James Chappel is Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University.
Fascinating…Chappel’s is a complex intellectual history, focusing
not on popes and bishops, but on the lay individuals and movements
of ideas that drove this sea change…[He] deftly survey[s] the
intellectual evolution of Catholic thought throughout the 20th
century.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
Deeply researched and beautifully written…[An] excellent
book…Chappel’s history shows how profoundly Catholicism can be
transformed over time.
*The Nation*
Catholic Modern is an endlessly fascinating analysis of Catholic
social thought in turbulent times, which I imagine we will be
turning to for years to come. Essential reading.
*Catholic Herald*
Highly creative, massively researched, and eye-opening…[A] fresh
recasting of history.
*Commonweal*
Chappel has taken one facet of the Catholic modern and explored it
with exemplary scholarship and originality.
*Times Higher Education*
Authoritative…It sets out to explain how, when, and why the
Catholic Church became modern.
*Boston Review*
A heady look at how the church remade itself at a time of social
and political upheaval.
*America*
Chappel has historicized the dueling forms of Catholic modern at
the heart of present polarization in the church…If you are a
Catholic theologian working with twentieth-century European or
Latin American figures, you need to read this book.
*Horizons*
James Chappel has written a masterful accounting of one of the most
perplexing questions in modern European history. It will be
required reading for anyone interested in understanding the
transition from dictatorship to democracy among hundreds of
millions of European Catholics in the span of mere decades.
*Richard Steigmann-Gall, author of The Holy Reich: Nazi
Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945*
An incisive account of how Catholics became (and not were) modern…A
magnificent book by a promising author and scholar. A must-read for
all who have an interest in the manifold ways in which faith and
ideology have forged the minds and lives of so many during the
twentieth century.
*Social History*
This carefully researched and lucidly written history demonstrates
how Catholic social thought shaped central features of ‘secular’
Western European states in the twentieth century, including the
development of pro-familial welfare states and a ‘European’ variety
of capitalism. Its transnational approach to developments that are
all too often treated within a single national frame lends new
insight into Europe’s Catholic modernity.
*Judith Surkis, author of Sexing the Citizen: Masculinity and
Morality in France, 1870–1920*
Over the past century, the Catholic Church has undergone a dramatic
transformation. Shedding its former hostility to social pluralism
and political democracy, it has adapted itself to new patterns of
societal organization that we now characterize as modern. In his
capacious and richly populated history of the European Catholic
laity, James Chappel provides an excellent survey of the
intellectual and ideological debates that contributed to this epic
transformation.
*Peter E. Gordon, author of Adorno and Existence*
The past century posed unexpected dangers to Catholics’ immortal
souls: fascism and socialism, and then liberalism, with its
enticements to question things never questioned and enjoy things
never enjoyed. In his wholly original and pathbreaking book Chappel
takes us to the heart of their predicament, reminding us that it
was neither simply historical nor European, but remains with the
Church everywhere it faces the challenges of modernity.
*John Connelly, author of From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution
in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965*
Chappel skillfully explores how, why, and when the Catholic church
became modern.
*Publishers Weekly*
Groundbreaking…This bare summary does not do justice to the
sophistication and breadth of Chappel’s book. It is vital reading
for anyone interested in the [Roman Catholic] Church’s engagement
with politics in the 20th century.
*Church Times*
A key contribution to understanding the relationship between
Catholicism and political modernity as experienced particularly in
the decades before and immediately after the Second World War…An
immensely useful assessment of a critical period for the formation
of Catholic attitudes and ideas that still resonate in today’s
church and secular politics.
*Theological Studies*
A persuasive account, from the perspective of intellectual history,
of how ultramontane Catholicism swiftly but gradually discarded its
ingrained antimodern stance…Highly readable and many readers of
different stripes will find it of great interest. Chappel’s
contribution to the history of late modern Catholicism will
certainly garner much richly deserved attention.
*Journal of Modern History*
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