"Christendom was over.” These stark words, repeated several times by the great American scholar George Weigel in his new book, To Sanctify the World, sum up the Church’s predicament on the eve of the Second Vatican Council.
In his magisterial apologia for “the vital leg-acy” of Vatican II, Weigel argues that the ecumenical council was summoned by John XXIII in order to address the unprecedented crisis created by “a world simply irreligious”, as Newman once prophesied. In such a world, says Weigel, “Catholicism would cease to be an ethnic, national or cultural inheritance”.
