Cover of Catholic Social Science Review
Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-20 of 29 documents


part i: symposium
1. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Gary D. Glenn Symposium: Carson Holloway, The Way of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
2. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Kenneth L. Grasso John Paul II on Modernity, Freedom, and the Metaphysics of the Person
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Beginning by praising Carson Holloway’s The Way of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity for both contributing to our understanding of John Paul’s posture toward modernity and bringing his thought into conversation with the thought of some of the intellectual architects of liberal modernity, my essayproceeds to identify several subjects I wish Holloway had explored further, including the positive aspects of John Paul’s appraisal of liberal modernity and the engagement with modern thought that looms so large in his pre-papal philosophical writings. It then explores John Paul’s account of the achievements issuing from the modern quest for freedom, and the connection between the crisis that has engulfed this quest and the understanding of human freedom that informs contemporary culture. Against this backdrop, it examines John Paul’s efforts to address this crisis by articulating an anthropology that will assimilate the legitimateinsights of modern philosophies of freedom and consciousness into the broader framework provided by the philosophy of being as that philosophy has been understood within the Christian metaphysical tradition; and how the understanding of freedom that emerges from this anthropology differs from that which dominates contemporary culture. Far from being an adversary of the modern quest for freedom, John Paul believes that this quest is ultimately rooted in the revolution in human self-understanding wrought by Christianity, and seeks to articulate the intellectual foundation necessary to bring it to a successful conclusion.
3. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
J. Budziszewski To Lose God is to Lose Man: What “Public Reason” Can Learn from Public Faith
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Much of liberal theory tacitly presupposes a secularized and radicalized form of the religious view called fideism, according to which reason and faith, Athens and Jerusalem, have nothing to say to each other. John Paul II defended the contrasting view that only rightly ordered faith allows reason to become fully itself. If he was right, however, then to purge civic discourse of expressions of faith would make it not more rational, but less. Carson Holloway convincingly demonstrates this point through a sustained examination of thinkers who shaped the present age.
4. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Gary D. Glenn The Culture of Death and Political Tyranny
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This is an attempt to understand why Carson Holloway’s book, The Gospel of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity, so strongly emphasizes that the culture of death is tyranny. Since Aristotle, tyranny has been a political idea. John Paul’s thought focuses on culture not politics. But Holloway interprets him as saying that the culture of death is political tyranny. I had trouble grasping how that might be, especially since the ancients, and Aristotle in particular,did not regard abortion and infanticide (the central characteristics of what John Paul calls the culture of death) as tyrannical, or even as ordinarily unjust. One result of my grappling with this problem was that I came to see that Holloway’s argument was more right than not. Another result was that I came to understand that the culture of death is a new form of tyranny, one that is specifically the product of modern liberal political philosophy. A third result was that I had to ask, andgained insight into answering, how liberal modernity makes it so difficult to see the culture of death, to which it gives rise, as a political tyranny.
5. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Carson Holloway A Response
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
part ii: articles
6. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Father Peter Mettler, MSF Not Looking Away, Not Playing it Down: Why Homosexuality is a Concrete Hindrance for Ordination
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In view of the social normalization of homosexuality and the painful awakening to the reality that a not-negligible percentage of priests, especially in the Western world, is homosexually oriented, the question of why this orientation is irreconcilable with ordination has become more urgent. The decisive arguments are theological and have to do with the prospective priest’s full manhood. These arguments are in harmony with modern psychological insights into (male) homosexuality as a personality defect that blocks the person’s growing to mature manhood. It is argued that only after having demonstrably overcomehomosexual tendencies should a candidate be admitted to the seminary.
7. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
D. Paul Sullins American Catholics and Same-Sex “Marriage”
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Although Catholic teaching opposes same-sex “marriage,” in America Catholics support SSM more strongly than do Protestants, and states with Catholic majorities are much more likely to regularize homosexual relations. Younger persons support SSM more strongly than do their elders, suggesting that support will continue to grow. The trends in American Catholic thought on this issue exemplify American exceptionalism, moralism, and growing secularism, and reflectcatechetical ambiguity, equivocation among the U.S. bishops, elite dissent, and the lingering effects of the clergy sex abuse scandals and the birth control controversy.
8. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Brennan C. Pursell God in History: An Augustinian Approach to Narratives of Western Civilization
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This paper proposes a Catholic narrative structure for the story of Western civilization, a general outline that eschews secularism and historicism as much as biblical literalism and Catholic triumphalism. In brief, St. Augustine is more correct than Leonardo Bruni: There is only one age of man. We, God’s wondrous creatures, do not change over recorded time. Everywhere in the world, best documented and demonstrated in the West, we see mankind struggle against himself more than merely respond passively to impersonal and improbable social, economic, political, or gender-based “forces.” God, the author of history, writes straight across crooked lines. He shows us that the path of history points toward unity in diversity.
9. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Clement Anthony Mulloy The Impact of the West on World History: The Contrasting Methods and Views of Jared Diamond and Christopher Dawson
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article explores the viewpoints of two world historians, Jared Diamond and Christopher Dawson. Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, has a scientific view of the past. Dawson, a prominent Catholic metahistorian, sees God’s Providence in history. Their differing historical perspectives highlight three issues: the relationship between history and science, the role of religion in society, and the significance of the individual in history. In examining these issues, Diamond and Dawson present contrasting interpretations of the rise of the West in world history. On this basis, finally, the two project deeply contrasting views of the future.
10. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Michael P. Krom Transcendence and Human Freedom: Modernity and the Right to Truth
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
By reviewing the notion of the human person found in the modern liberal tradition, this essay seeks to give an account of the possible tensions between modern liberal political life and human fulfillment as understood in Catholic tradition. Resolving any such tensions would require showing that the philosophical underpinnings of modern liberalism are compatible with man’s “transcendent dignity” to pursue and live the Truth. By way of conclusion, the Church’s rapprochement with modern liberalism is discussed in light of Benedict XVI’s comments on and praise of American civil life made during his recent visit to the U.S.
11. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Philip Harold Robert Nisbet’s Visible and Invisible Communities
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Communitarian Robert Nisbet’s most famous book, The Quest for Community, falls short of what it intends to prove. Nisbet misinterprets Tocqueville on the nature of individualism and fails to comprehend the nature of the modern state. Most importantly, he never asks whether the local communities which he takes to be so valuable could themselves ever be oppressive. The failure to inquire into the nature and substance of justice allows Nisbet to emphasize the evils ofcentralization while suppressing any possible benefits. Such an unbalanced argument ignores true subsidiarity and in the end renders itself incoherent.
12. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Lloyd E. Sandelands Why the Center Holds: On the Nuptial Foundations of the Corporation
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Students of law and business administration are perplexed by the solidarity and resilience of the modern corporation. This is because knowledge of the defining elements of the corporation—of individual interests and the nexus of contracts—cannot account for the integrity and vitality of the whole. Beginning with the seminal ideas of Mary Parker Follett about organizations, specifically her ideas about functional relating and self-creating coherence, this essay draws upon Catholic Social Theory to explain how the life of the corporation is rooted in the life of the nuptial pair. Despite its often vast complexity, the modern corporation is literally an incorporation: a joining of male and female in one body. Implications of this idea about the corporation for our understanding of corporate law and business administration are discussed. Also briefly considered are implications of this idea for a theology of the corporation.
13. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Andrew Yuengert, Joel Fetzer Location Decisions of Abortion Clinics and Crisis Pregnancy Centers in California
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Data on the location of abortion clinics and crisis pregnancy centers in California are used to estimate Poisson models of the number of both kinds of clinic, to compare their location decisions, and to better understand the factors which limit clinic availability in some counties. The locations of the two types of clinic are determined in significantly different ways. Market size is the most important factor explaining the lack of clinics in certain counties; labor force participation rates,Catholic population, and cultural/political environment also play significant roles. Ethnicity plays only a modest role in clinic location. Instrumental variables generalized methods of moments estimates suggest that the number of abortion clinics has no independent effect on the number of crisis pregnancy centers.
14. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Andrew Essig Faithful Citizenship
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The 2008 presidential election witnessed a struggle among Catholics with regard to their civic responsibilities. The U.S. bishops published documents and made numerous public statements for the purpose of clarifying a Catholic’s role in politics. Yet the presidential candidate with the most extreme positions against the fundamental issues of Catholic Social Teaching won a majority of the Catholic vote. This paper will examine the role of religion in politics and the importance of civic responsibility among Catholics. It will further lay the foundation for a detailed discussion of how Catholics should act in the public square and apply it to explaining the problematic outcome of the 2008 presidential election.
part iii: book reviews
15. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Russell Brewer Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition. Edited by Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering; What Happened at Vatican II by John W. O’Malley
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
16. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Bryan Cross God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition by Alasdair MacIntyre
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
17. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Gregory R. Beabout Rethinking Rights: Historical Political and Philosophical Perspectives. Edited by Bruce P. Frohnen and Kenneth L. Grasso
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
18. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Thaddeus J. Kozinski Justice: Rights and Wrongs by Nicholas Wolterstorff
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
19. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Kevin Schmiesing Stewardship of Creation: What Catholics Should Know about Church Teaching and the Environment by Marie George
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
20. Catholic Social Science Review: Volume > 15
Michael Orsi Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity by Luke Timothy Johnson; A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. IV: Law and Love by John P. Meier
view |  rights & permissions | cited by