Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame in the US, an acknowledged authority on Catholicism, editor of the Encyclopaedia of Catholicism (Harper-Collins, 1995) and author of a number of best-selling books, may have given us yet another best-seller.
Lives of the Popes - the Pontiffs from St Peter to John Paul II (Harper-Collins, 520pp, £25) is an expansion of thumbnail sketches of popes and their pontificates presented as a popular feature in the Encyclopaedia of Catholicism.
Such was the fascination for many with these that McBrien determined to expand the sketches and include features which offer the reader a wider historical and theological context; for example, an introductory explanation of the papacy and of the two major dogmas of primacy and infallibility; how popes are elected and the future of the papacy.
McBrien does not claim this is a work of primary, historical scholarship. He is well aware of recent encyclopaedic dictionaries of the popes. He judges J.N.D. Kelly's The Oxford Dictionary of the Popes (1986) to be the best one-volume book of its kind in English. He is indebted to Kelly, but McBrien's book is different.
It offers more than a summary of each pope's life and pontificate: the reader is also given a theological context in which to locate and interpret the summary.
The originality of his book, McBrien claims, is in the material judiciously selected from a vast corpus of secondary material; the organisation of this into particular historical periods; the theological and pastoral interpretations provided throughout, and the features to complement the reader's understanding and appreciation of the papacy and its many diverse occupants.
The book may be read from cover to cover and can serve as a valuable reference work. It is a fascinating book to browse in, for examples: no other pope has claimed the title Peter; the first pope to be called Vicar of Christ was Gelasius (492-96); Innocent I (401-417) was the only pope to succeed his father Anastasius I (399-401), both of whom are recognised as saints: the only English Pope was Nicholas Breakspear Adrian IV (1154-59).
Protestant readers may go straight to the pontificate of the Borgia, Alexander VI (14921503), whom McBrien describes as "the most notorious pope in history" to read of his simony, nepotism, greed, debauchery, and his excommunication, torture and execution in 1498 of the Florentine preacher Savonarola for denouncing papal corruption and wishing to see a council to reform the church and depose Alexander VI.
McBrien's biographies of the popes of the Reformation period, Julius II (1443-1513), Leo XI (1475-1521), Adrian VI (1491523) and Clement VII (14781534) make most interesting reading, as do the entries on the popes of the Counter-Reformation. Ecumenists will endorse the fine balance in the analyses.
The entry on Pope John XXIII (1958-63) rightly requires the use of superlatives in the description and analysis of his work in transforming the relationships of the churches. Perhaps all would endorse McBrien's comment that "the whole world reacted with profound sorrow on June 3rd, 1963, when he died".
Even the Union Jack was lowered to half mast in the bitterly divided city of Belfast, he claims.
The book is a tour de force and indubitably a must for the historian and the general reader, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic.
The annual sale of Feed the Minds, Ireland, will be held in the Christ Church, Rathgar, today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Stalls for household effects, bric-a-brac, cakes and groceries, plants and books will be to hand. Admission is 50p with coffee and biscuits £1.