Sunday, January 15, 2006
Will that be enough?
Joseph Bottum argues that the mediocrity of the hierarchy has not prevented the emergence of a class of influential Catholic public figures who are holding the line against the nihilism of the liberal elites. There may be some truth to that, except it is not clear that their cultural arsenal is really that much stronger than (or different from) mainstream (protestant) american conservatism. Unfortunately, opposition to abortion is not, per se, enough to build a new culture.
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2 comments:
Jody Bottum is a great writer, but he needs a more sublime rhetoric--Christians are good for more than just "religiously informed moral arguments" in the public square. The fundamental "contribution", so to speak, is in the realm of ontology, not ethics: of meaning, more than moral reasoning. You can be an atheist while at the same time be a sound and good moral philosopher. But the questions of contingency, transcendence, and meaning are more exclusively religious in nature. But I am sure Bottum would agree with all of this, it's just that I wish he'd been more explicit about these things in the article.
put it in starker terms, juan: why do we live?, not just, how do we live?
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