John Médaille maintains that philosophers—beginning with the consummate dialectician Socrates who gives Euthyphro a thorough drubbing—have illegitimately stifled the special access that theologian-poets have to ultimate truths at the heart of all human experience. Thomas Storck objects: the power to see reality as it is, to discover principles and arrive at conclusions, is as natural to man as breathing and walking; after all, even Scripture says we have no excuse if we fail to recognize God in his works, if we fail to yield to the testimony of miracles and the evidence for revelation. But what is reason, after all? Are there even facts apart from judgments, judgments apart from interpretations, and interpretations apart from worldviews developed through the stories we learn and tell one another? Back and forth it goes, as Storck defends philosophy, objectivity, and Thomism, while Médaille seeks to expose their vulnerable flanks. In a world of sound bites and short attention spans, how rare is an amiable, penetrating, sustained dialogue between two thinkers of great intelligence and undoubted good will, who, though disagreeing about many things, are still drawn back, again and again, to the central mystery of Christ, supreme Logos and sacrificial Lamb?
Praise
“In a time when mere partisan yarking across no-man’s-lands of intellectual barrenness passes for a ‘national conversation,’ John Médaille and Thomas Storck revive the true meaning of the word ‘argue’: that is, to clarify. Read this book and profit from two thoughtful minds in pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.”
—MARK SHEA
author of The Church’s Best-Kept Secret
“These exchanges are warm, insightful, charitable, and provide a model of how two different intellectual approaches to the Catholic faith can converge in essential unity while maintaining the integrity of each approach.”
—ADDISON HODGES HART
author of Confessions of the Anti-Christ
“Any reader of this book will find their epistemological foundations shaken but their thinking enriched as Médaille and Storck delve ever more deeply into how we know and how we believe.”
—ROMAN A. MONTERO
author of All Things in Common
“For anyone interested in the question of where our modern world has gone wrong and what sort of apologetic is needed to win it back, this book is pure gold.”
—KENNETH HENSLEY
Pastoral Care Coordinator for Coming Home Network
“John Médaille and Thomas Storck have provided a model of how substantive, Christian conversation—and argument!—might proceed in a time when concern for clarity, conviction, care, and above all, charity seems so rare.”
—REV. JASON A. FOUT
Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation
About the Author
THOMAS STORCK writes on a wide variety of topics related to Catholic social teaching and Catholic culture and history. He is the author of five previous books, The Catholic Milieu (1987), Foundations of a Catholic Political Order (1998), Christendom and the West (2000), From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond (Angelico Press, 2015), and An Economics of Justice & Charity(Angelico Press, 2017). Mr. Storck is a member of the editorial board of The Chesterton Review and is a contributing editor of New OxfordReview. Many of his essays and articles may be found on the website www.thomasstorck.org.
JOHN MÉDAILLE is a former businessman who retired to become an Adjunct Instructor in Theology at the University of Dallas, where he teaches courses in Social Justice for Business Students and Understanding the Bible. He has authored two previous books, The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace and Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective,and articles in about a dozen other books. He has been married for 48 years, is the father of five, and the grandfather of three. He blogs occasionally at The Front Porch Republic.
