To Build the City of God: Living as Catholics in a Secular Age

Is man an isolated, voluntaristic, autonomous individual, as modernity would have him? Or is he subject to natural, social, and transcendent orders? Much has been written since Rerum Novarum in 1891 on the general outlines of Catholic social, economic, and political thought, but what Catholics need today is a sure guide to how to live out these principles in their daily lives. To this end, Brian McCall’s To Build the City of God responds with chapters on marriage and the family, dress, education, profit and wealth, debt, politics in the age of Obama, and much more.The modern world has erected a monstrous edifice on false principles, which, through its own intrinsic nihilism, is hollow to the core. Given time, it must collapse, and so with clarity and insight the author points the way for Catholics to live always under the reign of Christ; and to bring His kingship to a world increasingly desperate for the only Way that can truly bind us in temporal solidarity and transcendent communion.

Brian M. McCall is Associate Dean for Academics at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and holds the Orpha and Maurice Merrill Professorship in Law. Holding degrees from Yale, the University of London, and the University of Pennsylvania, he has authored numerous academic articles and books and is a regular contributor to several national Catholic newspapers and journals.