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The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

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

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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.

ISBN-13: 9780465094332

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Basic Books

Publication Date: 09-17-2019

Pages: 336

Product Dimensions: 9.30(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.20(d)

George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center and one of America's leading public intellectuals. The first volume of his biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, was a New York Times bestseller, and his writing appears regularly in a variety of publications, including the Wall Street Journal. He lives in North Bethesda, Maryland.

Table of Contents

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