Starting Off the New Year Royally

I am about half way through Robert Royal's A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press:

In this wide-ranging and ambitious volume, Robert Royal, a prominent participant for many years in debates about religion and contemporary life, offers a comprehensive and balanced appraisal of the Catholic intellectual tradition in the twentieth century. The Catholic Church values both Faith and Reason, and Catholicism has given rise to extraordinary ideas and whole schools of remarkable thought, not just in the distant past but throughout the troubled decades of the twentieth century.

Royal presents in a single volume a sweeping but readable account of how Catholic thinking developed in philosophy, theology, Scripture studies, culture, literature, and much more in the twentieth century. This involves great figures, recognized as such both inside and outside the Church, such as Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar,Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Czeslaw Milosz, and many more.

Royal argues that without rigorous thought, Catholicism – however welcoming and nourishing it might be – would become something like a doctor with a good bedside manner, but who knows little medicine. It has always been the aspiration of the Catholic tradition to unite emotion and intellect, action and contemplation. But unless we know what the tradition has already produced – especially in the work of the great figures of the recent past – we will not be able to answer the challenges that the modern world poses, or even properly recognize the true questions we face.

This is a reflective, non-polemical work that brings together various strands of Catholic thought in the twentieth century. A comprehensive guide to the recent past - and the future.

So far, I've read the chapters about the Thomist revival encouraged by Pope Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century in both philosophy and theology, the impact of the Second Vatican Council, and Royal's profiles and evaluations of Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others. I'm starting the two chapters on Scripture studies now, and really looking forward to part two of the book, "Creed and Culture", in which Royal will discuss Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Czeslaw Milosz, and "many more".

Royal is providing context for my reading list for the past few decades of my life, as, except for the more technical philosophical and theological works, I've been reading--outside of my research on the English Reformation--so many of those authors, especially Romano Guardini, Karol Wojtyla (especially his papal encyclicals and documents as Pope St. John Paul II), Joseph Ratzinger (especially his papal encyclicals and documents as Pope Benedict XVI), Edith Stein, Henri du Lubac, and all those poets, novelists, and historians: Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, etc. 

I wonder if among the many more Royal will discuss Dietrich von Hildebrand, Robert Hugh Benson, or Hilaire Belloc?