More on Linker's anti-Neuhaus screed

I blogged a few days ago about the long and (in my view) unfair and unconvincing Damon Linker essay in The New Republic, which purports to review and warn about the dangerous, authoritarian "theoconservativism" of Fr. Richard Neuhaus.  For more, check out the good stuff at "The American Scene," at Amy Welborn's blog, and at Mere Comments.  (Linker, apparently, is responding to and conversing with some of his critics in the comments at these blogs).  I thought this, from Ross Douthat, was particularly interesting:

. . . Linker, in order to read Neuhaus out of the liberal order, has to turn to his religious beliefs, and then read those back into his politics. The dishonesty of this maneuver ought to be obvious. Does Linker seriously believe that in thinking that the Catholic Church is the one true church, and desiring it to thrive and prosper and expand its reach in American culture, Neuhaus has lurched into authoritarianism? This is a reasonably common belief among thoughtless people - the sort of people who think that private proselytization, say, is incompatible with liberal democracy - but one expects better from a former editor of First Things.

The irony is that Linker is right about one thing: the "Catholic neoconservative" project can be a dangerous one, if taken too far. But it's potentially dangerous to Catholicism, not to America - because in attempting to smooth away contradictions between the American order and the Church, it risks losing too much that is distinctively Christian.

Now, in my view, Fr. Neuhaus and the others whom Linker attacks have not, in fact, lost sight of the possible "contradictions between the American order and the Church," even if they have tried to identify consonance, and to untangle some supposed contradictions.  Still, Douthat's is an important point.  He adds another long post about Linker's essay here.

UPDATE: Re-reading the Linker  piece, I came across this:  "[I]n the Council's 'Declaration on Religious Freedom,' known as Dignitatis Humanae, . . . the Church embraced democracy and human rights for the first time in its history."  Is there any way to understand this statement as anything other than (oddly enough) both shockingly and numbingly . . . well, incorrect?