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The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform

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The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform

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Overview

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism's dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America's leading intellectuals

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Church rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism developed intellectual tools capable of rescuing the imperiled modern project.

A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two centuries of profound change in the church and the world, The Irony of Modern Catholic History reveals how Catholicism offers twenty-first century essential truths for our survival and flourishing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781549101151
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/17/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

George Weigel is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Catholic Church and the author of over a dozen books, including the international bestseller Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. He is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, and a consultant on Vatican affairs for NBC News. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Rick
Adamson is an award-winning voice artist with more than twenty years’
experience in voiceovers, spoken word events, event announcing, and children’s media, as well as commercials for well-known international corporations. He has narrated numerous television and film documentaries, including Croatia, co-narrated with Martin Sheen.
His audiobook narration includes more than two dozen major books, as well as dozens of early-reader titles for juveniles. He won the prestigious Audie Award in 2011 for Best Inspirational/Faith-Based Fiction for In a Heartbeat, and he was among the finalists for the 2006 Audie
Award for Best Personal Development/Motivational Work for Younger Next Year. He earned an AudioFile Earphones Award for the ensemble narration of Rough Water.

Prologue: The Ironies in the Fire 1

Act 1 Catholicism Against Modernity

A Problematic Patrimony 17

Le Deluge 21

Lost Opportunity 25

Missionary and Reactionary 30

The Ultramontane Democratic Socialist 33

The Apogee of Reaction and the Beginning of the Modern Papacy 37

Entr'Acte: Bridge Builders

Explorers and Pioneers 53

The Novus Ordo in the West 65

Act 2 Catholicism Explores Modernity, Gingerly

Pivot 71

Sanctity, Sacraments, and Repression 84

The Leonine Revolution Revived 90

The Hinge 102

Entr'Acte: Theological Renaissance

Unshackled 115

Renewal in Several Keys 119

Personalism and Political Theory 125

Act 3 Catholicism Embracing Modernity

Another Presumptive Placeholder, Another Bold Decision 131

What John XXIII Wanted 134

Setting the Course 140

The Catholic Case for Religious Freedom 148

The Encounter with God 152

Reading and Misreading Modernity 155

Plurality and Pluralism 166

Entr'Acte: The Council Reconsidered

Checking the Drift 173

Re-Centering on Christ 182

Communio and the Rebirth of Theological Pluralism 186

Act 4 Catholicism Critiques Modernity from Within

Distinctively Modern Men 193

Fault Lines in Late Modernity 201

The Free and Virtuous Society 207

Professor Ratzinger's September Lectures 214

Three Crucial Points 224

Entr'Acte: A Communion of Disciples in Mission

The Council Without Keys 231

The Extraordinary Synod of 1985 234

Reliving the Easter Effect 240

Act 5 Catholicism Converting Modernity

Into the Deep 245

Evangelical Catholicism 252

Reimagining the Modern Story 259

The Franciscan Stall 268

From Bitter Irony to Purification 276

The Culture-Converting Counterculture 283

Acknowledgments 289

Sources 293

Index 301

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

"As with all Weigel's writing, this story is well told-richly illustrated with lively anecdotes, cogent summaries of complex ideas, and revealing quotations."—National Review

"Weigel advances a bold but credible interpretation of almost 200 years of ecclesiastical history, tracing the Church's engagement with modernity from the 19th century through today.... Weigel's ideas are certainly worth serious examination. Highly recommended."—National Catholic Register

"A fascinating look at the Catholic Church's encounter with modernity...Weigel is at once highly intellectual and thoroughly accessible as a writer as well as balanced and opinionated...A must-read book for Catholics and devotees of religious history."—Kirkus (starred review)

"George Weigel is the most interesting and authoritative American scholar and analyst of the Roman Catholic Church...[His] book is intended to refute the common notion that Catholicism has resisted modernity consistently and mostly ineffectively and has suffered as a consequence of its stubborn refusal to 'change with the times.' The truth, Weigel shows, is much more complicated than that."—New York Journal of Books

"[An] important new work...St. Teresa of Avila had it right when she said that 'God writes straight with crooked lines.' George Weigel's The Irony of Modern Catholic History traces those crooked lines in modern church history."—Washington Times

"A comprehensive interpretation of the history of the Catholic Church's encounter with modernity...This story is well told."—First Things

"Weigel ranks among the leading Christian public intellectuals of the past four decades. Stylistically, The Irony of Modern Catholic History is a pleasure to read. But the easy style disguises the fact that it's also an exercise in superb historical scholarship, from the reactionary Pope Gregory XVI in the mid-19th century, through the Modernist crisis and Vatican II, to the present."—Crisis Magazine

"Compelling...Weigel has a great eye for facts that raise eyebrows and provoke reflection...[He] is also a high-calibre phrasemaker."—Catholic Herald (UK)

"Weigel ranks among the leading Christian public intellectuals of the past four decades. Stylistically, The Irony of Modern Catholic History is a pleasure to read. But the easy style disguises the fact that it's also an exercise in superb historical scholarship, from the reactionary Pope Gregory XVI in the mid-19th century, through the Modernist crisis and Vatican II, to the present."—Catholic Philly

"This deeply learned and crisply written book reaffirms George Weigel's status as the preeminent American Catholic intellectual of our time. Weigel recasts recent history to show how we owe much of what is best and most noble in modernity to Catholicism and why, even in this season of ecclesial despair, Catholics have sound reasons to be hopeful."—Sohrab Ahmari, author of From Fire, By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith

"Weigel has an eye for a good story. Whether discussing the affairs of popes and princes, of conclaves and concordats, he seems always to come up with a telling anecdote or witty utterance to brighten the historical account. For a lively and informative overview from the 18th century to the present, The Irony of Modern Catholic History is the book to read."—Robert Louis Wilken, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia

"George Weigel is deeply learned and passionately engaged — one of the important intellectual assets of the 21st century Catholic Church. His book is fascinating and visionary."—Lance Morrow

"George Weigel's sweeping account of 150 years of Catholic history challenges the long-held assumption made by traditionalists, progressives, many historians, and mainstream media that secular modernity has always been the prime mover, forcing the Church to either resist or accommodate it. In reframing the narrative with the church as the creative protagonist in this drama, Weigel describes how the encounter with modernity led to the renewal of the church's gospel-centered mission in its third millennium, and suggests that the church might redirect — indeed, redeem—the modern project itself."—Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame

"The Irony of Modern Catholic History advances a bold new interpretation of the Church and modernity with characteristic authority, deep erudition, and literary panache. It is the latest reminder among many that George Weigel is unrivaled not only as a Catholic intellectual, but as an intellectual, period."—Mary Eberstadt, senior research fellow, Faith and Reason Institute, and author of Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics

From the Publisher

★ 2019-06-09
A fascinating look at the Catholic Church's encounter with modernity.
Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Weigel (The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times, 2018, etc.) dives into the past two centuries of Catholic history to explore how the church has rejected, explored, and finally embraced modernity. In a work that will appeal to anyone with a genuine interest in church history, the author reintroduces readers to the embattled, and sometimes embittered, pre-Vatican II popes before exploring the more familiar church of today. Weigel uses a five-act format to explain the history of Catholicism in modernity, with each act covering a specific era in the church: against, exploring, embracing, critiquing, and, finally, converting modernity. The author fully examines the irony that the modernism feared and rejected by 19th-century popes and clerics would eventually come to shape, and even be shaped by, Catholicism. After some background, Weigel's history begins in earnest with Pope Pius IX, whose anti-modern stance is best remembered via the Syllabus of Errors, which flatly rejects "progress, liberalism, and modern civilization." The author then moves on to Leo XIII, "the man who would set the Church on the road to a sometimes skeptical, sometimes intrigued exploration of modernity, which would lead to developments in this drama that could not have been foreseen in Leo's time." This Leonine revolution would impact the papacy and the church throughout the 20th century, culminating in the years of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Harkening back to his 2013 book Evangelical Catholicism, Weigel concludes with the church's "converting" modernism in the 21st century, embodied by "the challenging, puzzling, and, to some minds, deconstructive pontificate of Pope Francis." Weigel is at once highly intellectual and thoroughly accessible as a writer as well as balanced and opinionated.
A must-read book for Catholics and devotees of religious history.

Kirkus Reviews

The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform

The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform

Audio CD(Unabridged)

Audio CD(Unabridged)

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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Customer Reviews