento reached its high-water mark in the Council’s powerful constitutions Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium. Additional constitutions on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, as well as the declaration on the Church’s relationship to other religions, Nostra Aetate, introduced substantial changes in tone and in practice to Church life.

Yet what was conveyed to the world was not development, not reform, but innovation: the Church was rejecting her Medieval ways to join the Modern world at last. In the public imagination, the Council was making all things new.

This interpretation, dubbed “the spirit of Vatican II”, unleashed a revolutionary Jacobinism within the Church. Under the pretense of the Council, every aspect of Catholic life was utterly transformed, from the celebration of Mass to Catholic schooling to parish practices. Beautiful churches were made ugly, religious men and women cast off their habits, catechesis of the young short-circuited, missionary work halted, seminaries and convents emptied, and pillars of piety such as the Rosary and Eucharistic adoration were actively discouraged. A complete transformation of the Mass from a quiet mumble in Latin into a boisterous vernacular entertainment drove home to the average Catholic that, regardless of what the documents might have said, Vatican II had buried the “Old Church” and inaugurated a new one.

At the same time, a cultural revolution was sweeping through the West. Its creed was individual freedom, its cry was sexual liberation (that hormonal birth control made possible), its weapons were feminism and cultural Marxism. Family life was rejected as a form of patriarchal oppression. The severing of sex from reproduction transformed life in the developed world: no-fault divorce, abortion, legal pornography, gay rights, and, later, in vitro fertilization and transgenderism all became de rigueur.

Sexual revolutionaries, seeking to codify their agenda into law, forged alliances with progressive political parties and declared war on the Catholic Church, which was the largest institution to stubbornly uphold the Sixth Commandment.

The synthesis of the Conservative Catholic Project

Stirred by these religious and cultural upheavals, conservative Catholicism awoke to its contemporary project: to stand athwart secular and ecclesial history yelling Stop; to preserve the Church’s moral laws and religious practices as the means of sanctifying Catholics and the world; to support the family as the primary cell of society; to re-evangelize the Western world that had forgotten its Christian inheritance; to facilitate the social reign of Christ the King through secular means. Conservative Catholicism set to work on two fronts: within the Church, to ensure that it engages Modernity without capitulating to it; and within the world, to keep Christianity and its moral principles as the primary shaper of the social order, while a rudderless secularism was rejecting them.

In one sense, conservatism could be viewed as the only political alternative for Catholics who adhere to the Church’s moral teachings: in a two-party system, with one advocating many practices contrary to this morality, Catholics have only one choice. This is the easy explanation for why Catholics who attend church weekly voted by wide margins for the Protestant Republican candidate over the Democratic Catholic candidate in the 2004 and 2020 presidential elections. But there is more to conservative Catholicism than political happenstance. If conservatism grows from an inner disposition to preserve the received social order, and if the world—and the Church—are changing with astonishing rapidity, conservative Catholics turn to the permanent things of faith and of culture as sure lights to illuminate a world that is not only changing but growing hostile to Christianity. Conservative-leaning politics then serve as the public expression of deeper cultural and religious beliefs.

Though Catholicism was born from above and conservatism from below, the two find their synthesis in the conservative disposition that provides a means for Catholics to live their faith in the world. In a phrase, Catholicism is for eternal salvation; conservatism is for ordered liberty. The two adjectives provide critical context for each. The faith Catholics profess promises to save men not from political dangers, but from sin and for eternal life with God. Its salvation is supernatural. Conservatism seeks liberty for individuals, but not a thinly guised libertarianism. Its liberty is ordered, ensconced within a moral order created by God and a legal order governed by men, directed by obligations toward family, neighbor, and country, and shaped by the practices of ancestors.

Following its Lord’s commands, Catholicism requires its adherents to love their neighbors as themselves and exhorts the corporal and spiritual works of mercy as the means to exercise their love. How Catholics can love their neighbor daily within the social community they inhabit is less clear. Conservatism provides one way, though certainly not the only, whereby a Catholic can navigate a broader community that, due to its size and members’ concupiscence, needs laws and restraints to function properly. In turn, by perfecting through supernatural grace the human disposition to preserve and live according to received custom, Catholicism sanctifies conservatism, baptizes the permanent things, and teaches that ordered liberty is not an end in itself, but a means to finding human perfection, which is nothing short of union with God.

The compatibility of Catholicism with conservatism does not guarantee that the two will always walk in perfect harmony. The disposition to permanence can sometimes blind Catholics, or even set them in opposition, to the need for reform, which from the beginning has been necessary for the Church’s survival and growth. It is the task of Catholics to accept what the Church has sanctioned as prudent reform—the rejection of Jewish dietary laws for Christians, the insertion of the extra-biblical term “consubstantial” into the creed of Nicaea, the adoption of Aristotelian vocabulary to explain theological truths, and the new approach to modernity brought by Vatican II.

Should a conservative reject these reforms whole cloth, he risks the error against which Cardinal George warned in his homily: by making his brand of Catholicism universal, he and his practice can grow narrow and sectarian—or, in extreme cases, bitter and self-righteous.

What conservative Catholicism has wrought

The essence of conservatism, as enumerated by Burke, is not a rigid clinging to bygone days and ways, but the art of simultaneously preserving while reforming. For over half a century, conservative Catholics have done exactly this: they have integrated traditional Catholic teachings and practices into new institutions founded to meet the challenges presented by a discombobulated Church and an increasingly anti-Christian society.

One type of institution has cultivated the beauty of the Church’s liturgical tradition, especially the traditional Latin Mass, as the primary source for efforts at re-evangelization. Another has promoted sacred music, art, and architecture in a Church that, since Vatican II’s close, has preferred the ugly over the beautiful. Another has championed the “Benedict Option,” the intentional building of local communities comprised of conservative Catholics. Another has set up shop in Washington, D.C., to push government and economic policies toward moral ends. Another has founded schools, universities, publishing houses, magazines, and internet platforms to educate Catholics inhabiting a Church that forgot how to catechize and attending public schools that won’t speak God’s name.

In true conservative fashion, these institutions have their own journals and websites that articulate their unique visions. And, as both conservatives and Catholics are wont to do, some of these groups jab at each other for pursuing what they perceive to be a misguided approach.

Key differences abound between the conservative Catholics who comprise these institutions—differences that stem principally from their respective attitudes toward Vatican II and the Mass. There are three chief perspectives.

One, intensely loyal to Vatican II and to the New Order of the Mass, insists that the council’s noble intentions were hijacked by Catholic liberals. This perspective represented the reigning and most widely held conservative position from the end of the council until the pontificate of Benedict XVI.

Further to the right, a second perspective, though certainly accepting Vatican II, has misgivings about certain conciliar interpretations and a strong, even pugnacious, preference for the traditional Latin Mass as celebrated before the council. This view, espoused by “traditionalists,” spent the first twenty post-conciliar years in exile until Pope John Paul II allowed for a limited celebration of the older Mass; the traditionalists continued on the margins for another two decades until Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum removed restrictions surrounding this Mass. Since then, parishes offering the traditional Mass have bloomed, and especially devout conservative Catholics of the Millennial and Gen Z generations, without necessarily being traditionalists in the former sense, have found a home there.

Finally, further to the right sits another perspective that rejects most, if not all, of Vatican II, judges the New Order of the Mass to be invalid, challenges the authority of the pope—if not rejecting him outright by claiming that the chair of St. Peter has been vacant since 1958—and casts itself as the remnant of the true faith that the Church, in apostasy, has abandoned.

Individual Catholics, of course, may hold ideas advanced by more than one of these perspectives, but it’s striking that, for the most part, conservative Catholics’ political and cultural practices correspond to their theological outlooks. Conservative Catholics of the pro-Vatican II perspective loyally vote Republican, and, aside from having more children than the norm, blend into a typical neighborhood parish. But in a parish with a traditional Latin Mass, or one with a solemn New Mass headed by a pastor prominent for his conservatism, chapel veils, neckties, and home-schoolers are much more likely to be found.

Also present, though less widespread, are postliberal political views, including a few scattered fancies for monarchy. These cultural and political tendencies are also present in communities hostile to Vatican II, but to a greater degree. The trend is clear: the more tightly conservative Catholics embrace the now counter-cultural style of traditional piety, the more intensely they challenge the prevailing secular culture in lifestyle and politics. The opposite is also the case: conservative Catholics looking to escape the culture will often seek out a Latin Mass or reverent New Mass parish, for they believe they will find what they crave there; not a few drive tremendous distances each Sunday to realize this experience. The need to identify with a group is not a phenomenon unique to the cultural left.

For this reason, of all the great works that conservative Catholics have created since the Council, institutes surrounding the traditional Latin Mass garner the most attention. Ironically, these institutes are among the most successful in implementing Vatican II’s vision of renewal. For the innovations of the New Order of the Mass, coupled with its hackneyed and occasionally impious celebration, sent some conservative Catholics to rediscover the older Mass, whose beauty had, in most parishes before the council, been concealed by uninspired, workman-like, performances. These institutes, which include new religious orders of priests, saw to the liturgical education of the faithful and the cultivation of sacred music, essential efforts that had formerly been scarce, and ones explicitly called for by Vatican II.

As a result of these reforms, the older liturgy has been celebrated with far greater solemnity and participation by the faithful after the council than before, and this older Mass has inspired many faithful, especially younger Catholics, by conveying an element of transcendence in a world drowning in immanence. But even this development has had its shadow side: some who love the older Mass have been too inclined to accuse those not drawn to it of being “lesser Catholics,” an insult taken personally by their fellow conservative Catholics who do not share their affinity.

Remarkably, most of these institutions, regardless of their focus, were founded by lay people without direct Church support, and, not infrequently, in the face of opposition from pastors, bishops, and the Vatican. In the two decades following Vatican II, many Catholic dioceses, parishes, universities, and schools openly rejected pre-conciliar theology, morality, and piety for a syncretism that tried to meld Catholicism with New Age spiritualities. Along the way, they applauded and then sanctified sexual practices championed by the cultural left. The result was a hollowed-out Church that had forsaken so much of its attractive patrimony. In restoring these lost treasures of Catholicism and making them shine brighter than before Vatican II, these post-conciliar conservative institutions fulfilled Pope John XXIII’s goals more effectively than did the Church herself and the institutes directly under her care.

These new institutions also provided an outlet for conservative Catholics seeking more traditional spiritual expressions and longing for clarity in moral teachings. Conscious of their minority status, conservative Catholics desperately sought leadership from the handful of priests and Church leaders who sympathized with them. In a few painful cases, conservative Catholics allowed support for their preferences to cloak the immorality of priests who, they believed, could never do evil because they were conservative. Eventually, they found a champion in Pope John Paul II, though it took him nearly twenty years to curtail liberal dominance of the Church. But even as the institutional Church turned in a more conservative direction, and then reached its apogee with Pope Benedict XVI, conservative Catholicism, despite helping save the Church from doctrinal contradiction and cultural irrelevancy, retained a stigma.

This stigma stemmed in part from conservative Catholicism’s association with right-wing politics. Right-leaning political parties and governments, though they may endorse the moral preferences of conservative Catholics, are coalitions of multiple interests that can support policies in tension with, or even contrary to, Catholic teaching. Less controversially, certain legitimate preferences of right-wing parties, such as limited governmental interference, free markets, and restricted immigration, do not jive with Catholics who possess a more progressive disposition. Political beliefs can be held as deeply as religious ones. Too often, the conservative Catholic project repels progressive or liberal Catholics not necessarily because of its religious dimension but because these Catholics cannot stomach the extra-ecclesial personalities and policies of the right that they detest.

Of course, those who shudder at both traditional Catholic pieties and right-wing politics have a twofold reason to reject conservative Catholicism. Among them was Pope Francis, who for twelve years publicly sparred with conservative Catholics, especially Americans and younger, more traditional priests. The former, he characterized as uncharitable misanthropes; the latter, he repeatedly chastised for being “rigid” and out of touch with their flocks. In response, conservative Catholics abandoned the deferential and even Ultramontane love they showed to John Paul and Benedict and punched back, especially over moral confusions emanating from the Argentine pontiff’s confusing teachings concerning marriage and blessings of same-sex couples. Francis responded with a crushing blow: he restricted the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass.

A unique fallout ensued: a few conservative Catholics eschewed decorum and attacked the pope personally. Wiser ones, long accustomed to resistance to their project from various corners of the hierarchy, limited their public criticisms to the issues and continued to labor in their vineyards, conscious of the old Roman maxim: a pope dies; they make another one.

The newest one, to the surprise of all, is an American, Pope Leo XIV, whose election and pre-papal social media feed hint that the global and social priorities of his predecessor will continue. At the same time, there are signs that the Chicago-born pope not only shares conservative Catholics’ moral and doctrinal concerns but also has little appetite for provoking scrums within the Church. Regardless, conservative Catholics learned a critical lesson during the Francis pontificate: their mission and work do not depend on the personal support of the pope, though it certainly helps to have it when possible. In relying not on papal favor but on the permanent things of faith, which includes a healthy filial respect for the successor of St. Peter, conservative Catholicism can transcend shifting Vatican winds.

But conservative Catholics face other dangers more potent than a fight with the sovereign pontiff. Their support for their political parties, and adopting their platform views on extra-religious matters, can prevent them from embracing the pope’s moral stance on current events or positive elements outside of their worldview. Few conservative Catholics wanted to follow John Paul II’s lead in halting capital punishment while still acknowledging its liceity. Others have expressed discomfort with advancing Dorothy Day’s cause for canonization, not because of her sanctity but because of her left-wing politics. Most opposed Pope Francis’s initiatives on the environment and his broad call for welcoming migrants.

On economic issues more broadly, Catholic Social Teaching’s comfort with government-initiated charity infuriates certain conservatives who view supply-side theory as if it were revealed truth. In 2003, when John Paul opposed the United States’ invasion of Iraq, a group of Catholic neo-conservatives turned to the Church’s just war tradition to support President George W. Bush over the pope. In 2024, most conservative Catholics gave Donald Trump a pass for transforming the GOP from a pro-life to a pro-choice party.

These conflicts expose inevitable tensions that arise when principles, practicalities, complexities, and human tendencies all collide. There is nothing inherent in conservatism that places it at odds with Catholicism. In fact, as Russell Kirk explained, conservatism was born from and believes in “a transcendent moral order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.” When it comes to prudential judgments, the Vatican and certain conservatives may well come to different conclusions. But Catholic conservatives cannot support a party or government resolution that contradicts the moral teachings of the Church. Eternal salvation must shape ordered liberty.

Conservative Catholicism: The path ahead

Today, 60 years after Vatican II, with Catholicism nearly dormant in Europe and with the majority of American Catholics having passed from uncatechized to unchurched, the conservative Catholic project remains unfinished. It will not reach its conclusion until it realizes the vision of St. Paul: “For [God] has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10).

Conservative Catholicism alone cannot answer the challenge of Modernity and the various apostasies that have spawned from its infertile soil. Other groups and other movements within the Church must also play their parts. Yet conservative Catholicism’s role in the world and in the Church is critical. To the world, pledged to religious pluralism and embarrassed of its past, it proposes a vision of a created order, an enduring morality rooted in nature, and the permanent things of family, religion, laws, and customs as the bedrocks of flourishing societies. To the Church, occasionally tempted to conceal its truths in exchange for cultural relevancy, it insists on the power of the permanent things of the faith: God’s immutable teachings, laws, and sacraments passed on through tradition.

Success depends on conservative Catholics’ ability to preserve and reform, to realize Pope John XXIII’s goal of presenting eternal truths in ways more appealing to the changed times, as it has done so well with its many institutions founded since Vatican II, and to do so animated by grace and supernatural charity. Should conservative Catholics mistake temporal forms for eternal truths, or prioritize political expediency over Catholic principles, their witness will be compromised.

Typical conservative overstatement views the current times as the worst times and any crisis as an imminent calamity. It is tempting in this hour to make the prayer of the disciples at Emmaus a rallying cry: “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent” (Luke 24:29). But Modernity is not spent, nor is Catholicism about to disappear from the earth. Conservative Catholic urgency comes not from the fleeting hour, but from a zeal for souls who could be lost if they do not find Jesus Christ, the way to God, and to a purposeful life on earth. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The ongoing conservative Catholic project aims to ensure that his habitation will continue in the Church and in the world.