As I argued in the first part of this essay, the Catholic Church has much to contribute to the revitalization of right reason and the moral foundations of democracy in a Western world that has increasingly lost sight of its civilizational soul.
But as Paul Seaton has compellingly argued in a recent article at The Catholic World Report entitled “Western Civilization Under Attack,” the current leadership of the Church no longer speaks with any confidence about the need to defend Western civilization, that civilizational order with roots in Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome “in which the humanity of man has been most explored, extolled, and realized (if imperfectly, as such things must be).” As Seaton strikingly adds, if the West—including its deep-seated commitments to constitutional government, liberty under law, religious liberty, and the search for truth—“were to leave the stage of history, both as ideal and as reality, humanity would be immeasurably diminished.”
