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

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

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

George Weigel’s sweeping account of 150 years of Catholic history challenges the long-held assumption made by traditionalists, progressives, many historians, and mainstream media that secular modernity has always been the prime mover, forcing the Church to either resist or accommodate it. In reframing the narrative with the church as the creative protagonist in this drama, Weigel describes how the encounter with modernity led to the renewal of the church’s gospel-centered mission in its third millennium, and suggests that the church might redirect — indeed, redeem–the modern project itself.

Kathleen Sprows Cummings

Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame