Another whole cultural safari altogether, going back to the 1920s, and even 19th- and 18th-century Germanic ideology considering that Hegel and Kant have something to do with it. What has happened to theology and philosophy at Catholic universities and seminaries is tragic. One of the more idiotic maneuvers was the turn toward Wittgenstein and "dialogue with analytic philosophy" at Notre Dame. The ideological distortions creeping in have corrupted much of Catholic higher education. Pandora's Box. Just consider that there is no universally accepted model of reality at work here. They make it up as they go along.
Nonsense always sounds more profound if Heidegger and Sartre can be enlisted in its defense along with highbrow-sounding German and French jargon. Relativism and nihilism answered to certain ideological needs in the '60s for studied ambiguity and pseudo-sophisticated obscurantism as the upwardly mobile middle class sought to disengage itself from Western Christian civilization and the structure and mores of traditional family life - the beginnings of the long road to Clinton and the Beavis&Buttheadization of America. But this was all part of a broad package including Kinsey, Transpersonal "encounter group" psychology, I'm OK, You're OK gnosticism, and, of course, the Madison Avenue pop paperback version of Freud. We're paying the price for it now. In spades.
Your post made a lot of good points. I just want to point out one thing: Pope John Paul II is a phenomelogist in a direct line from Husserl.