The essays that comprise this collection offer a penetrating examination of the spiritual condition of 21st-century society and the modern Catholic Church. In a witty but soundly reasoned manner, the moral weakness that epitomizes the contemporary era is berated. Examples from the lives of figures from early and recent church history serve as parables for current cultural crises, and the voices of frustrated parishioners around the world give these situations immediacy. Each chapter vividly demonstrates that the moral dangers of post-Vatican II life are often disguised as mere alternatives rather than threats to the soul. This proposal offers an authentically Catholic way of responding to these ethical challenges and exhorts the faithful to move beyond romanticism about Vatican II and strive for lives of virtue that respond to the Church’s call for effective evangelization.
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About the Author
George W. Rutler is the host of a weekly program on EWTN radio, a former columnist for Crisis magazine, and pastor of the Church of Our Saviour in midtown Manhattan. A convert from Anglicanism, he has written numerous books on Catholic history and lore, including Coincidentally. He lives in New York City. George Weigel is the author of 15 books including Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, The Courage to Be Catholic, and the New York Times–bestseller Witness to Hope. He is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, and is regarded as one of America’s most prominent public intellectuals. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sainthood, visited anew,
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This review is from: A Crisis of Saints: The Call to Heroic Faith in an Unheroic World (Paperback)
I have just finished a first reading of this book. Several more will follow; there is too much in it to absorb in one sitting, and all of it superb. There is more of wisdom and wit in one sentence of Fr Rutler's than in a library written by any other author now living. I might, so as not to be accused of exaggeration, substitute `paragraph' for `sentence'...or maybe not.
Such a book is to be savoured, as one might savour a Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, and for much the same reasons. Yet each page leads you on to the next, and the next, as Fr Rutler draws out his argument, presenting it in detail yet never overwhelming the reader with theological arcane. `Crisis' is not a clarion call to Sainthood For The Rest Of Us; it is, rather, a reminder that we all are called to sainthood, which is quite a different thing. Instant `conversions' may take, occasionally, but most often don't, being based upon emotion and mob mania. The real thing begins within, involves all of a person - his mind, spirit, and (if required) body, and in most cases takes one while to have an effect. The voices of the saints, whether old or of our own time, are but faintly heard above the clamour of the braying politicians, pontificating pundits and posturing Celebrities: those self-anointed who perhaps hear Omar, though odds are they know him not: `O Love, could you and I with Him conspire/To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire/Would we not shatter it to Bits, and then/Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?' Though they leave Him out of the equation, and will re-mould the world to fit their own enlightened desires (for they are infinitely wise and deserve to rule), and us into the bargain. Indeed, the Shattering into Bits has well begun. Desire. For holiness? For God? For sainthood, that men may in future days invoke your name, and light candles before your statue? Or to know, and do, what is right, and count neither cost nor reward? The good Father shows the way. The same way that was shown two thousand years ago. Let us be about it then, using all our five wits and seven senses.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Treasury of Truth,
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This review is from: A Crisis of Saints: The Call to Heroic Faith in an Unheroic World (Paperback)
This is a work of great joy; both joy on the part of the author and joy on the part of the reader who takes the time to mine this treasure-trove of wisdom. Father Rutler has produced a grand dialogue on truth, faith, love and service. This book will take time as it is thick with solid logic and solid prose. A deep thinker and man of great faith, the author's patience and understanding come through on every page. If you seek to understand the spiritual desert that is our modern heritage, please read this book; you will come back to this and Father Rutler's other works again and again. He is a true Chestertonian.
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