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New Apologists in America's Conservative Catholic Subculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Peter A. Huff
Peter A. Huff*
Affiliation:
Saint Anselm College
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Abstract

Traditional Catholic apologetics is currently experiencing a revival in U.S. Catholic thought. Modeled in part on the apologetics of the preconciliar Catholic Literary Revival, the new Catholic apologetics draws strategically from the intellectual world of the pre-Vatican II church. Responsive to the conditions of postconciliar Catholicism and later-twentieth-century U.S. culture, the new apologists also exploit the resources of contemporary popular culture to advance a critique of secular society and the status quo in American Catholic life. While defending traditional Catholic doctrine, the new generation of apologists has contributed to the creation of a novel form of American Catholicism—technologically sophisticated, uniquely ecumenical, and aggressively separatist. Utilizing the lecture circuit, the print media, audio and video recordings, cable television, and the internet, the new apologists have made apologetics a vibrant industry of the conservative Catholic subculture in America.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Fall 1996 , pp. 242 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1996

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