Paradise and Utopia
When Christendom Was Born Again III: The Origins of the Saeculum
Modern historians often bring attention to the effects of secularization on the West. Once traditional Christianity ceased to influence Western culture, the experience of the kingdom of heaven naturally diminished, something the famous German sociologist Max Weber called the "disenchantment of the world." In this episode, Fr. John describes how the concept of the saeculum, a kind of neutral cultural space cut off from the life of the Church, first appeared, and how, with Petrarch, it became a haven for humanists fleeing the pessimism of the fourteenth century.
Friday, September 24, 2021
Listen now
Download audio
About
This is a series of forty reflections on the history of Christian civilization, or Christendom (and will include additional introductory and concluding episodes). It is divided into two halves tracing the “rise” of Christendom in early times and its “fall” in modern times. The entire podcast is organized around the theme of “paradise and utopia” - that is, of the civilization’s orientation toward the kingdom of heaven when traditional Christianity was influential, and of its “disorientation” toward the fallen world in the wake of traditional Christianity’s decline in the west following the Great Schism.
Contributors
Fr. John Strickland