Human Rights, Virtue and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics [Paperback]

Volume Three ofErnest Fortin: Collected Essaysdiscusses the current state of Christianity-especially twentieth-century Catholic Christianity-and the problems with which it has had to wrestle in the midst of rapid scientific progress, profound social change, and growing moral anarchy. In this volume, Fortin discusses such topics as Christianity and the liberal democratic ethos; Christianity, science, and the arts; Ancients and Moderns; papal social thought; virtue and liberalism; pagan and Christian virtue; and the American Catholic church and politics.Father Ernest L. Fortin, one of the nation's foremost thinkers in the fields of philosophy and theology, is Professor of Theology at Boston College, and the author and editor of numerous books on ancient and medieval philosophy and religion.

Ernest Fortin possesses that rare combination, found only in the greatest thinkers, of both immense learning and a playful intellect. His essays are grounded, but not confined, in tradition; they are scholarly, but not pedantic. They are eloquent testimony to the eros of the mind. Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See

Such deep and wide learning is rare enough. But the cumulative effect of bringing together all these valuable contributions is to let us see something rarer still: the life of a mind that is humane, lucid, and wise. Ralph Lerner, University of Chicago

Ernest Fortin has a place of honor at the table of quiet erudition and uncompromising curiosity where adults try to understand how the world went crazy, and what might be done about it. If we are ever so much more fortunate than we deserve, younger scholars will follow Fortin in what is best described as the path of wisdom. Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, First Things

These three volumes are fundamental contributions to the problem of modernity. In his analysis of rights, Catholic social thought, the state, andl#.