Catholic Culture, the Rooted, and the Universal
Paul Harvey
John Fea's recent blog entry "Catholic Culture" points to a nice piece on this particular type of rootedness, and its decline amid the forces of a more rootless modernity.
It made me wonder how the author would respond to Obama's Notre Dame appearance and speech (a full transcript of the speech is here, by the way). Here is the response, worth reading in full, but a brief excerpt here:
In my view, the singular focus upon abortion as THE issue over which conservative Catholics will brook no divergence and around which we are called to rally reveals, to my mind, not evidence of robust Catholic culture as much as its absence.
What he means by that is a little hard to summarize here, so I encourage clicking on the link above for the rest.
Obama's speech deftly played on the tension between communal rootedness and universal values. It's worth reading in full, too. I'm hoping our contributing editor Kathy Cummings will weigh in on the Notre Dame appearance (hint hint . . . . )
Update: Kathy says she can take a hint, and says it was a wonderful day to be present at Notre Dame -- so a post reflecting on this further is forthcoming!
John Fea's recent blog entry "Catholic Culture" points to a nice piece on this particular type of rootedness, and its decline amid the forces of a more rootless modernity.
It made me wonder how the author would respond to Obama's Notre Dame appearance and speech (a full transcript of the speech is here, by the way). Here is the response, worth reading in full, but a brief excerpt here:
In my view, the singular focus upon abortion as THE issue over which conservative Catholics will brook no divergence and around which we are called to rally reveals, to my mind, not evidence of robust Catholic culture as much as its absence.
What he means by that is a little hard to summarize here, so I encourage clicking on the link above for the rest.
Obama's speech deftly played on the tension between communal rootedness and universal values. It's worth reading in full, too. I'm hoping our contributing editor Kathy Cummings will weigh in on the Notre Dame appearance (hint hint . . . . )
Update: Kathy says she can take a hint, and says it was a wonderful day to be present at Notre Dame -- so a post reflecting on this further is forthcoming!
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