The outbreak of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the nineteenth century transformed the world and ushered in the modern age, whose currents challenged the traditional political order and the prevailing religious establishment. The new secular framework presented a potential threat to the papal leadership of the Catholic community, which was profoundly affected by the rush towards modernization. In the nineteenth century the transnational church confronted a world order dominated by the national state, until the emergence of globalization towards the close of the twentieth century. Here, Coppa focuses on Rome's response to the modern world, exploring the papacy's political and diplomatic role during the past two centuries. He examines the Vatican's impact upon major ideological developments over the years, including capitalism, nationalism, socialism, communism, modernism, racism, and anti-Semitism. At the same time, he traces the continuity and change in the papacy's attitude towards church-state relations and the relationship between religion and science.

Unlike many earlier studies of the papacy, which examine this unique institution as a self-contained unit and concentrate upon its role within the church, this study examines this key religious institution within the broader framework of national and international political, diplomatic, social, and economic events. Among other things, it explores such questions as the limits to be placed on national sovereignty; the Vatican's critique of capitalism and communism; the morality of warfare; and the need for an equitable international order.

This comprehensive biography of Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes his theological positions and contributions as a theologian. Pope Benedict XVI: A Biography is an incisive exploration of the life and career of the current head of the Roman Catholic Church, with an emphasis on his theological positions and contributions as a theologian. Written by a Catholic priest who is an expert on Bavarian theology, the book looks at Benedict's family life, his teen years in Nazi Germany, his rise in the Church, and the beliefs that shape his Papacy. Readers of this biography will learn that, in addition to his native German, Benedict XVI speaks Italian, French, English, Spanish, and Latin fluently, has a knowledge of Portuguese, and can read ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew. They will discover that he plays the piano and is very fond of cats. Perhaps surprisingly, they will find that during the time of the Second Vatican Council, the Pope was viewed as a reformer, and that he continues to regard himself as a supporter of the Council's teaching, holding, however, that those teachings have been widely misinterpreted. All this and more make for a fascinating-and instructive-reading experience. Photographs Lightly annotated bibliography

Writing Catholic Women examines the interplay of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality through the lens of Catholicism in a wide range of works by women writers, forging interdisciplinary connections among women's studies, religion, and late twentieth-century literature. Discussing a diverse group of authors, Jeana DelRosso posits that the girlhood narratives of such writers constitute highly charged sites of their differing gestures toward Catholicism and argues that an understanding of the ways in which women write about religion from different cultural and racial contexts offers a crucial contribution to current discussions in gender, ethnic, and cultural studies.

Praise for the German Edition: "This publication will spark a discussion about the role of the Catholic Church leadership in the GDR." . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

From 1945 to 1989, relations between the communist East German state and the Catholic Church were contentious and sometimes turbulent. Drawing on extensive Stasi materials and other government and party archives, this study provides the first systematic overview of this complex relationship and offers many new insights into the continuities, changes, and entanglements of policies and strategies on both sides. Previously undiscovered records in church archives contribute to an analysis of regional and sectoral conflicts within the Church and various shades of cooperation between nominal antagonists. The volume also explores relations between the GDR and the Vatican and addresses the oft-neglected communist "church business" controversially made in exchange for hard Western currency.

Bernd Schaefer is a Senior Research Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center's Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., as well as a Fellow at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, and the Hannah Arendt Institute at the Technische Universitat in Dresden, Germany. His previous publications (as co-editor) include Ostpolitik, 1969-1974: Global and European Responses (2009); Historical Justice in International Perspective (2009); and American Detente and German Ostpolitik (2004). Between 1993 and 1997, he served as secretary for the East German Catholic Church's Stasi lustration commission in Berlin.

This book examines the social, political, and religious relationships between Calvinists and Catholics during Holland's Golden Age. Although Holland, the largest province of the Dutch Republic, was officially Calvinist, its population was one of the most religiously heterogeneous in early modern Europe. The Catholic Church was officially disestablished in the 1570s, yet by the 1620s Catholicism underwent a revival, flourishing in a semi-clandestine private sphere. The book focuses on how Reformed Protestants dealt with this revived Catholicism, arguing that confessional coexistence between Calvinists and Catholics operated within a number of contiguous and overlapping social, political, and cultural spaces. The result was a paradox: a society that was at once Calvinist and pluralist. Christine Kooi maps the daily interactions between people of different faiths and examines how religious boundaries were negotiated during an era of tumultuous religious change.

This book offers an introduction to the theological and historical aspects of the papacy, an office and institution that is unique in this world. Throughout its history up to our present time, the Petrine ministry is both fascinating and challenging to people, both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Gerhard Cardinal Muller speaks from a particular and personal viewpoint, including his experience of working closely with the pope every day as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He addresses, in particular, those dimensions of the papal office which are crucial for understanding more deeply the pope as a visible principle of the church's unity. 500 years after the Protestant reformation, The Pope offers insights into the ecumenical controversies about the papacy throughout the centuries, in their historical context. The book also exposes prejudices and cliches, and points to the authentic foundation of the Petrine ministry.

In the early 1900s the Catholic Church appealed, for the first time in its history, directly to women to reassert its religious, political and social relevance in Italian society in a battle against liberalism, socialism and modern society. This book examines the highly successful conservative Catholic women's movements that followed, and how they mobilised women against secular feminism.

Selection of correspondence from the house which was once Little Malvern priory, illuminating life at the time. In 1538 John Russell, secretary to the Council of the Welsh Marches, acquired the dissolved priory of Little Malvern, where his descendants, the Beringtons, still live. This selection from the family letters in the WorcestershireRecord Office vividly illustrates the impact on Worcestershire of the Reformation and the Civil War. Among much else, it includes correspondence with Thomas Cromwell and Lord Chancellor Audley (who was John Russell's brother-in-law); Elizabethan medical prescriptions and business letters; correspondence about evading the penal laws against Catholics; a mock-heroic Latin skit on James I; a personal letter from one of the Jesuits executed at the time of theOates Plot, and an official certificate that Little Malvern had been (unsuccessfully) searched for priests. The letters themselves are accompanied by an introduction and explanatory notes. Michael Hodgetts has written extensively on Recusant History and is an acknowledged expert on English Catholic families and their houses.

although Hans Urs von Balthasar's earliest publication is from 1925, and although he was a mature forty years old in 1945, there is a deficiency in the secondary literature regarding his early literature, its historical backgrounds and non-theological sources. In this study Balthasar is presented in relation to the various contexts in which he was both drawing upon and responding to from the 1920s to the 1940s. The major contexts analyzed here are the broad central European Germanophone cultural context, the Germanophone Catholic cultural context, the German studies context, the French Catholic renewal literature and theology of the early 20th-century, the popular journal Stimmen der Zeit, Neo-Scholasticism, early 20th-century French Catholic culture, Swiss fascism, National Socialist literature, the Renouveau Catholique, the George-Kreis and many others. Balthasar's early anti-Semitism and some of the problematic aspects of his early work are also addressed in this study. His understanding of the modern age, his relationships with some key intellectual figures and his later reflections on his early work are also introduced. The book offers a comprehensive study of Balthasar's early intellectual development.

This is a study of the social construction and the impression management of the public forms of worship of Catholicism and Anglicanism. Interest centres on the dilemmas of the liturgical actors in handling a transaction riddled with ambiguities and potential misunderstandings. Simmel, Berger and Goffman are used in an original manner to understand these rites which pose as much of a problem for sociology as for their practitioners.;These rites are treated as forms of play and hermeneutics is linked to a negative theology to understand their performative basis. The study is an effort to link sociology to theology in a way that serves to focus on an issue of social praxis.