The Catholic Church in the Modern World

By E. E. Y. Hales From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the Catholic Church and modernity seem to be two entities inextricably at odds with one another. Modernity, for better or worse, stands for change; the Church, for stasis. Following the upheaval of the French Revolution, the Church has been “striving to sift the wheat from the chaff amongst the new ideas” of modernity. Surveying the two centuries from the pre-revolutionary ancién régime to the commencement of the Cold War, Hales looks at the Church as a whole, revealing the range of her influence, the rationale for her political and diplomatic campaigns, and, ultimately, the primary principle of her existence: to safeguard the Faith and provide for the salvation of souls. “There is not and there never was on this earth a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church…” –Thomas Babington Macaulay A carefully researched, balanced assessment of a complex, at times contentious perio