Many Western commentators have identified the conflict between communism and consumerism as the key factor in the `Revolution of 1989' in eastern Europe. However, in this challenging new book, George Weigel argues that the real root of the Revolution lay in a radical rejection of what Vaclav Havel called communism's `culture of the lie'.

Beginning with the `martyr-cardinals' of the 1950s, Weigel considers the role of the Roman Catholic Church in opposing nearly forty years of Kremlin dictates, and examines why the Church was able to ensure the protest of 1989 was civil, nonviolent, and democratic. He also assesses the impact of the election of John Paul II on the Eastern Bloc, and looks at his `grand' strategy for Catholicism's third millennium and the place in it of a re-Christianized Europe.