Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age (Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change: Christian Philosophical Studies,1)

The phenomenon of secularization since the Reformation and the beginnings of modernity has been traced by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age. He sees this in three modes: (1) separation of public, especially political, spaces from a religious context; (2) lessening in ecclesial practice by the general populace, which the Pew Foundation
Studies indicates as particularly strong among the younger generations
of Catholics; and (3) deeper levels of human consciousness in which
religious engagement and identity is no longer expected but instead has
become a difficult choice or option. It is upon this last that C. Taylor
focuses his attention, but undoubtedly the first two constitute its
enabling political and social context.
This has been summarized by him for the present project under four existential disjunctions, namely, between:
1/ the seekers who wish to realize in their life new, more
personally authentic, ways of being Christian and Catholic vs the
dwellers who feel that in the Church all is already clear, well defined
and simply to be followed assiduously;
2/ those who bring a modern sense of personal responsibility to
Church teaching in search of critical convergence vs the Church as a
jurisdictional authority to which is due obedience;
3/ ethical and moral praxis understood as a human, fallible and
historical or existential achievement vs a natural law morality built on
abstract, unchanging and universal essences; and
4/ a spirituality open to enrichment by the experiences and
spiritualities of the many great religious cultures and civilizations, even the nonreligious, vs a stress on the completeness of the Christian
spiritual tradition focused on the Second Person of the Trinity.
These four disjunctions could be read at a relatively surface
level. In terms of today s rampant individualism the loss of the social
context of belief provided by Church may appear to be of little account.
But to be trapped in oneself and loss the ability to transcend is to lose the
essence of religion as liberation and to be condemned to a life of
frustrated aspirations. Or understood as diverse personal psycho-social
attitudes the disjunctions might simply constitute the well-noted division
among Church members in the interpretation and implementation -- and
in some cases the effort to diminish the effects -- of Vatican II. In either
case the response might be a return to the Church s earlier selfunderstanding.

Charles Margrave Taylor, CC GOQ FRSC is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, history of philosophy and intellectual history. This work has earned him the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Templeton Prize, in addition to widespread esteem among philosophers. In 2007, Taylor served with Gérard Bouchard on the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation with regard to cultural differences in the province of Quebec.
José Casanova is one of the world's top scholars in the sociology of religion. He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center's Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular. He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of life-long achievement in the field of theology.
George Francis McLean at present holds the titles of Professor Emeritus at the School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America (CUA), Washington , D.C. , and Director of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Values. Yet this expresses only a small part of who he is. Over the years, Professor McLean has been a scholar and a teacher, but most importantly he has worked to democratize philosophy ­ promoting the research of philosophers coming from many different cultural traditions and publishing the academic work of teams of scholars from countries and regions around the globe in order to enhance the interchange of philosophical insight.

Since 1993, when Professor McLean took early retirement from his teaching position, he has worked full-time promoting global philosophical dialogue and cooperation. He has lectured in dozens of countries, traveling to places where key philosophical and cultural issues are debated. He has helped to bring together professors from many countries and regions in order to create opportunities for dialogue, communication, and cooperation, and to assist in building teams who, through their scholarly work, contribute to answering the vital questions of the day.