The Church And The Liberal Society

The body of this book is concerned with the three-centuries-long fight between Liberalism and its arch-foe, the Catholic Church. Even in its heyday as a creed. Liberalism's self-destructive tendency was unmistakable, and it was to this suicidal capacity that the Church pointed countless times in the course of controversy. In the perspective of the possible intimate link tween Liberalism and Dictatorship, the role of the Church as defender of basic freedom is brought into clearer focus.

Liberalism forms the dominant political ideology of the modern world, but despite its pervasive influence, this is the first book-length treatment of liberal political thought from a Christian theological perspective. Song discusses the different aspects and interpretations of liberalism with reference to the critiques of three twentieth-century theologians: the American Protestant Reinhold Niebuhr on the liberal progressivist philosophy of history; the lesser-known Canadian GeorgeGrant on the threat of technology to fundamental liberal values, as articulated in the recent work of John Rawls; and the French Thomist Jacques Maritain on the defence of political pluralism. Further to this, Song explores the implications of this political theology for the issues in fundamentalconstitutional theory raised by a bill of rights and judicial review of legislation, and concludes with an account of the critical but supportive stance of liberalism Christian theology should take.

Western liberal societies are characterized by two stories: a positive story of freedom of conscience and the recognition of community and human rights, and a negative story of unrestrained freedom that leads to self-centeredness, vacuity, and the destructive compromise of human values. Can the Catholic Church play a more meaningful role in assisting liberal societies in telling their better story? Australian ethicist Robert Gascoigne thinks it can. In The Church and Secularity he considers the meaning of secularity as a shared space for all citizens and asks how the Church can contribute to a sensitivity to—and respect for—human dignity and human rights. Drawing on Augustine’s City of God and Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes, Gascoigne interprets the meaning of freedom in liberal societies through the lens of Augustine’s “two loves,” the love of God and neighbor and the love of self, and reveals how the two are connected to our contemporary experience. The Church and Secularity argues that the Church can serve liberal societies in a positive way and that its own social identity, rooted in Eucharistic communities, must be bound up with the struggle for human rights and resistance to the commodification of the human in all its forms.

Acknowledgments1. If Liberalism is a Faith, What Becomes of the Separation of Church and State?2. Pragmatism, Liberalism, and the Quarrel between Science and Religion3. Rorty's Repudiation of Epistemology4. Rortian Irony and the "De-divinization" of Liberalism5. Religion and Rawls's Freestanding Liberalism6. Stanley Fish and the Demise of the Separation of Church and State7. Fish, Locke, and Religious Neutrality8. Reason, Indifference, and the Aim of Religious FreedomAppendix: A Reply to Stanley FishNotesBibliographyIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Vatican II opened new pathways to engagement with societies shaped by modernity. Its project could be read as an attempt to interpret the stance of the church in relation to the whole project of modernity. The fundamental presumption of this collection of essays is that it is timely, indeed imperative, to keep alive the question of the church's self-understanding in its journey alongside "the complex, often rebellious, always restless mind of the modern world." Cornelius J. Casey and Fáinche Ryan have assembled some of the most prominent commentators on ecclesiastical and social-political engagements from the fields of theology, political philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism. The contributors present differing perspectives on the role of the church. Some argue that pluralism is here to stay. Others point out that the liberal pluralism of contemporary society is aggressively powered by global corporate consumerism. This book, with its variety of voices, explores these issues largely from within the Catholic tradition. The role of the church in a pluralist society is a narrative that is being written by many people at many different levels of the church. Contributors: J. Bryan Hehir, Terry Eagleton, Patrick J. Deneen, Hans Joas, William T. Cavanaugh, Massimo Faggioli, Fáinche Ryan, Patrick Riordan, and Cornelius J. Casey

Ecclesiology and political theory intersect in the rich debate among Christian social ethicists in the United States concerning the public responsibility of the church in a democratic-capitalist culture. This book begins by developing a framework for analyzing a theologian's understanding of the church/world relationship. It also provides a broad account of the liberal philosophical tradition's justification for democratic capitalism. Chapters on Reinhold Niebuhr, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Stanley Hauerwas and Roman Catholic Social Teaching analyze and assess the intersection between their ecclesiologies and their appraisals of liberalism.

Leading authors in politics, law, sociology and theology discuss what the proper place of religion is in a liberal state.