Kozinski on the Rejection of Imperial, Modern Culture

The “earthly city” has always been opposed to true religion, and what Catholics, in America especially, need to grasp is that the culture in the West is neither liberal, tolerant, rationalist, materialist, religiously neutral, enlightened, morally progressive, secular, nor non-violent. At the heart of culture, pace the Enlightenment, is always the Sacred, and at the heart of our post-9/11 imperial culture is a terrifying sacred power in mortal conflict with the injunctions of compassionate belief. As for the primary Girardian directive for Catholics: it is nothing else than the wholehearted rejection of the imperial culture at the heart of today’s City of Man, one that has eclipsed the City of God through its counterfeit imitation of it. What this rejection looks like when translated into Catholic teaching and everyday life, as well what a blueprint for building an anti-imperial culture in the name of love might look like, are matters that need urgently to be addressed by Church leaders, lay and clergy.

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Source: Thaddeus J. Kozinski, "René Girard and Modernity’s Apocalypse," in New Directions for Catholic Social And Political Research: Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, ed. by Guido Giacomo Preparata (New York: Palgrave Macmillam, 2016), ch. 6.

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Comment: Perhaps the blueprint is found in Sacred Tradition.