The Catholic Enlightenment

The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the end of discrimination, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who lived two hundred and fifty years ago, but whose ideas are as attractive as ever. Ulrich Lehner argues that, while Catholic beliefs are commonly assumed to be at odds with modernity, most of the progressive reforms associated with the Enlightenment actually began to take shape during the Catholic counter-Reformation two centuries earlier, and were staunchly defended by enlightened Catholics during the eighteenth century. This is the forgotten story of an open-minded Catholicism, which was later snuffed out, and reemerged after Vatican II.