Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Politics & government

TO SANCTIFY THE WORLD

George Weigel

The Vital Legacy of Vatican II

In this new book, Weigel explains why the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are essential to the Church's future - and the world's.

The Second Vatican Council (19621965) was the most important Catholic event in the past five hundred years. Yet sixty years after its opening on October 11, 1962, its meaning remains sharply contested and its promise unfulfilled. Vatican II was initially summoned to address the crisis of world civilization that had led to two world wars and a Cold War that threatened the human future, but today it is remembered largely as a failure. While some Catholics proclaim a "spirit of Vatican II" that deconstructs Catholicism into a form of liberal Protestantism, others declare that the Council was the result of a vast conspiracy of worldly interests determined to bring Catholicism down.

In To Sanctify the World, George Weigel argues that both of these understandings are wrong. He brings more than thirty years of research on global Catholic affairs to bear on this compelling reassessment of the Council, explaining the necessity of Vatican II and exploring the continuing relevance of its teaching in a world seeking a deeper experience of freedom than personal willfulness. The Council's texts are also a critical resource for the Catholic Church as it lives out its original, Christ-centered evangelical purpose.

Written with insight and verve, To Sanctify the World recovers the true meaning of Vatican II as the template for a Catholicism that can propose a path toward genuine human dignity and social solidarity.

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

Available products
Book Published 2022-10-04 by Basic Books
Book Published 2022-10-04 by Basic Books

Comments

A readable traditionalist appraisal.

Catholicism, Revisited: PW Talks with George Weigel Read more...

French: Desclee de Brouwer

In explaining why Vatican II was necessary and what it taught, George Weigel has given us a rich history of the Catholic Church's efforts to meet the challenges of modernity. Viewed in their intellectual, social and political context, the personalities, debates, and documents of that momentous event emerge with new clarity in this remarkable work. Meticulously documented, yet eminently readable, To Sanctify the World is a matchless guide to the meaning and import of the Second Vatican Council.

In a time of widespread Christological amnesia and even denial, George Weigel's new book offers a bracing remedy. He provides a magisterial recovery of the Christological vision and commitment that permeate the documents of the Second Vatican Council and that illuminate the Church's way forward. It is the way toward the sanctification of the world through living and sharing faith in Jesus Christ who is the true joy of the Gospel.

Anyone interested in a bold yet authentic interpretation of Vatican II should read this book, in which George Weigel persuasively demonstrates that the Council -- the Holy Spirit's greatest gift to Catholicism in the twentieth century -- was not so much about reinventing and "modernizing" the Church as Christifying and converting the world

Historians tell us that the genuine interpretation of an Ecumenical Council's teaching usually at least takes sixty years to settle. That means we are now at the point of serenely and sanely understanding the authentic magisterium of Vatican Council II. And count on George Weigel to provide an attractive and compelling synthesis of it.

In this book, George Weigel gives a masterful interpretation of the Second Vatican Council that could not come at a better time for seminarians, theologians, pastors, and all who seek to understand its documents. He provides important keys for understanding the legacy of Vatican II, helping us through the contemporary hermeneutical debates about the council. Weigel's engaging book is a watershed in studies of Vatican II.

...Weigel delivers a probing study of the figures and theologies that influenced Catholic policy... there is much valuable work in this fluid reevaluation of Vatican II's origins and impact. Read more...