In our latest installment of book reviews, we turn our attention to the popular speaker and author, George Weigel. We do so with a book that some have called the most important read to better understand the beauty and scope of the new evangelization, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church.

George Weigel, author of the New York Times bestseller Witness to Hope, the biographical work on Saint John Paul the Great, draws from his vast writing experience to explicate the vocation of every baptized Catholic: to be in mission, in season and out of season. His treatment of this “permanence of mission” runs itself like a golden thread throughout his whole work. His message: evangelization always starts with “the daily reading of the Bible and regular reception of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance”.  Essentially, the missionary impulse always starts from the inside out, not from the outside in.

In its larger structure, Evangelical Catholicism is broken up into two parts.

Part One in Weigel's illuminating read lays out his vision for an Evangelical Catholicism that has as its seed Pope Leo XIII’s work Rerum Novarum (unique to many other works concerning the new evangelization). Under the influence of Leo XIII’s wisdom, Weigel makes it clear, Evangelical Catholicism is not something to be started, but rather something to be implemented.  As he suggests in his title, this evangelical seed must be planted “deep” in the fertile soil of the Catholic Church if it is to awaken a new springtime for the universal Church.

Part Two examines systematically how the episcopate, priesthood, liturgy, religious life, lay persons, Catholic intellectual life, Church's public policy advocacy, and papacy need to embrace renewal in the Holy Spirit so as to know renewal in life, word, and deed. A man that is known from not backing away from a challenge, Weigel scrutinizes the current problems in each of these areas, and makes suggestions for change.

In this vein, this book is a great read for a book club, because of its many thoughts and suggestions that ought to provoke stimulating conversation.

Furthermore, George Weigel tirelessly roots this work in the gospel narrative and the authentic spirit of the Second Vatican Council. As George Weigel notes, Vatican II was the Church’s cry for 'deep reform' at the service of an Evangelical Catholicism. This ‘deep reform’ out from Vatican II began to take shape under the lengthy reign of John Paul II. Certainly, as biographer of John Paul II, Weigel is just the man to take the spirit of that ‘deep reform’, and make the proposals he makes. He speaks with not only the authority of Scripture and knowledge of Vatican II, but also with the experience of walking in the shadows of a saint who understood how to integrate reform from within the Catholic Church.

George Weigel commented that this "book is the product of some thirty years of reflection on the future of the Catholic Church.” You combine his wealth of knowledge with an incubation period of thirty years, and what you have is George Weigel at his “prophetic best.”

I could not recommend this work enough for anyone who is serious about their baptismal vocation to be at the service of the Catholic Church in its missionary work of evangelization and catechesis. A must read!

Get book at http://www.amazon.com/Evangelical-Catholicism-Reform-21st-Century-Church...