Redeeming the Teeny-Weeny Self, by Francis X. Maier 

By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing, Oct. 24, 2025

Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of Christopher Lasch’s final book.  Published just a few months after his death, The Revolt of the Elites (1995) capped a series of five extraordinary works starting with his Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (1977).  An accomplished historian, Lasch was also a penetrating social critic.  He was never religious and always a man of the old, democratic left.  But he saw the world clearly and wrote about it honestly.  As a result, he had many Christian admirers.  And much of his work aligns, if imperfectly, with Catholic concerns.  Reading him today is like paging through the diary of a fiercely astute prophet.

Simply put, Lasch argues that the appearance of modern life masks its real nature.  We’re swamped with material comforts and choices, but they have no higher meaning.  Our personal autonomy is celebrated in marketing hype.  Then it’s promptly undermined in practice, because an economy organized around consumption needs a steady pool of dependent consumers.  The Industrial Revolution created new wealth and eased the hardships of life for many.  But it also removed work from the home, centralized it, and collectivized the labor force under “scientific” management. ….

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