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Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth By Richard John Neuhaus
Liberal modernity exasperates traditional religion. It fosters a pluralism that denies any one faith the power to organize the whole of social life. It teaches that public authorities must submit to the consent of those over whom they aspire to rule, thereby undermining the legitimacy of all forms of absolutism. It employs the systematic skepticism of the scientific method to settle important questions of public policy. It encourages the growth of the capitalist marketplace, which unleashes human appetites and gives individuals the freedom to choose among an ever-expanding range of ways to satisfy them.
None of this means that modernity necessarily produces “secularization”: the persistence of piety in America is a massive stumbling block to anyone wishing to maintain that the modern age is just a long march toward atheism. But if modernity does not lead inexorably to godlessness, the social, political, scientific, and economic dynamism of modern life nonetheless requires that traditionalist believers make a choice. … A tension between these alternatives–between liberal religion and anti-liberal religion–runs through the history of nearly every modern nation, including the United States. …
Whether or not the recent prominence of religiosity in the nation’s public life signals that America is undergoing a new Great Awakening, it is undeniable that the rise of the Republican Party to electoral dominance in the past generation has been greatly aided by the politicization of culturally alienated traditionalist Christians. Countless press reports in recent years have noted that much of the religious right’s political strength derives from the exertions of millions of anti-liberal evangelical Protestants. Much less widely understood is the more fundamental role of a small group of staunchly conservative Catholic intellectuals in providing traditionalist Christians of any and every denomination with a comprehensive ideology to justify their political ambitions. In the political economy of the religious right, Protestants supply the bulk of the bodies, but it is Catholics who supply the ideas.
… the one who has exercised the greatest influence on the ideological agenda of the religious right is Richard John Neuhaus–a Catholic convert from Lutheranism, …
tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?i=20060403&s=linker040306
Liberal modernity exasperates traditional religion. It fosters a pluralism that denies any one faith the power to organize the whole of social life. It teaches that public authorities must submit to the consent of those over whom they aspire to rule, thereby undermining the legitimacy of all forms of absolutism. It employs the systematic skepticism of the scientific method to settle important questions of public policy. It encourages the growth of the capitalist marketplace, which unleashes human appetites and gives individuals the freedom to choose among an ever-expanding range of ways to satisfy them.
None of this means that modernity necessarily produces “secularization”: the persistence of piety in America is a massive stumbling block to anyone wishing to maintain that the modern age is just a long march toward atheism. But if modernity does not lead inexorably to godlessness, the social, political, scientific, and economic dynamism of modern life nonetheless requires that traditionalist believers make a choice. … A tension between these alternatives–between liberal religion and anti-liberal religion–runs through the history of nearly every modern nation, including the United States. …
Whether or not the recent prominence of religiosity in the nation’s public life signals that America is undergoing a new Great Awakening, it is undeniable that the rise of the Republican Party to electoral dominance in the past generation has been greatly aided by the politicization of culturally alienated traditionalist Christians. Countless press reports in recent years have noted that much of the religious right’s political strength derives from the exertions of millions of anti-liberal evangelical Protestants. Much less widely understood is the more fundamental role of a small group of staunchly conservative Catholic intellectuals in providing traditionalist Christians of any and every denomination with a comprehensive ideology to justify their political ambitions. In the political economy of the religious right, Protestants supply the bulk of the bodies, but it is Catholics who supply the ideas.
… the one who has exercised the greatest influence on the ideological agenda of the religious right is Richard John Neuhaus–a Catholic convert from Lutheranism, …
tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?i=20060403&s=linker040306