In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Thomas Storck, Christopher Zehnder, and Andrew Sorokowski interview Carlo Lancellotti, author of Touchstone article entitled "America vs. Europe: Two Roads to Totalitarianism" (June 4, 2025)
Questions asked:
1. In your article you argue that although Europe was ahead of the US in terms of "overt" secularization, American "cultural de-Christianization" actually preceded Europe's. Could you explain for our listeners and viewers what you mean by these two types of secularization?
2. If this understanding is correct, does it argue a rather superficial view on the part of American Christians as to what it means to have a Christianized society or nation? That Americans have long regarded themselves as religious merely on the basis of certain limited areas of external behavior while our intellectual and cultural life has been dominated by "a scientistic, utilitarian, individualistic, and materialistic worldview"?
3. It is a commonplace that American society has been individualistic. Would you say that this is both a cause and a result of the fact that Americans have a very weak concept of culture and the effect of culture on individual persons, and that hence we have viewed religion as simply a private affair? And if that related to the variety of religious groups in the U.S. and its generally Protestant cultural tone?
4. You refer to a discussion in the 1990s between Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and David L. Schindler, in which the former called for a revival of a "Puritan-Lockean synthesis" in the US, while the latter argued that the American "dualism" of faith versus reason had led to a separation of religion from knowledge, and thus to secularization. Would you say that Schindler's view has been vindicated by events since the 1990s?
5. You cite the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce regarding scientism and "politicism," and the relation between secularism and totalitarianism. Could you comment on Del Noce's views on these topics and generally on his importance for understanding modernity?
6. When thinking about "politicism," do we need to distinguish between modern and classical understandings of what we mean by the political? For example, you wrote "I believe we must call totalitarian any worldview that affirms the supremacy of politics above all aspects of social life and absorbs into politics all other forms of culture, like education, science, religion, art, and so on." Now in his Ethics (Bk. I, 2) Aristotle wrote, "If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake...clearly this must be the good and the chief good.... It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric..." So are moderns and Aristotle speaking about the same thing? Or is there a hidden totalitarianism in Aristotle?
7. You end on a somewhat positive note, arguing that secular modernity is destroying the very institutions upon which is depends, and yet is unable to preserve, and that Christians can feel this void by "showing them in concrete ways (in education, at work, in the family, even in politics) that faith not only connects us with God, but also makes us able to address more intelligently the human needs we have in common with everybody." As far as you can see, have we begun to do anything effective along these lines? Do you have any specific ideas of how we might implement such a proposal?
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