Was it an antidemocratic insurrection, a middle-class white riot, or just a uniquely rowdy tour group? That’s apparently a serious question to many in Washington, D.C. and around the United States, even though we all watched in real time as former President Trump dispatched his followers to the Capitol with instructions to interrupt the certification of the November 2020 election results.

The day was a shocking revelation of the fragility of democratic order. Months later Republicans were thwarting efforts to get to the truth of the January 6 event with an eye on upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. Should that strategy of ignoring—even conspiring with—the nation’s antidemocratic social forces prove successful, what will it say about the viability of democracy in the United States?

Efforts to enforce white, minority rule will surely provoke equally undemocratic counterforce. The veneer of democracy has proved thin at home at a time when around the world the rule of law and representation by one person, one vote appear deeply vulnerable.

The Catholic Church is not exactly known as a paragon of democracy in design or practice. Its leaders once condemned as heresy the “Americanism” that taught that democratic and religious power could coexist peaceably in a pluralistic society.

But history may be on the verge of one of its grand inversions.

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