Guarding The Flame: The Challenges Facing The Church In The Twenty-First Century, A Conversation With Cardinal Péter Erdő by Robert Moynihan and Viktoria Somogyi

Hardback: Where is the Catholic Church going? How will it face the challenges of the 21st century? Do the recent advances in modern technology pose a threat to the human soul? 

In this wide-ranging, candid conversation, Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Budapest, Hungary, and one of the most respected cardinals in the Catholic Church, speaks with Dr Robert Moynihan, founder and editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, about the Catholic Church's faith in an increasingly secularized world.

As the two-time president of the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe, Erdő is one of the leading bishops of Europe. And as the continent has descended into a deep secularism - more pronounced and rapid even than in the United States - he is uniquely positioned and qualified to identify and address the issues that secularism presents. 

Here for the first time in English is the wide-ranging and now updated interview in which the cardinal speaks forthrightly about the situation the Church faces today, the need to "guard the flame" of the traditional Christian faith, and the most effective way to do so in our post-Christian society. His 2018 lecture at Columbia University on The Role of Religion and the Churches in a Secular State serves as an effective capstone to the main text. 

Guarding The Flame (2019) is translated from the Italian by Christopher Hart-Moynihan from the original Italian edition, La fiamma della fede. Un dialogo con il cardinale Peter Erdő (2015).

Guarding The Flame was prepared on the basis of four days of interviews with Cardinal Erdő in his residence in Budapest in the summer of 2011 and three days of interviews in New York City in January of 2018.

About the authors: Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Exztergom-Budapest and Primate of Hungary, was born in Budapest in 1952, the first of six children. He was created Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He has published more than 250 articles and 25 books on Canon Law, as well as other spiritual works.

Robert Moynihan (Harvard College, BA 1977 and Yale University PhD 1988) founded Inside the Vatican magazine in 1993. He has covered the Vatican and Church affairs for more than 30 years and is the author of books on Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Viktoria Somogyi, born in Hungary, has lived and worked in Rome at the Hungarian language desk of Vatican Radio. She studied International Relations at the University of Rome.