Christus Vincit: Christ's Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age by Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Diane Montagna, 421 pages
In the relatively new but vital tradition of book-length interviews of Catholic prelates, popularized by Cardinal Ratzinger and continued by Cardinal Sarah, Christus Vincit is an expansive, free-ranging conversation with the auxiliary bishop of Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. It might understandably be asked what this man of the peripheries has to offer the Church and the world. Quite a bit, as it turns out, and if little of it is new, most of it is excellent.
The heart of Bishop Schneider's message is that the naturalistic turn the Church took in the twentieth century has been a disaster pastorally, evangelically, and theologically. To counter this, he calls for a renewed emphasis on the supernatural and the transcendent. Again he reminds us that human beings are embodied creatures rather than pure spirits, that history is not Providence but has a providential aspect, and that while all earthly economic and political arrangements, debates, and crises are passing, there is a Kingdom which is eternal. Unfortunately, there is also a certain amount of conspiratorial thinking, mostly involving the Freemasons, some of which may be true but which generally seems out of place and fantastical.
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