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This process "fascinates and frightens the Catholic," whose church "insists that the intellect can reach truth absolutely." The Catholic position is equally amazing to the Protestant, who believes that "relativism is the most man can expect from his knowledge" and that "certitudes do not derive from knowledge but from voluntary decisions." These opposed methods, according to Father Weigel, render a Protestant-Catholic dialogue very difficult. "Epistemology (i.e., what and how things can be known) divides Catholic and Protestant much more than the tenets of their respective beliefs. Both sides will agree that Jerusalem is in Palestine and that there are 27 books in the New Testament. Things of this kind do not divide us. When it comes to the ultimate meanings of the phenomena, we are in conflict and there seems no way but the grace of God to get us out of it."
Cultural Winds. As for modernity, "the Protestant is up to date." He sails easily before the prevailing cultural wind: "When sociology was in ascendency, the gospel was the Social Gospel; when pessimism overcame optimism, Neo-Orthodoxy was pessimistic. When the spirit of the age is literalistic, then Protestants have a Puritan worship, but when symbol becomes meaningful to the people, Protestant worship is liturgical." Modernity creates an atmosphere of freedom but also displays "resentment against pure intelligence. Modernity gloats in showing that the intelligence of yesterday was really folly."
So wily and ubiquitous an imp is modernity that even wary Father Weigel seems to grant it the last word—in his title.
* The study of social phenomena resulting from religious motives.