Enchanted by Eternity: Recapturing the Wonder of the Catholic Worldview

Whether we realize it or not, Catholics have been deeply influenced by modernity's failed worldview. While we want to live and share our faith with joy, we struggle to do so because we unwittingly see the cosmos, the human person, and society as machines functioning independently of their Creator and of one another. If we want to bring the life-transforming effects of our faith into the world, we must first find and live real Catholicism, breaking free of the gravitational pull of modernity's worldview.

A worldview is the stable, all-encompassing way in which each of us looks at reality — the pair of glasses through which we see the world around us. It makes up the grid of givens, assumptions, and presuppositions through which we view the world. It colors what we mean by God, universe, and human. Everyone has a worldview, and recognizing our worldview and the worldviews of others is crucial in our search for truth, goodness, and beauty.

Endorsements

“The ideas in this book resonate with the way I feel about the Catholic Faith. This book slam dunks why I’m proud to be Catholic — because real Catholicism is a tough, world-improving movement that is about both the forever-life and an urgency to make this life the best possible for everyone.” — From the Foreword by Mark Wahlberg

Enchanted by Eternity is a tour de force that shines a light on the captivating beauty of Catholicism’s vision for personal and cultural renewal. Fr. Slattery invites readers to embrace an “ultramodern” sacramental Catholic worldview in which every facet of creation is imbued with divine purpose. This essential resource will lead the faithful to rediscover the earth as an enchanted garden where every creature holds the capacity to inspire rapturous wonder. With his vision of a “heavenized” earth, Slattery reveals that the path to civilizational renewal consists not in escape from reality but a journey deeper into it.— Matthew J. Ramage, Professor of Theology, Co-director, Center for Integral Ecology, Benedictine College

“For many years now we’ve been hearing about ‘the new evangelization.’ Fr. Slattery reminds us that ‘the old evangelization’ worked and brought hope, renewal and transformation to a bleak and despairing time. In the midst of our lonely and bored culture, Fr. Slattery powerfully exposes the emptiness of the modern worldview and recasts an adventurous and dramatic vision of what it means to be a disciple of the King of the Universe, who has rescued us not from but for world.” — Fr. John Riccardo, founder of Acts XXIX

“In his work Enchanted by Eternity, Father William Slattery combines his years of ministerial experience and lived experience of Catholicism to offer a ‘new’ proposal for living the Faith, based on insights from recent scientific developments and scriptural studies. This work demonstrates how faith and reason are not only compatible, but when they work together how they contribute to the sacramental worldview so necessary for grappling with the fundamental challenges of our day. This book proposes the Faith in a way that attracts!” — Most Reverend Earl K. Fernandes, Bishop of Columbus, Ohio

“This book is a shout to Catholics to do again what they did in the first millennium: to change the status quo culture and inaugurate a civilization with a Christian soul for the benefit of all women and men! Slattery brims with insights, backs them up with footnotes ─ and fascinates. Although he is an epistemologist, he shows a command of Western history, the philosophical implications of theoretical physics, the arts, literature, theology, and technology, moving from Einstein to Aquinas, Marx to St. Paul with skillful ease and catchy enthusiasm. Get ready to have your mind scrambled, your worldview table overturned, your hair ruffled, and your horizons widened, deepened, and expanded. As science probes more and more deeply into nature, materialism fails more and more profoundly. Particles, once assumed to be isolated, turn out to gather into entangled waves; cells, once thought to be simple, have proven to contain sophisticated technology beyond imagining. Life and the universe increasingly resemble not disorganized matter but the thoughts of a Mind. In his riveting Enchanted by Eternity, Father William J. Slattery masterfully draws out the profound implications of materialism’s failure for our view of this world and the next.” — Michael J. Behe, biochemist, professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, and author of Darwin's Black Box