Why was the Second Vatican Council necessary? What did it actually teach? What impact is this having on the Church and the world today?
The Saint Paul Seminary hosted leading public intellectual George Weigel to tackle these questions and more at the latest Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library Lecture.
About Weigel
George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
From 1989 through June 1996, 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.
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 “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); “Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable” (2021); and “To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II” (2022). 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 85 newspapers and magazines in seven countries.
Weigel received a Bachelor of Arts from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore and a Master of Arts from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. He is the recipient of 19 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.