By Catholic Culture Podcast ( bio – articles – email ) | June 13, 2022 | In the Catholic Culture Podcast
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DC Schindler’s Book The politics of the real: the Church between liberalism and fundamentalism is one of the richest entries into the ongoing Catholic debate about liberalism, political authority, the common good, and the relationship between church and state.
Schindler offers subtle and compelling arguments as to why liberalism is “the political form of evil”, consisting specifically of a rejection of the Christian form – specifically, the Judeo-Greek-Roman synthesis embodied in the Catholic Church.
Liberalism creates a situation like the one described by comedian Stephen Wright: “Last night someone broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact copies. It takes up aspects of the Western tradition but only on radically different bases, with a fragmented vision of reality. Even when liberalism claims to make room for religious tradition, it does so only by rethinking religion as a simple object of individual choice, that is, precisely as non-traditional.
But Schindler goes beyond the critique of liberalism, offering a deep and beautiful ontology of social order and a somewhat different model of the relationship between church and state than that offered by Catholic fundamentalists.
Schindler joins the podcast to discuss the book, including topics such as:
- Why To Oppose Non-Liberal Philosophy As “Impractical” Is A Rejection Of Man As A Rational Creature
- The false claim of neutrality (or non-confessionalism) of liberalism
- The “Christian form” and its fragmentation
- Why liberalism is “the political form of evil”
- The roots of liberalism in medieval nominalism
- The Anti-Catholic Meaning of the Declaration of Independence’s “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”
- How the “neutral public square” subverts all the traditions it “makes room for”
- The problem of the distinction between “civil society” and the state
- Why property is essential to understanding the relationship between individuals and society
The politics of reality https://newpolity.com/new-polity-press-titles/the-politics-of-the-real
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