The Modern Papacy

by Samuel Gregg

Overview

Since the dawn of the Enlightenment, modernity and the Papacy have experienced a difficult though never severed relationship. The Modern Papacy goes beyond the caricatures to demonstrate how the popes - specifically John Paul II and Benedict XVI - have articulated a sophisticated critique of the post-Enlightenment world, one that acknowledges the real progress made in modernity while simultaneously highlighting its political and philosophical shortcomings. Far from falling on deaf ears, the nature of their engagement with the modern world has sparked criticism and praise from Catholics and non-Catholics alike - sometimes in surprising ways. Whether the subject is faith and reason, religion and the modern sciences, the roots and future of Europe, or the origin and ends of human freedom, John Paul II and Benedict XVI pose questions that simply cannot be ignored, regardless of whether one likes their answers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441136848
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/17/2013
Series:	Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dr Gregg is Director of Research at the Acton Institute. He is the author of several books, including Morality, Law, and Public Policy (2000), Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (2001), On Ordered Liberty (2003), The Commercial Society (2007), as well as monographs such as Ethics and Economics: The Quarrel and the Dialogue (1999), A Theory of Corruption (2004), and Banking, Justice, and the Common Good (2005).

Table of Contents

Series Introduction

Series Editor's Preface

Author's Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Encountering Modernity

In Enlightenment'sWake

From 'Intransigence'to Critical Engagement

From Engagement toCrisis

APhilosopher from Kraków

ATheologian of Land Bayern

A New Papacy, A Distinct Agenda

Chapter 2. Against the Dissolutionof Man

Restoring Wisdom to Reason, andFaith in Reason

A Crisis of Truth and Freedom

Returbaning Europe to Europe

Seeking Responses

Chapter 3. Inside the Modern Areopagus

Restorationists, Accomodationists,and Liberationists

Modernity Critics, New NaturalLawyers, and Catholic Whigs

Secular Rejection, SecularEngagement

A New Terrain

Chapter 4. Paradoxes of Enlightenment

Enlightenment, Progress, andIdeologies of Evil

Benedict at Regensburg

A Wider Agenda

Twenty-First Century Challenges

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

Gregg's work is a useful introduction to the thought of Wojtyla and Ratzinger and thus essential reading for anyone engaged in serious study of the present-day papacy.

The volumes in this timely series comprise the most comprehensive body of material on conservative and libertarian thought yet published in a single project devoted to the subject. The series will prove an indispensable tool not only for those concerned with the history of political thought but also for those who confront the challenging task of constructing a viable contemporary conservative identity. Professor Meadowcroft had a difficult editorial task, to which he has responded with a judicious choice of thinkers and topics.
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History

From the Publisher