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Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism, 1750 to the Present (International Library of Historical Studies)
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Product Description
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.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #908603 in Books
- Published on: 2003-09-26
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett are lecturers in History at the University of Reading and are the editors of The Right in France: From Revolution to Le Pen (I.B.Tauris).
Customer Reviews
Chipping away at a monolith ?
I thoroughly enjoyed this scholarly but readable account of the history of Catholicism in Europe since 1750. Though inevitably preoccupied with the shifting balance of the relationship between Church and state throughout the period, the authors nonetheless present enough reflection on the praxis of the faithful (together with some telling indicators of a general decline in religious observance) to ensure the work doesn't become a purely political history. And while they give a partially sympathetic account of the Church's plight under the French Revolution and its struggles to adapt to the changing nature of society in the following century, Atkins and Tallett spare no blushes when examining the failure of Pius IX to get to grips with the 19th century intellectual climate. They highlight, too, how the failure of the Church to distance itself from Nazism under Pius XII arose from an almost irrationally blinkered policy of opposition at all costs to communism and socialism. The authors conclude that seeing strength, stability and direction in a Church that is `Eurocentric, male-centred, hierarchical and doctrinally absolute' is misguided. Unless it can make more room for `the rest of the Church', they argue, its fragile diversity in unity will give way to a church that seems universal but will in truth be hidebound and `merely monolithic' (333).
