3. Providence and the Image of God
by Dr. Thomas Pink

It has been suggested that secular liberalism is a secularized form of religion, that posits its own form of God as a kind of invisible hand that providentially guarantees good outcomes, a guarantee for which liberalism has no naturalistic or ‘secular’ explanation. But this is to confuse religion with an unwarranted optimism that ‘it will be all right on the night’. Religion worth the name requires both an object of worship and a conception of humans as worshipers. Looking at Bernard Mandeville I show that secular liberal appeals to ‘an invisible hand’ have long involved the effective abandonment of both of these - the object of worship and the idea of a worshiper. This is especially because secular liberalism lacks a theory of humans as bearing the image of God, and so of humans as plausible worshipers. But a theory of humans as bearing the image of God is also lacking in notionally ‘conservative’ modern Catholic thought, as the case of Alasdair MacIntyre shows.

From the Conference Modern Foundation Myths and the Destruction of Church and Civilization Presented by the Roman Forum in Gardone, Italy in July of 2019, these talks critique some base assumptions of modernity and address the truth that the Catholic Faith alone can create a lasting and just civilization.