In the interim years, Notre Dame hired a Communist to teach English and a Socialist--the Socialist to be "an affiliated scholar at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study." Whatever.
The Socialist is someone named Hart, who brags about his English lineage and claims to be a 'religious scholar.' We can all offer pity to the poor fellow who is bearing the cross of an English heritage; but we should clearly see that the fellow is deluded when he claims 'scholar' status.
Paul Kengor explains.
...what really got me about Hart’s piece, particularly given his affiliation with Notre Dame, was this passage:
Democratic socialism is, briefly put, a noble tradition of civic conscientiousness that was historically—to a far greater degree than either its champions or detractors today often care to acknowledge—grounded in deep Christian convictions. I, for instance, am a proud son of the European Christian socialist tradition, especially in its rich British variant … but also in its continental expressions (see, for example, Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, with its prescient warnings against the dangers of unfettered capitalism)....
One needs not be a "conservative" Catholic to recognize Hart's ridiculously egregious error:
...Section 120 of Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno states bluntly: “Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”...
Kengor is a well-read scholar, unlike the poor Brit/American at Notre Dame. So Kengor quotes extensively from Quadragesimo Anno, and there's a lot someone ought to know.
Particularly at Notre Dame; especially if one poses as "a scholar."
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