Product Description

The thinking person's guide to being a Roman Catholic today. 'The richness of the Church's past is a liberation, not a straitjacket. It is a source of confidence in launching into and uncharted future.' Eamon Duffy is both a practising Roman Catholic and a distinguished historian, whose writings have changed the course of English Reformation studies. In Faith of Our Fathers Duffy brings the insights of history to the intellectual and pastoral challenges confronting Christianity in a post-modern world. In this lively and vivid book he considers the range of Catholic belief and practice, from prayer for the dead and veneration of the eucharist, to the place of Mary or the authority of the Pope. In the process he explores the ways in which the practices of an ancient religious tradition can be a vital Christian resource in the turbulent modern world. Duffy argues that attentive engagement with the tradition is indispensable in deepening our understanding of the Gospel today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68722 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 187 pages

Review
"'A lively and vivid assessment' The Universe"

About the Author
Eamon Duffy is Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and President of Magdalene College. He is the author of the seminal study, The Stripping of the Altars.

Customer Reviews

Keeping in contact: Catholicism today in the light of Catholicisms past
This is an illuminating and endearingly personal account of the nature of Catholicism today, and how, post-Vatican II, it keeps in touch with its past. Eamon Duffy ranges widely across subjects as diverse as the role of the saints, Catholic dying, and the nature of the Eucharist. Despite an obvious liturgical conservatism, the author is clearly something of an enthusiast for the postmodern melting-pot that is Roman Catholicism after Vatican II. On issues like papal authority and the role of the priesthood, he argues that the 'Tridentine moment' of high-Renaissance authoritarian Catholicism is finaly passing - and revealing, as it goes, some surprising links with an earlier, more human-scale Catholicism. One might perhaps expect a Professor of Church History to argue that the past is the key to the future, but who can complain when he does it so entertainingly, and with such a sense of understanding for his subject's foibles, while by no means excusing its excesses and errors ?