The Irony of Modern Catholic History
by GeorgeWeigel,
Basic Books, 336pp, £25/$30
From the societas perfecta, its face set against modernity, to a communion of disciples in mission, engaging with modernity in order to convert it. In his compelling new book, eminent American historian, biographer and theologian George Weigel revisits the Church’s tempestuous journey from “intransigent rejectionism” in the mid-to-late 19th century, across the “fiery brook” of modernity, to where we are now.
Though a firm advocate of engagement, Weigel travels with eyes and ears open. Rather than slotting people and actions into pre-assigned roles in the drama, he stops to re-examine them. Thus, while he finds Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors guilty of blunderbuss condemnation, he also praises it for identifying flaws in the thinking of the day that would later become “painfully obvious: publicly, in the rise of totalitarianism, and culturally, in the breakdown of reason”.
