Great book: Liberty, the God that Failed

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St_Francis

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The premise of this book is that the polis needs to be: the people, the government, and the Church all united and moving in the same direction, and this is what existed before tye Protestant Revolt, when some rulers took advantage of the religious problems to separate the Church from the State too much, and then the so-called Enlightenment thinkers completed the task of removing the soul from society and leading us all into a condition of societal death.

And I’m only about 1/8th through the book.

The reason I’m mentioning it here is that I looked over the thread titles and seeing that this book answers a lot of the questions.
 
Aside from the fact that the description you gave sounds very unappealing, especially because I have studied the times before the reformation, the fact that the author of the book in question wrote a book about Vatican II called “The Great Facade” should seal the deal for people not reading this one.
 
Well, I must have described the book very badly because I can’t imagine a Catholic not wanting to live in a fully-Catholic society!

Abd as to you second point, I was dumb enough a few months ago to ridicule one of Rousseau’s child-raising ideas because he put all his children in orphanages, only to find out that that was the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem :o
 
St_Francis said:
Well, I must have described the book very badly because I can’t imagine a Catholic not wanting to live in a fully-Catholic society!

Abd as to you second point, I was dumb enough a few months ago to ridicule one of Rousseau’s child-raising ideas because he put all his children in orphanages, only to find out that that was the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem :o
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I suppose it would depend. If your idea of living in a “fully Catholic society” is a return to the middle ages or the ideas commonly expressed by those who reject Vatican II or current Church authority, then definitely not.

It is not a fallacy. It is perfectly reasonable to suspect that someone who rejects current Church teaching and is a schismatic and prone to associate with bizarre groups will not have the best ideas about how a Catholic society should look.
 
TRH, you make a compelling case. I’ve thought about getting this book before, and you made me re-examine if I should want to get it.

I think, that I still do. I think your posts are more focused on attacking a proposition: ie: making our society entirely Catholic, and moving us back to a time pre-Reformation.

Maybe you said that based on what the OP said, but I don’t think that this book is about that at all. This book is merely challenging a building block of our civilization: liberty. And, perhaps it is one we need to analyze. I mean, look at civilizations like the USSR, or Communist China today… surely they are built upon building blocks which proved (or will in the future prove) flimsy, and will bring about the collapse of Communist China.

Could that be true of something like Liberty? Is Liberty idolized in our society? And, to use the harsher root word, with a worse connotation: are their idolators of the god of Liberty? That is a claim, which I certainly would like to investigate by reading this book.

However, even if those things are proven, its not like the author envisions society will simply fall down after that. No, he’s pointing out flaws in our system… that flawed system will continue, and he’s not advocating for an alternative system of… medieval feudalism, is he?

I base my post on one review I read at The Distributist Review: distributistreview.com/mag/2012/12/review-liberty-the-god-that-failed-part-i/
 
Hmm, well after reading some of it on the internet and reading the reviews it does certainly sound a little more appealing and more interesting.

Some of it seems outlandish and I might not agree with all of it, but it certainly does sound interesting enough to read. (Although I would advise caution for those not well versed in these matters.)
 
TRH1292 said:
I suppose it would depend. If your idea of living in a “fully Catholic society” is a return to the middle ages
No. (BTW, you may not know that this is a common strawman argument used against people who advocate any of several changes to the status quo, just a heads-up!)
or the ideas commonly expressed by those who reject Vatican II or current Church authority, then definitely not.
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Ummm, I see no reason to believe that Ferrara is schismatic, rejects current Catholic teaching, Vatican 2, or current Church authority.
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