An email: “Guys, I’m as happy with the new Pope as anyone, and I know I may be reading into some things you’ve said on the Corner, but-and especially coming from people who like the work of Robbie George-who is an ecumenical Thomist, willing to see that Immanuel Kant and other Protestant Natural Lawyers did a lot of good-to imply that we want a Pope to be big on MacIntyre’s philosophy. . . . I mean, c’mon, I don’t want conservatism to hold that everything that happened after the Reformation was bad (which would include,

btw, the formation of our Republic).

“Anyway, I don’t see how MacIntyre doesn’t hold that, and while I *know* that George and [John] Finnis are not enemies of modernity, I can’t say the same for

MacIntyre. I know that my fellow-Catholics won’t all become deontologists like me tomorrow, and that it will remain a mainly-teleologist/Thomist Curch, but I

do think I can ask people to come to Kant *constructively*, as opposed to nastily. Michael Novak and George always discuss Kant constructively,

even if they remain Thomists. Alastair MacIntyre has never, ever, done this.”

My response: You are, as you suspected, reading more into my comment than I meant. I can’t say anything intelligent about your characterization of MacIntyre–I haven’t read him since college–but I imagine that it’s possible to approach him, as well as Kant, constructively. I can recommend Maurice Cowling’s essay on MacIntyre in the February 1994 New Criterion–which does not appear to be online–and Edward Oakes’s “The Achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre.”