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The Catholic Enlightenment - The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Paperback)
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The Catholic Enlightenment - The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Paperback)
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"Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be
explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought."
This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo
Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion,
as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the
sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were
incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim,
are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender
equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then,
to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic
Enlightenment, Ulrich L. Lehner points to such figures as
representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded
Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor
and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways
for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own
time. Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment,
when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism
had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church
instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors,
more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on
human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions
formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual
freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some
of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners
were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition,
and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda. In
1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their
cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of
modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic
Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican
Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with
modernity would be broached again. Ulrich L. Lehner tells, for the
first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics.
As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further,
and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book
will prove to be required reading.
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