Cultural Pessimism in Modern Evangelical Thought

Abstract

"Shortly before his election as Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a sermon in which he spoke bluntly about a “dictatorship of relativism” that was poised to hurl the West into a new “Dark Age.” George Weigel, a biographer of Pope John Paul II, soon drew comparisons between the newly-elected pontiff and St. Benedict of Nursia, the father of European monasticism who labored valiantly to help preserve Western civilization in an earlier period of cultural crisis. As if to ratify this connection between two Benedicts, Weigel invoked the intriguing conclusion to Roman Catholic ethicist Alasdair McIntyre’s After Virtue:"