Kung, Hans.

Catholic Church. A Short History. Translated by John Bowden.

London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001. 20 cm. VII, 231 pages. Original Softcover. Secondhand book in very good condition. [Universal history].

Hans Küng is well known as the scholarly enfant terrible of the Catholic Church. This “turbulent priest” was active in the Second Vatican Council and made his name questioning traditional church doctrines as papal infallibility. In 1979, amidst a great furore, the Vatican censured his writings as being inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church. It’s not surprising then, that Küng’s latest book is not so much a ‘short history’ of the Catholic Church as a justification of his disagreements with its hierarchy, projected back through time. In eight major sections Küng chronicles the early days of Christianity, then takes us through the church’s relationship with the Roman Empire, charting the rise of the papacy, the full flowering of its power in the Middle Ages and its eventual corruption. He then goes on to outline the papacy’s decline in the face of the Reformation and modernism, and finishes with an extended criticism of the modern papacy. Küng outlines the key events in the European history of the Catholic Church, but he never mentions the Church outside Europe. In addition, the whole history is angled to support his anti-papal, de-centralist agenda. (Publishers information).

• Keywords: Catholicism · History · Religion
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0297646389
• Inventory Number: 400615AB

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