Sanctifying the World

English historian and Christian Humanist Christopher Dawson stood at the very center of the Catholic literary and intellectual revival in the four decades preceding Vatican II. One can find his influence throughout the Catholic Right of the 20th century. Poet and social critic T. S. Eliot, for example, considered him the foremost thinker of his generation, and the founder of American conservatism, Russell Kirk, wrote that “I have been saturated in Dawsonian historical studies” and “my own books reflect Dawson’s concepts.” Dawson’s reputation declined dramatically during the cultural shifts accompanying Vatican II, and few remembered the English Catholic in the final decades of the twentieth century. A revival of interest of Dawson and his body of work has increased dramatically in the last years of John Paul II’s and the beginning of Benedict’s pontificates. This book offers the first critical study of Dawson’s life and thought as a whole. It is especially poignant in a post-9/11 reexamination of the meaning of Western Civilization.