Product Description: How many people know that a modern pope publicly referred to Jews as "dogs;" that two other modern popes called the Jewish religion "Satan's synagogue"; that at the beginning of the twentieth century another pope refused to save the life of a Jew accused of ritual murder, even though the pope knew the man was innocent? Lastly, how many people know that only a decade before the rise of Hitler, another pope supported priests who called for the extermination of all the Jews in the world? The answer has to be "great numbers of people" since those accusations appeared in David I...read more

In the last three decades, many books have been published on the role of the Vatican in the modern world. Popes and Politics shows that many recent authors, whether devoted or antagonistic to the papacy, have been guilty of factual disstortions and biased interpretations that lead to a flawed picture of the church and its relation to contemporary society. Among the authors analyzed are James Carroll, John Cornwell, Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Michael Phayer, Garry Willas, Susan Zuccotti. Lawler cites "chapter and verse" to illustrate that many of these critics are doing to the church what the church historically did to the Jews--methodically scapegoating an imaginary enemy. Though in the recent past the central themes of Popes and Politics have often been exhaustively (and exhaustingly) analyzed, the treatment in the present book is fresh and original. To consider only one issue--the pope and the Jews--in addition to a re-assessment of Pius XII, Lawler also treats of the takeover of the Shoah for Catholic purposes; the connection of saturation bombing to the pope's "silence"; the significance of Hochhuth's other play, "The Soldiers"; the possibility of a Polish "holocaust; the reticence about "speaking out" by the head of the worldwide Anglican communion; the conflicts over both German and Israeli revisionist historians; the curious parallels between the Bermuda and the Wannsee conferences; the denigration of Pacelli and of Ben-Gurion--and many other non-stereotypical perspectives on this crucial moral issue of our time. The second part of the book--a discussion of the self-regulating principal of reform--is replete with intriguing and informative lessons, quotations, and anecdotes concerning some of the most fascinating and tragic figures in modern religious history: de Lamennais, Newman, Loisy, Montalembert, Döllinger, Rosmini, Acton, Blondel, Maritain, Bernanos, Congar, Häring, and several popes--to mention only a few. In the context of a reform that goes beyond "the politics of rancor," Popes and Politics treats also of church governance, structures of sin, intellectual freedom, gender conflicts, episcopal synods, sexual vs. social morality, signs of the times, and doctrinal claims.

Product Description: Justus George Lawler's critically acclaimed study of the work of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is, once again, available. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "One of the most learned critics writing today...Lawler has given new directions to theological criticism". -- Sally McFague