To the Age of Social Revolution: as Papal Rejoinder, ‘the Apocalypse is not Now’

This article concludes ultimately that, as he revivifies political Augustinianism, the Holy Father makes two original contributions. He draws on ideas foreign to Augustine, but familiar, respectively, within ancient and modern idealist political philosophy, to secure a basis for endorsing the agenda of the Activist State Augustine would have been compelled to reject. He adopts, as well, the modern construct of Constitutionalism, also unknown to Augustine, to fashion what, ultimately, is not so much a political or moral philosophy, but a philosophy of law devised to animate a particular vision of Church-State relations. In its concluding section, the article calls attention both to the distinctive value of the Pope\u27s position, but also seeks to suggest that-in the high-stakes game of the Church\u27s dialogue with a post-Christian culture-there may be wisdom, even as one proceeds to implement Pope Benedict\u27s program, in cultivating mindfulness of the diversified options in moral and political philosophy and in theologies of Church, ever alive in the larger Catholic tradition. In a first section, this article, thus, sketches the outlines of the Augustinianism and Idealist political philosophy, both Ancient and Modern, influencing Pope Benedict\u27s political philosophy. In a second section, it sets out Pope Benedict\u27s political philosophy. In a third, it adumbrates Pope Benedict\u27s theology of Church. In a fourth, it sets forth Pope Benedict\u27s vision of legal ordering of Church-State relations, and, in its concluding fifth section, it comments on the nature and limits of Pope Benedict\u27s distinctive contribution