Homo Utopianus, by David Carlin

By David Carlin, The Catholic Thing, June 10, 2023

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America and, most recently, Three Sexual Revolutions: Catholic, Protestant, Atheist.

Sometime between the 18^th and 19^th centuries a new type of human being appeared in Europe.  Not a biologically new type. No, a new psychological type.  Let’s call this type homo utopianus.

For a few centuries, Christianity had been fading away in Europe.  The Protestant Reformation combined with the Catholic Counter-Reformation – far from (immediately) undermining Christianity – had produced a great religious revival, a great intensification of Western Europe’s traditional religion. …

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