¹ See Faggioli, Massimo, Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (New London: Bayard, 2021)Google Scholar (also available in Italian and in French); Graziano, Manlio, In Rome We Trust: The Rise of Catholics in American Political Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020 Google Scholar, also in Italian).

² See Hollenbach, David, “Public Theology in America: Some Questions for Catholicism after John Courtney Murray,” Theological Studies 37, no. 2 (1976): 290–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph A. Komonchak, “The Silencing of John Courtney Murray,” in Cristianesimo nella Storia. Saggi in onore di Giuseppe Alberigo [Christianity in History. Essays in honor of Giuseppe Alberigo], ed. Alberto Melloni et al. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 657–702; Hudock, Barry, Struggle, , Condemnation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey toward Vatican II (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Susanna De Stradis, “Not Quite Silenced: Understanding the Censoring of John Courtney Murray,” Commonweal, December 2021, 10–11.

³ Murray, John Courtney, “E Pluribus Unum: The American Consensus,” in We Hold These Truths. Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 43–58 Google Scholar.

⁴ Murray, “E Pluribus Unum: The American Consensus,” 44.

⁵ Murray, 46.

⁶ Murray, 47.

⁷ Murray, 49.

⁸ Murray, 49–50.

⁹ Murray, 51.

¹⁰ Murray, 53.

¹¹ Murray, 56.

¹² Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, “Wie viel Staat die Gesellschaft braucht” [How much state does society need], in Wissenschaft, Politik, Verfassungsgericht. Aufsätze von Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde [Science, politics, constitutional court. Essays by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde] (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 53–63 Google Scholar, at 53 (expanded version of an article originally published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 8, 1999, p. 12, with the title “Wie viel Staat die Gesellschaft braucht”). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

¹³ Böckenförde, “Wie viel Staat die Gesellschaft braucht,” 54.

¹⁴ “Wird dieser Entwicklung freier Lauf gelassen, entsteht aus der sozialen Ungleichheit soziale Unfreiheit, weil—je länger je mehr—die Voraussetzungen zur Realisierung der rechtlichen Freiheit fehlen.” Böckenförde, 57 (emphasis original).

¹⁵ “There is almost no room in it for freedom that is not administered by the state, and people become dependent in new ways.” Böckenförde, 59. In this paragraph he also includes a long quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (vol. 2, book 4, chapter 6) on the limits of the interventions of the state.

¹⁶ “[L]eitender und begrenzender Gesichtspunkt ist die Hilfe zur Freiheit.” Böckenförde,” 60.

¹⁷ “Hilfe und Sicherung zur Ermöglichung von Freiheit,” Böckenförde. 60

¹⁸ See also, for example, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Der säkularisierte, religionsneutrale Staat als sittliche Idee—Die Reinigung des Glaubens durch die Vernunft” [The secularized, religion-neutral state as a moral idea—the purification of faith through reason], in Wissenschaft, Politik, Verfassungsgericht, 84–93; the essays in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Kirche und christlicher Glaube in den Herausforderungen der Zeit. Beiträge zur politisch-theologischen Verfassungsgeschichte 1957–2002 [Church and Christian faith in the challenges of the time. Contributions to the political-theological constitutional history 1957–2002], 2nd ed. (Munster: Lit, 2007), many of which are included in English translation in Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings, ed. Mirjam Künkler, and Stein, Tine, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the essays in Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Recht, Staat, Freiheit: Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie, Staatstheorie und Verfassungsgeschichte [Law, state, freedom: Studies in legal philosophy, state theory and constitutional history] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), many of which are included in Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings, ed. Mirjam Künkler, and Stein, Tine, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Der säkularisierte Staat. Sein Charakter, seine Rechtfertigung und seine Probleme im 21. Jahrhundert [The secularized state. Its character, justification and problems in the 21st century] (Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2007); in translation: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “The Secularized State: Its Character, Justification and Problems in the 21st Century [2007],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law, and Democracy, 220–37.

¹⁹ For another important comparison, that between Böckenförde and the renowned US historian of the Catholic tradition and distinguished federal appellate judge John T. Noonan Jr. (1926–2017), see Michael J. Hollerich, “The Böckenförde Paradox. What a German Jurist Can Teach American Catholics,” Commonweal, December 2017, 22–25.

²⁰ See, for example, Michael Baxter, “Murray’s Mistake: The Political Divisions a Theologian Failed to Foresee,” America, March 12, 2014, https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/murrays-mistake; William Cavanaugh, “If You Render unto God What Is God’s, What Is Left for Caesar?,” Review of Politics 71, no. 4 (2009): 607–19; the contributions in Philpott, Daniel and Anderson, Ryan T., eds., A Liberalism Safe for Catholicism? Perspectives from the Review of Politics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

²¹ See Timothy Troutner, “The New Integralists: What They Get Wrong, and Why We Can’t Ignore Them,” Commonweal, November, 2020, 32–37. Recent examples of Catholic integralism in the United States (with endorsement from Catholic bishops and academics in prime Catholic universities) include the following: P. Edmund Waldenstein and Peter A. Kwasniewski, eds., Integralism and the Common Good: Selected Essays from The Josias, vol. 1: Family, City, and the State (New York: Angelico Press, 2021); Thomas Crean and Alan Fiminter, Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae, 2020)Google Scholar.

²² About this, see Massimo Faggioli, “What Joe Biden (and all American Catholics) Owe Jesuit John Courtney Murray,” America, January 19, 2021, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/01/19/joe-biden-john-courtney-murray-who-was-239757.

²³ See Cacciari, Massimo, Il lavoro dello spirito. Saggio su Max Weber [The work of the spirit. An essay on Max Weber] (Milan: Adelphi, 2020), 65–95 Google Scholar.

²⁴ Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “The State as an Ethical State [1978],” in Künkler and Stein, Constitutional and Political Theory, 86–107, at 140.

²⁵ Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes [Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World] (December 7, 1965), § 76.

²⁶ Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae [Declaration on Religious Freedom] (December 7, 1965), § 13.

²⁷ About this, see the work on the genealogy of the idea of freedom and of the state by Quentin Skinner; for the differences between Skinner and Alasdair MacIntyre, a Catholic thinker very much at the center of the contemporary Catholic narratives critical of political modernity, see Émile Perreau-Saussine, “Quentin Skinner in Context,” Review of Politics 69, no. 1 (2007): 106–22.

²⁸ For an in-depth analysis, see Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein, “Böckenförde’s Political Theory of the State,” in Künkler and Stein, Constitutional and Political Theory, 38–53.

²⁹ Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “The Concept and Problems of the Constitutional State [1997],” in Künkler and Stein, Constitutional and Political Theory, 141–51, at 143.

³⁰ See the classical distinction made by Alois Grillmeier between different kinds of conciliar reception in the early church: official reception (by the hierarchy); theological reception (by theologians); and spiritual reception (by the baptized faithful): Alois Grillmeier, “The Reception of Chalcedon in the Roman Catholic Church,” Ecumenical Review, no. 22 (1970): 383–411; Grillmeier, Alois, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2, From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590–604), Part One: Reception and Contradiction: The Development of the Discussion about Chalcedon from 451 to the Beginning of the Reign of Justinian (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), 7–10 Google Scholar.

³¹ One symptom of this gap is the revival of Catholic integralism in North America and the United Kingdom in the context of a political-theological radical critique of liberalism, for example in the writings of Thomas Pink and Adrian Vermeule.

³² About this, see Faggioli, Massimo, Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2017), 94–122 Google Scholar.

³³ About this, see Vicini, Andrea, “Papa Francesco, i vaccini e la salute globale” [Pope Francis, vaccines, and global health], Civiltà Cattolica, no. 4115 (2021): 423–33Google Scholar. For the reactions of influential US Catholics against Pope Francis on this, see the articles on the pandemic published, for example, in First Things and Crisis magazine and various statements by influential US Catholic prelates. The lecture given by Australian cardinal George Pell in St. Patrick Cathedral in New York City on December 3, 2021, was another example of how the Catholic “culture war” narrative against secularism and the secular state continued to drive the underestimation of the COVID-19 pandemic almost two years after the beginning of this major global health emergency.

³⁴ Benigno, Francesco and Lavenia, Vincenzo, Peccato o crimine: la Chiesa di fronte alla pedofilia [Sin or crime: the church in the face of pedophilia] (Rome: Laterza, 2021), 244 Google Scholar (translation mine). About this dominance of the model of an idealized society and the postmodern, see Roberto Calasso, L’innominabile attuale [The unnamable present] (Milan: Adelphi, 2017; Calasso, Roberto, The Unnamable Present, trans. Dixon, Richard (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), 24–31 Google Scholar.

³⁵ See MacAlinden, Anne-Marie, “Sexual Abuse within Institutional Contexts,” in Sex Crimes: Transnational Problems and Global Perspectives, ed. Ackerman, Alissa R. and Furman, Rich (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 173–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization [1967],” in Künkler and Stein, Religion, Law, and Democracy, 152–67.

³⁷ About this, see the last book by one of the most important Italian philosophers of the twentieth century, Remo Bodei (1938–2019): Bodei, Remo, Dominio e sottomissione. Schiavi, animali, macchine, Intelligenza Artificiale [Domination and submission: Slaves, animals, machines, artificial intelligence] (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2019), 286–93Google Scholar, 380–87.

³⁸ See Judt, Tony, “What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?,” in When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995–2010, ed. Homans, Jennifer (London: Penguin, 2015), 319–38Google Scholar.