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Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism, 1750 to the Present (International Library of Historical Studies)
by Nicholas Atkin, Frank Tallett
Product Group: Book
Publisher: I B Tauris & Co Ltd (2003-09-26)
ISBN: 1860646654
EAN: 9781860646652
Dewy Decimal #: 200
Hardcover: 352 pages
SKU: B204-1230
Condition: New
Comments: New & Shrinkwrapped. In stock - Immediate despatch from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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Customer Reviews
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Chipping away at a monolith ?
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-02-16
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).
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