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You are right, I should have mentioned that corruption in the Church was among the catalysts of nationalism.

There is much to be admired about the American experiment, and it is somewhat churlish to criticize it after we've lost its fruit. Nevertheless, subsidiarity demands that the moral law remains outside of the reach of the laity, certainly so in a democratic state with a broad franchise. The colonies either assumed, wrongly, that the democratic process would never invade culture and morals, or they thought nothing wrong of such invasion. Either mistake was easy to make with Anglican church-state amalgamation laced with Protestant disdain for hierarchy and poisoned by the French Enlightenment at the top. What they fought for was political autonomy, which is but one dimension of subsidiarity. They completely missed the centrifugal forces of Protestantism as it comes to culture and morality. Many (John Adams is a good example, with his "this government is only fit to govern people of good moral character", or words to this effect) understood that moral law is the cornerstone of their edifice, but all apparently thought that morality grows on trees. No Catholic thinker would have made such mistake.

I happen to think that the only organic system of government is feudal monarchy. I would admit that Catholicism is compatible with a democratic government limited to its area of competence. But a democratic government tends to outgrow its competence, at which point is becomes hostile to Chrisitanity in general, and especially to Catholicism. Our history shows that.

Could you point me to a good summary of Schindler, Weigel and Novak debate, -- I only got disconnected fragments of it?

Here is a bibliography. I don't have time to annotate it or designate a brief summary. In some ways it needs to be followed chronologically anyway. OF course, Schindler summarizes it in his book and if you read Neuhaus's review of the book (toward the end of the bibliography, you might have a good starting point).

Weigel, George, “Is America Bourgeois?” Crisis, 4 (October 1986), 5-10

Schindler, David L., “Is America Bourgeois?” Communio, 14 (Fall 1987), 262-290

Schindler, David L., “Is America Bourgeois?” Communio, 14 (Fall 1987), 262-290

Schindler, David L., “Catholicity and the State of Contemporary Theology: THe Need for an Ontologic of Holiness,” Communio, 14 (Winter, 1987), 426-50

Weigel, George, “Is America Bourgeois? A Response to David Schindler,” Communio, 15 (Spring, 1988), 77-91

Schindler, David L., “Once Again: George Weigel, Catholicism, and American Culture,” Communio, 15 (1988), 92-120

Schindler, David L., “The Church’s ‘Worldly’ Mission: Neoconservatism and American Culture,” Communio, 18 (1991), 365-97

Lowery, Mark, “The Schindler-Weigel Debate: An Appraisal,” Communio, 18 (1991), 425-38

Weigel, George, “Response to Mark Lowery,” Communio, 18 (1991), 439-49

Schindler, David L., “Response to Mark Lowery,” Communio, 18 (1991), 450-72

Novak, Michael, “Schindler’s Conversion: The Catholic Right accepts Pluralism,” Communio, 19 (Spring, 1992), 145-163

Schindler, David L., “Christology and the Church’s ‘Worldly’ Mission: Response to Michael Novak,” Communio, 19 (Spring 1992), 164-78

Schindler, David L., “The Church’s ‘Worldly’ Mission: Neoconservatism and American Culture,” Communio, 18 (Fall, 1991), 365-97 latent ambiguities regarding first principles in our understanding of the human person will inevitably work themselves out historically

Schmitz, Kenneth L., “Catholicism in America,” Communio, 19 (1992), 474-77

Schindler, David L., “Norris Clarke on Person, Being, and St. Thomas,” Communio, 20 (Fall, 1993), 580-92, response by W. Norris Clarke, pp. 593-98, cf. the original article by W. Norris Clarke, “Person, Being, and St. Thomas,” Communio, 19 (Winter, 1992), 601-18

responses to Clarke and Schindler by Stephen Long and George Blair, with responses to the responses by Clarke and Schindler in Communio, 21, no. 1 (Spring 1994), 151-190

Schindler, David L., “At the Heart of the World, From the Center of the Church,” Pro Ecclesia, 5, no. 3 (Summer 1996), 314-333

Schindler, David L., Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996)
response: Richard John Neuhaus, “The Liberalism of John Paul II,” First Things, no. 73 (May 1997), 16-21, and “Schindler’s Complaint” in “The Public Square” section of the same journal, no. 74 (June-July 1997), pp.72-74.

Schindler, David L., “Reorienting the Church on the Eve of the Millennium: John Paul II’s ‘New Evangelization’,” Communio, 24.4 (Winter, 1997), 728-779 critique of John Courtenay Murray and liberalism

cf.: Novak, Michael, “Thomas Aquinas, the First Whig,” Crisis (October 1990), 31-38
Schindler, David L., “Time in Eternity, Eternity in Time: On the Contemplative-Active Life,” Communio, 18, no. 1 (Spring 1991), 53-68 notes in datbs42

On the “metaphysics of the person”:

Ratzinger, Joseph, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio, 17 (Fall, 1990), 439-54

Zizioulas, John D., “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 28 (1975), 401-48

Kereszty, Roch, “Historical Research, Theological Inquiry, and the Reality of Jesus: Reflections on the Method of J. P. Meier,” Communio, 19 (Winter 1992), 576-600
Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991, pp. 1-40

Sokolowsi, Robert, “What Is Phenomenology? An Introduction for the Uninitiated,” Crisis (April 1994), 26-29

Schmitz, Kenneth L. “Modernity Meets Tradition: The Philosophical Originality of Karol Wojtyla,” Crisis (April 1994), 30-36

Schmitz, Kenneth L., At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1993)

Three related articles by Karol Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” parts I-III, in Crisis (April 1994), 37-48, (May 1994), 39-43, and (June 1994), 39-45 are excerpted from the new book by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. by Theresa Sandok, O.S.M. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993)

Additional resources:

Interview with David Schindler in Catholic World Report (October 1994), 42-49 [with letters of response in the December issue, pp. 58-61] in which he sets out his indictment of the Neuhaus-Weigel-Novak approach, arguing are Liberal in the 19th-century sense even as welfare-state liberals are also Liberal in the 19th-century sense

“A Civilization of Love: The Pope’s Call to the West,” a statement signed by individuals associated with The Chesterton Review, Catholic Worker, Caelum et Terra, New Oxford Review, Canadian Catholic Review, Desert Call/Forefront, Inside the Vatican, Nazareth, Communio, printed in each of these journals, e.g., in Caelum et Terra (Fall 1994), p. 2, with an accompanying editorial by David Nichols showing how Neuhaus selectively quoted (and, according to Nichols), distorted Centesimus Annus (see Origins [May 16, 1991], 1-24) in order to make it seem to endorse democratic capitalism; cf. Schindler and Stratford Caldecott, “A Civilization of Love: The Pope’s Call to the West” in Communio, 21 (Fall 1994), 497-503

Schindler, David L., “Christological Aesthetics and Evangelium Vitae: Toward a Definition of Liberalism,” Communio 22, no. 2 (1995), 193-224
Caldecott, Stratford, “Beyond Left and Right: A Politics of Life,” in the “Notes and Comments” section of Communio 22, no. 2 (1995), 381-388

I should add that some Dorothy-Day inspired critics of Neuhaus/Weigel/Novak have glommed on to Schindler's critique and misrepresented Neuhaus, Weigel, Novak. There's plenty of room for criticism of their effort to harmonize democratic capitalism and the American experiment with Catholicism without resorting to cheap distortion of their positions. So not everyone appealing to distributism or Catholic Worker or a supposed "third way" of True Catholicism and bashing Neuhaus or Weigel or Novak as "neo-cons" and invoking Schindler on their side should be taken seriously. Some of them are hack jobs, some are insightful critiques. The same thing is now happening with Catholics who follow JPII and Ratzinger against the Iraq War--under the guise of a "third way" critique of "Neo-Cons" they in fact are following radical pacifist principles and claiming Catholic support for them. One can have a legitimate debate over whether the war met just war criteria without demonizing one's opponent, which is what some have done to Weigel and Neuhaus.

I'm not so high on feudal monarchy as you seem to be. It was a good system but not necessarily superior to the American experiment if the American experiment had not been abandoned. And I don't see any way of implementing a feudal monarchy, so at best it might provide insights into virtues of loyalty and subsidiarity to apply to a genuine democratic capitalist republic of virtue. I don't think even Chesterton would hold out for a feudal monarchy, would he? Distributism has much to be said for it, but again, whether it's anything but an academic exercise at this point, I don't know.

However, it would be true that in the event of a collapse into chaos and anarchy, something like feudal monarchy might emerge from the rubble. On the other hand, with the weapons available today, a collapse might not leave much at all.