No Lasting City

“This book offers the fruit of twenty-five years of thinking and rethinking by one of the best Catholic theologians writing today. In prose that is crystal clear and simultaneously elegant, Bauerschmidt mines the past without retreating into a defensive posture vis-á-vis the present. Ranging over theology, politics, art, and literature, Bauerschmidt nourishes a type of pilgrim church that can serve as a hopeful sign of contradiction in a world of despair.”

—William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University

“Bauerschmidt’s new book reveals to us once more how the concentrated form of the essay can often say more that is essential than the detailed form of the treatise. All the essays in this book are immensely rewarding for their deft and nuanced treatment of the relation of Christian teaching and spirituality to politics and culture. They steer an exemplary path between either denying that there is such an essential relation, or else too readily supposing that Christian mystery obviously dictates one obviously and uniquely righteous political policy or a single aesthetic and cultural style. In our increasingly fraught and even hysterical times, this is a truth that we all need to ponder.”

—John Milbank

“Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt is a serious Catholic thinker who is also a humble man. This combination makes for just the kind of writings that are requisite in a time where theologians, pressed to the margins of the academy and polarized along various fault lines, are tempted to become loud rather than thoughtful. Bauerschmidt adds to this a lyrical prose style, a balance and sanity derived from his mentors Julian of Norwich and Thomas Aquinas, a challenging and Christ-centered vision, and a delightful ability to draw theologically upon Catholic art and literature. This is Christian pedagogy at its finest.”

—Matthew Levering, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

“In No Lasting City, Bauerschmidt speaks with his trademark wit, intellectual seriousness, wisdom, lyricism, and authenticity. Whether debating the merits of political liberalism, exegeting a short story, or analyzing a medieval fresco, Bauerschmidt’s text is impelled entirely by the truth and force of the Gospel. Every essay in this volume is philosophically astute, theologically sensitive, and historically grounded: some, however, are downright prophetic.”

—Jennifer Newsome Martin, Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame