BOOKS: Jesuit gives full account of the triumphs, failures of papacy

The papacy is the oldest continuous institution in the Western world. It has seen the rise and fall of empires, witnessed the sacking of Rome countless times, and it has had a profound influence on billions of men and women.

So, it’s no surprise that a history of the popes will encompass a great deal more than just those men called Bishop of Rome.

“A History of the Popes from Peter to the Present,” by Jesuit Father John W. O’Malley, does just that. In tracing the line from Peter to Benedict XVI, he manages to sketch a fascinating portrait of Europe’s last 2,000 years.

Because the book is only a few hundred pages, it’s difficult to do much more than sketch the big, broad themes. Sometimes, a book that tries to tackle so much ground in its pages does more to confuse than enlighten. Thankfully, that’s not the case with “A History of the Popes.”

Fr. O’Malley is a gifted writer, and though he must by necessity move fairly quickly through the centuries, he is capable at lingering on these characters enough to give a sense of their personality and place in the historical drama around them. He is also good at showing the movement and growth of the papacy throughout the past two millennia.

That movement and growth is fascinating in its own right. From Peter’s time and that of his immediate successors, the tiny, persecuted Church in Rome grew alongside the other historical dioceses like Alexandria and Antioch.

While the centralized control the Vatican now exerts would be entirely foreign to the popes of the first few hundred years, Fr. O’Malley makes clear that the strongest constant connecting all the bishops of Rome was their belief that because they inherited the see of Peter, they held a special responsibility in the universal Church.

Their brother bishops seemed to recognize it too from a very early stage, often seeking the counsel of the bishop of Rome or requesting that he settle some disagreement between dioceses. The great turning point came in the 4th century, when Emperor Constantine drew the Church out of the shadows of the catacombs, showered favors upon its members and began erecting large churches throughout his empire.

From this point, a discernible — though by no means inevitable — momentum propels the popes forward, so that by the 9th century, they were crowning emperors and helping to shape kingdoms.

While I don’t think it comes as any surprise to Catholics with even a cursory knowledge of the Church’s history, Fr. O’Malley’s book points out that some of our popes were very bad men. Reading about them one after the other, however, becomes a bit overwhelming.

It’s difficult to keep track of the endless progressions of Pauls and Johns and Gregories. Which one probably poisoned his predecessor and installed his bastard son in the College of Cardinals? Which one bankrupted the Church to pay for his own profligate lifestyle? Which one launched a bloody and pointless war to settle some petty grievance?

And that’s not even to mention the time in our Church when three different men — each with armies and cardinals backing him — claimed to be the true pope. Or the fact that for a few centuries it was a matter of course that some duke, count or king would march straight into Rome, lay waste to the city, depose the duly elected pope and install his own pontiff.

Of course, there were a great many saintly men who steered the Barque of Peter over the years. There were popes who cared greatly for the souls entrusted to them, who used the Vatican treasury to alleviate some of the poor’s misery, who called councils to combat heresy and ensure unity.

Fr. O’Malley takes great care not to reduce the popes to caricatures. They were complex and often had overlapping motives for acting the way they did. In discussing the Renaissance popes and the rise of an increasingly secular papacy, the author takes a circumspect view.

“The popes wore both a crown and a miter. As they became more wary of princes, they became more professedly princes themselves — partly in self-defense, partly for less worthy motives,” he writes.

“The defense, restoration and adornment of Rome became a high priority for the Renaissance popes. Although this enterprise was driven by political motives, it never could be divorced from the popes’ zeal to honor God and the saints with the best that human talent could produce.”

I wonder if a non-Catholic reading “A History of the Popes” would have a very different experience than a Catholic reading it. That is, it’s easy for the cynical reader to be confirmed in his suspicions that the Church has only survived the centuries through bloodshed and intrigue, politics and power.

A Catholic, however, may read the history and be shocked and confirmed in his belief that the Holy Spirit in some mysterious way truly does guide the Church, because it has survived precisely in spite of the actions of so many flawed humans.

“A History of the Popes” also puts things a little in perspective. Talk to many Catholics on either side of the ideological spectrum, and they’ll try to convince you that the Church can endure no more. It’s losing its relevance, they may say. Vatican II destroyed it, or, the celibate priesthood is crippling vocations.

That’s not to minimize the challenges and competing views the Church encounters today. It’s just to say that, as “A History of the Popes” makes clear, if the Church can survive some of the more colorful Borgias, it can survive anything.

Media critic Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.

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