{"id":1082,"date":"2005-10-18T08:59:01","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T08:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/weigel-on-europe.html"},"modified":"2005-10-18T08:59:01","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T08:59:01","slug":"weigel-on-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/weigel-on-europe.html","title":{"rendered":"Weigel on Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lengthy interview<\/a><\/p>\n

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PB: The phenomenon that America has not become as secularized as Europe is sometimes referred to as the \u201cAmerican<\/a> exceptionalism<\/a>.\u201d Some might say that you owe this to the Protestant Evangelical churches<\/a>, which are more fundamentalist, rather than Catholicism. If one looks at \u201cred\u201d America I often have the impression that what kept America sane and Christian is this fundamentalist [I use the term in its original meaning, to denote the more traditional beliefs of Christianity as opposed to modernism<\/em> \u2013 pb<\/em>] Protestantism rather than Catholicism.<\/p>\n

GW:<\/strong> Evangelical Protestantism is a very elastic term.<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong> It is something specifically American. You do not have it in Europe.<\/p>\n

GW:<\/strong> But you do have it all over Latin America and Africa and parts of Asia.<\/p>\n

PB:<\/strong> That is true, and it is growing there because people are leaving the Catholic Church and are turning towards this more fundamentalist Christianity.<\/p>\n

GW:<\/strong> There is a kind of revolving door there. In Latin America people tend to go into these Evangelical churches and then ten years later come out and return to Catholicism. But, anyway, we are talking about North America here. The single biggest event that created the present religious, cultural, political dynamics of the United States took place on January 21, 1973.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh, and here’s a recent Weigel column responding to that Garry Wills NYReview of Books piece:<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n

I take it as an iron law of controversy that people turn to conspiracy theories and personal nastiness when they\u2019ve run out of ideas. Dr. Wills is, evidently, out of ideas, or at least arguments. In the course of his New York Review essay, he doesn\u2019t engage a single idea that Neuhaus, Novak, or I have proposed over the past twenty-five years. As our students will readily attest, my friends and I relish real debate; but how does one respond to cartoons masquerading as arguments? <\/p>\n

Garry Wills is a very intelligent man who has made important contributions to our understanding of American history \u2014 which makes it all the more discouraging when his commentary on things Catholic comes unhinged. So, for the record, here are what I take to be some of the key ideas three of his Great Conspirators have been propounding<\/p>\n

[snip]<\/em><\/p>\n

5. The pontificate of John Paul II was not a pontificate against modernity, but a pontificate advancing a distinctively modern appraisal of modernity, one that included both affirmation and critique. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lengthy interview PB: The phenomenon that America has not become as secularized as Europe is sometimes referred to as the \u201cAmerican exceptionalism.\u201d Some might say that you owe this to the Protestant Evangelical churches, which are more fundamentalist, rather than Catholicism. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}