A traditional (Read: Conservative) review of Church History ( )

WONDERFUL ( )

WONDERFUL ( )

Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church by H.W. Crocker III is a history of the Roma Catholic Church from its beginnings in the Holy Land to Roman and all the 2000 years between. Years of revolt and rebellion and where the whole western world was Roman Catholic at one time to the early 2000's. A good survey and chronologic map of the Church's greatest triumphs and lowest ebb. ( )

A swift read that is hard to follow at time - a common pitfall of any book that deals with the entire history of Europe (among other things) in 400+ pages. As a conservative Catholic who is not as well versed on Church history as I'd like to be, I found some of this book unsettling. Not that it challenged my core beliefs at all, but Crocker is quick to whitewash over many of the unsavory characters in Church history. While I get that the Renaissance popes were not the monsters that some make them out to be, simply writing off Popes leading armies in wars of conquest as a necessary evil in an ugly world seems a weak argument to me. Perhaps I'm too entrenched in the peaceful, stateless images of John Paul the Great and Benedict XIV.

But the book is entertaining, and does cover some of the more controversial stands of the Church and proves that opposition to things such as abortion is not something that came up in the 1960s. Also, the case that the Church is truly the apostolic Church Christ willed to carry out his mission on Earth is well made. ( )