The Ethics of Catholicism and the Consecration of the Intellectual

Arguing that the religious values of a particular culture can account for differences in the role of intellectual elites, this work compares the distinct traditions of French Catholicism and Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to demonstrate the strong relationship between the Catholic tradition and the emergence of an intellectual elite in secularized Catholic societies. Using France as a representative case of a Catholic context, the text argues that as French society became more secularized, intellectuals replaced the clergy as arbitrators of justice and enlightenment. Catholic morality was consolidated by the stochastic tradition and confirmed by the Counter-Reformation, providing the foundation that allowed the establishment of a lay elite. The book describes the progressive takeover of positions of influence by the new elite in Catholic society and examines the arguments used by thinkers from the 17th to the 20th century to legitimize their positions. In contrast to this progression, the work notes how the Anglo-Saxon Protestant tradition, due to its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, led to recognition of the individual's conscience as the sole judge of his or her deeds and failed to provide intellectuals with the basis for any claim to serve as moral leaders in political affairs.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Objective justice and its demise: Catholic ethics; the British moralists - the eclipse of natural law; the American assessment of natural law; from the clerisy to a sparse intelligentsia. Part 2 The rise and fall of the intellectual - the French experience: the counter Reformation and the impact of Jesuit pedagogy; lay ethics within the bounds of the Church; the philosophe - the prefiguration of the intellectual; the revolutionary reading of justice; an anti-individualist liberalism; positivism - the path leading to the intellectual; the emergence of the intellectual; the consecration of the intellectual.

Review :
"An important and original comparative study of three centuries of British and French intellectual history, The Ethics of Catholicism and the Consecration of the Intellectual represents suggestive and imaginative scholarship and it will give rise to an interesting debate among scholars." Gregory Baum, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University.