Restored Public Life

Abstract

When we live in the yes, public life in America will be rescued from despair. We know from the Hispanic community’s example that religious knowledge of our place in the universe is healthy. The yes functions similarly. At the personal level, the reader who answers Lonergan’s question with a yes will encounter celebration, gratitude, and, because we have not lived up to the direction of the universe, confession. The universe now offers correction that must be taken seriously, though not coercively or institutionally. The yes spreads through the cultural entity of cosmopolis, which will confront our nihilism. The disciplines and the university will be renewed by a new understanding of the unity of all subject matters. Each course of study, though different, is always of a universe that is on our side. Policy debates will consider the common good. Politics will be filled with meaning and be more generous.