This course covers the late seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. It addresses the distinctive political, intellectual, and religious developments of the modern era. The particular focus of the course is on the steady secularization of Western society and culture, and the Catholic and Christian responses to this development. To that end, the transforming effects of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the development of liberalism, fascism, and communism, and the twentieth century world wars are addressed, as are the orthodox Catholic and Christian reactions to these phenomena.