Would ‘Compulsion’ Be Hell?
There was once an epic struggle between Stalinist Communism and the Catholic Confessional State. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956, Hans Morgenthau wrote that Communism “lost the moral conviction of its own legitimacy.” Morgenthau was right, for Communism slowly but surely collapsed. Before the Second Vatican Council, it was common to refer to Catholicism as triumphalist and sure of itself. Since the Council, Catholicism has suffered a crisis of authority, as the Catholic Faith itself has come unraveled.
Then came the New Left in the late 1960s. Daniel Cohn-Bendit summed up the aspirations of the New Left: “One day we shall ourselves organize our own lives. We will not be doing it for our children — sacrifice is counter-revolutionary and comes from a Stalinist-Judeo-Christian humanism — but finally in order to have untrammeled enjoyment.” You know what happened: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Not sacrifice, not heroism, but pleasure — and liberal capitalism was happy to comply in whatever way it could.
You May Also Enjoy
The Catechism — like the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ injunctions against lust — reduces ECUSA’s sexuality resolution to cinders.
Tools & Their Uses... A Brief Moment in Time... The DDF Douses a Flashpoint... Mystified by the Animus... The Christmas Narratives: Beautiful Fables?... and more
Reviews of The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love... The Common Things: Essays on Thomism and Education... Religious Values at the Threshold of the Third Millennium... Revoking the Moral Order: The Ideology of Positivism and the Vienna Circle... Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem... Plague Journal: A Novel