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As I now see it, the flaw in Catholic social teachings is its origin in European politics. Having to deal with Marxism/Liberalism led the Church to accept German paternalism--the welfare state as conceived by Bismarck as an anti-socialist devise. The American progressives, as part of their pre-Great War fascination with things German, did also. Hence this provided common ground between them and the American Church. Most Catholic Americans were already members of the Democratic Party, and after Wilson there was a kind of identification of American progressivism and Catholic social action, mainly though the labor movement, since so many workers were Catholics.

But part of American progressivism was always an anti-religious element. After 1972, that element began to dominate the Democratic Party, and largely because of the abortion issue, Catholics were sudden faced with the choice of going along with a party that moved further and further to the Left. Many Catholic bishops officially opposed abortion but sought to remain aligned with the Democrats by giving Catholic pols cover with the"seamless garment" doctrine. The USSCB tried to keep aligned with the Democrats on all but the issue of abortion, but so fanatical was the feminist element in the Democratic Party that this became impossible, although it has taken the bishops another twenty-five years to begin to see this. Even now I expect that many bishops will not begin to realize that the Democratic Party is hostile to the deepest beliefs of the Catholic Church. That is because a significant number of bishops have secretly abandoned the moral teachings of the Church.