Summarizing the last 200 years of the history of the Catholic Church – and what years these are from the French Revolution to the pontificate of Francis! – in only 500 pages is a formidable challenge that only people with a deep historical knowledge and a remarkable capacity for synthesis can accomplish. John T. McGreevy is one of these people.
McGreevy, a PhD in history from Stanford University and Distinguished Professor of History at Notre Dame since 1997, has built his reputation as a historian of Catholicism in the United States on the comprehensive approach he takes to his research, where he interweaves political, social and cultural analysis with a comparative and international perspective. This is reflected in his previous works, which have been translated into several languages. Among them are Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century Urban North (1996), Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (2004), and American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global (2016) stand out. All are noteworthy for their meticulous research based on primary and secondary sources, as well as their ability to synthesize in a clear and accessible manner.
His latest work, Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis, transcends U.S. borders to offer a panoramic view of the last two centuries of the Catholic Church's history. McGreevy, in the introduction, sets out to make the Church’s current situation comprehensible to the reader. He divides the work into three parts spanning from the French Revolution to the present, each part detailing key events, political and social movements, and the geographic expansion of the Church in a particular period. In fact, the most original element of McGreevy’s work is the global perspective with which he addresses the development of Catholicism, gradually shifting from the Eurocentric focus to the Church’s presence in new settings in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania. This shift is an element that undoubtedly marks the present moment of the Church. The fact that Pope Francis has appointed numerous cardinals from outside Europe highlights how the pole of attraction of the old continent has been disengaging. For the European reader, accustomed to considering the history of the Church from a rather Eurocentric perspective, McGreevy’s work will help to acquire an openness of vision that is very much to be welcomed.
As has already been said, the value of the work lies in its ability to condense complex events in an accessible way. Nevertheless, this synthesis is not without certain reductionisms, and some events could have received more detailed attention. McGreevy himself warns in the introduction that ‘specialists will regret what is missing and rightly so’ (x).
The book begins with an account of the French Revolution and explores the initial warm reception of many French clerics to democracy in that period, and their subsequent rejection of it because of the horrors of the Revolution. The author traces the evolution of what he calls ‘reformed Catholicism’ not only in France but in other European countries and in the nascent American republics that espoused political reform and opposition to papal authoritarianism. This movement, which McGreevy describes with frank sympathy, was nevertheless a minority, since the general reaction was to close ranks around Rome where the papacy stood as a bulwark against liberalism. This reaction, called ultramontanism, vindicated the old ecclesiastical privileges and the independence of the Church from any national control while favoring the renewal of popular spiritual life with unswerving loyalty to the papacy. But ultramontanism also stimulated the creation of new religious orders committed to assisting the disadvantaged, the evangelization of other territories, and the defense of a Neo-Thomism of universal scope. According to McGreevy, the great achievement of this movement, facilitated by advances in transportation and communication, was the recognition of an authentically universal Church, although strongly centralized around the Vatican.
In the second part, McGreevy describes the complicated relations between the Church and the new liberal states. This was a very complex period in which, once again, renovating forces pushed to adapt the Church to the new political and social realities, especially in countries with a minority Catholic presence such as the United States or Prussia, or in countries with aggressive liberal policies such as France or the Italy of the Disgorgements. Here we see how the Church gradually accepts the reality of events until it comes to accept democracy as a political system that is not only acceptable but recommendable. McGreevy does not hesitate to dedicate long pages to the thinker Jacques Maritain, a great friend of Paul VI, as the most important defender of Catholic democracy.
This brings us to the third and last part, perhaps the most challenging portion of the book because deals with the most recent events. Along with the authentically global vision of the development of the Church during these last two centuries, the other great point to highlight in McGreevy’s work is the capital importance he gives to the Second Vatican Council, considered by the author as the great modern event of the Catholic Church. ‘Until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, no single event in the history of modern Catholicism was as momentous, none as disruptive, as the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars’ (5–6). It is not without reason that he devotes an entire chapter to it, since the last council, among other achievements, underpinned what could be called the ‘globalist vocation’ of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the Council represents the culminating point of this historical journey that McGreevy traces by understanding the last ecumenical assembly not only as a point of renewal and change within Catholicism but also as a place of confluence of all the old reformist movements, which the Church accepts and assumes, putting an end to the strength of the ultramontane movement.
The Council was followed by the general crisis of the Church in the subsequent decades, during which the strong rejection of the encyclical Humanae Vitae and its teachings on sexual morality was the spearhead of a rupture in the solid unity of popular Catholicism with the papacy and the Magisterium. The pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis close this ambitious book, along with a quick analysis of how the Church has dealt with the sexual abuse crisis. Naturally, this last part – given its temporal proximity – should be taken with certain precautions, since it lacks the perspective to be able to judge the last years of Catholicism. Aware of this, McGreevy approaches the pontificate of the current pope with a glance towards the future of the Church, in which the optimistic tone with which he contemplates it is to be welcomed.
Throughout this long historical journey, McGreevy pays predominant attention to the political, social, and cultural aspects that have involved the development of Catholicism in the last two centuries. For this very reason, this book can be defined as a historical account of the more political and temporal dimensions of the Church. It is an approach that allows us to highlight the important role that the Church has played in society and helps us to understand the sociological transformations that the institution has undergone. Nevertheless, this approach to history has some drawbacks. As an example, it is enough to observe the little attention paid to some lay spiritual realities that appeared with great force in the 20th century, such as the Neocatechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation, the Focolare movement, or Opus Dei. To the latter, McGreevy devotes two brief paragraphs, which do not describe its essentially lay nature and its renewing message that reminds us of the universal call to holiness in work and ordinary life, but only show it as a religious movement whose first members were dedicated to the modernization of Franco’s Spain and, later, to sustaining the political-economic-social vision of John Paul II (357). This is a very reductionist and partial view of this institution, but it is entirely consistent with the perspective adopted by the author. It is natural, therefore, that the plot underpinning the history of the Church in the last two centuries is presented as a conflict between reformist forces and traditionalist resistance, especially represented by the ultramontane movement. In fact, the book could be described as the story of the persistent struggle of ultramontane Catholics to keep the Church tied to the pre-existing structures that emerged after the French Revolution, as opposed to the efforts of liberal Catholics to open the institution to modernity. This substantial change would only be achieved with the Second Vatican Council and, after a period of conservative revitalization under the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, would now experience a renewed acceleration with the arrival of Pope Francis. It is a well-put-together and logical account in itself, but perhaps not quite complete.
‘Ecclesia semper reformanda’. The popular phrase attributed to Karl Barth and recently taken up by Pope Francis himself points to an incontestable reality: despite its divine origin and holy nature, the Church is made up of sinful men and women whose errors, unfortunately, tarnish the true face of the institution. McGreevy’s account shows well this human element that has enveloped the external development of the Church in these two centuries. The challenge now is to delve deeper, as a complement to the author’s excellent synthesis, into the role played by the more spiritual elements of Catholicism. For example, McGreevy’s analysis could be enriched by referring to the work carried out by great and important saints of the 19th century, such as St. John Bosco, St. Anthony Mary Claret or St. Catherine Labouré, whose important foundations barely receive an anecdotal mention (149) – although the treatment is a little more extensive in the case of the Daughters of Charity (337–339); St Thérèse of Lisieux, who opened for Catholics the significant path to spiritual infancy; St. John Vianney, who spiritually inspired thousands of secular priests; or St. Faustina Kowalska, who promoted the devotion to the Divine Mercy.Footnote1
Perhaps a religious reading of the development of Catholicism, that is, an analysis of the motivations and spiritual ideas behind the forces that have renewed Catholicism in each period, could contribute to seeing in the tensions experienced the reality of a Church governed by the Holy Spirit, Who raises up in the Church’s historical evolution vanguard movements that renew and liberate her from what is outdated and worldly, but also raises up rearguard elements to illuminate this progress in the light of the tradition and the deposit of faith received. There is no doubt that including this perspective would have considerably lengthened an already extensive work, but perhaps it would have provided an even more global vision of the Catholic Church.
School of Church Communications, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy
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Notes
1 This is not to say, of course, that McGreevy does not mention saints, but he pays special attention to those who reflect social and cultural changes within the Church, such as St. Josephine Bakhita or the missionary St. Daniel Comboni. In this sense, McGreevy has chosen to sympathetically highlight figures in Church life – some well-known, others less so – who stood out more for their activism, especially liberal, such as the French constitutionalist bishop Henri Grégoire; the Mexican revolutionary priest Servando Teresa de Mier; Daniel O’Connell, the Irish independence hero; some prominent French liberal Catholics such as Charles de Montalembert or the former priest Félicité de La Mennais; the Chinese statesman and former priest Ma Xiaobang; the French philosopher and reformer Jacques Maritain; the German Jesuit and social philosopher Gustav Gundlach; Gustavo Gutiérrez, initiator of liberation theology and its ideologist, Bishop Hélder Câmara; Barbara Ward, British pioneer in the defense of the environment; the Senegalese politician and poet Léopold Sédar Senghor; or the married couple, John and Dominique de Menil, outstanding figures in North American cultural life.