A new Christendom: Can Christianity breathe life into modernity?
"The transition from enlightenment, secular foundationalism to post-enlightenment, secular traditionalism can best be understood by considering the transition from the early-medieval synthesis of faith and reason to its divorce in late-medieval nominalism and voluntarism. Such a consideration can also help us to predict and depict more accurately what the next transition might look like."
I won't say this genealogy has "long been discredited" by intellectual historians; indeed it remains popular among Catholics. Who is able to write a scholarly historically accurate refutation of the thesis?
The Enlightenment was a tool for those pursuing the "will to power" - some may have been sincere believers in liberalism, but was it true of all who sought to increase their own power? I do think that it remains useful to look at various historical trends as a rejection of various forms of authority and tradition, but I would not tie every individual rejection with the concomitant adoption of Enlightenment ideology.
"In the words of Maritain, there has been a certain maturation of the political order, and it does look like the Gospel seed has come to a greater fruition in certain temporal areas - though there is room for much more growth, and there have been many misshapen and misbegotten stalks, as well as abortive fruits. One simply cannot discount or reject the modernity-friendly Gaudium et Spes in this regard. This maturation, and the real responsibility that it demands, which is the aspect of modernity gravely lacking today, is the true message of Gaudium et Spes when interpreted correctly according to the hermeneutic of continuity - that is, not as a replacement of the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, but as its complement. After Vatican II, no Catholic can interpret the prior Leonine social teaching and theology as simply a rejection of modernity, but neither can he reject or dismiss the prior teaching as outdated or simply mistaken."
How many of the advances in "science" and technology were possible because of the excess wealth first made possible through empire, supplemented later by cheap energy? As for the supposed maturation of the political order - I deny such a thing has happened. To take one aspect, we have drifted away any authentic form of republican government. Is it not the case that those who have maintained the consolidation of political and economic power during the early stages of nationalism have done so while proclaiming themselves to be fervent believers in "democracy" and "freedom"? The current political [dis-]order cannot be "Christianized" because it itself is opposed to right reason. Evangelization can only prepare people for death or possibly for a new, more localist order arising from the old.
Perhaps there are no "convincing and satisfying answers" because there are no easy answers that enable the current system to be perpetuated. Any real movement towards republicanism cannot but be a subversion of the system.
