Metaphysical study of God, love, technology, and culture in modern society Reality most basically and properly considered, says David L. Schindler, is an order of love ― a gift that finds its objective only in an entire way of life. Love is what first brings things into existence, and everything exists in, through, and for love. With this understanding of reality, Schindler explores how modern culture marginalizes love, regarding it at best as a matter of piety or goodwill rather than as the very stuff that makes our lives and the things of the world real. Schindler examines how Western civilization’s fixation with technology ― especially its displacement of experience with experiment and its privileging of knowing and making ― has undermined its capacity to build an authentic human culture. Schindler sees this as a technological age not simply because of technological advancements but because of the way we think as the result of our technological orientation. He shows, within the context of politics, economics, science, and cultural and professional life generally, that God-centered love is what gives things their deepest and most proper order and meaning. Living Church “Theologically intense and ethico-culturally far-reaching.”   Catholic Book Review “The book has a dense philosophical style that bears much fruit upon careful reading.”   David L. Schindler is Edouard Cardinal Gagnon Professor ofFundamental Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institutefor Studies on Marriage and Family at The CatholicUniversity of America, Washington DC. Ordering Love Liberal Societies and the Memory of God By David L. Schindler William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Copyright © 2011 David L. Schindler All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8028-6430-7 Contents Preface...........................................................................................................................ixIntroduction: Ordering Love.......................................................................................................1"Keeping the World Awake to God": Benedict XVI in America.........................................................................19Cultural Implications of Religions in Public Life: Recuperating the Deeper Questions..............................................26The Dramatic Nature of Life: Liberal Societies and the Foundations of Human Dignity...............................................34Truth, Freedom, and Relativism in Western Democracies: Pope Benedict XVI's Contributions to Without Roots.........................53Civil Community Inside the Liberal State: Truth, Freedom, and Human Dignity.......................................................65Charity, Justice, and the Church's Activity in the World: A Reflection on Deus Caritas Est........................................133Does the Free Market Produce Free Persons?........................................................................................154Market Liberalism and an Economic Culture of Gift and Gratitude...................................................................166The Significance of World and Culture for Moral Theology: Veritatis Splendor and the Nature of the Body...........................219The Embodied Person as Gift and the Cultural Task in America......................................................................242Liturgy and the Integrity of Cosmic Order: The Theology of Alexander Schmemann....................................................288Living and Thinking Reality in Its Integrity: Originary Experience, God, and the Task of Education................................310Religion and Secularity in a Culture of Abstraction: On the Integrity of Space, Time, Matter, and Motion..........................328Modernity and the Nature of a Distinction: Balthasar's Ontology of Generosity.....................................................350The Given as Gift: Creation and Disciplinary Abstraction in Science...............................................................383The Anthropological Vision of Caritas in Veritate in Light of Economic and Cultural Life in the United States.....................430Index.............................................................................................................................450 Chapter One "Keeping the World Awake to God": Benedict XVI in America For Pope Benedict XVI the main issue of our time, as it has been for all the saints and doctors of the Church down through the ages, is the memory of God and his centrality in our lives. Thus he asserts that the problems of the West can be traced finally to a forgetfulness of God. It is this question of God, of his presence or absence, that lies at the heart of the faith-reason problematic on which I have been asked especially to comment. My question is this: How does Benedict understand the task, as he puts it, of "keeping the world awake to God," and what does his understanding imply