Rather unexpectedly, two recent publications have come to form a kind of diptych depicting, in contrasting styles, the same subject: the emotional and psychological health of a country that, in quick time, has self-consciously and flamboyantly gone about shedding its past, including its Catholic past. Those who are otherwise secure in their conviction that liberalization has brought a world of gains may yet have to reckon with new and unpleasant realities.