Catholic Modern

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 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 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 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