The Irony Of Modern Catholic History

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism's dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America's leading intellectuals Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Church rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism developed intellectual tools capable of rescuing the imperiled modern project. A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two centuries of profound change in the church and the world, The Irony of Modern Catholic History reveals how Catholicism offers twenty-first century essential truths for our survival and flourishing.

A leading Catholic intellectual explains why the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are essential to the Church's future—and the world's The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was the most important Catholic event in the past five hundred years. Yet sixty years after its opening on October 11, 1962, its meaning remains sharply contested and its promise unfulfilled. In To Sanctify the World, George Weigel explains the necessity of Vatican II and explores the continuing relevance of its teaching in a world seeking a deeper experience of freedom than personal willfulness. The Council’s texts are also a critical resource for the Catholic Church as it lives out its original, Christ-centered evangelical purpose. Written with insight and verve, To Sanctify the World recovers the true meaning of Vatican II as the template for a Catholicism that can propose a path toward genuine human dignity and social solidarity.

Do you wish to understand something of the contemporary Catholic Church? If you do, then this book is for you. It offers a careful overview of the history of the church from the mid-nineteenth century, with Pope Pius IX, until the present day, with Pope Francis. It deals with two major councils of the church, Vatican I (1869–70) and Vatican II (1962–65). Furthermore, it provides a detailed and accurate summary of the major theological movements in the church during this period.

In the bloody Civil War that split our nation, American bishops worked for the success of the Union . . . and of the Confederacy! As Catholics slaughtered Catholics, pious priests on both sides prayed God to give success in battle. . . to their own side. Men in blue and men in gray flinched at the Consecration as cannonballs (fired by Catholic opponents) rained down on them during battlefield Masses. Many are the moving – and often surprising – stories in these pages of brave Catholics on both sides of the conflict – stories told by Fr. Charles Connor, one of our country's foremost experts on Catholic American history. Through searing anecdotes and learned analysis, Fr. Connor here shows how the tumult, tragedy, and bravery of the War forged a new American identity, even as it created a new American Catholic identity, as Catholics—often new immigrants—found themselves on both sides of the conflict. Fr. Connor

The twentieth-century patristics movement that contributed theologically to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council is generally well known. Less well known, but no less important, is the similarly dynamic return to the ancient ecclesial sources that took place in nineteenth-century theology, which profoundly shaped the Catholic articulation of the relation of faith and reason, the development of doctrine, the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, and the nature of the Church. In Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth-Century Catholicism, Joseph Carola, S.J., tracks the theological movement of the Scuola Romana, a contemporaneous, interconnected return to patristic sources pursued by Jesuit theologians at the Roman College—Giovanni Perrone, Carlo Passaglia, Clemens Schrader, and Johann Baptist Franzelin—and their precursors, interlocutors, and intellectual progeny, including the Tübingen theologian Johann Adam Möhler, the Oxonian John Henry Newman, and the Cologne theologian Matthias Joseph Scheeben. Situating these seven theologians’ lives and labors within the broader historical context of nineteenth-century Catholicism, Carola introduces readers to a rich theological world rarely explored, providing both biographical depth and attentive distillation of their writings, methodologies, and impacts. As Carola shows, these extraordinary theologians engaged the Church Fathers and the Church’s entire tradition with intellectual rigor, revitalizing the nineteenth-century Catholic Church at her very heart and providing, in turn, a refined patristic methodology and faithful theological vision that are just as vital for the Church in the twenty-first century as they were in the nineteenth.

Through a study of the participants, Marvin O'Connell traces the emergence of Modernism and the controversies related to it, offers a careful examination of the movement's multiple causes and ramifications, and places the events within the political, social, and intellectual context of the time.

This book explores the contribution of the Rev Dr Thomas Shields (1862-1921) to Catholic education in the United States of America in the late 19th and early 20th century. Fr Shields was a pioneer in combining a career as an academic in Catholic University of America with the publication of many resources for schools. Given his pioneering role in aligning Catholic educational thought with emerging insights in the sciences, and his multi-layered commitment to Catholic education as scholar, author of textbooks and founder of initiatives in the field of Teacher Education, it seems fitting that his considerable body of work should be the subject of fresh scholarly investigation. The book is in five parts. Part 1, “Catholicism as an Educational Movement”, sets out the contours of the intellectual climate in which Shields operated and presents Catholicism as a dynamic educational movement. Part 2, “Responding to Progressive Thought”, explores the relationship between Progressivism and Catholic Education, showing how the Catholic Church responded to the challenges presented by Progressive thought. Part 3, “Shields and the Reform of Pedagogy”, examines both Shields’ general pedagogical principles and how they relate to Catholic education. Part 4, “Forming Teachers in Heart and Mind”, considers Shields’ ideas on Catholic Teacher Formation, exploring issues such as culture, vocation, method and curriculum. Part 5, “The Catholic Education Series”, explores selected examples from Shields’ Catholic Education Series to identify how his material for schools reflected, to a greater or lesser extent, his wider educational ideas. As the present age is also witness to considerable and deep-rooted challenges to Catholic education and, indeed to the Catholic understanding of the human person, Shields’ work will inspire contemporary reform-minded Catholic educators to reassess and develop the mission of Catholic education in light of the traditions of the Church.

Three problems in the life of the church: (1) For the past millennium, theologians have done a brisk trade in proofs, arguments for the so-called ‘‘existence’’ of God, the validity of the Christian faith, and so on. I think this is a mistake; Christianity is a choice. (2) Typical Christian theology begins with Jesus rather than with the Common Documents, the documents shared in common by Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. This is Marcionite Theology, so called for a second-century figure who wanted to delete the Common Documents from the Bible. Many problems in theology become much more tractable if the Common Documents, the Exodus focally, are treated as a model rather than as a mere prologue to the New Testament. (3) There are problems with God interfering with nature, and they have become worse with modern science. God interfering with nature doesn’t just injure the sciences, it also generates serious pathologies in theology. The theme is choices made by the church, and the book is called The Accountant’s Tale because somebody once asked an accountant, ‘‘What is two times two?’’ and got the answer, ‘‘What do you want it to be?’’