"This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the modern world. The centerpiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, from which the title of the book is taken. Taylor's Marianist Award Lecture, reproduced here, offered him the opportunity to speak about the religious dimensions of his intellectual commitment - dimensions left implicit in his philosophical writing.

In fact, this is the only place where Taylor, a Roman Catholic, spells out his theological views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory."--BOOK JACKET.

"Four well-known commentators on religion and society were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: scholars William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Catholic author and activist Rosemary Luling Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society."--BOOK JACKET.