From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, September 2024

September marked my first full month as the Witherspoon Institute’s 2024–25 Public Discourse Fellow. After being an avid reader of the journal during my college years, I am excited to begin what promises to be a year of intellectual and personal growth at PD. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to spend a year in scholarly collaboration and study with the distinguished intellectuals at Witherspoon.

It is not lost on me that I begin this new position at a time in which PD’s role in shaping public conversation is particularly important. We find ourselves now in a time of significant social and political tumult, resentment, and confusion. It seems clear to me that, particularly over the past several years, reactionary sentiment has permeated many facets of our society—from our culture and our politics to our venerable civic and religious institutions. “Reactionary,” of course, despite any connotations, ought not to be construed as an inherently negative descriptor; strictly speaking, it refers only to something’s genesis being in reaction to something else. Whatever you think of right-wing populism (I myself have mixed views), there is no doubt that its rise can be attributed principally to concerns about the ideologically motivated social changes that progressives have rapidly advanced and weaponized in recent decades. Political leaders can harness prevailing sentiments to their advantage, but they are not their ultimate cause.

The Catholic Church has not been untouched by this phenomenon: awareness of and support for causes such as integralism and traditionalism, as well as the minimization or rejection of certain doctrines of the Church (especially the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the postconciliar magisterium) have grown significantly in the past decade, particularly among young people. In large part, I believe this is a reaction to the liberalization that—while some would defend and others criticize—I don’t think anyone would deny has taken place in the Church under Pope Francis’s leadership. But for whatever their differences, John Paul II and Benedict XVI were in staunch agreement with their successor regarding a variety of subjects that have now become controversial in certain corners: from the necessity of religious liberty, the inadmissibility of state-sponsored religious coercion, and the rejection of political authoritarianism to the inalienable dignity of every human person (practicing Catholic or not) and the Church’s relationship with non-Catholic religions, as well as its unique fraternal bond with Judaism. Yet it is only now that pushback to these teachings and demands for a return to the Church as it was before the Council (as if that were possible) have escaped from the fringes and are knocking on the doors of the mainstream.

A crucial aspect of Public Discourse’s mission, as I see it, is to be a beacon of light and a forum for serious, rigorous, and truth-seeking discourse even when temptations toward despair, radicalization, and provocative polemics abound. At PD, we charitably examine and challenge ideas and arguments—we don’t attack or demonize people, and we don’t serve any worldview, party, or ideology besides the cause of truth. When darkness harkens at the gates, we orient ourselves toward joy and hope, doing our best never to allow temporal concerns to separate us from the transcendent realities that define us. Over the coming year, I hope to do my part to further this mission.

With this in mind, I commend to you several essays that PD has published in the past few months.

PD contributing editor Nathaniel Peters sits down with M. Ciftci to discuss his new book on Vatican II, church–state relations, and political participation. Daryl Charles and Carson Holloway exchange competing views about moral principles, just war theory, and how the U.S. and Western powers ought to respond to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Xavier Symons, John Rhee, and Tyler VanderWeele examine “what it means to die well” in an article on flourishing at the end of life. And, as the sensitive subject of in vitro fertilization (IVF) is increasingly weaponized by the Left as a political cudgel to attack social conservatives, we compiled a primer on the topic for those interested in what IVF actually is—and the complex moral and ethical considerations involved.

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From the Archives

• R. J. Snell, “Theorists of the Poison Pill”
• Daniel Philpott, “Where Have You Gone, Jacques Maritain?” and Nathaniel Peters, “Maritain for Our Time”
• Terence Sweeney, “What Secular Humanism Misses”
• R. J. Snell, “How Should Conservatives Respond to Revolution?”
• Melissa Moschella, “The Ethics of Abortion: Clarifying Misconceptions”
• Robert P. George, “The Common Good: Instrumental But Not Just Contractual”

What We’re Reading around the Web

Our editors suggest the following as worth a click:

• James Hankins, “Real Republics and Fake Democracies,” Law and Liberty
• Kenneth Craycraft, “The Pro-Natalist and Pro-Life Case to Make Birth Free,” First Things
• Beatrice Scudeler, “The Stay-at-Home Intellectual Mom,” Plough

Image by 4Max and licensed via Adobe Stock.