Comments on: Chaput: Bad Electoral Alternatives Spring from Reformation Divide

By: Fred

Fred — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 23:48:13 +0000

Read the book, David. You may find flaws in it or disagree with it entirely, but Gregory’s account of postmodern society certainly rings true to me, and he makes a plausible case that much of it can be traced back to the Reformation.

By: John McNees

John McNees — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 23:28:19 +0000

Yes, the review of Brad Gregory’s book that First Things published was a shockingly inadequate appraisal of the best apologia for FT’s general position (at its best) that has so far been written. It would be good to fill most of some future issue with a panel discussion of the work.

By: David Nickol

David Nickol — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:05:50 +0000

I do have a copy of The Unintended Reformation that I hope to get to soon, although I am reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation first. It does seem to me from reading Archbishop Chaput's review that his reading of Gregory (and things in general) is that the Protestant Revolt (as we called it when we studied it in Catholic school in the 1950s) wasn't just the unfortunate breaking away of a large number of groups from the One True Faith. It was a catastrophe that ruined everything. It seems to me that blaming the Reformation for the poor choices Catholics allegedly have in American elections is rather strange, since I don't think the United States would even exist for Catholics to vote in if there had been no Reformation. I am by no means an expert on the topic, but it seems to me the political philosophers who influenced the Founding Fathers were not only not Catholic, but had at least some of their works on the Index of Forbidden Books. (Of course few great thinkers didn't have at least one forbidden book.)