Philpott corrects Orsi on Catholicism and "modernity"

I noted, a few days ago, this post, by Prof. Robert Orsi, at the (excellent) Immanent Frame site.  Again, a number of scholars were asked to reflect on this question -- occasioned by the launch of a new research project at Notre Dame called "Contending Modernities:  Catholic, Muslim, Secular":

What is gained by framing research on religion, secularity, and modernity in terms of “multiple” or “contending” modernities, and what “new paths for constructive engagement” might such a frame afford?

As I noted, the response of Orsi, who holds the Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern, was "bracing":

. . .  The various goods of modernity were hard won; the language of multiple modernities obscures the fact that Catholicism was one of the major obstacles to their achievement. This is not to absolve the modern of its horrors or to deny that sometimes Catholics stood in courageous and necessary opposition to it (although the church itself mostly did so for its own ends, otherwise it was quite willing to come to terms with even the vilest moderns). It is to call into question the positive valence of the phrase “multiple modernities,” to question the history it elides, and to recognize the brave opposition of secular modernity to Catholicism, which has been on balance a great good. . . .

I responded:

The "brave opposition of secular modernity to Catholicism . . . has been on balance a great good."  I'd say the issue is joined!

Indeed.  Now comes my friend and colleague, Prof. Daniel Philpott -- an accomplished political scientist and a participant in the "Contending Modernities" project -- to . . . assist Prof. Orsi in better understanding the dynamic under discussion.  Dan writes (among other things):

[I]n his determination to cast the Church as an almost perfect foe of liberal modernity, Orsi offers little more than scant acknowledgment of liberal modernity’s historical campaign against the Church—and hence, modernity’s illiberalism, for one mark of liberalism is surely religious freedom. . .

 

He ignores, too, the Church’s own assiduous and sincere engagement with the modern world through its series of social encyclicals beginning in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and continuing right up through Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate.   In this engagement the Church rejects some dimensions of modernity but conditionally endorses others.  Much of its teaching and ministry has been directed towards those who have fallen into modernity’s shadows: workers caught in the gears of modern industry’s machines; immigrants and refugees left homeless by modern sovereign states; the elderly whom modern families have left isolated; the orphans whom modern cities have left on their sidewalks; and millions of unborn children who are denied the chance ever to make a choice by modern legal regimes that enshrine the reproductive choice that Orsi “cherishes.” Orsi ignores the Church’s advocacy of international law and cooperation since the early twentieth century; Pope Benedict XV’s call for forgiveness among European nations at the end of World War One; the Church’s predominant role in the “third wave” of democratization from 1974 to 2008, when it helped to toppled dictatorships in Poland, Chile, Brazil, and the Philippines; the work of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta; and the Church’s provision of one quarter of the resources that go to fight AIDS in Africa. . . .