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George Weigel

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The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God Hardcover – International Edition, April 5, 2005

by George Weigel (Author)

4.5 79 ratings

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Why do Europeans and Americans see the world so differently? Why do Europeans and Americans have such different understandings of democracy and its discontents in the twenty-first century? Contrasting the civilization that produced the starkly modernist cube” of the Great Arch of La Défense in Paris with the civilization that produced the cathedral” of Notre-Dame, George Weigel argues that Europe's embrace of a narrow secularism has led to a crisis of morale that is eroding Europe's soul and threatening its futurewith dire lessons for the rest of the democratic world.Weigel traces the origins of Europe's problem” to the atheistic humanism of the nineteenth-century European intellectual life, which set in motion a historical process that produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, the Gulag, Auschwitz, the Cold Warand, most ominously, the Continent's de-population, which is worse today than during the Black Death.And yet, many Europeans still insistmost recently, during the debate over a new EU constitutionthat only a public square shorn of religiously-informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. Precisely the opposite, Weigel suggests, is true: the people of the cathedral” can give a compelling account of their commitment to everyone's freedom; the people of the cube” cannot.Can there be any true politics”any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedomwithout God? George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is No,” because, in the final analysis, societies are only as great as their spiritual aspirations.

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

April 5, 2005
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0465092667
ISBN-13

978-0465092666
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Paris's modernist La Grande Arche de la Défense and the Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame serve as metaphors for papal biographer Weigel's (Witness to Hope) examination of what has happened to Europe in the last several decades and its significance to Americans. Weigel, an American Catholic theologian who has lived and worked on the continent, defines the "Europe problem" as the sharp divergence of European views on democracy, the world and politics from those held by Americans like himself. For him, La Grande Arche ("The Cube") symbolizes the new Europe, retreating from democracy, en route to depoliticization, enamored of international organizations and intellectually Christophobic. Notre-Dame, which guidebooks claim would fit inside the Cube, embodies Europe's Christian history, now strangely absent from the constitution of the European Union. Weigel traces the "Europe problem" to the 19th-century rise of "atheistic humanism" and "the related triumph of secularization, or de-Christianization, in western Europe." He urges Americans to pay attention to what has happened there because it has implications for the future of democracy in the United States and throughout the world. In developing his thesis, Weigel draws on diverse sources, including the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who has been keenly interested in Europe's democracies. Readers given to pondering European affairs will find much to pique thoughtful discussion. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Catholic neoconservative Weigel maintains that the weighty preamble to the European Union's proposed constitution demonstrates what is wrong with Europe. The document doesn't mention Christianity as a factor in the formation of Europe, instead touting the nonreligious influences of the pre-Christian ancients and the Enlightenment. The omission produced heated debate but little rewriting, indicating, Weigel says, elite Europeans' hostility to Christianity and reflecting the union's bureaucratic orientation against politics, especially the democracy that Christianity, with its concern for individual human dignity, fosters uniquely among the great world religions. Weigel raises many questions about contemporary European actions, attitudes, and developments--in particular, the precipitate decline of the overall nonimmigrant European birth rate--on the way to concluding that Europe's leadership is bored with life. Those questions and a host of incidental observations are very intriguing and provocative, but Weigel's championing of Catholicism, Poland, and especially the Christ-centered humanism of the present pope as restoratives for a sick Europe may strike many as banking on very long shots. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; First Edition (April 5, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465092667
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465092666
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,092,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,453 in United States National Government
- #3,935 in European Politics Books
- #469,517 in Religion & Spirituality (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 79 ratings

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George Weigel

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George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

From 1989 through June 1996, Mr. Weigel was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he led a wide-ranging, ecumenical and inter-religious program of research and publication on foreign and domestic policy issues.

Mr. Weigel is perhaps best known for his widely translated and internationally acclaimed two-volume biography of Pope St. John Paul II: the New York Times bestseller, Witness to Hope (1999), and its sequel, The End and the Beginning (2010). In 2017, Weigel published a memoir of the experiences that led to his work as a papal biographer: Lessons in Hope — My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II.

George Weigel is the author or editor of more than thirty other books, many of which have been translated into other languages. Among the most recent are The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God (2005); Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (2013); Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (2013); Letters to a Young Catholic (2015); The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times (2018); The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020); and Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (2021). His essays, op-ed columns, and reviews appear regularly in major opinion journals and newspapers across the United States. A frequent guest on television and radio, he is also Senior Vatican Analyst for NBC News. His weekly column, “The Catholic Difference,” is syndicated to eighty-five newspapers and magazines in seven countries.

Mr. Weigel received a B.A. from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore and an M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. He is the recipient of nineteen honorary doctorates in fields including divinity, philosophy, law, and social science, and has been awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, Poland’s Gloria Artis Gold Medal, and Lithuania’s Diplomacy Star.

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4.5 out of 5

79 global ratings

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C. Rodriguez

Lay Catholic Reviews Weigel's Cube & Cathedral

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2005

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Weigel is one of my favorite authors, this is the fourth of his books that I have bought and read.

The seeds for Cube & Cathedral have already been sown in Weigel's book 'Letters to a Young Catholic', but are greatly expanded and footnoted in this latest endeavor.

The book delivers exactly what it promises, an analysis of how and why Western Europe is distancing itself from its Christian Roots and what the consequences will be. The book addresses recent events that have been extensively covered in newspapers, and also harkens back hundred of years to philophers whose ideas helped make us who we are today.

The tone of the book is prophetic, in the sense it warns on what will happen if we turn away from God. Weigel also offers hope, for the role each of us must play to turn our world to Christ. I got an overwhelming sense of Salvation History in reading this book, Church Time is slow and deliberate, giving each of us many chances to influence history. However, I also see how my role is a small one because there are so many of us throughout space and time also created by God, also called to holiness and saintliness.

The final hope offered is the incredible impact the World Youth Day agenda is having, in preparing the world for a rebirth in Christianity.

The book is a quick read, wide margins and ample spacing between lines. It lends itself to rereading and highlighting of ideas that can be used over and over again in daily converstaion with others.

21 people found this helpful

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John Harpur

Predictive, prescient and provocative

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2006

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If you care about the future of Western civilisation and Judeo-Christian culture, this is a book for you. If you are puzzled, as I am, by some European leaders (e.g. Chirac) almost daily appeasements of fundamentalist Islamic governments and movements, this is a book for you. If you want a quick but not thin analysis of the malaises affecting Europe, then this book will give you reasonable satisfaction.

However, if you believe that multiculturalism is in the common Good, that the 'modern world' has consigned military power politics to the bin, that the promotion of family values and morality grounded in the Torah/Bible is backward thinking, then this is most certainly not for you. If you cherish these fantasies, do not buy this book. It will unseat them.

Weigel is a Roman Catholic theologian, but the thrust of his book can be assimilated without necessarily agreeing with all of his remedies - though many of them are very sensible.

This is a depressing book in many ways. It reveals just how far Europe has to repair itself if it is to survive another hundred years as the Europe of the Enlightment.

7 people found this helpful

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jaimeshawn

Interesting

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2014

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I was curious about this book: Much of what I see as the suicidal tendency in the Western Culture (American and European) I usually attribute to economics. (i.e. Demographic suicide: Young people do not marry and have children when there are no economic opportunities to sustain a family; Political suicide: Instead of supporting the military and legal power of the state, like middle class people do, a society of poor people tolerates and participates in lawless behavior; Social suicide: People that have no opportunity to have a middle class life, do not value the personal self-restraint and personal courage that defines 'civilization' as opposed to idolizing people like... like... the Kardashians.) So my view is that the collapse of the West is due to the collapse of the middle class, or in other words, poor people act like poor people.

Weigel's argument goes a little further in that he looks at why the upper-class supports policies that impoverish and decimate the middle class. Starting with Nietzsche's 'God is Dead', he argues that the the World Wars and current demographic suicide are the result of the Atheistic Humanism and that the span of destruction from the beginning of WWI in 1914 to the fall of the Soviet’s in 1989 merely is the most flamboyant part of a suicide that is sweeping across the continent today, with birth rates so far below replacement levels that the economic and political collapse of those counties is inevitable.

So is the West collapsing because of the Anti-Human Faith of the elites, or is it collapsing due to their greed and incompetence?

I think to truly answer the question, one would have to try to correlate economic growth with the beliefs of the upper class and somehow separate that from their greed and incompetence: That might be a truly impossible project.

Somehow the West grew out of the poverty and tyranny that has characterized most of the human experience, and somehow it has gotten to the point where the number of peasants in Europe is currently falling at a rate not seen since the arrival of the Black Death, but is it because of dependence and lack of opportunity? Or is it merely a larger example of what the mismanagement that English upper class inflicted on the Irish in the 1840s and 50s, or that the rulers of Europe did to Germany in the 30 years war?

I do know from having a nephew that is a card carrying member of Atheistic faith, that he really objects to considering it a faith, which is a sign of the parochialism and intolerance of that faith. An intolerance that claimed 100 million lives in its incarnation as Marxism, and intends to exterminate 90% of the people on the planet now, in its incarnation as 'Sustainability'. With an elite infected with such a faith, I expect the future for most people to be bad.

8 people found this helpful

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Carissa B

An important book for Europeans and Americans alike

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2005

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George Weigel builds a compelling case that Europe's abandonment of Christianity has led to the continent's precipitous decline. He argues that it is impossible for a civilization to sustain itself when it has no purpose for doing so, and illustrates why Europe faces this problem. Weigel points to Europe's large fundamentalist Muslim population as the greatest challenge to Europe's continuing existence. In light of the 7/7 attacks, his argument takes on added force. Americans should not imagine themselves immune to Europe's problems - we tend to follow Europe down civilizational paths, and we are already well on the way to joining them in militant secularism. I highly recommend this book. It is one that everyone concerned with Western civilization and Western culture should read.

17 people found this helpful

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Ravzender

A Quick Read on the Spiritual Differences

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2015

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A very good read about the differences between Europe and America. I usually don't read this genre of book, but I found it kept my attention and George points things out in a logical way. It doesn't take that long to read, so if you need a break from your normal genre of books, give this one a try and learn a little bit about the differences between Europe and America. This book was published in 2005 so you have to be aware of some of his references are from ten years ago. I recommend it.

4 people found this helpful

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Jimenez

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2018

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Excellent and arrived as described

recluse

カソリックの反撃

Reviewed in Japan on September 15, 2006

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タイトルはすっかり多文化主義の流れに飲み込まれたパリの二つの建物を現しているようです。そこにヨーロッパの緩慢なる自殺への流れを著者は見出しています。読んでみて気がつきましたが、これは、現代のユーロ統合に向かうヨーロッパに対するカソリックの神学者による異議申し立ての作品です。著者は現代の欧州統一の底流に潜むキリスト教忌避の動きを厳しく批判します。啓蒙主義の一面にのみ目をむけ、キリスト教の論理の中に内在している民主主義への萌芽とその歴史への貢献を無視する現代欧州の１９６８年の子供たちがその批判の対象となります。この視角は新鮮なものです。啓蒙主義の延長線上にあったものは、精神的な価値の没落とboredomだったというわけです。futureと題された章で、著者が予想する３つの未来のシナリオは、恐るべきその論理的な帰結を明らかにし読者に思考を促します。決して本質的な意味で、relativistやscepticistになることもできない私のような日本人にとっても、ここに繰り広げられる対立の構図はすさまじいものです。それに比べて、日本のメディアで紹介されるユーロの姿はなんと薄っぺらいことか。

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