I agree that individuals need to be good for society to be good. The question at issue is the best means of achieving that end.

A thousand years ago, peasants told their children scary folktales to make them afraid of running off into the woods where the monster would gobble them up. Parents in postindustrial societies no longer rely on such crude scare tactics because progress has been automated.

The moral code that Father Casey brings to the table operates at the level of those ghost stories for children. But just as children grow out of their childish fears, Western civilization grew out of its oppressive and intellectually childish theocracies. Children become good as individuals because they're part of a progressive society that operates on humanistic values that reach back, through the Christian interim, to ancient pagan philosophy.

Granted, capitalism can also make us selfish and greedy, and democracy can make us complacent. So progressive modernity and secular humanism are hardly foolproof means of turning us all into saints. But neither is the Catholic's moral code foolproof, since scripture can be twisted to rationalize all kinds of wrongdoing. Plus, that moral code is based on a transparent fiction that's no longer part of our zeitgeist. Christianity is anachronistic

I reject the notion that there's such a thing as "the conservative truth." What's called "conservative thought" is anti-intellectual and perfectly self-destructive. Conservativism is just propaganda for animalistic dominance hierarchies. (I've written a number of articles on this.)