Godless Continent

Via National Review, here's a thought-provoking perspective on (Catholic neoconservative) George Weigel's new book: The Cube and the Cathedral. Here's the opening:

In his Oration on the Dignity of Man, Renaissance sage Pico della Mirandola declared that "whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him their own fruit." Elaborating, he provides us with an index by which to measure European man's predicaments and prospects: "If [these seeds] be vegetative, he will be like a plant. If sensitive, he will become brutish. If rational, he will grow into a heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God." Five centuries after Pico, George Weigel offers a bleak report on contemporary Europe's germinations in his new book The Cube and the Cathedral. In effect, he worries that Europe as a whole is indifferently slipping into vegetable life, while its elites clear away any visions of angels that would interfere with their cultivation of an elegantly Godless Continent.

As the West wrestles with its antipathy to faith and inherited tradition, there are lessons for secular Indians. If our secularism is godless European in character, then India will share Europe's plight. If instead, our secularism builds on our multiple faiths and pluralistic tradition, India will yet bloom even as Europe withers.

This godless continent of hybrid men is a perfect home for Salman Rushdie!! Regrettably he chooses to live in our beloved Gotham.