The Great Reformer

The Great Reformer
Author: Austen Ivereigh
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2014-11-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1627791582

A biography of Pope Francis that describes how this revolutionary thinker will use the power of his position to challenge and redirect one of the world's most formidable religions An expansive and deeply contextual work, at its heart The Great Reformer is about the intersection of faith and politics--the tension between the pope's innovative vision for the Church and the obstacles he faces in an institution still strongly defined by its conservative past. Based on extensive interviews in Argentina and years of study of the Catholic Church, Ivereigh tells the story not only of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the remarkable man whose background and total commitment to the discernment of God's will transformed him into Pope Francis--but the story of why the Catholic Church chose him as their leader. With the Francis Revolution just beginning, this biography will provide never-before-explained context on how one man's ambitious program began--and how it will likely end--through an investigation of Francis's youth growing up in Buenos Aires and the dramatic events during the Perón era that shaped his beliefs; his ongoing conflicts and disillusionment with the ensuing doctrines of an authoritarian and militaristic government in the 1970s; how his Jesuit training in Argentina and Chile gave him a unique understanding and advocacy for a "Church of the Poor"; and his rise from Cardinal to the papacy.

Great Catholic Reformers, The

Great Catholic Reformers, The
Author: C. Colt Anderson
Publisher: Paulist Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780809105793

The Second Vatican Council stated that the church is always in need of purification and renewal, but it did not attempt to describe how this process takes place. This highly readable book presents lessons on church renewal for today from ten of the most significant reformers in church history. By looking at historical models from a variety of historical and cultural contexts, this book describes how reform takes place, what it looks and sounds like, and how it can be effective. The Great Catholic Reformers covers the careers of Pope Gregory the Great, Peter Damian, Bernard of Clairvaux, Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Jean Gerson, Jan Hus, Gasparo Contarini, John Henry Newman, and Dorothy Day. This diversity of reformers in our tradition suggests that legitimate reform within the Catholic Church can operate from different spiritualities, employ either gentle or harsh critiques, use secular or canon law to enforce discipline, and begin with lay men and lay women as well as with members of the religious or of the clergy. By offering these diverse models, The Great Catholic Reformers seeks to encourage every Catholic to take up the difficult task of reform and to provide them with examples that suit their own temperaments. It also aims at broadening tolerance for people who follow different approaches to reform. Book jacket.

Nails in the Wall

Nails in the Wall
Author: Amy Leonard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2005-07-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226472574

Book Review

The Catholics

The Catholics
Author: Roy Hattersley
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 961
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1448182972

The story of Catholicism in Britain from the Reformation to the present day, from a master of popular history – 'A first-class storyteller' The Times Throughout the three hundred years that followed the Act of Supremacy – which, by making Henry VIII head of the Church, confirmed in law the breach with Rome – English Catholics were prosecuted, persecuted and penalised for the public expression of their faith. Even after the passing of the emancipation acts Catholics were still the victims of institutionalised discrimination. The first book to tell the story of the Catholics in Britain in a single volume, The Catholics includes much previously unpublished information. It focuses on the lives, and sometimes deaths, of individual Catholics – martyrs and apostates, priests and laymen, converts and recusants. It tells the story of the men and women who faced the dangers and difficulties of being what their enemies still call ‘Papists’. It describes the laws which circumscribed their lives, the political tensions which influenced their position within an essentially Anglican nation and the changes in dogma and liturgy by which Rome increasingly alienated their Protestant neighbours – and sometime even tested the loyalty of faithful Catholics. The survival of Catholicism in Britain is the triumph of more than simple faith. It is the victory of moral and spiritual unbending certainty. Catholicism survives because it does not compromise. It is a characteristic that excites admiration in even a hardened atheist.

The Unintended Reformation

The Unintended Reformation
Author: Brad S. Gregory
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2015-11-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 067426407X

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

Heroes of the Catholic Reformation

Heroes of the Catholic Reformation
Author: Joseph Pearce
Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781612783895

The Protestant Reformation began five hundred years ago, accompanied by an age of turmoil and secularism we can recognize even in our own time. Rather than shrinking from the crisis, the Catholic Church responded with even deeper, and more genuine, reform. We can do the same today. This Catholic Reformation was accomplished by many defenders of the Faith whom we now know as saints. Their holiness, courageous deeds, and sacrifices during this renewal of the Catholic Faith demonstrate the true heroism of saintly action and provide models for defending the faith in the modern world. Diverse as they are inspiring, these heroes and saints stood up to slay "the dragons of sin" while championing Church teaching. Their sacrifices left the Church and the world forever changed. Bishop John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and priests Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell refused to submit to England's secular tyranny and chose martyrdom instead. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and Charles Borromeo, the reforming Archbishop of Milan, spearheaded the Catholic Reformation. Pope Pius V brought a spirit of asceticism to the papacy and ardor to the work of reform. Teresa of vila and John of the Cross, despite enduring terrible suffering, surrendered themselves completely to Christ's great mission of reform within the Church. The Heroes of the Catholic Reformation is a scholarly and cultured celebration of the saints who responded to the fierce oppositions of their time with courage and an authentic and lasting Catholic Reformation. Author Joseph Pearce invites us look to these heroes for inspiration as we seek to live the fullness of Faith in our fallen world.

The Front-runner of the Catholic Reformation

The Front-runner of the Catholic Reformation
Author: Franz Posset
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The Front-Runner of the Catholic Reformation looks at the life and work of Johann von Staupitz, vicar-general of the reformed Augustian friars in Germany and spiritual mentor of Martin Luther. It sheds light on the spiritual and theological aspects of the Reformation that Staupitz passed onto Luther, and how, despite his adherence to Catholicism, Staupitz was to have a profound bearing on the course of the Reformation.

Evangelical Catholicism

Evangelical Catholicism
Author: George Weigel
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0465038913

The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its two-thousand year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church defined by the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being Catholic that comes from over a century of Catholic reform; a mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The Gospel-centered Evangelical Catholicism of the future will send all the people of the Church into mission territory every day -- a territory increasingly defined in the West by spiritual boredom and aggressive secularism. Confronting both these cultural challenges and the shadows cast by recent Catholic history, Evangelical Catholicism unapologetically proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth of the world. It also molds disciples who witness to faith, hope, and love by the quality of their lives and the nobility of their aspirations. Thus the Catholicism of the 21st century and beyond will be a culture-forming counterculture, offering all men and women of good will a deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling self-absorption of postmodernity. Drawing on thirty years of experience throughout the Catholic world, from its humblest parishes to its highest levels of authority, George Weigel proposes a deepening of faith-based and mission-driven Catholic reform that touches every facet of Catholic life -- from the episcopate and the papacy to the priesthood and the consecrated life; from the renewal of the lay vocation in the world to the redefinition of the Church's engagement with public life; from the liturgy to the Church's intellectual life. Lay Catholics and clergy alike should welcome the challenge of this unique moment in the Church's history, Weigel urges. Mediocrity is not an option, and all Catholics, no matter what their station in life, are called to live the evangelical vocation into which they were baptized: without compromise, but with the joy, courage, and confidence that comes from living this side of the Resurrection.

The Catholic Reformation

The Catholic Reformation
Author: Michael A. Mullett
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2023-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000891615

The Catholic Reformation (1999) provides a dynamic and original history of this crucial movement in early modern Europe. Starting from the late middle ages, it clearly traces the continuous transformation of Catholicism in its structure, bodies and doctrine. Charting the gain in momentum of Catholic renewal from the time of the Council of Trent, it also considers the ambiguous effect of the Protestant Reformation in accelerating the renovation of the Catholic Church. It explores how and why the Catholic Reformation occurred, stressing that many moves towards restoration were underway well before the Protestant Reformation. The huge impact the Catholic renewal had, not only on the papacy, Church leaders and religious ritual and practice, but also on the lives of ordinary people – their culture, arts, attitudes and relationships – is shown in colourful detail.

The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction

The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Peter Marshall
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2009-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199231311

The Reformation was a seismic event in European history, & one which changed the medieval world. Much which followed in European history can be traced back to this event. In this book Peter Marshall seeks to explain the causes & consequences of religious & cultural division & difference in western Christianity.