ABSTRACT
The German immigrant Catholics in the United States felt inwardly at war not only with Anglo-American liberalism, but with Anglo-American attitudes and sensibility. As the nineteenth century began, Catholic intellectual life, as if beaten down by the French Revolution and its aftermath, was organizationally at a low ebb. By mid-century, however, one could discern in Britain, in France, and in Germany a rebirth of organized Catholic intellectual life and, with returning self-confidence, the beginnings of a new Catholic vision of social justice. To the right and to the left, Catholics opposed liberal individualism and collectivist socialism. Catholic societies which praise solidarity suffer from social division, as for example from fragmented political parties, low tolerance for compromise and dissent, and such political-moral passions as make a "loyal opposition" difficult to maintain. In Catholic social thought, one finds painfully little analysis of concrete, historical "liberal" texts.
