Evangelical Catholicism: A Reformed Church and a Culture in Crisis


A version of Mr. Weigel’s remarks were published as an essay in National Affairs. Click here to read it.

In his twelfth William E. Simon Lecture, EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel discusses the thesis of his new book, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church, with an eye toward addressing some of the challenges presented by our current cultural crises.

The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its two-thousand year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church defined by the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI; a way of being Catholic, both ancient and new, that offers to the world a deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling self-absorption of postmodernity, and that challenges deep currents in contemporary American culture.