Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 132

MODERN AGE

WINTER 2016

intellectualized faith was able to accomplish, the clerical sexual
abuse scandal brought to a rapid halt. Even as the "Swallows of
Capistrano" (the label Bottum deploys to describe these Catholics) lit out to occupy the landscape, the power and influence of
the institutional Church in America had passed its peak.
A decade later few believe there is any prospect for a "Catholic
moment," and many conclude that, in retrospect, what looked
like a "moment" was in fact the last gasp of Christian morality in
America. With successive presidential victories supported almost
entirely by secular-leaning elements of the American polity, the
successful painting of Christians as engaged in a "war on women"
for refusing to submit to a mandate that conscripts religious institutions into providing contraceptives and abortifacients, and a
Supreme Court decision-backed by growing public support-
requiring nationwide legalization of homosexual marriage, the
anxiety is one-sided at the moment and for the foreseeable
future.
Bottum's book is charmingly written, idiosyncratic in largely
fetching ways, and tells a generally accurate yarn, but in two
key respects his narrative misfires. First, he insists upon the label
"post-Protestant" to describe the now-ascendant "elect" who
control the main institutions of cultural formation in American
society, while understating how deeply Protestant they remain;
and secondly, he inaccurately portrays the presence of a confident (if intellectualized) Catholicism as the deepest inspiration of
the momentary countermovement against the "Poster Children,"
while missing how Americanized-and hence Protestantized
and liberal-that Catholicism was. The mistake is understandable, given Bottum's own role in advancing this version of the
narrative in his role at First Things, but the battle he describes is
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
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