I. I begin with a discussion of Father Michael Baxter's reflections on my Heart of the World, Center of the Church (HWCC). I am deeply grateful for the evident care and thoroughness with which he read the book, and can suggest here only the beginning of a reply to his serious questions.

Appropriately for the audience of the Review of Politics, Baxter develops his reflections mostly in terms of my argument regarding John Courtney Murray. Granting a basic validity to my critique of Murray, Baxter nonetheless argues that, in the end, my own constructive proposal “gets vague,” and he suspects that “it will turn out not to be substantially different from what has already been proposed by Murray and his successors.”