In a 2013 lecture at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Michael Hanby examines what causes liberalism to become dictatorial in thought and practice. Hanby argues that liberalism is founded on a “noble but tragically inhuman anthropology” that separates truth from freedom, leading ultimately to a superficial pluralism that subtly conceals its uniformity. Liberalism’s first principles, which are theological, ontological, and anthropological, are hidden behind a veil of political neutrality. These first principles cannot be renegotiated, Hanby says, without liberalism falling apart, since there is nothing outside the sovereignty of the liberal order. (Historical note: The reference in the lecture to “HHS” refers to the 2012 Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring most health insurance plans to provide coverage for surgical sterilization, prescription contraceptives, and drugs that cause early stage abortions.)
Hanby developed this lecture into an essay published in the Summer/Fall 2013 issue of Communio. This double-volume issue includes more content from other lecturers at the same 2013 John Paul II Institute conference, the theme of which was “Dignitatis Humanae and the Rediscovery of Religious Liberty.”
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James Peters discusses historical understandings of reason and rationality and how they differ from the modern notion of rationality. (21 minutes)
The inward eye, cosmic truth, and making well — Andrew Kern takes his listeners along an “interlinear” reading of a portion of St. Augustine’s Confessions that explores the differences between how God makes and how we create. (38 minutes)
James Matthew Wilson talks about how cultivating the desire to perceive the interior life of things sustains the basic human capacity for recognizing truth, pursuing wisdom, and contemplating beauty. (23 minutes)
Shared Practices, Strong Communities — Christine Pohl reflects on why a deliberate commitment to certain shared practices is necessary for the sustaining of community. (57 minutes)
How the Church promotes the cause of freedom — Oliver O’Donovan: “We discover we are free when we are commanded by that authority which commands us according to the law of our being, disclosing the secrets of the heart.”
The danger of not defining “freedom” — Richard Bauckham insists that an adequate understanding of freedom requires recognition of God as the ground of true human freedom
Power to the people — Nathan O. Hatch on the DIY spirit of early American Christianity
Free for obedience — Glenn W. Olsen on Augustine’s understanding of freedom
The recovery of an integrated ecology — In this essay, Michael Hanby unpacks the summons of Laudato si’ to an ecological way of life based on a proper understanding of creation in its fullness and integrity. (57 minutes)
D. C. Schindler explains how liberalism sought to make way for individuals to function together without any orientation to an explicit common good. (37 minutes)
Philosopher D. C. Schindler examines how postmodernism poses a unique threat to our sense of an interior self. (28 minutes)
The profound drama of human sexuality — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler explains the cosmological significance of human sexuality and why it is paradigmatic of the relationship between nature and freedom. (32 minutes)
Jeanne Murray Walker discusses how she helps students approach and appreciate poetry as the mysteriously meaningful literature it is, rather than as a linguistic cage containing static meaning to be abstracted from the words of the poem. (23 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 164 — FEATURED GUESTS: Dana Gioia, Brady Stiller, Robert Royal, Richard DeClue, Tiffany Schubert, and Joonas Sildre
The fraught marriage of liberty and equality — In this essay, Patrick Deneen examines Alexis de Tocqueville’s complex and insightful portrait of “democratic man” living in the context of perpetual societal tension between the excesses of liberty and equality. (39 minutes)
“A sign of contradiction” — In this lecture, Daniel Gibbons compares and contrasts understandings of sacramental poetics proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Sydney. (36 minutes)
Education vs. conditioning — Education necessarily involves metaphysical and theological preconditions, and Michael Hanby argues that our current education crisis is a result of society rejecting these preconditions. (41 minutes)
Eugene Peterson talks about how Jesus spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and how the Spirit infused this normal speech. (14 minutes)
The roots of American disorder — In this reading of an article from 2021 by Michael Hanby, the critique of Marxism in Augusto del Noce’s work is compared with texts from the American Founders. (79 minutes)
Is liberalism compatible with religious freedom? — D. C. Schindler relies on two Thomistic axioms to illustrate why liberalism — which claims to offer a minimalist conception of the common good — is ultimately incompatible with a Catholic understanding of religious freedom. (34 minutes)
No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
When is a market “free”? — William T. Cavanaugh argues for a richer conception of freedom than the reductionist one promoted by economist Milton Friedman. (44 minutes)
The gift of objective reality — Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan makes an argument for the consistency of the idea of law when it is conceived in a theological context. (40 minutes)
Freedom as conformity to reality — W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan
Historian Brad Gregory discusses the unintended consequences of the Reformation, consequences which continue to trouble us. (26 minutes)
The negation of transcendence — Michael Hanby argues that our current civilizational crisis can be understood as a “new totalitarianism” that negates or disallows every form of transcendence. (32 minutes)
The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
David Bentley Hart on how “two-tier Thomism” deviates from historic Christian understanding of the relationship between God and Creation. (42 minutes)
Community, the giver of freedom — Thomas H. Naylor and William H. Willimon on why suspicion about big government shouldn’t take the form of autonomous individualism
Justice and truth — Joseph Ratzinger: “Plato’s philosophy is utterly misconceived when he is presented as an individualistic, dualistic thinker who negates what is earthly and advocates a flight into the beyond.”
Light from Neither the East nor the West — John Betz distinguishes a Christian understanding of freedom from the conventional modern definitions. (41 minutes; Part 3 of 3)
Sustaining a heritage of wisdom — Louise Cowan (1916–2015) explains how the classics reach the deep core of our imagination and teach us to order our loves according to the wholeness of reality. (16 minutes)
Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
Challenging the “gospel of democracy” — Robert Kraynak argues that assumptions many modern Christians hold about liberal democracy are rooted in some false ideas about the nature and purpose of civil government. (46 minutes)
