Theme: "Cultivating and Passing on a Catholic Worldview"

John Sharpe — ‘Neither to the Right Hand nor to the Left’: Integral Catholicism in Confrontation with Modernity

DVD INCLUDES CHARLES' TALK

In a presentation as humorous as it is profoundly compelling, Commander John Sharpe, retired Naval officer, publisher, and schola director, urges his listeners to abandon the inadequate labels of “left” and “right” with regards not only our current political system, but as an unnecessary and ineffectual dichotomy within the Catholic worldview as a whole. “When you have sanity and history and reality, you don’t have a label for it,” he says. “Labels are for all the weird stuff.” Going further into the heart of classical liberalism (a “right-wing” conception), Commander Sharpe shows that its essential contention with the Church is not one of moral issues, but of the very existence of and salvific necessity of Revelation. “It’s what you can think or cannot think that really makes the ‘right’ upset.” If we are going to reclaim the West for Christ, we must build our efforts on reading and study and a clear understanding of the State’s duty to help souls get to Heaven.