Customer Reviews

The Catholic Church: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)

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When I purchased Hans Kueng's concise history of the Catholic Church, I was skeptical about whether 2000 years of history could be reasonably compressed into a volume as short as this. Yet as a Protestant from a family with a long Catholic heritage, I was eager to try it, and I do not for a moment regret reading this pithy, informative gem. Kueng really does trace Catholic history from the time of Christ--exploring what the church actually constituted in the early days of Christianity, how the church and its governing structure including the Papacy evolved, why the great schism between Eastern and Western Catholicism occurred, the historical frauds perpetrated by some medieval Popes in their efforts to consolidate power, the merits of the case of the Reformation leaders like Luther and Calvin, and the emergence of the modern absolutist Papacy from the time of Pius IX onward, and the brief moment of reform centered in Vatican II. Predictably, Kueng presents a rather biased history, especially when reviewing recent times. (He almost categorically rules out the possibility that John Paul II has had ANY positive influence, which I find hard to accept.) But that notwithstanding, I cannot see that anyone but the most conservative Catholics would find this book anything but enlightening and worth the time spent in reading it. If this is what the Modern Library intends to do with its new Chronicles series, it should be a real boon to those who want serious history in reasonably small doses.

Brilliant, forceful, authoritative - what else would you expect from Hans Kung? However, this book is not so much a history of the Catholic Church as it is an anti papal polemic. Kung glosses over or ignores much of church history while he develops his major theme, the rise of the papacy and its corrosive influence on the Church.

For those who actually want to read a short history of the Catholic Church (short being a relative term when dealing with a 2000 year old institution) I recommend the following:

Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas S. Bokenkotter. Available from this site.

For those who are interested in the rise of the papacy, Kung's book is a must read.

This short book provides a very readable and helpful overview of the history of the Catholic Church, and particularly the Papacy, from the Apostle Peter to the current Pope, John Paul II. As a Protestant without a lot of background in Catholic history, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and learned a lot from it. But as other reviews have noted, it is hardly an unbiased account. It presents the very unflattering story of a power-hungry papacy that has decreed itself infallible out of whole cloth, discriminates horribly against women, insists against all reason and Biblical authority on the celibacy of the clergy, and is simply hopelessly mired in the Middle Ages.

Because I lean liberal, I found myself agreeing with Kung at every turn. But I have the distinct feeling that I've heard only one side of the story--that there must be another more devout and wholesome side to the story of the Catholic Church that Kung did not see fit to dwell upon. I'd like to know the rest of the story.

This is not a bad book, its just the wrong book for the purpose. When I read a "Modern Library Chronicles" book I am expecting a good introduction to a subject by an accomplished author. I think the editors picked the wrong person to write this book. Kung simply has too much bagage and personal feelings about the Catholic church. This is not so much a history of the Catholic Church, but Hans Kung's critisms of the history of the Catholic Church. I am a Protestant, so I don't necessarily disagree with many of Kung's criticisms, but I just wanted a history, not Kung's constant criticisms of Catholic history. He could have included a lot more history into the 200 pages if he spent less time telling us how the Catholic Church would be perfect if it just listened to him. Again, its not a bad book (Kung has been a very important theologian in the 20th century and his criticisms of the Catholic Church should be read), its just not the right book for the series.

Hans Kung's brilliance as an author and a theologian is not to be faulted, and in this volume he shows us how the Roman Catholic Church has survived 2,000 years in spite of itself. There is very little new here for anyone who has read church history. For those who haven't, the author rips through 2000 years with the highlights, and he basically tells us that good leadership has been the exception in Roman Catholocism, rather than the rule. The rule has been power politics at the expense of strengthening and sustaining a religious structure that serves the spritual needs of its members. At least, until Pope John XXIII and his miraculous Vatican II - ultimately betrayed by every succeeding Pope. The author's ire is especially aimed at John Paul II who's pronouncements to the world at large have been borderline progressive, though not followed by much action; and his pronouncements and actions to the church family which have been ultra-conservative. I have no disagreements with Kung's history or analysis, however, he weakens his case by using the final chapters to carry on about his own troubles with the Pope and the curia. This failing aside, Kung (whose volume "On Being a Christian" helped bring me back into the fold)gives us a factual and highly readable account of Mother Church, and some basic proposals for a Vatican III that could re-energize Roman Catholocism, and bring our Church into a more democratic model of a "people's church" in the new century. I won't be holding my breath, though.

In all fairness to the reader, I am only halfway through this book; however, Kung is a very intelligent Catholic, who has remained in the Roman Catholic church for his entire life, and who has had a long, scholarly career; further, he is a Catholic priest as well as a scholar. Because of certain disagreements that he has had with the Roman Catholic church, they have revoked his credentials to teach as a Catholic theologian. Nevertheless, a theologian he certainly is, whether he is officially approved as such by the Catholic church or not.

It would be a mistake to view this book as an unbiased history of the Roman Catholic Church, for Kung is clearly unhappy with the developing role of the papacy throughout the church's history. However, a historical analysis, by its very nature, involves not only the facts of history, but also an interpretation of those facts. As mentioned above, Kung is clearly biased against the papacy as it has developed.

While I don't agree with all the views of Kung as presented in his book, I very much like it, and appreciate Kung's honest attempt to portray Catholic church history as he believes it to actually be, rather than merely regurgitating the Catholic church's claims for itself. Some who read it will certainly believe that he is too harsh and negative in his analysis of the Catholic church; however, I appreciate his honesty. He calls things as he sees them, even though his views on any number of matters differs with the Catholic church's claims about itself.

Hans Kung lays all of his cards on the table in the introduction. This book (The Catholic Church: A Short History) will be, in a way, a synthesis of his religious and scholarly work over the past four decades. It will be neither a Church history written from the viewpoint of the official papal historians nor will it be an anti-Catholic catalogue of crimes throughout time. The author writes as a Catholic and both his love for his Church as it should be and his frustration with it as it can often be suffuses the entire history. He covers the material both efficiently and passionately in a short amount of space. This book may be disliked by those who are either blindly pro-papacy or obstinately anti-Catholic, but everyone else should have an entertaining and informative read from an author who understands history as a lived experience.

I finally finished this thing. It felt like it took forever to read and it did (two months). It was one of those books that you know you have to read and just get through it like a snow blower through a Wisconsin driveway. Kung has been around for awhile and he is well known within Catholic circles for having his own agenda. The early part of this book was very good and did a good job of explaining the history of the church in only about 50 pages. Not a bad job. Then we get into the Vatican II and beyond years and Kung's bias comes out much like the snow shooting out the top of that snow blower. Overall a good book and one most amateur theology types would like to read. I have recommended a few of these Modern Library Chronicles and this one is no different. If you want to know more about the beginnings of Christianity and the history of the Catholic church then this is the book for you. It explains things in a simple non-esoteric fashion despite some complications I had with it (mainly because I wouldn't read it for days then pick it up again and try to figure out where I was in the reading). Dust off the snow blower and take a stab at this book.

Hans Kung's "History of the Catholic Church" is a broad treatment of a much narrower subject, the history of the papacy. Kung convincingly argues that the history of this institution is much different from the myth, that Christ said "Upon this rock I will build my Church," and that there has been an unbroken line of holy men from then until now proclaiming the word of God. Rather, the papacy was a political institution, developed some several hundred years after the death of Christ, in an era where church and state were indistinguishable.

Kung takes us through the era of persecution, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, the invasions and fall of that empire. The pope was a prince like many others, susceptible to being co-opted by warring princes, to being deposed, to gaining and losing territory.

Many think of the church as having survived intact through 2,000 years, and use this as a reason to be somewhat complacent about the state of the church today. But Kung reminds us of not only of the Protestant Reformation, the huge split we are familiar with in Western Europe, but also the split with the Eastern Church that occurred much earlier. Is the church headed towards such a split today? Although of course there were many reasons underlying these world-shaking events, Kung places the responsibility for these schisms in large part on the papacy, which in both cases resisted change and insisted on its own primacy and infallibility.

Kung also traces the evolution of doctrine along the way. Again, the myth is that doctrine remains unchanged and inviolable down through time, and that the pope is in a sense God's mouthpiece. How then to explain the proclamation of "new" doctrines such as the bodily assumption of Mary to heaven, as late as 1950? Of course infallibility comes in for much criticism from Kung, as well as the new fashion for canonizing a pope's predecessors, who, if half of what Kung writes is true, are hardly candidates for sainthood.

Kung of course has an ax to grind, having been a major force in Vatican II, and subsequently having been removed from teaching by the modern successor to the office of the Inquisition. But it is hard to argue with the proposition that the church is a man-made institution. Which of course all churches are--the problem for Catholics is that belief in the Church as an institution is inextricably intertwined with belief in Christ. Must they be?

While I agree with the first comment that this isn't exactly a "history" of the Roman Catholic church, I would like to see the conservative Roman Catholics simply refute his claims instead of just saying their "wrong" or "lies." *An example of this (as a historian myself) would be to look at what we know of Jesus of Nazareth and look at the 1st century church of ACTS, and compare it with many of Roman Catholic teachings. Sadly, I have found that most Roman Catholics (even Christians as a whole), simply do not know the Scriptures or what they say. They simply look to traditions/the church culture and accept it as fact. Instead of attempting to exaplain all of the Papal and church attrocities through the centuries, or how one can become a saint and then we can pray to them to "carry" our prayers, or by a priest earning his way to be able to "forgive" us of our sins on behalf of God, they simply ignore the questions. Looking back on church history we see the Papacy confirm that the Roman Catholic church is above Scripture; if one accepts this, then they can easily accept anything the church says. This is called Church-ianity and should not be confused with Christ-ianity. While I have no problems with someone claiming to follow church-ianity, it should not be confused with Christ-ianity as the two are night and day different.
--My advice is to simply read the Scriptures for yourself with a exegesis/herenutical mindset in mind, and ask yourselves if this book is that wrong? *If it is, then it should be easy enough to refute its points.
Not a bad book; worth reading. (IntelligentWonders dot com)