Charles Taylor's Liberalism, Again

Happening now: Sociologist José Casanova, a Berkley Center senior fellow, and philosopher Charles Taylor discuss Taylor’s seminal work #ASecularAge (2007) and the divergent religious dynamics that can coexist within our global secular age.

Watch live: https://t.co/KxCnU77kNI

— Berkley Center (@GUberkleycenter) June 11, 2020

A True Believer?

Following upon this post; some videos which reveal Charles Taylor's attitudes towards multiculturalism, diversity, and immigration.

Un'altra libertà

Un'altra libertà by Camillo Ruini, Gaetano Quagliariello
Contro i nuovi profeti del paradiso in terra

Magister: Praise of Freedom, the Real Kind. Dialogue Between a Cardinal and a Lay Thinker

Il cardinal Ruini contro il multiculturalismo: "Non è valore in sé"

The Proposed Trinity Dome Mosaic

for "America's Catholic Church," the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Apparently, there was a special collection held on Mother's Day 2017 in Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States to help fund the dome.

It is a product of its time but it does represent an attempt by the Latin churches in the United States to re-write American history and re-define American [Catholic] identity.

The procession of saints includes, among others, St. Juan Diego (the first canonized male Native American), St. Kateri Tekakwitha (the first canonized female Native American), St. Teresa of Calcutta (an honorary American citizen), St. Francis Cabrini, M.S.C. (the first U.S. citizen to be canonized), St. John Paul II (the first pope to visit the National Shrine), and St. Junípero Serra (declared a saint by Pope Francis at the National Shrine in 2015 for the first canonization ever to take place on American soil).

Is there a single political entity that is the United States? That is the nationalist myth that arose 1865. Then again, only a basilica built in the seat of the Federal Government would pretend to be a national Catholic symbol. And then there is the inclusion of two modern popes...

As for the quality of the mosaic itself -- I don't think it looks very good, but it goes well with what else has been installed in the upper basilica. The depiction of the Most Holy Trinity is uncanonical; did the artist not consult anyone traditional authority on this question? The figures themselves look like the "naturalistic" representations of saints that are done in modern stained glass windows -- they don't look like mosaics at all. Maybe it's because of the distance and the resulting resolution, but I think the mosaic loses something as a result. As for the representation of the "Immaculate Conception," I find that I cannot relate to Western depictions of the Theotokos these days.

Then again, that sort of ambition and desire to create such a large mosaic for a very large temple reflects the triumphalistic hubris of the American [Latin] Catholic Church, which didn't go away with Vatican II. "This was the best they could do, and they thought it was great?"

Perhaps it is a good thing that the Greeks didn't attempt to recreate a version of Hagia Sophia on American soil.

CWR Blog: NA Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation: Lift Restrictions on Ordination of Married Men in Eastern Catholic Churches By Carl E. Olson
Recommendation comes on 85th anniversary of the promulgation of the 1929 decree "Cum data fuerit"

The Writing of Church History

A study group was considering starting Epic; is much of Church History written from a Latin perspective triumphalistic or ultramontane, or a version of Whiggism, resulting in more of a history of the Western Patriarchate, with the non-western churches an afterthought?

A Catholic version of Whiggism, in so far as Catholicism is equated with European civilization and its material advances are attributed in some way to the Catholic faith. Intellectual advances in science and knowledge may originally have been due to the mingling of the Christian focus on the Logos and Greek rationalism. But I am thinking more of the rise of the nation-states and empires - do we want to impute this "success" to the supposed Christian faith of those nation- and empire-builders?

We may not want to go so far as to embrace the ideology of those who declaim the appearance of the Constantinian Church, but what Church history would not incorporate an analysis of Church-state relations (not just in the former Western Roman Empire, but in the Eastern as well), making some sort of normative judgment on what existed? (I think the Church can be an effective means of localism, but has it ever been able to bring that about in the political sphere, apart from some sort of collapse?)

As for the non-Western churches, is it too early to reconsider their histories as part of that of the Church as a whole, as if their apparent separation from the Bishop of Rome was that, only apparent? Do we need a formal restoration of communion going beyond acts of doctrinal agreement first? In the past those non-Western churches not currently in full communion were viewed as heretical and schismatic and treated as such in works of Church history. But is it not only charitable but historically accurate to see the tragic separation as a result of [linguistic] misunderstanding and hardening due to a lack of proper fraternity charity and ill feeling because of other events?

Church history potentially can be more unified than generic world history, as it is centered on Christ and His Church. But can we rightly look forward to histories being written reflecting the diversity of the local Churches, a proper multiculturalism because it is grounded in Christ and the live that He gives to us?

Jim Keenan is associated with it, so...

is it a questionable endeavor?

Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church

Thaddeus Kozinski, The Good, the Right, and Theology (via Peter Hawthorne)