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.

"Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich L. Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time. Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda. In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again. Ulrich L. Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading.

Reproduction of the original.

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.

The Catholic Church has always been a major player in European and world history. Whether it has enjoyed a religious dominance or existed as a minority religion, Catholicism has never been diverted from political life. "Priests, Prelates and People" records the Church struggling to adapt to the new political landscape ushered in by the French Revolution, and shows how the formation of nation states and identities was both helped and hindered by the Catholic establishment. It portrays the Vatican increasingly out of step in the wake of world war, Cold War and the massive expansion of the developing world, with its problems of population growth and under-development.

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.

This volume provides an up-to-date analysis of Catholicism in Britain and France, examining various aspects of the faith in the 200 years since the French Revolution. By focusing on two countries whose religious establishement and experience were markedly different, and by adopting a comparative approach, the book is able to offer an unusual perspective on the challenges facing the Catholic church in the modern world and on its impact not only on believers, but also on the two societies as a whole.