Catholicism

A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis

De: John T. McGreevy

Narrado por: Jonathan Yen

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.

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.

©2022 John T. McGreevy (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Stunning fresh thinking.

Amazingly comprehensive while filled with precision and clarity. Refreshing in its post French Revolution approach (instead of the traditional post reformation approach). Now a treasured reference work for me that I will undoubtedly return to many times over. First rate!

Highly readable overview of modern Catholic history

Excellent, fair minded overview of modern Catholic history. It’s hard to cover such a vast subject in one volume, but the author succeeds admirably. The authors focus on the lives of important or representative individuals keep it from being an overly dry listen.

Historian as Advocate

All historians write from a perspective that drives their selection and presentation of the facts. Absolutely objective history, in the sense of neutral, authoritative, final history is consequently impossible. But it is important that they try, that they make an honest attempt to understand and present people in their own terms, that they do not cherry-pick their data so as to distort the story. Or, if they choose the role of advocate rather than historian, that they indicate that to the reader. In this book, McGreevy is writing as an advocate for Liberal Catholicism. If this is the only book you read on the subject, you will be woefully misinformed. But I heartily recommend it to those who, for lack of a more precise term, might be called conservative Catholics. They too tend to inhabit echo chambers within which those who disagree seem foolish or wicked. It is a healthy corrective to inhabit for a time a perspective that sees your cherished assumptions as the problem and some of your heroes as the villains. If the clearer understanding costs you a bit of your formerly blithe confidence, that is a price well worth paying.

Pleasantly objective and unvarnished

It’s all there warts weirdness and wonder. A well paced factual description. A straight recounting of history

Grapples with lots of big transitions

Detailed histories are challenging as audiobooks. It’s very hard to flip back to reread the start of what turns out to be an important transition. Keeping track of names is harder. And so on. I’m an economist by training, even taught and wrote a bit of economic history, but that has me thinking bottom-up and over processes over high politics and key individuals.

Note that this history really starts with the French revolution, not the Reformation and Counter Reformation.

I come from a Protestant/Lutheran background where no single individual tends to stand out, hierarchies are absent or weak. So I would have liked more on the rise of the pope over regional church structures where kings held more sway. It’s there, but hard to return to re-read so maybe covered better than I remembered. Ditto transitions of say the Jesuits, where their theological stance seemed to go through huge swings. How? - surely not osmosis from wider changes? There’s nothing on church finances, it’s a top-down approach. But it does give a sense of how Catholicism transitioned from being an institution dominated by French and secondarily Italian and Spanish influences, and very European in numbers and everything else, to a global religion and institution.