Yeah, it seems to have at least something to do with the crowds these people run with. It looks like Libresco is closely associated with a bunch of Catholic sugar-daddy-funded make-work "journals" (First Things, Crisis), at least partly through her husband. I don't know if that came before or after her conversion. There is a definite "type" here: the Breunigs, quasi-paleocons like Damon Linker, radtrads like Andrew Bacevich, etc. You see it even in the pop culture with the very public conversion of Dasha from Red Scare. It's probably an aesthetic preference as least as much as an intellectual conversion, but it's not just aesthetics for most of them. Protestant fundamentalism has become anti-intellectual to the point of hostility toward any form of higher education. So radtrad Catholicism and nonsense like ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, basically Orthodox radtrad-ism) are really the only options for the educated. I think Rod Dreher eventually joined ROCOR after leaving Catholicism.
Simple ego probably drives people like this as well. Libresco is a rising "star" on Catholic networks like EWTN. She is now on the tradcath/radtrad speaking circuit and playing the prodigal daughter on Catholic TV.
Yeah, it seems to have at least something to do with the crowds these people run with. It looks like Libresco is closely associated with a bunch of Catholic sugar-daddy-funded make-work "journals" (First Things, Crisis), at least partly through her husband. I don't know if that came before or after her conversion. There is a definite "type" here: the Breunigs, quasi-paleocons like Damon Linker, radtrads like Andrew Bacevich, etc. You see it even in the pop culture with the very public conversion of Dasha from Red Scare. It's probably an aesthetic preference as least as much as an intellectual conversion, but it's not just aesthetics for most of them. Protestant fundamentalism has become anti-intellectual to the point of hostility toward any form of higher education. So radtrad Catholicism and nonsense like ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, basically Orthodox radtrad-ism) are really the only options for the educated. I think Rod Dreher eventually joined ROCOR after leaving Catholicism.
Simple ego probably drives people like this as well. Libresco is a rising "star" on Catholic networks like EWTN. She is now on the tradcath/radtrad speaking circuit and playing the prodigal daughter on Catholic TV.