Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Samuel Gregg: Catholicism and the Enlightenment
Samuel Gregg: Catholicism and the Enlightenment
May 9, 2025 2:04 AM

Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg reviews a new book at the Library of Law and Liberty that demolishes the canard that religious figure were “somehow opposed holus bolus to Enlightenment ideas is one that has been steadily discredited over the last 50 years.” In his review of The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement by by Ulrich L. Lehner, Gregg points out that the new book shows how “the Enlightenment argument for freedom was embraced by many Catholic Enlighteners.”

One of Lehner’s central themes is that the roots of Catholic Enlightenment thought are to be found in that most reforming of Church councils: the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Trent’s impact in terms of clarifying church dogmas and doctrines, curbing laxity among the clergy, implementing an extensive seminary and university reform program, and propelling the rise of dynamic religious orders (to name just a few changes) is hard to underestimate. Trent facilitated the development of a thoroughly orthodox, intellectually rigorous, and disciplined clergy; a renewed emphasis upon addressing social and economic problems; a repudiation of superstitious customs; and, perhaps most significantly, an emphasis that lay people were also called to holiness. This idea pervades, for instance, Saint Francis de Sales’ immensely influential Introduction to the Devout Life (1609).

Trent was therefore about improvement. prehensive efforts to better the human condition was a central leitmotif of the various Enlightenments and one to which, Lehner shows, many Catholics were naturally well-disposed. In some areas, such as enhancing women’s legal status and education, it turns out that Catholic reformers were well ahead of their Protestant and more secular-minded counterparts.

This helped create conditions for an engagement on the part of Catholic intellectuals with Enlightenment thinkers and ideas in fields ranging from philosophy and science to law and economics. Observing, for instance, the discoveries made through enhanced use of the empirical method, Catholics shaped by Trent’s reforms wanted to underscore patibility between faith and science. But they also desired to enhance the Church’s capacity municate its teachings “more widely and in a more conceptually clear manner.” That meant addressing criticisms of the Church and Catholic belief articulated by some Enlightenment thinkers.

“Catholic Enlighteners,” Lehner writes, “sought to show the public that they could successfully grapple with their intellectual counterparts and that they possessed the same intellectual abilities.” This, however, did not translate into outright rejection of every Enlightenment tenet: “Catholic Enlighteners saw some merit in the criticism and tried to refute them thoroughly while also ceding some ground.”

Read “An Enlightened Faith,” Samuel Gregg’s review of Ulrich Lehner’s new book The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement at the Library of Law and Liberty.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Artificial Intelligence: A contribution or detriment to human flourishing?
In my recent book, Artificial Humanity. An Essay on the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (2019, IF Press), I analyze several interesting aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) from a philosophical, anthropological and even ‘futuristic’ point of view. My intention throughout the book is to keep the reader grounded in real expectations about AI and its integration with rational, intelligent and free human living parison with so-called “advanced” machine learning. Therefore, I ask fundamental questions as guidance to readers who have followed...
Jeremy Corbyn would destroy the US-UK special relationship
Citizens across the UK are casting their votes in the 2019 general election. Jeremy Corbyn “seems in equal parts blind to the violence of socialism, the goodness of the West, and anti-Semitism in his own party,” I write in my new article for The American Spectator. The voters’ decision will have a decisive impact on the United States and the West as a whole. The Labour Party leader would destroy the special relationship of the U.S. and the UK. After...
Acton Line podcast: Elizabeth Warren wants $3 trillion tax hike; Mark Hall on America’s Christian founding
Massachusetts Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has proposed to increase taxes for big businesses and high earners to rake in nearly $3 trillion per year. Warren plans to use this tax to fund spending in health care, education, and family benefits, and as a result, according to Warren, the economy would grow. Are economists in agreement with Warren? What would increased taxes on the wealthy do for the economy? Dave Hebert, professor of economics and director of the...
A bait and switch at Peter’s Pence?
The Wall Street Journal’s recent article on the Vatican’s main charitable appeal landed like a bombshell this week. And it didn’t help that we’re in the midst of the holiday giving season. The Roman Catholic Church conducts an annual collection known as Peter’s Pence, which is touted as supporting mercy ministries and serving those most in need. Shockingly, the Journal has reported that for at least the last five years “as little as 10%” of the approximately $55 million raised...
Chernobyl and Alexander Solzhenitsyn on a culture of deceit
Yesterday, December 11 was the birthday of the great Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, born in 1918. The Imaginative Conservative published an essay I wrote on Solzhenitsyn and the HBO series Chernobyl. If you have not seen the series, it is excellent. As a warning, some of the scenes, especially in episode three are tough to watch, but it is incredibly well done. One of the underlying themes of the series is the problem of widespread deceit. This of course was...
How would Jeremy Corbyn change the UK?
American observers may know that Jeremy Corbyn wishes to fundamentally transform the British economy and reshape the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK. “Is it moral to confiscate people’s property and deny the elderly the right to control their own property?” asks Rev. Richard Turnbull, as he explores Corbyn’s economic proposals, from providing “free” services to the full nationalization of whole industries. For instance, Corbyn’s economic plan would destroy £367 billion of stock wealth. Turnbull – the director...
A Christian culture of reason and faith: Interview with Chantal Delsol
On December 11, Michael Severance, manager of Acton’s Rome office, interviewed French philosopher, historian, and novelist Chantal Delsol. Delsol reflects on the relativism and egoism of the modern West, especially Western Europe. “Today’s laws and morality,” she says, “are in great part inspired by paganism, which has reappeared on its own at the moment of Christianity’s decline.” As a remedy to this modern malaise, Delsol offers advice on how to recover a culture of reason and faith. In this vein...
Trade war hits home: How tariffs disrupt American businesses
Despite the “America-first” claims of trade protectionists and economic nationalists, we continue to see the ill effects of the Trump administration’s recent wave of tariffs—particularly among American businesses, workers, and consumers. Alas, while such controls may serve to temporarily benefit a select number of businesses or industries, they are just as likely to distort and contort any number of other fruitful relationships and creative partnerships across the economic order—at home, abroad, and everywhere in between. In a recent article for...
Wilhelm Röpke on liberalism and Catholic social teaching
This week’s Acton Commentary, adapted from my preface to the newest Acton Institute publication The Humane Economist: A Wilhelm Röpke Reader, illustrates what makes Röpke such an interesting and vital economist: Röpke saw his project in holistic terms involving intersecting and interdependent spheres or orden that to be fully appreciated and understood scientifically must be examined in their economic, social, and moral dimensions. mitments to mainline economic analysis, the importance of social institutions, and the moral and religious framework of...
The Virtue of Liberalism
Today, Law & Liberty published the text of my lecture for the Philadelphia Society in October: “Why Economic Nationalism Fails.” The topic for the panel was “Conservatism and the Coming Economy.” Since I’m not a determinist and doubt my own powers of prediction, I focused on what political economy conservatives ought to support in the future, despite worrying trends in the present: Conservatives ought to reaffirm the good of economic liberty, both domestically and internationally. Free markets and free trade,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved