I think the Pope’s far too ambitious in trying to find common ground with everyone in sight. The result is that Catholicism appears to become the religion of lowest common denominators.

Any post Vatican II Pope has a tough go of it, to be sure, and JPII is certainly an optimist. Trying to conform modern liberal discourse to the truth rather than rejecting it outright as as a false master narrative seems to be the idea. God bless him and best of luck.

I see it differently. I think he’s trying to conform the truth to modern liberal discourse.

On what does Mr. Auster base that reading? _Veritatis Splendour_, or _Fides et Ratio_, or _Redemptor Hominis_? Or perhaps there is something intrinsic in any universal (i.e. Catholic) claim that he sees as isomorphically liberal? I haven’t read probably a third of what JPII has written, but I confess that I don’t see it unless we limit our view of his thought to a few sound bites from his spokesman or, alternatively, we make the claim that universal postures of any sort — including those that acknowledge the authority of a particular tradition as it reveals the transcendent — are intrinsically liberal. That seems self-refuting, though, because then any claim to a human nature or eschaton of any sort is also refuted. As was clear in another discussion, denial of universals in general is denial of truth in general.

It is true that JPII uses the language of the day, and I admit that it irritates my postmodern side. Of course I’m not the Pope, and Mr. Auster uses the language of the day too.

On the other hand, I’m the first to confess that just because the notion of this particular Pope being a liberal seems ludicrous on its face that does not necessarily mean it is false. There are those who think that anyone who sees anything valid in Vatican II itself is inherently a liberal, despite JPII’s articulation of it as orthodoxy-professed-to-modern-culture. In the case of someone who has written so extensively and deeply there must be plenty of material upon which to found the judgement, though. Certainly one possible reading of JPII is as an attempt at reclaiming what has been coopted from Christendom by secular modernism; although I am with Mr. Kalb in thinking that it is probably far too ambitious, to the point of ludicrously hopeful credulity, to be successful.

In the near future I will pull together some quotes of JPII to try to back up my suggestion that he conforms Christianity to liberal discourse.

As for Matt’s suggestion that JPII has been attempting to reclaim what has been coopted from Christendom by secular modernism, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. My first, admittedly curmudgeonly, thought is: why did one need to attempt this at all? Why not just preach the Gospel and ignore liberalism?

The idea that the Church needs to bow and scrape to modernity as a preliminary to communicating the Christian message is, I believe, false and pernicious. One sees this same thing at work among Anglicans. Every Anglican bishop I’ve heard or read does the same thing. They approach the Gospel through modernity, with the end result that the Gospel is articulated in modernist, secularist, personalist terms, diluted to the point of meaninglessness. See my recent comments on the newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

By contrast, the rector of my own Episcopal parish preaches Christ and the Gospel, with no mention of modernity or contemporary politics. And the Christian message comes through clear and strong. But he’s extremely rare. Similarly, in the writings of Pope Pius XII that I’ve read, one gets the Christian message without any irrelevant and distracting modernist overlays.

Therefore I reject the notion that the Church must “engage in modernity” as a prerequisite to preaching the Gospel. That is to give modernity far too much power.

I suppose I agree with pretty much all of Mr. Auster’s comment with the exception of the imputed intentionality of JPII; and of course I am completely ignorant about the rector of his church but I know a tragically small number of similar men. I think it is clear from JPII’s writing that his intentions are not liberal.

Well, I think it’s a mixture. I’m sure Matt would agree that anyone who has adopted 20th century humanism and personalism as his organizing concepts cannot be thought of as having entirely non-liberal intentions.

Sure. I think that someone who sees George Washington categorically as a hero cannot be thought of as having entirely non-liberal intentions either, though. Furthermore, I think it is clear that what is today called humanism is the empty hollowed-out secularized form of a much more ancient Christian tradition. Modernism performs taxidermy on the past, hollowing it out, creating forms empty of meaning; but it cannot exist without them.

For example, one basic reason the UN is so popular is that people realize that the protestant divine right of the state needs an authoritative conscience; a conscience no longer authoritatively recognized as provided by the papacy. So the modern world replicates Christendom in hollowed-out form, creating a horror show of death and emptiness to replace the living forms realized in medieval Christendom. The United Nations IS the secular Pope. I think that JPII has the audacity to think that these forms can be filled with life, but I personally find the prospect both horrifying and astonishingly ambitious.

The UN specifically is but one of tens or hundreds of examples that come immediately to mind.

So if I had my way I would probably live in a world where the Pope talks more like Mr. Auster and Mr. Auster thinks more like the Pope. I recognize that I am not immune from the “be careful what you ask for” effect, though.

“So the modern world replicates Christendom in hollowed-out form, creating a horror show of death and emptiness to replace the living forms realized in medieval Christendom. The United Nations IS the secular Pope.”

Excellent. Just as the medieval kingdoms (which formally imagined themselves as an empire) required the Church as their common spiritual and legitimizing basis, so modern nations, shorn of the Church, require the U.N.

“I think that someone who sees George Washington categorically as a hero cannot be thought of as having entirely non-liberal intentions either, though.”

Touché. But a couple of clarifications. I said Washington is the father of our country, which is simply true, and I said he is one of the greatest men who ever lived, which is also simply true. I do not regard him as a categorical hero. I know a good deal about him, and admire him for the concrete things I know about him, not simply as a hero image.

But yes, Washington was a part of the American founding with its flaws leading to liberalism, all of which we are aware of. One wishes that he and the other founders had had a more concrete vision of social order in their formal articulation of the United States. That’s why it’s necessary for traditionalists, not to turn against the American Founding, as some misled souls on the right would like to do, but to go back and see the flaws in the founding along with its strengths and try to re-articulate it in a way more consonant with enduring social and spiritual order.

That seems to me to be, on a national scale, rather like what the Pope is trying to do on a global scale. I am not against those efforts, but I am not terribly optimistic about their prospects.

The Pope, in my view, is re-articulating traditional Catholicism so as to make it conform more to modern liberalism. By contrast, traditionalist conservatives want to re-articulate the American Founding so as to make it conform with traditionalism.

It is entirely possible in the abstract that that is what JPII is in fact doing, just as it is entirely possible that traditionalist conservatives are in fact bending what it means to be traditionalist beyond all recognition in order to make it coherent with a particular liberal rebellion of 200 years ago.

My objection is not to any assertion of what is in fact being done; it is merely to the imputed intentionality of the various do-ers.