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A fresh history of nineteenth-century philosophy’s many ideas about secularization.
 
The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.

The French Catholic priest and biblical scholar Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) was at the heart of the Roman Catholic Modernist crisis in the early part of the twentieth century. He saw much of his work as an attempt to bring John Henry Newman’s notion of development of doctrine into the realm of Catholic biblical studies, and thereby transform Catholic theology. This volume situates Loisy’s better known works on the New Testament and theology in the context of his lesser known work in Assyriology and Old Testament studies. His early training in Assyriology taught Loisy a comparative historical approach to studying ancient texts, in addition to providing him the requisite training in ancient Near Eastern languages and literature. Loisy built upon this Assyriological foundation with his historical critical work in biblical studies, first in the Old Testament. In his biblical scholarship, Loisy combined the then current trends of historical biblical criticism with his more comparative approach. Prior to his excommunication in 1908, Loisy attempted in his more popular writings to defend the inclusion of historical biblical criticism in the repertoire of Catholic biblical interpretation. He saw this as an important step in reforming Catholic theology. The Modernist crisis set the stage for the major debates that would occur in the Catholic theological world for more than a century. The controversy over Modernism became one important conflict that helped pave the way for the Second Vatican Council. The issues raised during Loisy’s time, remain contested today. Examining how Loisy approached biblical studies helps readers better understand his overall work, and the place it played in the pivotal intellectual turmoil of his day.

By Those Who Knew Them illuminates the lives of several key figures involved in the modernist movement--the movement for intellectual and structural renewal in turn-of-the-century Catholicism

At the dawn of the 20th Century, several writers who were to become famous under the title of "Modernists" were advancing a deep agenda for reform in the faith and praxis of the Roman Catholic Church. But their agenda met with serious and scholarly opposition from another group of writers, whose essays are here made available in English. They include the historian and university rector Pierre Battifol, the biblical exegete M.J. Lagrange, OP, the Jesuit historical theologians Eugène Portalié and Léonce de Grandmaison, and the philosophers Eugène Franon and Joannès Wehrlé. All welcomed the historico-critical methods of research, and far from thinking them fatal to orthodoxy (as the Modernists did), they thought the Church's faith would survive and be strengthened by rigorous scholarship. These thinkers, then, are the true predecessors of Pius XII (Divino afflante Spiritu) and Vatican II (Dei Verbum). At the same time, these men thought outside the boxes drawn by 19th Century Positivism (Loisy), anti-intellectualist pragmatism (LeRoy), and romantic mysticism (Tyrrell). Their concerns hold new significance in the light of John Paul II's 1990 encyclical Fides et Ratio. Reading these too-long forgotten writers, then, deepens in a new way one's understanding of the Catholic Church's decision to decline and even condemn the Modernists' agenda, whether one ultimately applauds that decision or deplores it.

In two sets of intertwined biographical portraits, spanning two generations, Divided Friends dramatizes the theological issues of the modernist crisis, highlighting their personal dimensions and extensively reinterpreting their long-range effects. The four protagonists are Bishop Denis J. O?Connell, Josephite founder John R. Slattery, together with the Paulists William L. Sullivan and Joseph McSorley. Their lives span the decades from the Americanist crisis of the 1890s right up to the eve of Vatican II. In each set, one leaves the church and one stays. The two who leave come to see their former companions as fundamentally dishonest. Divided Friends entails a reinterpretation of the intellectual fallout from the modernist crisis and a reframing of the 20th century debate about Catholic intellectual life.

This work casts light on contemporary arguments over social Catholicism and the believer's role in society by illuminating a similar dispute among French Catholics during the Modernist Crisis (1909-1914)

In the six original essays included in this volume, the authors discuss how von Hügel, Blondel, Bremond, and Loisy all found inspiration in the great mystics of the past.

The Church Confronts Modernity assesses the history of Roman Catholicism since 1950 in the United States, the Republic of Ireland, and the Canadian province of Quebec

This collection of essays provides a small revolution in the study of Roman Catholic Modernism, a movement that until now has been largely seen as an episode that underscored institutional Catholicism's isolation from the mainstream intellectual currents of the time.