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The “neoconization” of the Church
We’ve long known that neoconservatism turns the American nation into a mere “idea,” a “proposition,” or, in the favorite phrase of the neocon Catholic priest Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, “the American Experiment.” But the neoconservative process of turning concrete particular entities into abstract, easily marketed ideas doesn’t stop with nationhood. In an interview at NRO today, Pope John Paul II’s official biographer, George Weigel, a leading Catholic neocon, was asked what is the Pope’s greatest legacy. Weigel answered:
He was the great Christian witness of the last quarter of the 20th century, the man who took the Christian proposal to more of the world than anyone else.The Christian proposal? The next thing you know, Weigel will be describing the Church as the Christian Proposition, or—who knows?—perhaps even as the Christian Experiment.
Weigel also doesn’t mention that in taking the “Christian proposal” to more of the world than any previous pope had done, JPII also thinned out Christian truth and doctrine more than any previous Pope had done. There is a close connection between those two achievements. As Michael Oakeshott wrote in his famous essay, “Rationalism in Politics,” liberals (a category that includes neoconservatives) reduce truth to simplified formulae in order to make it more manageable, as well as more saleable to an ever greater number of people. Email entry |