A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism’s dramatic encounter with modernity, by among America’s leading intellectuals

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed the Church and today’s world were locked in a battle towards the death. The triumph of modernity wouldn’t normally only finish the Church being a consequential participant in world history; it would also lead to the loss of life of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years back. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Chapel rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism created intellectual tools with the capacity of rescuing the imperiled contemporary project.

A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two hundreds of years of profound change in the cathedral and the world, The Irony of Contemporary Catholic History reveals how Catholicism gives twenty-first century essential truths for our success and flourishing.