Response from the Authors

Chris Blum and I would first of all like to thank Father David Endres, editor of U.S. Catholic Historian, for generously providing a forum for a discussion of our book, The Past as Pilgrimage. It is, admittedly, an unconventional work, one that in many ways challenges the type of scholarly work presented in this journal. Father Endres was under no obligation to give us a hearing, yet did so in a spirt of true intellectual openness. So too, we wish to thank the symposium participants, William Cavanaugh, William Portier, and William Junker (yes, it is three Bills engaging the work of two Chrises), who despite having serious objections to aspects of our argument were nonetheless willing to participate in this scholarly exchange.

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”² With this and similar comments in his recent encyclical, Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), Pope Francis drew the ire of conservative Catholics who accused him of simplistically, even childishly, rejecting modernity. No less a conservative pundit than R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, went so far as to call Pope Francis the most anti-modern pope since Pius IX.³ After reading the responses submitted to this symposium, we can sympathize with Pope Francis’s situation. Although William Portier acknowledges our desire to inspire an “ecology of professional life,” William Cavanaugh and William Junker see primarily an anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment screed crippled by romantic nostalgia. We are, to be sure, critical of the Enlightenment and modernity. But the issue is whether or not that criticism is rational or irrational, and this in turn depends on what one sees when he looks at contemporary professional practice. Again, the environmental analogy is apt. Where Francis sees filth, his critics see progress and prosperity. They acknowledge the environmental destruction that has accompanied modernity, but insist that modernity has learned from its mistakes; in the end, there is nothing wrong with technology and markets that cannot be fixed by technology and markets. As we turn to the state of our intellectual environment, we cannot help but see a similar pollution. With Francis, we see these problems crying out for something more than technical solutions: that is, they require a change of heart, mind, soul, and cultural practice. Francis embraces modern science and technology, yet subordinates them to higher goods; we, too, embrace developments in modern historical thinking, yet in turn also subordinate them to the higher goods of sustaining a community united by faith. That this entails a radical re-thinking of historical practice is the argument of our book. Contra Cavanaugh and Junker, we see this radical re-thinking as a working through modernity, not a return to the pre-modern past.

The issue that seems to divide us is just how a Catholic should work through modernity. For Chris and me, this comes down to the question of whether Catholic historians will enculturate modern historical scholarship or modern historical scholarship will enculturate Catholic historians. The purpose of our first chapter is to argue for the desirability of the former and the historical reality of the latter. Cavanaugh and Portier seem to be generally persuaded by the argument of that chapter, but all three respondents appear skeptical of our suggestions regarding an authentic enculturation of modern historical thinking. Because two exemplars of Catholic history, Bossuet and Newman, wrote between Trent and Vatican II, Cavanaugh accuses us of rejecting Vatican II, of “repeatedly” disparaging “the so-called ‘spirit of Vatican II” (that phrase appears precisely two times in the entire work). Though all three respondents praise our treatment of Eamon Duffy, Cavanaugh charges that we misrepresent him as a pre-Vatican II reactionary. These and similar accusations seem to be responses to something more than what is actually in our text. We invoke medieval, early modern and nineteenth-century Catholic historical writers not out of any desire...