The Popes and European Revolution
Ellis, John Tracy
Books: ANGUISH BEFORE RENEWAL THIS BOOK tries to describe the dif- ference made to the papacy by the European Revolution of 1789 to 1815; or, in other words, what Catholicism was like before the...
...The present work is so rich in detail and so thorough in bibliographical THE POPES AND EUROPEAN REVOLUTION Owen Chadwick Oxford University, $84, 646 pp...
...In other words, the reader of this latest work of Owen Chadwick will learn that the church has withered and 'died' before...
...Hale's The Catholic Church in the Modern World, recalled Macaulay's well known tribute of 1840 to the Catholic church and then remarked: The century that has passed since Macaulay wrote has seen onslaughts even more grievous than those he had in mind, but, after reading Mr...
...One misses as well a treatment of the extraordinary growth of the new religious congregations that began in France and elsewhere around 1800...
...It will remain for a long time to come the most authoritative, informative, and readable account in English of the church's anguished experience in an age of unparalleled disruption followed by an almost spectacular recovery and renewal...
...The lengthy narrative has remarkably few typographical errors, such as 'simi-nary' for 'seminary' (p...
...Cardinal Antonio Severoli, bishop of Viterbo, told his priests to note down the faults of their parishioners in a secret book and ordered doctors to persuade the sick to make their confession and to abandon them after three days if they refused to do so...
...When, for example, the archbishop of Lisbon refused to ordain a colored man, "Rome ruled against him and declared such decisions null...
...The fact is spelled out by Chadwick in any number of ways, e.g., in the section entitled, "The Fall of the Jesuits," in the treatment of the issue of clerical celibacy, and in the changes wrought in parish life where out of the eighteenth-century rot the revolutionary upheaval brought about a condition of which the author writes, "They [the laity] wanted a stronger parish and congregational life, and the nineteenth century developed the parish in a manner unthinkable under the old regime...
...If the Curia obstructed enlightened policies, as it often did, it also intervened at times on the side of genuine morality and common sense...
...Even with the great decline in numbers since 1965, the Jesuits numbered over 27,000 in 1984...
...Professor Chadwick's superb account of the church from the French Revolution to about 1830 fulfills admirably the purpose stated in the opening sentence of his preface...
...The extensive bibliography with critical notes, the ample index, and the references to sources at the foot of the respective pages-all are in keeping with the expectation of both the scholar and the educated general reader...
...the name of Daniel O'Connell is not even in the index...
...Nor are there lacking what one might call the oddities and the turns and twists of history...
...What, one may ask, has a book that treats of events that happened from two centuries to a century and a half ago, to offer to readers in 1982...
...Not only was Catholicism born anew...
...It is a rare combination and few attain it...
...In all of this the perennial conflict of conservatives vs...
...or, in other words, what Catholicism was like before the deluge and what it was like after, what the continuity and what the differences...
...If they are Catholic they are painfully aware of the divi-siveness that has plagued their religious community since Vatican Council II...
...Hales' absorbing account of revolutions and calamities of every sort from without and within, one is left with the impression of a resilience in face of disaster, which simply as an historical fact, must be without parallel...
...Here one finds solid documentation for the judgment of a writer in the Times Literary Supplement (January 2, 1959) who in reviewing E.E.Y...
...Books: ANGUISH BEFORE RENEWAL THIS BOOK tries to describe the difference made to the papacy by the European Revolution of 1789 to 1815...
...The same Severoli came within six votes of being elected pope in the conclave of 1823, and the church was saved from this calamity by the veto of the Austrian emperor...
...In fact, the first published volume in the series, A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada (1977) by Robert T. Handy of Union Theological Seminary, has already lived up to standards of this kind...
...The narrative abounds in perceptive vignettes, e.g., of Napoleon, "He was not a man who by nature felt mystery in the universe, and after he rose to power was too arrogant to capture humility of mind...
...liberals was everywhere present from the Roman Curia down to the small parish community...
...And when these features are spelled out in a style distinguished by clarity, humor, and literary grace, even the non-professional will find the learned treatise a delight to read...
...The work is learned without being pedantic and thorough while escaping tedium...
...Expressed in other terms, for those who are dismayed by the current disarray in Catholic ranks, The Popes and European Revolution will lend abundant evidence to substantiate the oft-quoted remark, plus ca change, c'estplus la meme chose...
...The Opening of the Vatican Archives (1978) was an absorbing treatment in which this Anglican historian revealed a deep sympathy combined with a critical sense that met the highest professional demands of sound history...
...John Tracy Ellis coverage in all the leading western European languages that the reader feels a sense of awe...
...And these are only a few samples of what one finds here...
...Owen Chadwick, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, demonstrated his mastery of the Catholic church's nineteenth-century history in his Henson Lectures of 1976, Catholicism and History...
...Chadwick provided one answer in his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor at Cambridge in 1968 when he said, "History . . . does more than any other discipline to free the mind from the tyranny of present opinion...
...If the reader is a non-Catholic with an interest in Catholicism, what has such a person to learn here...
...it experienced a restoration and renewal that were little short of astonishing...
...If the succeeding volumes achieve the standards set by the work under review-and the names associated with the respective titles offer assurance in that regard-those of the English-speaking world who have an interest in ecclesiastical history, will be well repaid...
...It is one of the projected series of some twenty volumes being edited by the author and his distinguished brother, Henry Chadwick, under the title of Oxford History of the Christian Church, that will run from antiquity to the present day...
...In these pages is traced the story of her virtual annihilation in France in the 1790s, only to be born anew in 1801 with the concordat of Napoleon, defective as that instrument certainly was from Rome's point of view...
...If no book is ever perfect, one can truly say that The Popes and European Revolution comes enviably close to that ideal...
...519...
...Meanwhile certain centuries-old customs were permanently buried, such as right of sanctuary, benefit i of clergy, and usury...
...Professor Chadwick interprets the "European" in his title in a strictly continental sense, for one finds virtually nothing about the English and Irish Catholics of the period...
...It was another way of stating the famous axiom of George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...
...As for errors of fact, the book is singularly free, although the estimated 22,000 Jesuits of 1773, the year of the suppression, can hardly be described thus, "they never again came anywhere near the number of when they were suppressed...
Vol. 109 • January 1982 • No. 2
