Church, Interrupted
Havoc & Hope: The Tender Revolt of Pope Francis
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Church, Interrupted: Havoc & Hope: The Tender Revolt of Pope Francis is a revealing portrait of Pope Francis's hopeful yet controversial efforts to recreate the Catholic Church to become, once again, a welcoming place of empathy, love, and inclusiveness.
Bestselling author, Vanity Fair contributor, and papal biographer John Cornwell tells the gripping insider story of Pope Francis's bid to bring renewal and hope to a crisis-plagued Church and the world at large.
With unique insights and original reporting, Cornwell reveals how Francis has persistently provoked and disrupted his stubbornly unchanging Church, purging clerical corruption and reforming entrenched institutions, while calling for action against global poverty, climate change, and racism.
Cornwell argues that despite fierce opposition from traditionalist clergy and right-wing media, the pope has radically widened Catholic moral priorities, calling for mercy and compassion over rigid dogmatism. Francis, according to Cornwell, has transformed the Vatican from being a top-down centralized authority to being a spiritual service for a global Church. He has welcomed the rejected, abused, and disheartened; reached out to people of other faiths and those of none; and proved a providential spiritual leader for future generations.
Highly acclaimed author John Cornwell's riveting account of the hopeful—and contentious—efforts undertaken by Pope Francis to rebuild the Catholic Church.
• Well researched and brilliantly written, readers, scholars, and fans of John Cornwell will want to read his most controversial and compelling work yet.
• More than a third of America's 74 million Catholics said they were contemplating departure in 2018. It is estimated that over the past twenty years, the Catholic Church has been losing $2.5 billion dollars annually in revenues, legal fees, and damages due to clerical abuse cases. The decline in church attendance, marriages, and vocations to the priesthood and sisterhood tell a story of major decline and disillusion. Cornwell showcases Pope Francis's way forward, a hopeful message that gives reinvigorated reasons to stay with the church and help be the change the new generation would like to see.
• For readers within and outside Catholicism fascinated by the future and restructuring of the church, this will be a book they want to read again and again as the church continues to change and grow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British historian Cornwell (A Pontiff in Winter) offers a comprehensive and evenhanded appraisal of the first seven years of Pope Francis's papacy. The book opens with the issues facing Francis at his election, including a "dysfunctional Church" with shrinking numbers of active members and the ongoing influence of the Benedictine tradition in Rome. Exploring Francis's early actions to combat corrosive gossip and institute disruptive changes, Cromwell praises the pope's ability to "hold opposites in tension" with "bold prudence" as he reorients the Church toward serving the poor. Cornwell also addresses the difficulties Francis has encountered with the sex abuse scandal (specifically lagging reforms in Chile). Francis, unlike his predecessors, has pushed for greater interfaith dialogue, especially with Jews, and weathered criticism from conservative Catholics on a variety of issues, such as his stance on allowing communion for remarried Catholics and his Laudato Si encyclical addressing environmental degradation. Cornwell optimistically considers how lasting the "Francis effect" will be, comparing him favorably to seventh-century pope Gregory the Great, whose "readiness to abase himself, confess his mistakes, his ignorance, his fallibility, and sinfulness... shook up the office of the papacy with reverberations right down to the twenty-first century." This thoughtful consideration of Francis's early actions and influence will appeal to anyone interested in the challenges facing the Catholic church in the contemporary era.
