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:	9781623565558
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/21/2013
Series:	Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	191 KB

About the Author

Samuel 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).
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's Wake
From 'Intransigence' to Critical Engagement
From Engagement to Crisis
A Philosopher from Kraków
A Theologian of Land Bayern
A New Papacy, A Distinct Agenda
Chapter 2. Against the Dissolution of Man
Restoring Wisdom to Reason, and Faith in Reason
A Crisis of Truth and Freedom
Returning Europe to Europe
Seeking Responses
Chapter 3. Inside the Modern Areopagus
Restorationists, Accomodationists, and Liberationists
Modernity Critics, New Natural Lawyers, and Catholic Whigs
Secular Rejection, Secular Engagement
A New Terrain
Chapter 4. Paradoxes of Enlightenment
Enlightenment, Progress, and Ideologies 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