book: Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750

book: Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 | Nicholas Atkin, Frank Tallett ...

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	• Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 Nicholas Atkin, Frank Tallett Oxford University Press, USA, 2004 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Skewed Goldmine

This book is very well researched and I am confident accurate in many regards as to the *outer* circumstances of history.

The authors admit that they are not Catholic and are trying to evaluate the Church from an outside perspective, looking in.

And they make effort which I am sure they genuinely and sincerely believe to be fair. For the first part of the book, this aspiration was evident to me. But the closer the book gets to the modern era, I have to say that I, as a Catholic devoted to the tradition, did find the book skewed to a secularist ideology.

Despite again, the author's genuine intentions I am sure.

It is hard to see how such things can be much different. All one can do is to name "where one is coming from". From where I am coming from, the authors cannot hope to grasp the inner dynamics driving the Church.

The authors are caught in a secularist ideology which inevitably skews perception of these inner dynamics.

Similarly many will feel this reviewer is caught in a traditional Catholicism which also skews ...

Whatever the case, there is great research, clear writing, a real *goldmine* of information and honest effort here.

Very well worth it, if one wants to understand this period of history, for there is little or nothing as comprehensive as this. I would just beg readers to remember that just because the secularist academic paradigm, within which this book is written, is the dominant one of our age, does not mean that it is the only perspective available.

And from other perspectives, much of the interpretation in this book is less than convincing.

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Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett offer the first one-volume historical overview of European Catholicism from the 18th century to 2002. The authors record the Church struggling to adapt to the new political landscape ushered in by the French Revolution and show how the formation of nation states and identities was both helped and hindered by the Catholic establishment. They portray 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. This is not the story of the Church in all its glory, but one of adaptation and change, of decline and resilience as the Church has responded to social, political, and cultural changes over the last 250 years.

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