The Devil and Democracy: Chaput's "Strangers in a Strange Land"

John Courtney Murray gets mentioned only once in Charles J. Chaput's “Strangers in a Strange Land,” but the book is best understood as an erudite and eloquent attempt to update and apply Murray's teachings to our time—to grasp what it means now to be “living the Catholic faith in a post-Christian world,” as the subtitle has it. The author, the head of the archdiocese of Philadelphia, addresses himself to “everyday Catholics” who “want to think . . . in a mature Catholic spirit of faith.” But his book should be read by serious-minded people of whatever religious, partisan or intellectual inclination.