Catholic History for Today's Church

August 10, 2015
O'Malley (What Happened at Vatican II), popular Jesuit historian and professor at Georgetown, has probably forgotten more Catholic Church history than most of the faithful know. This collection of his articles and lectures from the past fifteen years is meant to clarify the present state of the Church by examining its past, warts and all. A wide array of topics are covered here, including the fascinating stories of a number of the popes, the origins of priestly celibacy, as well as a summary of the great councils of the Church and what they did and did not decide. O'Malley is a masterful writer and elucidates complex ideas in a way that the average lay person can not only understand, but also appreciate. A key highlight is the chapter from an address the author delivered about his own life of learning and navigating academia. It is humble, encouraging, and filled with history from the author's multiple decades of experience as a student, priest, scholar, and teacher. As is the case with most of O'Malley's corpus of work, this collection will please even the most cursory student of history and whet readers' appetites for more.

October 1, 2015

Here, O'Malley (theology, Georgetown Univ., The Jesuits) digests and presents the kind of religious history at which he excels, but for a general audience. He argues that today's contentious conversations about the role of the papacy and the character of the Catholic Church derive from old debates, dating back to the origins of the papacy and the Council of Trent and Vatican II. The book as it stands, however, is a rather baggier collection of O'Malley's articles and essays, including a few outliers loosely related to the theme. VERDICT O'Malley's accessible approach should make this array of articles illuminating for those new to the subject. Most academic libraries will be better served by the author's previous efforts, however.

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