Customer Reviews

A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present

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John O'Malley, a distinguished and highly respected scholar, writes a brief history of 2000 years of papal governance and is critisized for being selective and in his selection promoting a liberal agenda? It appears that most critisisms leveled at O'Malley's work, here and in reviews of his other books, are leveled by conservatives, sometimes self-proclaimed. It begs the question, who has the agenda here?

Far from "pope-bashing" O'Malley consistently declares that popes throughout the ages have been men, no more, no less. Some have been saints and others sinners, some great and influential, others small and insignificant, and a few either incompetent or downright evil causing great harm. He also maintains that there is always disagreement as to which monikar any one individual might ascribe to any pope.

O'Malley's mastery of church history is unquestioned. My only criticism is that such a brief treatment of papal history requires a certain shallow presentation. However, if it wets the appetite to learn more of church history, especially the appetite of my Catholic sisters and brothers, then bravo!

There is much to applaud in an attempt to bring the reign of 265 popes to life over the two millennium that mark western civilization and still hold it to just 325 pages. This is a lively journey, objectively reported and for me at least, both an enjoyable and edifying read. Some have criticized its scholarship here. It would be impossible to approach the scholarly level of say Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years in so brief a book. But given the attempt to cover so much and tell so much so neutrally and still leave the reader time for lunch, Father O'Malley has pulled off a rare achievement. As an Octogenarian, I can still remember Pope Pius XII's many defenses of Fascism which are invariably under reported and John XXIII's saintly aspirations which are all too often ignored in these reactionary times, particularly by that most conservative organization in western history. The author addresses the latter and barely touches on the former and still pulls of a popular history that should satisfy professional historians, the general public and even the church.

The author is faced with the task of presenting 2000 years of history in approximately 300 pages of which the last 70 concern the period of Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. By necessity the author needs to go through the material very fast. He stops along the way to discuss some of more important popes but even then he needs to move rather fast. He tries to show how the popes interacted with the other important world figures throughout history. The task was a little easier for me as I have studied Church History in a formal setting so I was already familiar with the popes the author discusses and the world situation in which they lived.

I was troubled at times by his viewpoint on Popes Pius XII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. I do not think that the author gave full consideration to the responsibilities that these popes had to maintain orthodoxy during very challenging times. I am not an expert on O'Malley but he seems to have a very liberal perspective and I think he believes that the Church should change more to adapt to his view of the modern world. I am more of a conservative and I would rather look to the "Church of the Fathers" as a guide rather than the latest "Pew Survey" as to what should constitute Christian orthodoxy.

This is a good book but it should only be a start on understanding the history of the popes. It is too short a book to give the total view. Hopefully, people will read this and their curiosity will be stirred and they will go on to read more of the fascinating history of the papacy and the Church. The Church history series by Jaroslav Pelikan and Justo L. Gonzalez, and the book by Thomas S. Bokenkotter are all excellent.
A Concise History of the Catholic ChurchThe Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (Story of Christianity)The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)

The Jesuit researcher John O'Malley presents us with an OK book. It's well researched, and contains a lot of good facts and stories about some popes. The problem is that he seems to choose some just for the opportunity to bash them. He picks up some popes that are very important to some key moments of the Church's history. But others do seem to be there just to give the book some more "juice".

The other fact is the research itself. Since its purpose seems to be presenting a lot of facts, even quotes and what sometimes seem to be anecdotes (but all presented like unquestionable truth), a larger index of sources would have been better. There are just a few notes at the end, and some are just to point to which encyclical it belongs to. And some are just quotes from other modern writers, like Peter Hebblethwaite. It seems odd to have so few notes, and it can make you few like you are reading an extract from Hebblethwaite's book.

The author is obviously a liberal. Maybe more than a moderate liberal. His analysis of the Popes since Leo XIII is somehow disturbing. He picks his favorites and tries to find a way to present a problem in the others. His critique of Saint Pius X is just the usual liberal rant, and most of that is baseless. What strikes as more absurd is exactly that he can stop being analytical and just offer plain opinion. But just when he doesn't agree with that particular pope. I'll quote some passages just to prove my point. About Saint Pius X, when he states that his fight against "modernism" started an epidemic banning of books, or worst. First of all, it has no sources for that. And it's the first book that I've read that puts something like that in such words. And he states: "With more than a grain of truth it has been described as a reign of terror". Talk about bashing and taking sides, huh? A reign of terror? What an exaggeration. And said by whom, we imagine?

Things get worst (if you can believe). In the chapter about Pope Benedict XV, he states that Pope Pius X sent him to Bologna, but didn't make him a cardinal "because he distrusted him", and goes on to state that making the person in charge of the see of Bologna was "usually automatic". OK, did I miss anything? Usually automatic doesn't mean that it was a rule. Or that it happened every time. It says that it could happen. Let's make this clear. If it was automatic for every other archbishop before him, O'Malley is not precise in his writing. If he knew that it was not a rule (it is not!), he just found a way of bashing Pius X some more, even in the next pope's chapter. And come on. Where did he get that Pius distrusted the future Benedict? By the way, there are no sources for anything in this chapter of the book.

His careless writing gets another shot on Pius XII's chapter. He says that, these days, Pius reputation hinges on "his failure forcefully to condemn the holocaust...". He could have made more clear that it's an alleged failure. One that is not supported by the facts. Something that even he, although not that forcefully, states in other parts of the chapter. It's bad for a priest, and a scholar, not to be more clear about this episode.

Even on Pope John XXIII's chapter he drops the ball. Not on the pope's biography, a liberal would never do that (and Pope John was indeed a saint that deserves all the praise, even from non-liberals like myself). But when he talks about the council that elected him. Again he makes bad conjectures just to try to bring new light to a point. Everybody knows that the future pope Paul VI was considered for pope in John's election. And he was discarded because he was an archbishop, and not yet a cardinal. But O'Malley goes again with another assertions that finds no eco in the facts. He says that the future Paul VI was considered "because there were no strong candidates". On the contrary. Pope John was elected exactly because there were too many strong candidates, and no compromise could be found. The struggle between the conservative and the liberal cardinals was so strong that they chose John XXIII to put him as a stop-gap pope (how wrong they were), and try again when the college of cardinals would have a different arrangement.

Of course, things get worse in John Paull II's chapter, when the author goes all in. He follows the now obvious and boring rant of the liberals that JPII concentrated too much power on himself, and demanded blind obedience. As he puts it: "cost what it may". So he calls the pope's alleged iron fist as "petty obstinacy unworthy of JPII". He then goes on to make a ridiculous pseudo-psychoanalysis of the pope, stating that having survived the assassination attempt by the communists only strengthened the popes vision of a special mission for himself, and that only made him more authoritarian. Now wait a minute. Talk about petty obstinacy. Is the author so desperate to make a case for JPII authoritarian vein that he tries his hand in third class psychology? And based on what? Funny, there are no sources for this chapter. So he is just making that up and stating an opinion that is ridiculous for a book like this, that poses as a scholar's book. He just forgets it all and go after what he doesn't like. A shame that this need is so strong that tarnishes what could have been a better book.

The end of the book is probably worse still. He tries once again to shout that the popes have concentrated too much power on their hands, and uses the election again. But he says that power used to be shared, and betrays himself by citing emperors, kings, and whoever could do it centuries before. But, was that a good thing? It bothers me that a priest, just to try to prove a point against the popes from his age, say that it was a good thing to let people outside the church to participate in the choice of the next pope.

He then says that the church, today, basically is Ultramontanist. This is rubbish of the worst sort. Even Papal Infallibility, the flag of those accusing the church of ultramontanism, has nothing to do with the movement really thought about it. No pope claimed infallibility for his every act. In fact, the last popes always stated their fallible nature. Infallibility was only used as such by Pius XII, and that was before Vatican II and the true "universalization" of the church.

And he goes all-in to close the book stating that when Jesus said that "the gates of hell will not prevail against it", he meant the church (obvious), and that the popes have a penchant for confusing it with themselves. Oh, come on. That is a low punch. And of a very low quality one. From a catholic to diminish so much the role of the pope is troubling. For an author pretending to write about the history of the popes, is even worse.

Let's make it clear: it's a book against the papacy. It tries very hard to focus on the bad, and when he can't, he just makes it up, or misrepresent it with no second thought. In the course of it, he gives some interesting facts about the old papacy, especially about a millennium ago. If you can separate the good from the bad, it's worth the money. If you are going to read and believe it blindly, or if you know nothing about it, don't waste your time. It will pollute your mind with his personal opinions. And he is not afraid to throw them disguised as facts.

This is a very complete history of the Popes. I have found it very useful as a reference source, even better than an encyclopedia.

Starting with a discussion as to whether Saint Peter should be considered the first pope or the Apostle of whom Jesus said, "you will be the rock upon which I will build my church", the discussion is truly Jesuitical. It is the beginning of the book and up to the time of Constantine that are the intriguing 'birth' of the papacy. It has grown more out of necessity than of planning. The making of "christianity" as the new 'official religion' of the Roman Empire by Constantine in 336 started the entanglement of church and state, that wouldn't be finally exorcised until 1870 when Rome became the capital of the Italian Monarchist state.

A jesuit himself, O'Malley seems to live by the theory that everyone has a positive side, even if they are a Borgia pope who is the illegitimate son of another pope, who has bought his way into the office and settled his children and mistresses into the papal palace. Also everyone has a negative side, even those who are saintly, may not do good as popes because they spend too much of their time being 'holy'. He sidesteps a lot of issues such as the Church's involvement in the destruction of the Templars, and the approval of the Spanish Inquisition. Very little is made of the Crusades except to say that the first one was the only one that was successful (except for the destructive swath cut through Europe on the way to the Middle East and the rape and murder of most of the population of Jerusalem after its' fall) and that the Fourth (where Constantinople suffered the same damage as Jerusalem) never accomplished its' goal of getting to the Holy Land.

As to the popes of the 20th century, he states that had the Victors of WW One listened to the popes call for a benign peace, the second world war could have been avoided. Guess he never heard of Wilson's 14 Principles? He says that Leo who was the pope who signed Concordat with both Mussolini and Hitler was duped into thinking that Fascism wasn't the nasty situation it was. Though after 1933 he never condemned any of the actions of the Nazis even though the killings of the mentally challenged and deranged was well known in Europe, and could anyone have thought that Kristallnacht was anything but Anti-Semitic. From 1939 till the end of WW Two Pius only complained to the German Government about the lack of freedom of worship and the closing of Catholic agencies in favor of the Nazi Party and the Hitler Youth movement. Even after the horrors of Dachau and Auschwitz were broadcast to the world, the Church never condemned the leaders of the Nazi Party. Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels had all been baptized as children, but none were ever excommunicated; not even posthumously.

(Based on the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) all the Nazis therefore qualified for heaven and most of the communists, Roma and Jews who were killed during WW Two didn't because they weren't Catholics.)

Though he shows a lot of respect for John XXIII and John Paul II, he seems to feel that Paul VI has been given short shrift by History. He does find JPII to have been to strict and unbending on subjects such as 'Liberation Theology' and birth control, he does mention how the papacy was brought to world attention by this pope. As to Benedict XVI, he seems to feel that this will be a short, transitional papacy of a man who in most cases is too much of a 'homebody' to be anything but in the shadow of his predecessor.

Had O'Malley not tried to pull so many of his punches, little discussion of Galileo and such, and when talking about the notion of papal infallibility, not mentioning how often one pope finds mistakes from a previous one, this would have been a better book. The Truth will out but not always where one expects to find it.

Zeb Kantrowitz

Same ole same ole here, if you know the author.

Very liberal take on the history of Rome, very rote criticisms of JPII.

Well-written. Misguided. Predictable highbrow American feel-good food.