Making the Church Our Own: How We Can Reform the Catholic Church from the Ground Up

Swidler, who is a longtime leading figure among liberal Catholics, lays out a practical program for democratizing and opening up the Catholic Church from the parish and dioceses level up, drawing on the unrealized potential of models and reforms throughout history. As background, he especially focuses on the Enlightenment reform movement in 19th-century Germany that presaged the reforms proposed by Vatican Council II, many of which are still unfulfilled or reversed.

Leonard Swidler is professor of Catholic Thought & Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Founder/Director of the Institute for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue.