Vatican II’s aggiornamento sought to reach out to the modern world with the message of the gospel in a way that was intelligible to the contemporary world. Fundamental theology was expected to play an important role in this process, but it has not been very successful in doing so. Set in this context, this article

Pope Francis consistently addresses economic issues with the concept of idolatry, but Gaudium et spes treats the economy as an autonomous, secular realm amenable to technocratic solutions guided by principles of right reason. Cavanaugh accounts for this difference by examining changes in theories about secularization from the 1960s to the present. He argues that today