One of the great political dramas in Western civilisation since the early seventeenth century has been the tension between the papacy and modernity. The strictures of many Enlightenment thinkers on subjects ranging from the nature of reason to the meaning of freedom have resulted in a range of intellectual positions with which the papacy is compelled to engage, often from the standpoint of critic. This isn’t simply a function of the violence and upheaval that shook Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. It’s also the result of the papacy recognising that the political, social and religious culture of…