This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centerpiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, which offered him the opportunity to speak about the religious dimensions of his intellectual commitment. This is the only place where Taylor, a Roman Catholic, spells out his theological. views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory. Four well-known commentators on religion and society, two Protestant, two Catholic, were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Rosemary Luling-Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society..
