Jürgen Habermas (German sociologist and philosopher and public intellectual)

Via Wiki:

Habermas versus Postmodernists:

Habermas offered some early criticisms in an essay, "Modernity versus Postmodernity" (1981), which has achieved wide recognition. In that essay, Habermas raises the issue of whether, in light of the failures of the twentieth century, we "should try to hold on to the intentions of the Enlightenment, feeble as they may be, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause?"[15] Habermas refuses to give up on the possibility of a rational, "scientific" understanding of the life-world.

Habermas has several main criticisms of postmodernism.
 First, the postmodernists are equivocal about whether they are producing serious theory or literature.
 Second, Habermas feels that the postmodernists are animated by normative sentiments but the nature of those sentiments is concealed from the reader.
 Third, Habermas accuses postmodernism of being a totalizing perspective that fails "to differentiate phenomena and practices that occur within modern society"[15].
 Lastly, Habermas asserts that postmodernists ignore that which Habermas finds absolutely central - namely, everyday life and its practices.

Jürgen Habermas Dialogue with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI)

It has to be a two-way street, buddies! The post modernists do not reveal to the reader what there agenda is.

Via wiki:

"In early 2007, Ignatius Press published a dialogue between Habermas and Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), entitled The Dialectics of Secularization.

It addresses such important contemporary questions as these:

 Is a public culture of reason and ordered liberty possible in our post-metaphysical age?
 Is philosophy permanently cut adrift from its grounding in being and anthropology?
 Does this decline of rationality signal an opportunity or a deep crisis for religion itself?

In this debate a recent shift of Habermas became evident — in particular, his rethinking of the public role of religion. Habermas writes as a “methodological atheist,” which means that when doing philosophy or social science, he presumes nothing about particular religious beliefs. Yet while writing from this perspective his evolving position towards the role of religion in society has led him to some challenging questions, and as a result conceding some ground in his dialogue with the Pope, that would seem to have consequences which further complicate the positions he holds about a communicative rational solution to the problems of modernity.

/Cont....

..../Cont. In an interview in 1999 Jürgen Habermas stated that:

"For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it.

And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk."[31]

The statement was later misquoted in a number of American newspapers and magazines as: "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization,"[32] which Habermas did not say...
Habermas now talks about the emergence of "post-secular societies" and argues that tolerance is a two-way street: secular people need to tolerate the role of religious people in the public square and vice versa.[33]"

Hooray! At least one poster, Chris C, knows his onions. Hitler was no more a Catholic than I am a Presbyterian because my well-meaning parents had me baptised into that branch of Christianity. People who are not content just to ignore religion, but who feel they must attack people who believe in it and a god, often drag Adolf Hitler into their unnecessary arguments because they want to identify people who don’t believe what they believe – in this case Catholics and their Pope - with really nasty people with a public record of nastiness.

They can’t get their facts straight about a single, well-known person: how can they expect to be ‘authorities’ on anything as complex as religion and personal belief.

mac,

When HFR implies that Hitler was not an atheist but a Catholic, it is perfectly relevant to point out that he was in fact an atheist. When HFR wants to use “Gott mitt uns” as evidence that Hitler was not an atheist, it is perfectly relevant to point that the motto predated Hitler and that his own creation, the Waffen SS, did not have that motto. The correction of a misstatement in a discussion can hardly be irrelevant to the discussion.

Your other points are relevant to what the discussion has become, though not relevant to my correction of HFR. Catholic resisters to the Nazis were thin on the ground. So were non-Catholic resisters. I have never seen a statistical study of the backgrounds of those who resisted Hitler to see if they were religiously disproportionate to the general German population, and I doubt that such a study could ever be realistically done. Many Catholics supported Hitler, as did many Protestants. Some Catholics opposed him, as did some Protestants. I highly recommend the series on the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans for anyone who want s a comprehensive understanding of Hitler’s rise to and exercise of power and the German population’s various reactions to him.

Calling Hitler a Catholic is as silly as calling Stalin an adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is also completely unnecessary to the case against the record of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich, just as calling Stalin a Russian Orthodox adherent is completely unnecessary to the case against the record of the Orthodox Church during the Soviet era.

Where is Pericles and his junior partner, CJ Morgan?

Why aren't they here accusing you all of Catholicophobia.

CJ Morgan, you love the "I" word? What's wrong with the "C" word?

LOL