Monday, November 24, 2014

"A Catholic Showdown" Without David Walsh is no "Catholic Showdown Worth Watching"

This article by the prominent Catholic public intellectual and university professor Patrick Deneen is old news. It received extensive coverage across the internet. I won't bother adding anything too substantive to it but to say that conspicuously absent from Professor Deneen's article is this guy

I took a few courses with Dr David Walsh back in the day and I did not encounter his work on liberalism until I approached it on my own relatively recently. My interaction with Walsh was primarily in his capacity as guide to the work of a difficult and dense German-American philosopher, Eric Voegelin.

Not to diminish Professor Deneen's valuable contribution to this debate in the form of a useful overview, but misses something by overlooking Professor Walsh's work. While the other individuals are excellent scholars who deserve to be read and whose presence in any conversation on this debate is indisputable, I suppose I would simply add one more name to the list. His mixture of intellectual power and elan with spiritual richness summon to provide a deeply penetrating and searching study of modernity. His work should not be missed.

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