A Deeper Vision
Subtitle: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: November 16, 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 621
ISBN-13: 9781586179908
Description: In this wide-ranging and ambitious volume, Robert Royal, a prominent participant for many years in debates about religion and contemporary life, offers a comprehensive and balanced appraisal of the Catholic intellectual tradition in the twentieth century. The Catholic Church values both Faith and Reason, and Catholicism has given risen to extraordinary ideas and whole schools of remarkable thought, not just in the distant past but throughout the troubled decades of the twentieth century.


Royal presents in a single volume a sweeping but readable account of how Catholic thinking developed in philosophy, theology, Scripture studies, culture, literature, and much more in the twentieth century. This involves great figures, recognized as such both inside and outside the Church, such as Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar,Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Czeslaw Milosz, and many more.


Royal argues that without rigorous thought, Catholicism – however welcoming and nourishing it might be – would become something like a doctor with a good bedside manner, but who knows little medicine. It has always been the aspiration of the Catholic tradition to unite emotion and intellect, action and contemplation. But unless we know what the tradition has already produced – especially in the work of the great figures of the recent past – we will not be able to answer the challenges that the modern world poses, or even properly recognize the true questions we face.


This is a reflective, non-polemical work that brings together various strands of Catholic thought in the twentieth century. A comprehensive guide to the recent past - and the future.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: FAITH AND REASON
label: Part One; title: The Thomist Revival and Preconciliar Catholic Thought
label: 1; title: Catholic Philosophy in a Time of Turmoil
label: 2; title: Theology and the Throes of Modernity
label: 3; title: Critical Interlude: The Second Vatican Council
label: 4; title: A Renewed Theology and Modern Culture
label: 5; title: The Three Ages of Scripture Studies
label: 6; title: Scripture Study after the Council
label: 7; title: CREED AND CULTURE
label: Part Two; title: The Emergence of Culture as Protagonist
label: 8; title: Freshness Deep Down Things: The Catholic Literary Revival
label: 9; title: The Two Frances
label: 10; title: The Motley Society and After
label: 11; title: The Pathos of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition
label: Conclusion:; title: Acknowledgements; title: Notes