Spiritual Undercurrents of the Global Catholic Resistance to Fascism
March 16, 2022
Brenna Moore, professor of theology at Fordham University, explores a remarkable network of Catholic historians, theologians, poets, and activists who pushed against both the far-right surge in interwar Europe and the secularizing tendencies of the leftist movements active in the early to mid-twentieth century. With meticulous attention to the complexity of real lives, she considers how this group sought a middle way anchored in “spiritual friendship”—religiously meaningful relationships understood as uniquely capable of facing social and political challenges, and a way of bonding with loved ones both living and dead, present and absent. Moore is the author of "Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism" (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Her talk was one of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.