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

Author: George Weigel

Narrator: Rick Adamson

Unabridged: 9 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 09/17/2019


Synopsis

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.

About George Weigel

George Weigel is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Catholic Church and the author of the New York Times 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, D.C., and a consultant on Vatican affairs for NBC News.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Matt on March 01, 2021

"According to the conventional telling of this history, modernity was always the drama's protagonist and the Church was always the reactive (even reactionary) force. That Catholicism may have been a creative and independent actor in this process, rather than a merely defensive one, is seldom conside......more

Goodreads review by James on December 18, 2020

A little bit of philosophy and ecclesiology and a lot of history and papal document exposition, and this was a great way to see and interpret our current place in the Church. This might not be what the average person looking for a history of the modern church is looking for, but this is great for Ca......more

Goodreads review by Kathleen on January 26, 2020

He lost me slowly over the first half of the book, and then all at once with this phrase on page 160: “the global plague of abortion (a practice closely linked in the West to radical feminism).” I wanted a book of history, not polemics, and wasn’t going to get it here.......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on March 10, 2020

George Weigel, like his mentor St. John Paul the Great, offers incredible depth and meaning to a meme-driven, emoji-filled world starving for substance and meaning. The secular world thinks it’s the future and faith is the past. Weigel shows how the Church moved over the past 250 years from opposing......more

Goodreads review by Sean on June 09, 2023

I enjoyed the book. I feel far worse and far better about the state of the Church after reading it. I give only four stars because I need to read a competing view of modern Catholic history before I give it 5 stars. Regardless of my agreement with Weigel’s interpretations it is quite clear that the......more


Quotes

"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