If the Christian intellectual is dead, has a Catholic cousin survived? Think back to 1955, when Msgr. John Tracy Ellis published his devastating critique of the intellectual mediocrity of American Catholic culture, "American Catholics and the Intellectual Life." Six decades later, is Catholic intellectual life in decline? In the ascendant? Going dark after a final flare-up, supernova-style?
That question has to be answered the same way as the query about Catholic novelists: It depends on what you mean by Catholic. If it means a culture radically distinct from that of not-Catholics, then there are very few Catholic intellectuals left, except for a few trad-bros on Twitter who fancy themselves theocrats. Even advocates for a new Catholic ghetto, a “Benedict option,” are often more American in their thinking than Catholic (the Pilgrims were pursuing a Benedict option; so, too, the Mormons and Quakers).
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