The Salt Lake Tribune on George Wiegel and Two Popes

The Salt Lake Tribune has an in-depth article about George Wiegel, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.

Five years into the papacy of Benedict XVI, biographer George Weigel is struck by the continuity of mission between Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, both of whom pursued activist papacies engaging an often-skeptical general culture.

Both popes are products of early 20th-century European Catholic culture, John Paul in Poland and Benedict in Germany. Both were deeply influenced by World War II and its aftermath, and both were partly shaped by Vatican II in the 1960s.

Both popes preach “the centrality of discipleship,” both seek to spread the gospel — Benedict, especially, in Western Europe — and both believe in outreach to the young, Weigel said during a stop here to lecture on his newest book, The End and the Beginning.

Weigel, John Paul’s biographer in 1999’s Witness to Hope, also wrote the forward to Light of the World, a new book-length interview on a range of topics Benedict conducted with German journalist Peter Seewald.

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George Wiegel on The World Over Live

George Wiegel, who contributed a foreword to the US edition of Light of the World, appears to discuss the book on EWTN's The World Over Live. (Segment starts at the 6:00 mark.)

Deflating the NYT Condom Scoop

George Weigel writes on the National Review Online website:

Here is what the New York Times reported to its readers on November 21:

“Pope Benedict XVI has said that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS . . . .”

No, the pope did not say that in his new book, Light of the World, to which I had the honor of contributing a foreword. Here is what the pope actually wrote...

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Official webpage for Light of the World

Visit the official site for Light of the World to see exclusive online content, such as the foreword by George Weigel:

What the Pope sees, and what he discusses with frankness, clarity, and compassion in this stimulating conversation with Peter Seewald, is a world that (to borrow from Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson) has lost its story: a world in which the progress promised by the humanisms of the past three centuries is now gravely threatened by understandings of the human person that reduce our humanity to a congeries of cosmic chemical accidents: a humanity with no intentional origin, no noble destiny, and thus no path to take through history. This is not, it must be emphasized, the cranky view of a man ill at ease in the postmodern world. Rather, as Benedict XVI takes pains to underscore in this conversation, his challenge to postmodernity is one intended to preserve and extend the achievements of modernity, not least in the sphere of political freedom — and to do so by encouraging postmodernity to rediscover some ancient truths about itself.

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