A magisterial history of the centuries-long conflict between “progress” and “tradition” in the world’s largest international institution. The story of Roman Catholicism has never followed a singular path. In no time period has this been more true than over the last two centuries. Beginning with the French Revolution, extending to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and concluding with present-day crises, John T. McGreevy chronicles the dramatic upheavals and internal divisions shaping the most multicultural, multilingual, and global institution in the world. Through powerful individual stories and sweeping birds-eye views, Catholicism provides a mesmerizing assessment of the Church’s complex role in modern history: both shaper and follower of the politics of nation states, both conservator of hierarchies and evangelizer of egalitarianism. McGreevy documents the hopes and ambitions of European missionaries building churches and schools in all corners of the world, African Catholics fighting for political (and religious) independence, Latin American Catholics attracted to a theology of liberation, and Polish and South Korean Catholics demanding democratic governments. He includes a vast cast of riveting characters, known and unknown, including the Mexican revolutionary Fr. Servando Teresa de Mier; Daniel O’Connell, hero of Irish emancipation; Sr. Josephine Bakhita, a formerly enslaved Sudanese nun; Chinese statesman Ma Xiaobang; French philosopher and reformer Jacques Maritain; German Jewish philosopher and convert, Edith Stein; John Paul II, Polish pope and opponent of communism; Gustavo Gutiérrez, Peruvian founder of liberation theology; and French American patron of modern art, Dominique de Menil. Throughout this essential volume, McGreevy details currents of reform within the Church as well as movements protective of traditional customs and beliefs. Conflicts with political leaders and a devotional revival in the nineteenth century, the experiences of decolonization after World War II and the Second Vatican Council in the twentieth century, and the trauma of clerical sexual abuse in the twenty-first all demonstrate how religion shapes our modern world. Finally, McGreevy addresses the challenges faced by Pope Francis as he struggles to unite the over one billion members of the world’s largest religious community.

Global Catholicism: Between Disruption and Encounter opens the Studies in Global Catholicism series with an examination of a worldwide religious institution that up to now has been more globally extensive than truly globalized. It explores the world historical and theological meaning of de-Europeanization with church data by world region. Readers get an in-depth look at the institutional and theological capacity and limits of the cosmopolitan reality of today’s Catholic Church. Its integrated perspective, grounded in cultural and political history together with an ecclesiology of post-Vatican II Catholicism, offers a new way to approach today’s emerging post-colonial, inter-cultural Global Catholicism as centuries-old trajectories are disrupted and pressing new realities demand original responses.

Provides a broad and deep survey of Roman Catholic life and thought, updated and expanded throughout The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism provides an authoritative overview of the history, doctrine, practices, and expansion of Catholicism. Written by a group of distinguished scholars, this comprehensive reference work offers an illuminating account of the global, historical, and cultural phenomena of Catholicism. Accessible chapters address central topics in the practice of Catholic theology and the development of doctrine, including God and Jesus Christ, creation and Church, the Virgin Mary, the sacraments, moral theology, eschatology, and more. Throughout the text, the authors illustrate the unity and diversity of Catholic life and thought while highlighting the ways Catholicism overlaps with, and transforms, other ways of living and thinking. Now in its second edition, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism is fully updated to include recent developments in the study of Catholicism. Extensively revised and expanded chapters, many of which written by new authors, address contemporary issues such as theology and politics, environmentalism, and the clerical sexual abuse crisis. Entirely new chapters cover the early modern Church, the Bible in Catholic theology, the Eastern Catholic churches, liturgy, care for creation, the consecrated life, challenges for the Catholic Church, and more. An informed and engaging intellectual journey through the past and present of Roman Catholicism, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism: Illustrates the diversity of modern Catholic life and thought Describes Catholics in different lands, including the Holy Land, India, Africa, Europe, the British Isles, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas Surveys spirituality and ecumenism, inter-religious dialog, Catholic schools and hospitals, art and the sciences, the Holy See, and other central Catholic institutions and practices Covers major eras in Catholic history, from the Scriptures and the early Church to Post-Modernity Features new material on diverse practices of Catholicism across cultures, the global dimensions of the Catholic Church, race and ethnicity, and Eastern Catholic Churches The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism, Second Edition, is the ideal textbook for surveys classes on Catholicism and Catholic theology in Catholic, Protestant, and non-confessional colleges and universities. It is also an invaluable resource for scholars and general readers interested in broadening their knowledge of Catholicism.

This volume unites three disparate strands of historical and legal experience. Nearly from its beginning, the Catholic Church has sought to promote peace – among warring parties, and among private litigants. The volume explores three vehicles the Church has used to promote peace: papal diplomacy of international disputes both medieval and contemporary; the arbitration of disputes among litigants; and the use of the tools of reconciliation to bring about rapprochement between ecclesiastical superiors and those subject to their authority. The book concludes with an appendix exploring a wide variety of hypothetical, yet plausible scenarios in which the Church might use its good offices to repair breaches among persons and nations.

In How Catholics Encounter the Bible, award-winning biblical scholar and historian Michael Peppard explores the paradoxical role of the Bible for Catholics--a book central to their tradition, but one which Catholics rarely read. Instead, as Peppard shows, biblical ideas influence Catholics through diverse modes of storytelling, artistic imagination, and ritual. Through examples of pilgrimage, visual arts, poetry, music, and even on Netflix, Peppard shows how the Bible thrives among Catholics, even if its printed text may be missing.

Europe has a tremendously important role in the history of Christianity and was the continent with the most Christians from roughly the year 900 to 1980. However, Europe is now home to only 22 percent of all Christians in the world, down from 68 percent in 1900. The major trend of European religion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been secularization—disestablishment and decreased influence of state churches, lower importance of religion in the public sphere, the decline of religious beliefs and practices, and individual religious switching from Christianity to atheism and agnosticism. One hundred years ago, it was true that the typical Christian in the world was a white European. Given current trends, however, Europe is clearly no longer the geographic nor demographic center of world Christianity. Yet, that does not mean Europe has no role in the future. It is still the home of major Christian communions, such as Catholics (Rome), Anglicans (Canterbury), Russian Orthodox (Moscow), and Lutherans (Geneva). European mission agencies are active throughout the world providing theological education and social welfare programs, combatting climate change, and advocating for gender equality.

Encyclopedic in scope, this book offers wide-ranging coverage of the foundational teachings and practices within the mainstream of the classical Christian tradition. It begins with their roots in the Scriptures, and also branches out into Eastern and Western Christianity, ancient, medieval, and modern, to the present-day. Part I provides an overview of some of these routes, then presents an historical survey of Christianity's major traditions. Part II unpacks some of the character of that revelation, focusing particularly on epistemological and procedural questions. Finally, Part III looks at Christian theology in a university setting: the possibility and shape of theology as a university discipline, its major subfields, and its relations with humanities and the sciences respectively. Fundamental Theology: A Protestant Perspective, 2nd edition, includes a wide range of pedagogical features: - each chapter begins with an outline thesis statement, highlighted in bold - charts and graphs - relevant headings and subheadings employed throughout the book - keywords - provides a survey of pertinent reference literature - questions for review and discussion - annotated suggestions for further reading

This rich collection of essays by distinguished scholars from across the globe can be read as sketching key steps on the path toward working in solidarity to build a future worthy of the human family through a new social Catholicism. These steps include a contemporary renewal of Christian humanism and of human rights, while learning to live as authentic Christian witnesses in pluralistic societies after the end of Christendom. They will also include working for a just and sustainable economic paradigm, becoming missionary disciples with a continual orientation toward the marginalized, and overcoming the plague of racism by working to build a constitutional democracy for every citizen. This societal renewal will require fostering robust movements of social Catholicism apt for our age, within which Catholics will pursue the Universal Call to Holiness through living their earthly vocations in a spirit of social friendship. They will creatively employ social media to foster apostolates extending beyond borders. In an age of “dark clouds” threatening dystopia, a new social Catholicism will require a reinvigorated pastoral leadership that has come to appreciate the dangers of populism, and the need to instead foster solidarity and incarnate Christian charity through a “better kind of politics.”

From a bold new historian comes a vibrant history of Rome as seen through its most influential persona throughout the centuries: the pope. Rome is a city of echoes, where the voice of the people has chimed and clashed with the words of princes, emperors, and insurgents across the centuries. In this authoritative new history, Jessica Wärnberg tells the story of Rome’s longest standing figurehead and interlocutor—the pope—revealing how his presence over the centuries has transformed the fate of the city of Rome. Emerging as the anonymous leader of a marginal cult in the humblest quarters of the city, the pope began as the pastor of a maligned and largely foreign flock. Less than 300 years later, he sat enthroned in a lofty, heavily gilt basilica, a religious leader endorsed (and financed) by the emperor himself. Eventually, the Roman pontiff would supplant even the emperors as de facto ruler of Rome and pre-eminent leader of the Christian world. By the nineteenth century, it would take an army to wrest the city from the pontiff’s grip. As the first-ever account of how the popes’ presence has shaped the history of Rome, City of Echoes not only illuminates the lives of the remarkable (and unremarkable) men who have sat on the throne of Saint Peter, but also reveals the bold and curious actions of the men, women, and children who have shaped the city with them, from antiquity to today. In doing so, the book tells the history of Rome as it has never been told before. During the course of this fascinating story, City of Echoes also answers a compelling question: how did a man—and institution—whose authority rested on the blood and bones of martyrs defeat emperors, revolutionaries, and fascists to give Rome its most enduring identity?

Now in its fourth edition, this bestselling textbook (over 125,000 copies sold) isolates key events that provide a framework for understanding the history of Christianity. The book presents Christianity as a worldwide phenomenon rather than just a Western experience. This popular textbook is organized around 14 key moments in church history, providing contemporary Christians with a fuller understanding of God as he has revealed his purpose through the centuries. The new edition includes a new preface, updates throughout the book, revised "further readings" for each chapter, new sidebar content, and study questions. It also more thoroughly highlights the importance of women in Christian history and the impact of world Christianity. Turning Points is well suited to introductory courses on the history of Christianity as well as study groups in churches. Additional resources for instructors are available through Textbook eSources.