Secondly, Weigel argued that Catholic Christians must speak openly “about the empirically demonstrable and deplorable effects of the sexual revolution on individuals and society.” In addition to this, he argued that Catholics need to bring about a “new appreciation of the dignity and nobility of human love” as illustrated in John Paul II's “Theology of the Body.”
“This weapon in the conversion of culture ought to be fully and unapologetically deployed,” Weigel argued, “and if that requires making the public claim that the Catholic Church understands human sexuality better than the prophets of sexual liberation, then so be it.”
The American intellectual also asserted that the Church needs to be vindicated from the “black legends” that circulate around its history, such as the Crusades, Galileo's trial and the Inquisition.
“I raise these matters of historical record, not to score debating points,” Weigel clarified, “but to suggest that part of the challenge we face today is to recognize, with John Paul II and Cardinal Lustiger, that Europe (and indeed the entire West) is suffering from a false story about itself, and about the relationship of biblical religion to its formation and its history.”
Finally, Weigel advised, the Church must continue to develop a “rich interior life,” and at the same time, find “winsome ways to make the Church's proposal to a post-Christian Europe.” One way to do this, he suggested, is for members of the Church to join with men and women “of conscience,” who may not be believers, to publicly challenge “the ever-more-ominous dictatorship of relativism.”
Speaking to the Europeans in attendance at the Collèges des Bernardins symposium, Weigel concluded by saying, “I commend that more combative stance to you, who stand watch over the societies that gave birth to my own, in contesting for the causes we share.”
“You will not find Americans lacking as allies in the 21st century, as you did not find us lacking as allies in the century just past.”