I commenced my writing career, roughly twenty-five years ago, as a critic of liberal Catholicism, which I referred to, in one of the first articles I ever published, as “beige Catholicism.” By this designation, I meant a faith that had become culturally accommodating, hand-wringing, unsure of itself; a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled. In a series of articles and talks as well as in such books as And Now I See, The Strangest Way, and especially The Priority of Christ, I laid out my critique of the type of Catholicism that held sway in the years after the Second Vatican Council as well as my vision of what a renewed and evangelically compelling Church would look like. I emphasized Christocentrism as opposed to anthropocentrism, a Scripture-based theological method rather than one grounded in human experience,…

I will confess that one of the biggest laughs I’ve had in the last several months was occasioned by a recent article in The New York Times by Norimitsu Onishi. In this lengthy piece, the author tells us that the current political and cultural leadership in France, very much including President Emmanuel Macron, is alarmed at the rise of “American-style woke ideology,” which is effectively undermining French society and fomenting violence. Why, you are wondering, would this produce laughter? Well, what we call “woke” thinking in our American context was almost totally imported from French intellectuals who flourished in the second half of the twentieth century. One thinks of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, and perhaps especially of Michel Foucault. The thinking that was originally shared in Parisian coffeehouses eventually made its way into the university system of Europe and then, especially in the seventies and eighties…

Confesaré que una de las risas más grandes que he tenido en los últimos meses fue ocasionada por un reciente artículo en The New York Times de Norimitsu Onishi. En este largo artículo, el autor nos dice que el actual liderazgo político y cultural en Francia, incluido el presidente Emmanuel Macron, está alarmado por el surgimiento de la “ideología woke al estilo estadounidense”, que está socavando efectivamente la sociedad francesa y fomentando la violencia. ¿Por qué, te estás preguntando, esto produciría risas? Bueno, lo que llamamos pensamiento “woke” en nuestro contexto americano fue casi totalmente importado de intelectuales franceses que florecieron en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Uno piensa en Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, y quizás especialmente en Michel Foucault. El pensamiento que originalmente se compartió en los cafés parisinos finalmente se abrió camino en el sistema universitario de Europa y luego, especialmente en los años…