Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public OrderIn Bright Promise, Failed Community, respected Catholic sociologist Joseph Varacalli describes how and why Catholic America has essentially failed to shape the American Republic in any significant way. American society has never experienced a 'Catholic moment' --the closest it came was during the immediate post-World War II era--nor is it now close to approximating one. Varacalli identifies as the cause of the current situation the 'failed community' of Catholic America: an ineffective and dissent-ridden set of organizational arrangements that has not succeeded in adequately communicating the social doctrine of the Church to Catholic Americans or to the key idea-generating sectors of American life. The 'bright promise' of Catholic America lies in the long and still developing tradition of social Catholicism. With a revitalized, orthodox, sophisticated community to serve as the carrier of Catholic social doctrine, Varacalli sees trends of thought that would propose viable alternatives to philosophies and ideologies that currently dominate the American public sphere-ones that would thus have a formidable impact on American society. |
Contents
Catholics and Success in the Contemporary American Republic All That Glitters Is Not Gold | 13 |
The Discrediting and Unraveling of the Contemporary American Public Order | 27 |
The Pyrrhic Victory of Liberalism The Exhaustion of an Inadequate Idea | 31 |
The American Culture War and the Civil War within the Catholic Church of the United States | 37 |
Not Enough The Insufficiency of Evangelical Protestantism | 43 |
Reality Denied On the Obsolescence of the Concept of the Natural Law | 47 |
Catholic Philosophical Vision Catholic Historical Reality The Need for a Catholic Plausibility Structure | 51 |
PostWorld War II American Catholicism Anticipating the Catholic Moment | 61 |
First Things First Catholic Participation in Secular America | 85 |
The Catholic Vision and American Populism A Case of Elective Affinity? | 99 |
John Paul II and the Restorationists Picking Up the Pieces for a Real Catholic Moment | 105 |
Linking Heaven and Earth The Catholic Contribution to Culture Institutional Life and the Individual | 109 |
Staying the Course | 113 |
Bibliography | 115 |
| 125 | |
About the Author | |
Secularization from Within The PostVatican II Catholic Church in America | 65 |
A Failure in Vision and Nerve The Present Accommodation of Americanist Catholic Leadership | 77 |
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Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public Order Joseph A. Varacalli No preview available - 2000 |
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