Wolin, modernism and Charles Taylor

Richard Wolin cites Charles Taylor on "strong evaluation" at the close of Heidegger's Children.

It is my reading of Taylor (for whom I had an exaggerated respect from the early seventies through to the late 80's) that he is another Catholic crypto-Heideggerian.

Taylor has impeccable political credentials from many viewpoints, but where he is suspect - at least to me - is in his inobvious Catholicism (and perhaps also that I find him not at all likeable in person - and found myself so very alone in that response at McGill among his admirers.)

Taylor strikes me as someone who never got past the Eliot of his schooldays.  It is only an impression.  My opinion of his later great tomes is that they were in need of a critical editor.  Whether he his a windbag or no, he did receive 1.5 million dollars to explore "spiritual realities" as a Templeton Prize.  Is there a comparable prize awaiting the atheist Colin McGinn?

The issue, however, is what water is to be carried by Taylor's notion of "strong evaluation" - which I would like to consider in parallel with Margalit on our "thick relations".

To dissociate Taylor on "telos" from the Catholic background of the philospher is to ignore his own teachings (though he is apt to insist that certain of his theses must stand or fall on their own - one suspects that he will set aside a line of argument for "telos" but not "the reality of telos" for we are not seeking to clarify a concept but to adumbrate a lived reality - but within certain preferred categories.)

Is it ad hominem to renouce an argument with a fideist?  What is it that is missing in the background of Steven Weinberg or Colin McGinn?  Or is it something lacking in them as men?

By converting the categories of a faith to the background, Taylor deftly shifts the burden from the shoulders of the theist to this most intangible of supports.

I wonder if Taylor simple took Anscombe at her word that Wittgenstein was a covert Catholic?

See: prominent Anglicans in Canada: Bob Ray and Adrienne Clarkson.
See: Heidegger on the South German Catholic way of life