London: Bloomsbury, 2014 (first published 2011) ISBN 9781472909886
This book is a serviceable short history of the Roman Catholic Church, with the caveat that it is written by a Jesuit priest, who perhaps glosses over the bad more than perhaps he should. Packing nearly 2000 years of history into a little over 200 pages leads to much compression - Tanner has dealt with this by taking a broad-brush approach to his work, but still manages to cover a lot of ground. By dividing the book two ways - chapters historically, and within each chapter sections looking at Church government, popular religion, missionary work and so on, the reader gets a flavour of what changed and what remained constant across the history of the Church.
At times Tanner runs the risk of seeming to be an apologist for the Church, downplaying the sins of the Borgia Popes for example, and portraying the Reformation as a minor disagreement that got out of hand. Likewise the split between Catholic and Orthodox is portrayed as an issue of bad timing. Tanner mentions in passing some of the geo-political machinations that were precursors to these splits - perhaps he could have made more of them. He devotes more time to recording the workings of the Church Councils and to theological, liturgical and doctrinal movements, an area that often gets overlooked in other Church histories, so perhaps he does have the balance right after all.
While we think of Roman Catholicism as a World religion now, Tanner shows us that this growth really exploded only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in fact many centuries of the Church's existence consisted of decline rather than expansion. The last two centuries have been difficult for the Church in other ways, walking a tightrope straddling tradition and modernity, scripture and human appeal.
This book is a useful guide for the major events in the history of the Church, but a book not be read in isolation.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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