Michael Novak on the State of the Catholic Church | Michael Novak | Big Think

Michael Novak on the State of the Catholic Church

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Novak thinks the church should modernize.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Novak:

Theologian, author, and former U.S. ambassador, Michael Novak currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in religion and public policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., where he is director of social and political studies. Novak received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1994, and delivered the Templeton address in Westminster Abbey. He has also received the Boyer Award in 1999; with Milton Friedman and Vaclav Klaus, the International Prize by the Institution for World Capitalism; the Anthony Fisher Prize for The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, presented by Margaret Thatcher; the Weber Award for contributions to Catholic social thought in Essen, Germany; the Cézanne Medal from the city of Provence, and the Catholic Culture Medal of Bassano del Grappa in Italy; the highest civilian award from the Slovak Republic in 1996; and in 2000 the Masaryk Medal, presented by Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic.

Novak was appointed and served as Ambassador of the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva from 1981–1982; head of the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the monitor of the Helsinki Accords) in 1986; with Senate approval, member of the Board for International Broadcasting in 1984; member of the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice in 1985. He has also served the United States during both Democratic and Republican administrations.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Novak: Well, it’s the fastest growing church in the world. It’s growing in the new part of the world mostly. It’s decaying considerably in Europe, but there’s also a comeback there and beginning to manifest itself, but it’s growing very rapidly, most rapidly in Africa at first and now in Asia, and even in China, it’s having a startling growth in China because many, so I understand. I’m not a specialist there. But, many of the Chinese think that one of the reasons for the success of the West was the vision of Judaism and Christianity, one God who is the Creator who ask us to have as our vocation creating as well and to build a better future to work for a future kingdom, not what we have now but better. And this has been the energy that has kept propelling the West. And also, a God who’s thought of as truth and therefore it has sharpened the mind and to make a study and… Think of all the monks and nuns who over their whole lifetime copied the great manuscripts of the past, not only religious manuscripts but on Botany and Astronomy and other scientists. That’s what preserve the scientist of the ancients and generated several disciplines which flowered in the modern period as independent field of Science. So, there’s a terrific moral and religious impulse in the West which people in Asia and elsewhere… I talk to a man from South Korea just the other day and he’s not Christian nor Jewish but of Buddhist background and he argued that one of the reasons for South Korea’s great success is the fact that there’s so many in South Korea are Christian and that these influences have been there now for hundreds of years and gave it a new dynamic and a new vision. Also, centered in the person and in personal virtue and personal integrity, not that Christians do that so in such a great way, but that’s the inner drive of the thing. Question: Would you support a 3rd Vatican Council? Novak: Ah…

Read the full transcript at