As they mull over the details of his pa-pacy-the gaffes, the cerebral pronouncements, the deepening scandals-some Vatican-watchers will struggle to position Pope Benedict XVI in the broad sweep of Catholic history. Does he mark the end of an era? The start of something new? Or was he just a place-holder? George Weigel, a conservative American Catholic, suffers no such confusion. In his new book, "Evangelical Catholicism", he sets out his clear views on where the church is going and where it needs to go. As an admirer of both Benedict and Pope John Paul II, his Polish predecessor, he argues that both pontiffs commendably ushered in a new phase of Catholic history: what he calls an "evangelical" period, in contrast to the "counter-Reformation" Catholicism that has held sway for most of the past 500 years.
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