Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T20:12:33.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Caritas in Veritate and Critical Theory: Locating Religion in the Public Sphere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Erin Brigham
Erin Brigham
Affiliation:
University of San Francisco
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the debate on the public voice of religion from two perspectives: contemporary critical theory and the Catholic social tradition. Using the recent conversation between Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) on religion and secularization as a point of entry, I argue that critical theory offers a framework of rationality that promotes dialogue between religious and secular individuals while the Catholic social tradition's principle of subsidiarity provides a practical model for how this dialogue can occur.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 36 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Schuller, Florian, in the foreword to Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI) and Habermas, Jürgen, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, ed. Schuller, Florian, trans. McNeil, Brian (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 11Google Scholar.

2 See Habermas, Jürgen, “Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the ‘Public Use of Reason’ by Religious and Secular Citizens,” in Between Naturalism and Religion, trans. Cronin, Ciarin (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008), 114–47Google Scholar.

3 See Habermas, Jürgen, The Future of Human Nature (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2003)Google Scholar and Benedict, Pope XVI, Encyclical Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), §59Google Scholar.

4 Benedict, XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §42Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, “Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?” in Ratzinger and Habermas, The Dialectics of Secularization, 29–42Google Scholar.

5 Habermas, Jürgen, Postmetaphysical Thinking, trans. Hohengarten, William (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 51Google Scholar.

6 Benedict, Pope XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §4Google Scholar.

7 See Habermas, Jürgen, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987)Google Scholar, particularly the preface by Thomas McCarthy, vii–xvii.

8 Habermas, Jürgen, “Some Further Clarifications of the Concept of Communicative Rationality,” in The Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Cooke, Maeve (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 307–42Google Scholar.

9 Specifically relevant are the works of Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser, explored later in this article.

10 Habermas, , Dialectics of Secularization, 23Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 45.

12 Habermas, Jürgen, “What is Meant by a ‘Post-Secular Society’? A Discussion on Islam in Europe,” in Europe: The Faltering Project, trans. Cronin, Ciarin (Malden, MA: Polity, 2009), 73–77Google Scholar.

13 Habermas, , “A Discussion on Islam,” 74Google Scholar.

14 Habermas, , “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 140–47Google Scholar.

15 Habermas, Jürgen, “An Awareness of What is Missing” in Habermas, Jürgen and others, An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age (Malden MA: Polity, 2010), 16Google Scholar.

16 Habermas, , “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 143Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 135–40.

18 Ibid.

19 Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 181–235Google Scholar.

20 See a collection of responses to Habermas' work on the public sphere in Calhoun, Craig, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

21 Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, 117Google Scholar, 115.

22 Ibid., 115.

23 Habermas, Jürgen, “Public Space and the Political Public Sphere,” in Between Naturalism and Religion, 22Google Scholar.

24 “Communicative Action and the ‘Use of Reason,’” in Between Naturalism and Religion, 53Google Scholar.

25 “The Architectonics of Discursive Differentiation,” in Between Naturalism and Religion, 82Google Scholar.

26 Habermas, , Postmetaphysical Thinking, 33–34Google Scholar.

27 Habermas, Jürgen, “Richard Rorty's Pragmatic Turn,” in Pragmatics of Communication, 369–73Google Scholar.

28 Habermas, Jürgen, Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics, trans. Cronin, Ciarin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 9Google Scholar.

29 Reder, Michael, “How Far Can Faith and Reason be Distinguished,” in Habermas, and others, An Awareness of What is Missing, 42Google Scholar.

30 Benhabib, Seyla, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992), 166–70Google Scholar.

31 Lara, Maria Pia, Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 1–19Google Scholar.

32 Cooke, Maeve, “Salvaging and Secularizing the Semantic Contents of Religion: The Limitations of Habermas' Postmetaphysical Proposal,” The International Journal of Philosophy and Religion 60 (2006):187–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 For a more detailed discussion of the principle of subsidiarity as it has been developed in the Catholic Social Tradition, see the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Washington DC: USCCB Publishing, 2004), §185–88Google Scholar, and Massaro, Thomas, Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 89–91Google Scholar.

34 Benedict, Pope XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §57Google Scholar.

35 Pius, Pope XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (15 May 1931), §79Google Scholar, in O'Brien, David and Shannon, Thomas, eds. Catholic Social Thought: A Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005), 60Google Scholar.

36 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All (Washington DC: USCCB Publishing, 1986), §124Google Scholar.

37 Fraser, , “Rethinking the Public Sphere”, 124Google Scholar.

38 Benedict, Pope XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §4Google Scholar.

39 Ratzinger, Joseph, Introduction to Christianity, trans. Foster, J.R. (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1990), 46Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., 95.

41 Ibid., 95–96.

42 Benedict, Pope XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §3Google Scholar.

43 Ratzinger, , Introduction to Christianity, 110–11Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., 141.

45 Benedict, Pope XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §55Google Scholar.

46 Ratzinger, Joseph, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy, trans. Walker, Adrian (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 60Google Scholar.

47 Benedict, Pope XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §2Google Scholar.

48 Ratzinger, , The Nature and Mission of Theology, 77–78Google Scholar.

49 Benedict, Pope XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections”, (lecture, University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html.Google Scholar

50 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), §4, in Catholic Social Thought: A Documentary Heritage, 167.

51 Paul, Pope VI, Octogesima Adveniens, §4Google Scholar, in Catholic Social Thought: A Documentary Heritage, 266.