Changing The World

What approach should religious people take to "the world"? What is the correct relationship between Church and State? What are the extent and the limits of freedom of conscience? Christians have wrestled with questions like these from St. Augustine's time up to now.

A crucial turning-point occurred with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which called on Catholics to read the signs of the times and become fully engaged in the work of evangelizing and reforming the secular order in the cause of justice and peace. According to Vatican II, the lay members of the Church must take the initiative in this enterprise, working through the political structures and processes of pluralistic modern society in collaboration with all men and women of good will.

Decades before the Council, St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, set out the vision, principles, and norms of this dramatically new approach, with its emphasis on personal freedom and secularity. In Changing the World - The Timeliness of Opus Dei, Father Martin Rhonheimer, a widely published author and scholar who teaches at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, takes a searching and sometimes surprising look at these momentous developments, so important in the twenty-first century to the self-understanding of the Catholic Church and her members, as well as to the secular world.