Customer Reviews

Three Popes and the Cardinal

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Decades after publication, this analysis remains highly relevant to anyone attempting to glean a broad view of Popes Pius 12, John 23, Paul 6, and Vatican Council 2. Martin was in his prime when he wrote this, and never more brilliant.

This is not a piece of historical research, a work of fiction, or a work of scholarship. It has been maligned or misidentified as same by various persons with apparently no experience or orientation in literature. It is, rather, a fresh analysis by someone who was equipped to make it, and was there and knew the principals. To the extent it is an opinion and a polemic, it is a thoughtful and creative one, also quite sober. The imbedded essay entitled "The Trap Gate of History" is alone worth the price of the book and the time of searching for a good copy of it. Even to those not largely interested in Catholicism, this book is one of the most acute analyses of the crisis of modern Western history on record, far broader than Fukayama though in certain critical ways consistent with him.

The word portraits of the popes and Martin's mentor Cardinal Augustin Bea are on a par with high Renaissance painting. The book has many other hidden treasures and all in all, continues to reward many repeated readings.

This book is started in a manner of which only the great (late) Fr. Martin, SJ is capable- dramatic, with panache and leaving the reader thinking he or she has their own inside source on papal and curial happenings. Even reading a text set in 1972 gives the reader an interesting view of the last conclaves of the 20th century. Martin begins comparing each pope (Pius XII, John XXIII & Paul VI) and their relationship with Augustin Cardinal Bea, SJ- who happened to be the mentor of the author. We come away realizing the sway Cardinal Bea had and the privledged information Martin possesed. However...by mid point Martin begins a 100 page tangent on sociological tendencies and cultural failings of the West. Besides slowing the book pace, this detour leaves the reader scrathching thier head pondering the relevance.