Why, it will be asked, does the Church always seem to lean so heavily to the Right? How are we to explain the fact that, in modern times, at all events, the Catholic Church has been in almost permanent alliance with Conservative politics? Why, for example, in the political struggles of... Europe was Catholicism, by and large, the bulwark of reaction? Why do we so often find it the prop and stay of rotten monarchies, oppressive administrations and inequitable social systems?