Publishers Weekly
08/15/2022
Weigel (The Next Pope), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, examines the impact of the Second Vatican Council in this thorough chronicle. Through close readings of the council’s decrees and declarations, Weigel explores why Pope John XXIII took the rare step of convening “all the world’s Catholic bishops” in sessions that lasted from 1962 to 1965, as well as how the proceedings changed the Catholic church. The Second Vatican Council met to address the “challenge to Catholicism posed by the modern world,” which included clerical infighting, reactionary papal policies, and the social dislocations caused by two world wars and the Cold War. Weigel suggests that the church was motivated by a desire to achieve a “revitalized western humanism” and by the belief that the “sacred liturgy should be reformed organically” by returning to its “medieval and patristic forms.” The author challenges conventional readings of documents produced by the council, such as when he asserts that contrary to the populist reputation of the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” it largely preserves the church’s formal hierarchy even as it emphasizes the laity’s “responsibility” to spread the word of God. Weigel delivers a probing study of the figures and theologies that influenced Catholic policy, though his focus on Western European events gives little mention of how Catholic practices elsewhere influenced the outcome of the council. Still, there is much valuable work in this fluid reevaluation of Vatican II’s origins and impact. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Weigel is perfectly suited to the task of re-presenting the history and theology of Vatican II to naysayers on both ends of the spectrum. And he does just that in this accessible, thorough, and honest account of the Council… George Weigel has done the Church a great service in defending the Council, taking its problems seriously, and explaining the way forward.”—Washington Free Beacon
“With characteristic fluency, [Weigel] defends not only Vatican II but the entire centuries-old process by which bishops, meeting in council and praying for divine guidance, have wrestled with subtle doctrinal points and expressed them in complex texts that took decades to digest fully... The argument is artful.”—The Economist
“A watershed study of Vatican II.”—Catholic World Report
“This work by George Weigel is a very important read not only because of the recently celebrated 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council but because Vatican II continues to be misunderstood by many and manipulated by some as a justification for ideas the Council Fathers would never have countenanced. Weigel helps one to understand the meaning and importance of the Council like no other.”—National Catholic Register
"George Weigel’s new book is a colossal contribution to modern Church history."—Catholic Herald
“Superb… an accurate understanding of the council has value to persons well beyond the borders of the church. And that’s why To Sanctify the World is so important.”—National Review
“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.”—Publishers Weekly
“George Weigel is perhaps the most well-known and influential Vatican-watcher and public theologian in America.”—Claremont Review of Books
“In this book, 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 debates about the Council. Weigel’s engaging book is a watershed in studies of Vatican II.”—Eduardo J. Echeverria, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
“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.”—Mary Ann Glendon, author of A World Made New
“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 Weigel to provide an attractive and compelling synthesis of it.”—Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York
“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.”—Robert Barron, bishop of Winona-Rochester and founder, Word on Fire Catholic Ministries
“All of Weigel’s best qualities are displayed here—penetrating intelligence, erudition, clarity, breadth of vision, remarkable range of insider’s knowledge. I doubt that Vatican II—still bitterly contested in some quarters sixty years after the event—will ever be more interestingly or more accurately understood than in this deeply moving book.”—Lance Morrow, author of God and Mammon
“In a time of widespread Christological amnesia and even denial, 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.”—Robert Imbelli, author of Rekindling the Christic Imagination
“This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding the event of Vatican II. Rich in historical and theological context, it offers a clear and readable argument for understanding Vatican II as in continuity with the whole Catholic tradition and as a call to re-center the Church and its mission on the person of Jesus Christ. I can think of no more important message for this historical moment.”—Patrick Kelly, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus
Kirkus Reviews
2022-08-16
The history and legacy of the Second Vatican Council.
In his latest, Catholic scholar Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of Letters to a Young Catholic, examines the ecumenical council that took place between 1962 and 1965. The author begins with a detailed yet concise exploration of the many global changes that led to the council. Though Pope John XXIII, “an essentially conservative and traditional pope,” shocked the church by calling for a council, which hadn’t taken place since 1870, it should have been clear that modern society—punctuated by world wars, the rise of communism, decolonization, and countless other factors—had changed the landscape so thoroughly that a fresh approach was vital for Catholic survival. Weigel writes that the ultimate purpose of the council was to “empower a revitalized Church to offer the modern world a path beyond incoherence—or, worse, self-destruction—through an encounter with Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.” Once it began, institutionalists lost their bid to steer the council’s work toward less important matters of rules and administration. Instead, the council took a decidedly theological turn in order to answer the pressing question of “how God made his purposes known to humanity in a binding way that was authoritative for the Church over time.” The council would be thoroughly Christocentric in nature and explore the church’s role in a modern world through a Christian viewpoint. Weigel thoroughly analyzes the major documents that resulted from the council’s decisions. He then discusses its lasting legacy, especially through the lens of two of its participants: popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Finally, he notes that a 1985 synod most clearly affirmed the meaning of Vatican II as a great gift of grace until “the Church lived fully the truth about itself as a communion of disciples in mission.”
A readable traditionalist appraisal.
