New Books in Catholic Studies

Historians have long looked to networks of elite liberal and anti-clerical men as the driving forces in Mexican history over the course of the long nineteenth century. This traditional view, writes Margaret Chowning, cannot account for the continued power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, which has withstood extensive and sustained political opposition for over a century. How, then, must the scholarly consensus change to better reflect Mexico's history? In Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940 (Princeton University, 2023), Chowning shows that the church repeatedly emerged as a political player, even when liberals won elections, primarily because of the overlooked importance of women in politics. Catholic women kept the church alive through the wars of independence and made it into the political force it continues to be in present-day Mexico. Using archival sources from ten Mexican states, the book shows how women, who were denied the vote and expected to stay out of the political sphere, nevertheless forged their own form of citizenship through the church. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, women self-consciously developed new lay associations and assumed leadership roles within them. These new associations not only kept Catholicism vibrant, they also pushed women into public sphere. Methodologically, this book shows the value of exploring gender in political and religious history and reveals the equal importance of informal political power to more formal activities like voting.Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rich Meyer, president of JSerra High School—named for St. Junípero Serra, the ‘Apostle of California’—in Southern California, discusses what is working in Catholic education today. He and I are both fathers and teachers; and I ask him about his philosophy and his school’s approach about social media and some of the contentious cultural issues of our day. How do we help our children find sure footing on the right path and what is the correct balance of order and freedom, of justice and grace? JSerra High School website. JSerra High School podcast: Unplugged. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Revered by contemporaries and posterity for both his sanctity and his scholarship, Bede (672-735) is a pivotal figure in the history of the Church. Known primarily as an historian for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede was also an accomplished pedagogue, hagiographer, and biblical scholar. Bede the Theologian: History, Rhetoric, and Spirituality (Catholic U of America Press, 2022) takes a fresh look at this classic Christian thinker, exploring the gamut of Bede's literary corpus. The book investigates key themes, including Bede's understanding of the theological significance of time, his conception of the relationship between the temporal and eternal orders within history, his theological use of rhetoric, his foray into narrative theology, and his spirituality.The purpose of this volume is to introduce the reader to principal theological themes in Bede's thought. Bequette's thesis is that Bede was a theologian writing in continuity with the Christian tradition and yet making creative, original contributions to that tradition for the sake of his contemporaries, both in the monastery and in the culture at large. The method involves a close reading and analysis of key texts within Bede's corpus of writings. These texts include the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Life of St Cuthbert, and several of Bede's biblical commentaries (On the Tabernacle, On the Temple) his homilies, and didactic treatises (On the Reckoning of Time, Concerning Figures and Tropes in Sacred Scripture). Bede the Theologian: History, Rhetoric, and Spirituality constitutes a scholarly study of Bede's thought as an integral whole, identifying key themes and ideas that pervade his writings. Thus, it can serve as an introduction to Bede's thought for non-specialists in the areas of theology, religious studies, and other areas of the humanities.John Bequette is professor of philosophy and theology at the University of St. Francis (Ind.)Jackson Reinhardt is a graduate of University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University. He is currently an independent scholar, freelance writer, and research assistant. You can reach Jackson at jtreinhardt1997@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @JTRhardt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the fourth century AD, a new faith grew out of Palestine, overwhelming the paganism of Rome and resoundingly defeating a host of other rival belief systems. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But how did a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations become a mass movement centrally directed from Rome? As Peter Heather shows in this illuminating new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise and eventual dominance.From Constantine the Great's pivotal conversion to Christianity to the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire--which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction--to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond, out of which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention, as it not only defined a fledgling religion but transformed it into an institution that wielded effective authority across virtually all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe.Authoritative, vivid, and filled with new insights, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300 (Knopf, 2023) is an unparalleled history of early Christianity.Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ned Bustard is the author of a new children’s book, Saint Patrick the Forgiver: The History and Legends of Ireland's Bishop (InterVarsity, 2023). We talked about the book, the life of St. Patrick, and the conversion of Ireland. The day after the interview, during his Ash Wednesday homily, Pope Francis said, “the Gospel is not an idea, the Gospel is not an ideology: the Gospel is a proclamation that touches your heart and makes you change your heart.” That’s exactly what St Patrick showed by returning to pagan Ireland where he’d been a slave for six years. When a slave, he had been a shepherd. Now free, he became the shepherd of a nation. IVP Kids imprint webpage. Square Halo Books webpage. World End Images webpage. St. Patrick’s writings, the Confessio and the Epistola, in English and Latin. EWTN Ireland documentary, Discovering St. Patrick Pope Francis’s homily on Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Upon the French invasion of Algeria in 1830, the territory quickly became a placeholder for French dreams, debates, and experiments in social engineering, economic development and even religious culture. Missionaries and Jesuit priests sent to minister to the new French colonial population there commented favorably on Arab Muslims’ religiosity, seeing in it both the possibility of effective missionization and an example of how religion and civil society might work together. After decades of failed missionary efforts, violent conquest and conflict, and influential international events, liberal Catholics in Algeria like the Bishop Charles Lavigerie—founder of the White Fathers—had abandoned active evangelization and instead embraced a visceral and violent rejection of racialized Islam as the antithesis of French civilization.These transitionary decades serve as the backdrop to Joseph W. Peterson’s wide-ranging and deeply human book, Sacred Rivals: Catholic Missions and the Making of Islam in Nineteenth-century France and Algeria (Oxford UP, 2022). In it, he tells that stories of French Catholic missionaries and the Algerian men and women with whom they interacted, exploring the gray areas between faith and politics, between colonial ideology and colonized experience. Peterson balances micro-historical approaches with an awareness of global events to tell a new story about the role of religion in the development of the French civilizing mission, colonial ethnography and racial pseudo-science, as well as in the construction of regimes of legal difference. Sacred Rivals is deeply readable book and will be of interest to scholars of French Algeria, colonialism, and all those interested in the long and complex history of Christianity and Islam.Sarah K. Miles is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who specializes in global francophone history and the history of the French Left. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (skmiles@live.unc.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I asked an exorcist, Monsignor Rosetti, about the spiritual world around us, the demons he fights, and the mischief they cause. He talks about his life and work as an exorcist, how people stumble into demonic ensnarement, and how we, in our daily practice and through the Sacraments and sacramentals, can steer clear of it.Monsignor Stephen Rossetti is the head of St. Michael’s Center for Spiritual Renewal and teaches at the Catholic University of America. He has a PhD in psychology and is the author of a number of books, including Diary of an American Exorcist. Msgr. Rossetti’s website and blog. Msgr. Rossetti on Instagram. Msgr. Rossetti’s Exorcism App. Msgr. Rossetti’s publications. Bishop Robert Barron’s recent talk in which he describes how far fewer people are going to Confession since the Council of Vatican II. Al Pacino’s rant—part 1 and part 2—from The Devil’s Advocate that Msgr. Rossetti praised in our discussion for its verisimilitude. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) statement about Exorcism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction (Liveright, 2023) by Dr. Jamie Kreiner presents a revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge—and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later.Although we think of early monks as master concentrators, a life of mindfulness did not, in fact, come to them easily. Delving into the experiences of early Christian monks living in the Middle East, around the Mediterranean, and throughout Europe from 300 to 900 CE, Dr. Kreiner shows that these men and women were obsessed with distraction in ways that seem remarkably modern. At the same time, she suggests that our own obsession is remarkably medieval. Ancient Greek and Roman intellectuals had sometimes complained about distraction, but it was early Christian monks who waged an all-out war against it. The stakes could not have been higher: they saw distraction as a matter of life and death.Drawing on a trove of sources that the monks left behind, Dr. Kreiner reconstructs the techniques they devised in their lifelong quest to master their minds—from regimented work schedules and elaborative metacognitive exercises to physical regimens for hygiene, sleep, sex, and diet. Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty, illuminating account of human fallibility and ingenuity that bridges a distant era and our own.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The extraordinary array of images included in The Middle Ages in 50 Objects (Cambridge UP, 2018) reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Ages. Exploring material objects from the European, Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the book casts a new light on the cultures that formed them, each culture illuminated by its treasures. The objects are divided among four topics: The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and Its Fictions, and Death and Its Aftermath. Each section is organized chronologically, and every object is accompanied by a penetrating essay that focuses on its visual and cultural significance within the wider context in which the object was made and used. Spot maps add yet another way to visualize and consider the significance of the objects and the history that they reveal. Lavishly illustrated, this is an appealing and original guide to the cultural history of the Middle Ages.Elina Gertsman is a professor of Art History at Case Reserve Western University. She specializes in medieval art.Barbara H. Rosenwein is Professor Emerita at Loyola University Chicago. She is an expert in medieval history, on which she has written a number of influential works.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Garret Johnson works with Courage, the Catholic apostolate for people experience same-sex attractions. He describes his experience living the gay lifestyle and responds to my interview with Father Jim Martin, SJ, author of Building a Bridge, and several things Fr Jim said in that conversation that Garrett disagrees with. This is—please be warned—an honest, raw, and redeeming discussion about sex, gay culture, drugs, pornography, identity politics, Catholic doctrine, and the secular narrative. Garrett’s website, brotherwithoutorder.com. The websites for Courage and also Encourage. Courage serves people experiencing same sex attraction and Encourage is for the people—parents, siblings, others—who love them. Bishop Barron’s sorrowful mysteries of the rosary. Father James Martin, SJ, on Almost Good Catholics, episode 30: What if You’re Gay? Starting Conversations with and about LGBT Catholics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices