Abstract

The purpose of this book is to defend the John Courtney Murray project. Participants in the project believe that American democracy is compatible with Catholicism. For example, two principal elements of Catholic political thought are natural law and the "two spheres" doctrine, while two principal elements of American democracy are the "laws of Nature and Nature's God" and church-state separation. Objective, transcendent principles, however, have been supplanted by skepticism and nihilism. Now a moral pluralism which precludes practical agreements and leads to a struggle for power dominates, threatening both democracy and the Church. Participants in the project therefore wish to rescue Catholicism and democracy from the onslaught of contemporary thought, and to do so it is necessary to reassert their originally compatible elements.