Word: consensus
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Where is the act of purpose, the work of thought to come from? Even with the will to achieve it, deliberately acquiring a consensus may sound as absurd as deliberately deciding to fall in love. But for those about to embark regretfully on a dubious, consensusless future, Father Murray has a further word. "It just happens," he says in effect, "that I have here a device which any reasonably intelligent person may apply to lead him to the consensus, the public philosophy." And with an urbane, engaging smile, out of his long black clericals he pops it: natural...
Father Murray feels that only inside the Catholic community has natural law endured, therefore Catholic participation in the U.S. consensus has been "full and free, unreserved and unembarrassed, because the contents of this consensus-the ethical and political principles drawn from the tradition of natural law-approve themselves to the Catholic intelligence and conscience. Where this kind of language is talked, the Catholic joins the conversation with complete ease. It is his language. The ideas expressed are native to his own universe of discourse. Even the accent, being American, suits his tongue...
...election of a U.S. President from the Catholic community dramatizes this claim. And whether or not the Catholics have been the true custodians of the American consensus, as Murray would have it, there is no denying that a new era has begun for Catholics in America, a country that in itself represents a new era in the history of church and state...
...title of original and sovereign right-the consecrated authority of the priesthood and the royal power." This, says Father Murray, established a "freedom of the church" in the spiritual sphere that served to limit the power of government on the one hand, and on the other brought the moral consensus of the people to bear upon the King...
...Protestant land while showing their fellow Americans what all-out patriots they were. Today, an increasing number of well-educated and theologically sophisticated young Catholics are beginning to take part in what Father Murray calls "building the city"-contributing both to the civic machinery and the need for consensus beneath...