Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American Public
Philosophy Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American Public
Philosophy R. Bruce Douglass and David Hollenbach, S.J., editors
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
This book can be ordered from the Woodstock Theological Center.
From cover:
Liberalism and Catholicism are two of the most important forces shaping the contemporary political culture of the United States. This book explores what is at stake as they encounter each other in new contexts today and what a fresh conversation between them promises for the future of American public life. In light of the conflicts between Catholicism and liberalism in the past, it explores the deeper philosophical, theological, and political issues that must be addressed if such a new conversation is to occur and bear fruit. The book emerges out of the conviction that both traditions continue to have much to learn from each other and that both would contribute more constructively to the resolution of the problems facing the nation if they were to do so. It thus constitutes an invitation to the dialogue that could produce such mutual instruction. It is a collaborative effort that brings together that work of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines. It examines how the relationship between the two traditions came to be what it now is. It projects ways this relationship might develop fruitfully in the years ahead, and addresses practical questions of public life in light of he emerging conversation. Though the book gives particular attention to the United States, it has relevance to debates about the future of both liberalism and Catholicism in many other parts of the world.
R. Bruce Douglass is Associate Professor in the Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He is a former Chair of that department, and is a political theorist specializing in the teaching of an research into late modern Western political thought. He serves as co-director of the Mellon Program in Social and Political Thought at Georgetown. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, and he has edited several books, including The Deeper Meaning of Economic Life (Georgetown University Press, 1986), and Liberalism and the Good (Routledge, 1990).
David Hollenbach is the Margaret O'Brien Flatley Professor of Catholic Theology at Boston College and is an Associate Fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. He is a regular contributor to the annual "Notes on Moral Theology" in Theological Studies, and has written over forty additional chapters in books and journals such as Theology Today, Human Rights Quarterly, The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, and America. His publications include Justice, Peace, and Human Rights: American Catholic Social Ethics in a Pluralistic World (Crossroad, 1988), Nuclear Ethics: A Christian Moral Argument (Paulist Press, 1983), and Claims in Conflict: Retrieving and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition (Paulist Press, 1979).
