CATHOLICISM AND THE RENEWAL OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
George Weigel
New York: Paulist Press, 1989
224 pp., $11.95
The conviction that "fundamental understandings of the human person, human society, and human destiny" are up for grabs in our nation today meets us at the entryway to George Weigel's powerful new book, Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy.
As we begin our third century of national life, Americans retain a consensus that our constitutional system ought to be preserved, but we no longer agree, Weigel reports, even about "the very meaning of such terms as 'peace,' 'security,' 'justice,' 'liberation,' 'equality,' and 'rights.'" "In the controversy over abortion, even the "fundamental definition of what constitutes 'human life' is … bitterly contested." Thus it is easy--and reasonable--to begin where Weigel begins, namely, persuaded that "the question of … the renewal of democratic culture... poses itself with special urgency to this generation."
Weigel, whose frequent publications show him to be a trenchant analyst of American thought, states that, whereas big problems often manifest themselves as political, "politics is a function of culture, and …the heart of culture is religion." If what the country needs is renewed "public philosophy," then "this public philosophy must take account of the incorrigibly religious character of the American people."
George Weigel, who is the president of the James Madison Foundation, Washington, D.C., is a Roman Catholic. His major work prior to this book was an impressive study of the debate over the ethics of war and peace in the American Catholic community, Tranquilities Ordinis (Oxford University Press, 1987). Now he returns to his church, both its current American embodiment and its long intellectual tradition, and finds in it hope for the very renewal of the "public moral discourse about the right-ordering of the American experiment" so desperately needed. In carefully argued chapters, Weigel presents issue after issue that needs rethinking, offers suggestions for the direction that re-conceptualization ought to take, and tries to show how the Catholic tradition can make a special contribution to this moral-intellectual renewal. It is a bold and courageous thesis; Weigel succeeds in at least making it plausible. He succeeds without question in presenting an argument worth studying, worth debating.
The Condition Of American Catholicism
Before he can enter into his main topic, Weigel must, for honesty's sake, admit that contemporary American Catholicism does not look like it is ready for the formidable task he has set for it. The American church is itself rent into factions, and its internal dialogue sounds similar to the cacophony heard in the nation at large. Weigel describes in detail the major split in the American Catholic community: between those Catholics attracted to the ideas favored by National Catholic Reporter and those to whom the thinking of the Wanderer appeals. The former group, on the Left, pushes hard for continual reform of the church according to Vatican Council II, whose spirit they claim to represent. The latter, on the Right, Weigel calls "restorationists" who seek a return to "orthodox
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