The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce understood secularization as not merely the decline of formal religious beliefs and practice, but the comprehensive elimination of the sacred in philosophy, culture and politics leading inexorably to a rationalistic and scientistic understanding of the human person. How plausible is Del Noce's diagnosis of the crisis of modernity and what are its implications for our understanding of the relationship between? 

Margarita Mooney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. (website)