Larry, Rodney and Andrew - just back from Amazon having downloaded Two Cities and the LouisIX book - outstanding work. Sheldon Wolin coined inverted totalitarianism as the managed democracy (similar to managed healthcare!). My teachers Robert McNally SJ and Edward Berbusse SJ would have loved this conversation. I believe they are with Jean, Urs, and Henri having a belly laugh or two with Hugo and Karl with the Lord even as they work together to help us see the shards in the whole. As always Dorothy Day keep us in your prayers.
I have listened to Dr. Jones on several different podcasts and he is fantastic. It is hopeful for society that he is educating young people with a Catholic view of the proper ordering of the temporal.
Regarding Jones's analysis of the splintering of Christianity, here is a relevant quote by G. K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy p. 22): "The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth, and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful."
