Perhaps no term in modern Catholic political discourse is so poorly understood—deliberately or innocently—as “integralism.” The term is bandied about without second thought both by scornful opponents who deride it as “Catholic sharia law” and by wishful utopians who define it as nothing more or less than whatever vaguely traditional throne-and-altar political project they personally happen to espouse at the moment. It is true that the word, which only entered the mainstream…