Episode 301: Carlo Lancellotti, author of Touchstone article entitled "America vs. Europe: Two Roads to Totalitarianism" (June 4, 2025)

In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Thomas Storck, Christopher Zehnder, and Andrew Sorokowski interview Carlo Lancellotti, author of Touchstone article entitled "America vs. Europe: Two Roads to Totalitarianism" (June 4, 2025)

Questions asked:

1. In your article you argue that although Europe was ahead of the US in terms of "overt" secularization, American "cultural de-Christianization" actually preceded Europe's. Could you explain for our listeners and viewers what you mean by these two types of secularization?

2. If this understanding is correct, does it argue a rather superficial view on the part of American Christians as to what it means to have a Christianized society or nation? That Americans have long regarded themselves as religious merely on the basis of certain limited areas of external behavior while our intellectual and cultural life has been dominated by "a scientistic, utilitarian, individualistic, and materialistic worldview"?

3. It is a commonplace that American society has been individualistic. Would you say that this is both a cause and a result of the fact that Americans have a very weak concept of culture and the effect of culture on individual persons, and that hence we have viewed religion as simply a private affair? And if that related to the variety of religious groups in the U.S. and its generally Protestant cultural tone?

4. You refer to a discussion in the 1990s between Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and David L. Schindler, in which the former called for a revival of a "Puritan-Lockean synthesis" in the US, while the latter argued that the American "dualism" of faith versus reason had led to a separation of religion from knowledge, and thus to secularization. Would you say that Schindler's view has been vindicated by events since the 1990s?

5. You cite the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce regarding scientism and "politicism," and the relation between secularism and totalitarianism. Could you comment on Del Noce's views on these topics and generally on his importance for understanding modernity?

6. When thinking about "politicism," do we need to distinguish between modern and classical understandings of what we mean by the political? For example, you wrote "I believe we must call totalitarian any worldview that affirms the supremacy of politics above all aspects of social life and absorbs into politics all other forms of culture, like education, science, religion, art, and so on." Now in his Ethics (Bk. I, 2) Aristotle wrote, "If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake...clearly this must be the good and the chief good.... It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric..." So are moderns and Aristotle speaking about the same thing? Or is there a hidden totalitarianism in Aristotle?

7. You end on a somewhat positive note, arguing that secular modernity is destroying the very institutions upon which is depends, and yet is unable to preserve, and that Christians can feel this void by "showing them in concrete ways (in education, at work, in the family, even in politics) that faith not only connects us with God, but also makes us able to address more intelligently the human needs we have in common with everybody." As far as you can see, have we begun to do anything effective along these lines? Do you have any specific ideas of how we might implement such a proposal?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listening to WCAT radio, your home for authentic Catholic programming.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome to the Open Door with the host Thomas Stork
and co hosts Christopher Sender and andrews Rakowski. Today we
were honored to have as our guests Karl Ancelotti, who
has written an extremely interesting article that appeared in touch
Tone a few months ago, and we will be talking

(00:28):
to him about that article and related matters. Let us
begin with our prayer in the name and the Father
and Son of Thely Spirit. Amen, Come, Holy Spirit, pull
the hearts of your faithful and kindling them the fire
of your love. Send forth your spirit and they shall
be created. And you show we knew the face of
the earth. Let us pray, Oh God, who has taught

(00:49):
the hearts of the faithful, by the light of the
Holy Spirit. We had that in the same spirit we
may be truly wise. And everyone rejoiced in his consolation
to Christ, our Lord, Amen, the Father Son Wilpa. Amen.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
So thank you very much, doctor Ancelotti for being with
us today. Then the article you wrote in Touchdown America
versus Europe Two roads to seculariz age, totalitarianism right tue
to autornism raised a number of very interesting points, and

(01:25):
it started out with a point that is often made
and often taken for granted. And so you argue in
your article that although Europe was a head of the
US in terms of overt secularization, in the United States,
actually cultural de christianization was way ahead of Europe. And this,

(01:50):
I think will come as a surprise to many of
our listeners who take for granted the idea that the
United States is more religious or at least has been
respect in Europe. Could you explain what you mean by
these two types of cycularization and how you got to
this point of this. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Absolutely, I mean, in fact, you know, in my mind
the title of the article should have been in America
versus Europe to Roads to Secularization, as you said, but
of course the editor probably shows something a little more dramatic.
Although I mean Totallyorani is a topic in the article.
But really my concern was exactly the one you just raised,
comparing secularization the way it happened on the two sides

(02:35):
of the ocean. I mean I spent a lot of
long times of my life on both sides. I grew
up in Italy for the first twenty five years of
my life and I've been working in the US for
the next thirty five hours, almost years of my life.
So for me as been as a Catholic, it's been
a very interesting question to compare our secularization developed in
the two different contexts. So since we want to talk

(02:58):
about overord versus cultural, by over I simply mean what
can be easily measured as church attendance. This is what
sociologists would do, right, I mean, a sociologists would study
how many people go to church, how many people get religious?
Looking for their children only, how many people get married

(03:19):
in church? And that's what you know. Sociologists typically, since
they have to measure something, they always in the sense
choose the easy path because that's not hard to do.
But is it the whole story? And for many years,
I think that sociological approach has been kind of prevalent
in gauging secularization. And I mean I remember when I

(03:45):
was a little younger, I used to live in Washington.
I was friends with doctor David Schinder, the distinguished Catholic
theologian who passed away a few years ago. And I
also had the occasions to meet Father new House. I
think you want to bring them up later in discussion.
But back in the nineties only two Talians. There was
a clear sense that there was a godless Europe and

(04:11):
still kind of most more robust American Christianity. I mean,
there was a book by Vigel and Europe and the
Cuban Cathedral, if I remember correctly, that was kind of
a common place. And as it happened, doctor Shina was
on the opposite side of the defense precisely because he
thought that this kind of work sociological analysis of church

(04:32):
attendance really doesn't tell you much about our culture is
impregnated by Christianity culturally in the sense of how does
Christianity shape judgment? How does Christianity shape lifestyle? That's Christianity
shape the way people think. That's what I mean by

(04:52):
cultural secularization, the way the culture moves away from thinking
in a Christian way. Now, of course, as opposed to
the first start, which is again easily measurable, the second
type is kind of subtle and hard to assess, usually
has to be done by proxy, and of course it's

(05:14):
more open to discussion, So it would be interesting to
come up with some examples. But I mean, feel free
to interagt me if I'm going on too much, but.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
In the in the article I gave examples that concern
for its intellectual life. I mentioned this Italian Catholic philosopher Shack.
In the fifties, he wrote a book or a book
chapter reviewing American philosophy, and it was struck that compared
to Catholic filowers, to European philosophy at the time, American

(05:49):
academic philosophers were almost unanimously autistic. They were either you know,
kind of autistic pragmatists or analytical philosophers, or new positive
is or Marxist, or or that it was struck by
the unanimity because if you go to Europe or you
get to see Paul records in France, in Italy you

(06:10):
had many academic with others who were Catholic. You had Spain,
and in Germany you could go all over the place
and there was a diversity of philosophical altitudes. While at
least on the religious questions. While in his survey it
turned out that American philosophy at the time, I don't
know Quine or that kind of people. They were very

(06:32):
at the aar in a years in English, Alfred Ayer,
I think it's the name. They were striking the autistic,
so it was struck by that. The other example, where
mean simul Vile at the same pression as she came
to New York, she was struck in. And then for
the tree already, how the culture was imprinted with scientists,
for example, out the salvation you I mean, would expect

(06:53):
salvation from science or from technology, from technical progress in
a sense that would fix also problems. You know. Again
there's an implicitly non Christian cultural outlook. And now at
this point I would like to emphasize that when we
talk about eighties, for example, it is very crucial that

(07:15):
you understand eight is not just as an abstract formal
denial of the gods. The way eighties manifested itself historically
is first of all by denying the religious question altogether,
but the nine, the spiritual dimension, but the nine transcendence,
even if before denying the specific question of the triune

(07:37):
God or the Christian revelation, the manifestation of aightens. Historically,
it's the self sufficiency of men that you don't need
to ask questions about salvation, about redemption, anything of the
candor about God and the other classical manifestation of eighties,
in my view, is always the affirmation of alternative ways

(07:58):
of salvation. Even assuming that there is a problem with humanity,
can it be solved by science and technology? Can it
be solved by politics?

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Atheens manifests itself as this dualism in which even if
you may still affirm God abstractly, like to think of
the d is you know the d East, the world
of the of the eighteenth center, the Ei s T S.
The would still affirm God as the great Arctic of
the universe in the abstract, but then would affirm that

(08:28):
humanity is essentially self sufficient. The step from there to
atheism is very short. So based on these kind of categories,
Simon Bay, for example, was convinced that American nineteen forty
three was much more autheistic than Europe because it affirmed
that science and technology were sufficient for their redemption of
society in earl. Another example that I given the article

(08:53):
is will and Wright, which is the father of the
sexual revolution. The theoretician of the sexual revolution Will Right
in the early fifties, or maybe it was nineteen forty nine.
Afriget after World War Two, he decided to move to America.
Why because he felt that the sexual revolution would take
off much better in America. And the explanation it gives

(09:16):
is interesting. It says that even America is puritanical on
the surface, meaning everybody maybe would go to was a
good protest and go to church on Sunday, listened to
a pastor. It has this idea of individual happiness, which
is what the sexual revolution needs. Okay, so again here

(09:37):
there is an indirect cultural aspect. How do we think
of happiness in which which is culturally non Christian?

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Right?

Speaker 3 (09:48):
And it is not easy to discern, But all these
others noticed that America was on a cultural pattern that
was going to get rid of tradition, get rid of
the Christian worldview more efficiently than what they were observing
in their own European countries. No, I don't want to
talk too much.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
I mean you may ask. Your thesis is, of course,
that secularization of culture happened first in America before Europe.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
That's correct, right?

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Oh no, no, no, no, that's too much. I will
say that it had been faster after World War Two?

Speaker 4 (10:27):
Do you think do you think it has its roots
in I'm going back to say, the Revolution even I
asked that because the revolution period of revolution is generally
considered to be one of the most irreligious periods of
American history. But then there was in the early nineteenth
late in eighteenth century these revivals, and you had this

(10:47):
Protestant revival movement which up to that point, for instance,
mail was not delivered on Sunday, was delivered on Sundays.
They seized the delivery mail on Sundays. You had this
this product of religiosity produced movements against for social reform,

(11:09):
for against slavery, to make make domestic servants good. I mean,
there was all sorts of you know, prohibition, all these
different things published alcohol. So I mean, do you is
this something you think the secularization cred later than that,
or do you think you can see the roots of
the secularization even there?

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Okay, that's a complicated question. I mean, in the big picture,
you know they are many The process of secularization on
both sides of the country started from the ideology of
the Enlightenment, I would say, in the in the eighteenth
century at some point, but for a long time, I
think it affected mostly the elits did not percolate down

(11:54):
to the trust route. When you observe really mass secularity.
I mean that's reization really is not just an elite phenomenon.
It is is not an elite phenomenon. It becomes a
mass phenomenon. That's the twentieth century phenomenon. I don't think
you can see that in the nineteenth century. That's the
first thing to say. I think, but I want to

(12:17):
make another comic. One thing that I also bring up
in the article is the question of what again doctor
Schinder called a certain dualism built into American Protestant redigality.
I don't know if we want to talk about this
later or but because I think it's one of the
later questions. But what Shinder talks about the Puritan tradition,

(12:45):
and to me a great example of that if you look,
for example, at the history of American universities, there is
a beautiful book by George Marston, the distinguished Evangelical scholar
or telling the History of the American Universities. I forget
the title. In that book, Martin shows how already in

(13:07):
the nineteenth century you could serve this phenomenon. We are
by all the universities were formally Protestant, but basically The
trend was about affirming compartmentalization. Essentially that there are all
these academic disciplines, we have a totally independent structure, totally
independent intellectual dynamic on which Christianity person has nothing to say.

(13:32):
All right, so you see that there is this separation
we are by in a strictly say Protestant Calvinist perspective,
God is transcendent, and you don't want to mix God
with the study of history or philosophy in as much
as you don't want to contaminate God. Right, there is

(13:53):
this sense of affirming the transcendence of God, which, as
Hinder puts it, transforms into affirming the Imman and so
everything else. If God in a pros and perspective is
completely transcendent and in the universities the divinities department is
completely independent, you think that you are affirming Christianity in

(14:18):
a sense, but you're also saying that Christianity is not
relevant to history of philosophy or sociology. Right, and you
affirm a separation, a dualism where value of these independence
spheres in which the secular sphere progressively becomes more and

(14:38):
more secular. Because you see what I'm trying to say, so,
I would say, to answer your question, and we say no.
In the nineteenth century, you don't see secularization in the
modern sense, but you see certain forms of dualism or
separatists between faith and reason that prepare the ground for secularization.
That's the way I would phrase.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
It's interesting because on that note, these religious movements early
in nineteenth century were companies. Well, they were by they
say political action, but it was political action only in
order towards morality. Dougmatism, dogmatic teaching. Even though that money
splits amongst products sex to split multiply across the sex,

(15:20):
it wasn't dogmatic. It wasn't about the primacy of the
Christian religion, even it is about morality.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
And so that's extremely important. That's a very important point
because you could say that speaking very generally, that the
mediation the connection between faith and life was ethical, was
exclusively moral, but faith was not impacting the life of reason.
You see, if you want to look at these two aspects,

(15:48):
the life of reason and the life of the ethical life,
the pipeline from the Christian faith to real life went
strictly to the ethical moral pipeline, not through the intellectual pipeline.
I think that's another. Another part.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Is that is, would you say that there's anything to
do with the fact that, even though ideas are important
in America, they're not usually recognized as such. In other words,
we take certain things for granted, like Louis Hart said
that John Locke was a massive national cliche in the

(16:27):
United States, but Americans don't recognize that as a as
an intellectual construct. It's simply the air we breathe. And
so American religion is is not a concern with ideas,
but cons there is Christophers, wasn't the morality?

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yes, I think there are multiple factors. That's certainly one.
Another closely related one is the American tendency to pragmatism.
You know, that's really the national philosophy in a sense,
you know, the fact that a certain practical spirit, which
is good many ways. I don't want to dismiss it
as bad, but it can produce a certain anti intellectualism

(17:10):
maybe in some situations. But my favorite personally explanation root
cause is again in Protestant theology and theology, there is
ultimately a disconnect between faith and reason. The tomistic idea

(17:30):
that you know, faith is the fulfillment of really that
grace perfects nature, and so that in this sense, faith
is not just knowledge of God but also knowledge of men.
I mean this is a classical Catholic theme, right, that
the Christian revelation reveals God to us, but it also

(17:50):
reveals ourselves. It also reveals men, and by doing so,
it also reveals what it means to be a true
human being, a saint if you needed. And so in
this sense, I personally maintained that the growth of science
in early modern Europe was also a reflection of the
spiritual life of the monasteries of the Middle Aged and

(18:12):
it reflected a certain interest in the world, a certain
curisulty about the world, which was a by product of faith.
This is something that for example, Remi Bragg, the famous
French historian, has written about. By contrast, many mainstream Protestant
trends tended to oppose faith and reason. Faith is the

(18:34):
knowledge of God, but it doesn't necessarily illuminate nature, It
does not illuminate political life, it does not illuminate in
any way our knowledge of the world. Right, and so
this kind of atmosphere, this atmosphere of dualism, can faith
and reason rather than a harmony of faith and reason,
in my opinion, favors what we are talking about. I

(18:57):
don't know that sound learn to what you just said.
I think that's what you see. What I'm trying to say.

Speaker 5 (19:05):
There is a common sort of thesis that what happened
with American Protestantism was that ultimately it has morphed into liberalism,
that this has become a sort of you know, ethical
it preserves the ethical element, but set aside the element
of faith, and what you have today is a kind

(19:27):
of de christianized Protestantism in the form of current liberalism.
Would you would you agree with that generally?

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yes, absolutely agree. I mean, if you look at it
for example, the I mean my opinion is that you know,
this big polarization in America that you see today politically
is the distant echo of the original polarization of liberal
progestism versus fundamentalism as you could observe in the nineteenth century,

(19:55):
right in the sense that the nature of America can
in general liberal Protestant theology is to fall into naturalism.
That seems clearly that's what happened, and then leads precisely

(20:16):
to the phenomenon that you just described of keeping just
the ethical Christianity and giving up on the revelation, on
the trends on the supernatural. So yeah, that's definitely what type.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
It.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Incidentally, you know, it just throws out as something I
was curious. Fact. In the eighteen seventies there was a
petition to Congress to declare the United States of Christian Nation,
and the House Judiciary Committee dismissed it as saying, well,
we already, we already, we've been there, done that. We

(20:57):
decided not to do it, and it's not we don't
want to do it. So that's something that's very curious
and not well known to the people will say, oh, yes,
this was founded as the Christian nation. Well, it certainly
wasn't explicitly so. And the one attempt that I'm aware
to declare it explicitly so was severely rejected by Congress.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Well, I mean, in America was really funded as a
combination of two factors, the Scottish Enlightenment and and protestant
Is in its kind of non established forms. I mean,
of course you had a Piscopellions, but you also had
all these groups and sex Baptists and Methodists and and

(21:49):
so these two elements constituted the fragile alliance. Again, Marsden
writes very well about what because the American Enlightenment, Because
this alliance of two factors kind of non denominational or
free searches that wanted the religious freedom and a certain

(22:10):
elite form of Enlightenment talk. And I think of Jefferson
and that kind of person that was open to keeping
Protestism as a guaranteur of ethics of public morality. And
of course this makes at some point to dissociate. I mean,
you know, like water and oil had to separate, I

(22:33):
would say, and in a sense, you know, the American crisis,
if we believe that there is some sort of American
crisis this day, manifested in this extreme political polarization against
is the long term dissociation if you wish out the
Enlightenment from the American form of Protestants. That's a very

(22:54):
broad statement to make, but as a general framework, I
think it's probably.

Speaker 5 (22:58):
Some now.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
The concept of culture as a as a as a
generalized way of life has never really it's not really
the first meaning I think that Americans would would think
of when they hear in the word culture, they would
think of art and symphonies and operas on does this

(23:31):
argue anything that we have a very limited understanding of
the culture and an intellectual life and how it affects
a nation as a whole. That and therefore a very
superficial idea is what a christianized society would be. So
I can remember growing up going to public schools in

(23:53):
the in the fifties, so we had prayers and sometimes
Bible reading every day, but the actual content of the
what was hot was completely circular and completely based on
science and progress.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yes, again I recommend Marston. He wrote a book another
book called The Twilight of the American Enlightenment if she
makes exactly that point. It does an extensive examination of
American culture in the fifties, and he has this surprising
discovery that everybody went to church and then it had
nothing to do with high schools, you know what I mean,

(24:28):
Just to just to put it in half serious terms.
And so this is the dualism I was talking about,
And this is what I mean by cultural secularities. Let
me give you an example about the education for example
that I come from it. At about the same time
two great philosophers reformed education in Italy and in America.

(24:51):
In America it was John Doing, you know, John Doya.
Then enormous influence in Italy was an a guy named
Genteela johmanni Gentila. It's now remembered as the philosopher of
Fascist because he did cast this lab with Mussolini. But
it was a serious philosopher. He was a serious thinker,
and he reformed the Italian high schools, probably up to
my generation. I went to high school in the early

(25:11):
eighties and you could still in a sense see the
imprint he left and Gentila's high school education. And Gentila
was not Catholic essentially, it was kind of liberal, idealistic
Hegelian philosopher. But even without being Catholic, the education that
he left was this education that you go to school
to join a civilization, You go to school to become

(25:34):
part of a cultural heritage, which somehow has to do
with the meaning of life. The meaning of life was
not for him Jesus Christ. It was this Hegelian god
of culture, this imman and divinity of history. We don't
need to go there, right, but you still see that
there is there. It was a school system which you

(25:55):
had to study philosophy, you had to take three years
of philosophy in high school, get to study two or
three major histories of literature. Everything was historically and at
the end of the day, there was there either to
be a human to be a successful human being, you
don't just need to get a job and whatever, but
you also need to be aware of the civilization you

(26:19):
belong to. Okay, non Catholic, no, But now let's look
at John do and John Doui is there is this said, yes,
I understand it an expert that you it's a pragmatic education.
You train people to become productive members of a democratic society.
And this implies and Red Do is say this somewhere
that you don't ask abster questions that are useless. But

(26:42):
what's the point of stelling philosophy If you have to
be a productive member of society, there is no reason
to ask philosophical religious questions. And so philosophical religious questions
are banned from education. You go to Sunday School, but
you don't discuss philosophical questions at school. Of these two,
which one sounds more culturally tasted, I would say the second. Yeah,

(27:07):
that's pretty Yeah, I would say the second because and
I can now talk about my own children. My two
olders went to the local public school. It was a
fine school. People were very well meaning, but it was
understood that you don't ask fundamental questions. The goal is success. Now,
this is one word that people in this country use

(27:27):
a lot, but without ever asking what are the philosophical resulie?
What is the dey of success in education? For example,
if you unpack it, at the end of the day,
the day of success is again the doing an idea
of becoming a productive member of democratic society, which easily
degenerates into making good money and getting strucial recognition. I

(27:49):
mean that's probably a success. I mean, correct me if
I'm wrong, But I think that income and public recognitions
are the division of success. Now, this i of success
in education, to me, is an example of a cultural
form of It is because it denies that they need
what is the ultimate goal of human life?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Right?

Speaker 3 (28:09):
If you affirmed that the ultimate goal of human life
to which you prepare young people through public education is
income and public or donation and making this up right,
But you see that there is an implicit geology, there's
an implicit philosophy about what is the end and goal
of life? That's what I mean by cultural it is.

Speaker 5 (28:29):
I think it's interesting also that American historians very rarely
venture into the philosophy of history. I mean, it's you
can get a pH d in history without ever encountering
the very notion of philosophy of history. I mean, whereas
in Europe, I mean, there's more of a tendency to
among historians, as far as I understand you to at least,

(28:50):
you know, consider philosophy of history. But could you say
a little bit more about what happened in Europe? I mean,
we have, I've seen the phenomenon of European thinkers who
may not be believers, who may actually be atheists, but
whose mentality has been shaped by Catholicism. But could you
say a little more about that, and perhaps refer some

(29:12):
of the ideas of augustudir Notachev these works you have translated,
after all, sure.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
I can try. I mean, in the in the article,
I make this point that in Europe, Marxist, at least
in Italy, in France, in continental Europe, say, Marxist played
an important role in the project secularization, not by denying religion,
but by offering a surrogate, by offering a substitute for religion. Right,

(29:41):
they belief in the revolution. They belief in the advent
of the Marxist reign of freedom is kind of utopian thinking.
Was that theistic, but was a theistic in a religious way.
Now that sounds like a contradiction term.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
But he.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Form informed than that God. The affirmed the official movement.
So it was certainlytistic, but it tried to give an
outlet to the human need for happiness, the need for hope.
It tried to give an alternative outlet to this need
from hope. Its not affirm success in this strictly bourgeois
materialistic sense that sometimes you spot in the fifties or

(30:22):
sixties already in the US. So it kept people desiring
sense alive, but misdirected, misdirected directed towards said the revolution,
and in the end it was bound to end up
in the same place. What I say in the article

(30:43):
is that really it's not that now Europe is any
better than the United States in terms of secularization. They bought.
They both got to the same point, but true too
slightly different rights. Right, So in Europe, the Marxist utopia
or revolution kind of undermined the authority of traditional religion.

(31:05):
It created a void, and then this void was invaded
by Hollywood, you know, or or by again scientists, materialists
exactly what was going on on the other side, but
in the American Marxis did not play a major role
in the United States until the process in a sense

(31:26):
went in the opposite way that you started from scientists, materialism, pragmatism,
and then later this became political and produced this kind
of totalitarian movements that we observe today, like warkness or
some aspect the most extreme aspects of the sexual revolution

(31:47):
and transgen gender ideology. These things are ideological and in
my view they are potentially totalitarian, but they came after
secularization in a sense, afterization that already in the fifties
and sixties and seventies was not very political because if
you look as late as the seventies, the Democratic and

(32:08):
the Republican Party was very similar. Okay, they represented different constituencies,
but culturally they were not very different. You know, you
could take I don't know remember that my dad used
to talk about there was this Senator Jackson was from
Mississippi or something, and you could see he was a Democrat.
Were Southern Democrats. I mean they represented different constituencies, right,

(32:28):
The Republicans would represent the Chamber of commerce, business, certain groups.
The Democrats who represent different groups, but at a certain
level they were not culturally very different. This opposition is
extreme opposition of ideologies developed after the process of secularization
in the senset already around its course in Europe, because

(32:49):
the other way around, there was first these classes of
ideology communists or sus Fascists orsus nagists that provided alternative religions.
This created a void, and then the void was occupied
by a lot of American culture.

Speaker 5 (33:06):
Do you think, though, that.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
That GK.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Chesterd have noted what I saw in America? He said,
the United States is the only country based upon our creed.
Isn't there a kind of a similar function to the
American political creed, which is actually much more than a
political creeds. It has also its implications about the nature
of man and the purpose of human society, and what

(33:32):
our purpose and end is as individuals. Do you think
there's something similar between that and Marxism proposes that the
religion of America actually became America, and it almost as
universalists because it seemed to be the great hope of
all mankind. So it takes on a very church like

(33:53):
aspect in that way, at least a religious aspect.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yes, I think that's correct. But again developed within this
alliance or this ambiguity with the process and Christianity, I
mean they kind of sustain each other. I mean, if
you can think of the difference in for instance, you know,
the Scottish enlighten un versus the French Enlightenment, that kind

(34:17):
of shows you the difference. Right that the Scottish alignment
was masonic, I mean that you believed in it was deistic,
it was not autheistic, it was dastick, and so it
affirmed that basically that there is the possibility of preserving
aspects of Christianity as a guaranteur. You know, God, the

(34:39):
great active of the universe, rubber stamps our enterprises like
on the one dollar bill and with Baptis, with the
New World Order, I mean it's on the one dollar bill,
the triangle the eye of God endorses approves of our
enterprises to build a new world order. This was definitely,

(35:03):
in my understanding, the American creed. But this American greed
supported itself because of the symbiotic relationship with widespread non
sectarian or whatever non conventional Protestant is. That was right.

(35:24):
I mean, I think to me that as a matter
of fact, the country was genuinely progress and culture, and
in a sense, this kind of ideology that you described
lived in this symbiotic or even parasitical relationship with the
Protestantism of the country with a certain type of products
and Christianity. That's why what I also write in the

(35:47):
other is that in Europe secretarization was conflictual because the
French Enlightenment versus the Catholic Church, the Church was the enemy.
While in the US, as I see it personally, secularization
was the coming apart of this strange marriage between an individualistic,

(36:09):
non unconventional forms of Protestantism and this Enlightenment way of thinking.
This kind of days was embedded inside the American Protestant experience.
It was not against the American protest experience, what I'm saying,
because it was embedded in the American protect experience. Yeah,

(36:31):
so section secuation had to happen as a thundering of
this marriage, not as a conflict the way it happened
in Europe.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
Yeah, I guess I would see that that even before
that sundering occurred in the United States, it was still
fundamentally secularistic, because religion took a position which is not
supposed to occupy, namely, yes, as a as a servant.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Yes, that's what Schindler would say first, And I don't disagree. Okay,
I don't disagree that in principle there was certain of
and that the secular is within American personal religion. I'm
not disagreeing with that, but we must recognize that the
country was genuinely practisate as far as the life of

(37:18):
the millions of people who lived in the country, Protestantis
was the spirical driving force and the support of the
national awareness. I don't think we can deny that either.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Going back to Europe for a second, you're familiar, I'm
sure with pus eleventh statement that the tragedy of the
nineteenth century was the loss of a working class to
the church. Now, in your article you argue that, well,
I'm not sure if you're talking about just Italy or

(37:53):
as a whole. It really wasn't until after World War
Two the secularism took off among anybody intellectuals. So do
you see, how do you how does a film level.
Do you think he was mistaken or is he talking
about different different strata or what.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
That's a good question. I mean, of course these things
developed over time and they you cannot make a clean cut. However,
I would say the following that when eleven talked about
losing the masses for the church in Italy, it meant
that they didn't look at Catholicism as the possible source

(38:38):
of a social renewal of social justice and they started
looking at socialists. That doesn't mean that they stopped going
to church immediately, I mean, it just means that Cathologists
start being the source of their awareness and expectations for
against sout renewal. Well, what is true is that, for example,

(39:01):
they will still get married, they will still have children.
So even if at the level of awareness they were lost,
at the level of morris, you know, what's the English
word for more? I never know to translate that of
behavior of lifestyle, the lifestyle remains staunchly Catholic until the

(39:24):
nineteen fifties when TV came on the scene, right, I
mean it's kind of funny if you read the lives
of these communist leaders in Italy from the forties and fifties.
They were perfect family men, and there was they were
I mean the leader of the Communist Party Tooriaty, at
some point he had the lover and it was a

(39:45):
major scandal. You had to keep it hidden because people
would not abide the Communists. The Communists would not abide
with the violations of the of Catholic sexual morality, you
know what I'm saying. So what I'm saying is that
even if Bilic eleven is correct in terms of understanding
of awareness, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of really

(40:09):
breaking away from Christianity at the cultural, behavioral, moral level,
that did not happen until after World War Two, in
my opinion.

Speaker 5 (40:21):
Could you say a little bit about the notion that
secularism or secularization leads to totalitarianism. There is that thesis,
and there is a thesis also that liberalism ultimately leads
to totalitarianism. That there's a Polish thinker, Legutko, who has

(40:42):
that thesis. What would you say about the prospects of
totalitarianism today.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yes, I'm more familiar with the first thesis because it
is not justice. Yeah, that is not really mine. I
mean that not believe that there is a tie in
secularization and total ettorneys and very simple terms. I think
its view was that eighties, as I mentioned already before

(41:13):
eighties poll eighties right, not the superficial. It would consider
eighties like you know, say Dawkins or the New eighties,
or even the eighties or the French Enlightenment, and Lamme
Tree did the rock that kind of people as just

(41:34):
in a sense superficial eighties because they just talk abstract
about whether there is God or not. To the note,
the real deep nature of eightsm is to affirm the
self sufficiency of men, the independence and self sufficiency of men,
that we do not need to be said, there is
nothing wrong with us. Certainly there is no original sin okay.

(41:56):
Debate is in a sense as to affirm again that
humanity is fine, that the death is natural, which was
a famous thesis of Hegel. There is nothing to be
scandalized by the perspective of death and even more sin. So,
if we agree that the really deep eighties is at

(42:19):
at this level, at the anthropological level, then the notch
argues that Marks was the first in a sense to
really recognize and affirm that in order to pully deny
God we need to be able to create a happy world.
We need to bring about happiness in history. The prospect

(42:43):
of historical happiness is the way to refute the Christianity
statement that we need to be saved, that we need
salvation right now. If we agree with the notche that
at the fundamental level is about human independence and self sufficiency,
then you see that politics, for every autistic worldview, takes

(43:04):
a crucial role, because how do you bring about this
natural happiness without God, without the redemption, without salvation. Politically,
politics becomes the supreme human activity. Politics becomes the source
of hope. Politics becomes where we expect happiness from by

(43:26):
removing the misery of history and soilence so forth. Now
you see that at the end of these politics must
invade every sphere of life to redeem it, just like grace.
Like in a sense you say that you know that
in Christianity Grace has to invest, invest and change every

(43:47):
aspect of our personality, of our life. So from an
artistic perspective, politics is the replacement of grace, and it
has to invade every aspect of life. This is the
not just definition of totalitarians. Totalitarians when politic becomes absolute,
when politics take over everything, where everything is political. I
was reading Anna Arend who tells the story of this

(44:11):
Soviet communist politician who made a big campaign to deny
that chess clubs should be out of the purview of
the control of the communist part. Why because he says,
we have to put a quote a paraphrase, but not
too much. We have to put an end to the
neutrality of chess. Chess is not neutral. The American I

(44:38):
don't know. The American Medical Association must be on board
with whatever is going to bring liberation. Education must be
about liberating people. Politics invades everything. This is again not
just definition of to Taliturani. And so you see that
in this sense there is this link, chain of links

(44:59):
that connect with circularization, in this statistic sense of sufficiency
with politics, with totalitarianmy.

Speaker 5 (45:08):
Well, one can see this at least in some parts
of our society here in the US. Is it happening
in Europe or not?

Speaker 3 (45:15):
In Europe it happened earlier, As I said, it really
happened in the thirties, if you wish, because if you
read again annahar and totalitarian systems were exactly like that.
The talitarian systems in Europe in the thirties were about
replacing this flawed, faulty, inadigated reality with a brand new
reality that we create politics and then you can send

(45:37):
five million used to the to the gas chambers if
they stand in the way of our recreation of reality.
The United States exactly because cecularization was not conflictional, and
because cecalization was more embedded into paradoxically, the religious, the
protests and religious experience did not experience utteritorism at the
same time. That's what that's was one of the part

(46:00):
to the articles, right that it really this and initially,
in my view, if you look back again after World
War Two, the expression of eighties in America, more than political,
was scientistic and technocratic, because then not She also says
that the other way in which eighties tried to bring

(46:23):
about salvation without God is by this belief in science
and technology, and in America, I think that was stronger.
America was already in the fifteen sixties a carto marge
and big believers that science and technology are the drivers
of every form of human progress. But by being scientistic

(46:46):
and technocratic it took longer to become political. I would
say that really American politics did not show significant to
talitarian strains until the nineteen nineties. Paradoxically went to talent
terrorism ended in the Soviet Union. It kind of picked
up in the in the US, but I doubt there

(47:07):
was anything of the kind, at least at the broad
social level before the nineteen nineties. Okay, the not check
would quibble with that. They're not just thinks that technocracy
is already potentially totalitarian, the belief in science so that
you have to trust the experts, and the experts are

(47:27):
the you know, it's already potentially totalitarian, but the authoritarianism
does not express itself aggressively in political terms immediately. It
doesn't have to. So while you know technocracy and scientists
are totalitarian potential, I would say that politically this happened
in Europe. First.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
In your article, you quote first that Graham Sheet was
to as a model the medieval Catholic Church in the
sense wanting overall cultural unity. So I'm curious when we
talk about totalitarianism and moiticizing. Certainly in the Middle Ages

(48:13):
there would have been a sense that all the institutions
of society would have contributed to the one end. The university,
for example. We're not seen as autonomous things that pursued
their own insu but serve of the overall overarching ends
of the society. How can we distinguish that from the
kind of totalitarianism that you and know you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Well, as I said, if you look at the European
Middle Ages, there was this unity, but ultimately they it
was planted to something transcendent, to something transcendent, meaning to
the Kingdom of God, which was not of this world.
It was not It was understood that society would be imperfect.

(49:00):
I mean, it was understood that ultimately happiness is reached
in heaven in the ultimate sense, not honor from this
sutalitarian tasy perspective, happiness must be reached on earth. And
so in a sense perfect imperfection cannot be tolerated. Imperfection
has to be removed, So you could the notturso makes

(49:23):
disolution of perfect is versus non perfectist politics. But apology
is perfectest it believes that you can bring perfection, and
so that's why politics can invade every aspect. In the
Middle Ages, politics was strictly confined because against salvation was
not expected from parties. It was expected from grace. And

(49:45):
this would then create the question or the tension between
the emperor and the pope in the state and the church.
There were problems again, but it was a different problem,
the problem of harmonizing religious authority. The points were transcendent
with the earth three. Politics is a different problem from
birthry politics taking over all of spiritual life and trying

(50:07):
to bring paradize on. Both have their issues, but they're
very different.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
But if we look at politics in the broadest sense,
the way ourself uses the German for example, that includes
maybe almost almost equivalent to what we would meet my
culture today, in the sense that it encompasses the like
he's talking about in the beginning of ethics, when the

(50:39):
political science, as he has usually translated, determines all the
things that occur in the state. But I guess one
could want to argue that in the medieval order, even
though it was transcended and wasn't looking for perfection in
this world, still the idea was that all all cultural

(51:03):
life or political life and the life sense would be
ordered to would be supportedate to a particular And yes,
and I don't know whether it makes well. I mean,
we're a Catholic, of course, we would take a lot
of difference. But I can see a secular is saying, well,
there's no difference the fact that it's transcending and is

(51:24):
neither over there. It's still manifests itself in this world
in the same way.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Well, that's a different, difficult question. I mean, I think
that the issue there is whether we recognize uh deituation
or you might have been fallen the Doctor of Original.
I think the Doctor and Original scene is politically very

(51:54):
significant and it really makes a huge impact character that
not it is the crucial option. It says, the crucial
option of rationalism is not against God, it's against originals.
And it said that, of course I started had no
idea original. So in a so maybe as Catholics we

(52:15):
have the freedom to try maybe to make some other
amendment warristo. But that's about my pagrade what I would say,
though recently I was reading jeus Son your son wrote
some interesting I says on Dante and Dante, unlike Thomas,
Aquinas believed that the emperor the secular government must be

(52:40):
spiritually submitted to the pope. But the pope does not
have direct political jurisdiction, should not have direct juridical jurisdictions
on the emperor, and Jiusn thinks that that the Dantage
introducing or the form of dualism of secularism inclicitly but

(53:03):
then not disagrees and it says that actually, what don't
they figure out is that we leave under a regime
of copiditors coupditas is Augustinian world to indicate the original
saying to indicate greed, fundamental disorder of the appetites. We
live in a situation of fundamental disorder of appetite. And

(53:23):
according to Dante, sorry note ineration figure out is that
from this perspective, Christian polities must be radically anti perfectis
because if you try to bring under one authority both
spiritual and political fulfillment, that would corrupt the spiritual authority.
So there is a there is a there is a

(53:47):
Dante for example, things that we cannot have a Christian totalitaranism.
It's because that would corrupt the church. Because because immediately
if the papacy became the ultimate seat of political authority,
you will be taken over by bad people by by
by is there an English word for cupidity, by people

(54:09):
with disordered desires. Of course, Dante was very angry at
bonifest the eight But but do you see my point?
My plan is that being in a regime of original
sin has to be accounted foreign politics and the way
the note, for example, the councilor it is by by
affirming that you cannot have an hierocracy. You can have

(54:31):
a theocracy, theocracy meaning that Christianity is recognized by society
as the supreme spiritual paradigm and authority. But you cannot
have an higher acerracy. She is a different Greek word,
meaning rule by the clergy, because rule by the clergy
would be kind of the ultimate integralist that the pope.
The president pick ups the phone and calls the pope,

(54:53):
and there is a difficult disease to the not The
reason that's not acceptable is because that kind of unity
is impossible after the original, after the original, after the
fall of fall of Adam, you know. And so in
this sense it is necessary to protect the beautifial dimension

(55:14):
by not making it the city of polity of power.
I know, I don't know if that answers the question
at all, but I thought it was interesting.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
I think I think too.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
One thing that keep in mind in the Middle Ages,
even though these boundaries were often violated. The emperor violated
the pope's boundaries, the pope sometimes finally the emperor's boundaries.
It was always recognized, at least by the church that
there are those boundaries exactly. Yeah, and not only just
between church and state, but within the actual social order itself,

(55:46):
in particular the family. So if you look at Aristotle,
I think he seemed to have a more absolute sense.
Of course, he's living in a city state, which makes
a lot of things different, but there was that sense
of limitation.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:01):
Popes would oftentimes you have to argue as to say,
the emperor were not violating your authority, but you're violating ours,
And so there was a clear sense of drawing lines.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Yes, that's something that always stuck. You know. People complained
that in the Christian Middle Ages there was interference of
a church with the state. But what you have to
realize that before that, nobody ever thought that the choice
was different from the state. The very fact of affirming
that there is a church and there is a state,
and that they serve different lands and then they have

(56:31):
a degree of autonomy was absolutely revolutionary. I think.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Yeah, you end your article on a somewhat positive note
arguing the secondberginity is destroying the very institutions upon which
it depends, and yet it is unable to preserve them.

(56:56):
And that while you're writing for in touch, so you say,
Christians meaning I suppose products in Catholics can feel this
fills boy by showing in concrete ways that faith that
only connects us with God but also makes us able
to when tells me address the human needs that we

(57:19):
have in common with everybody in the book. So, as
far as you can see, have we begun to do
anything effective along these lines? Do you have any specific
ideas though I might implement the suggestion of yours.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
I mean, certainly we can see that in education, I
think that, as I said, it's kind of implicitly statistic education,
which would be either well in Europe or Marxist or
whatever in America, or do he's aramul into great trouble.

(57:55):
Everybody is getting a sense that we have no nothing
to proposed to the children, right, and that the human
beings are not just made to be successful in a
very narrow materialistic sense, that there is something that needs
to be proposed. And I think that, for example, the
church is ideally placed position to offer educational proposals which

(58:19):
are original and which include the religious dimension in a
way which is not necessarily sectariat. I mean it can
be proposed also to non Catholics, but it can, for example,
in a libucational system in some of these classical education movements.
In promising, there is some of these movement that tend
to combine liberal education with trade education in a trade

(58:45):
like these essentials at the worker schools. Those are examples,
in my opinion, of a Catholic perspective that tries to
break out of this educational boy I do think that
a secular eriment is running out of steam very fast.
I mean that we are we are agsilation of practical
nihilisms in many aspects. I mean we think of these

(59:12):
places in Canada where they offer you to get suicide
because you only have to wait two weeks. Well, you
need to wait six months to see a psychiatrist. That
creates a condition which the Church Christians have to step
up and offer a more human proposal, a more human solution.

(59:33):
So in health care health care, the more healthcare becomes
industrialized and just purely technical, the more there is a
need for people who love their patients. So I mean
there are many affects of society in which this nihilism
is becoming unbearable, and that and really secular culture liberalism

(59:55):
has nothing to occur. I mean, I'm making a very
general comment, but you see what I'm trying to say
there at the end of the day, whatever people say,
humanity needs meaning in order not just to believe in God,
but also to run a college. You cannot run a

(01:00:16):
college without any proposal or what it means to be
a human being. And we are at the point where
nobody seems to have much to say, I mean, apart
from the church. MHM.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Andrew Christoph, do you have any closing comments or questions
you like to nothing right now? Thank you very much, professor.
Here in today listen with hel Mary to our lady
and their Hilmory full of grace, words with the buss,
the women, food, Jesus, Mother of God, breakfruit, sinners, I

(01:01:00):
tell all of our death avete experiment. Thank you very much,
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Hello, God's beloved. I'm Annabel Moseley, author, professor of theology,
and host of then Sings My Soul and Destination Sainthood
on WCAT Radio. I invite you to listen in and
find inspiration along this sacred journey. We're traveling together to
make our lives a masterpiece and with God's grace, become saints.

(01:01:33):
Join me Annabel Moseley for then sings My Soul and
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Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Thank you for listening to a production of WCAT Radio.
Please join us in our mission of evangelization, and don't
forget Love lifts up where knowledge takes flight.