The Church of the Revolutionary Age

The Church of the Revolutionary Age: A Fight for God is the ninth installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' outstanding History of the Church of Christ. This volume surveys (1) the crisis of Modernism, "the crossroad of all heresies"; (2) the outbreak of the Great War and Pope Benedict XV's fight against the flames which laid unprecedented spiritual and material waste; (3) the continued success of Catholic social teaching and the rise of Catholic Action in the years after World War I, crowned by Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno; (4) the papacy of Pius XI, "defensor fidei et hominis," who rose to the unique and terrible challenge of confronting Communism, Facism, and Nazism; (5) the Church's missionary work in the Americas, the East, and Africa, with portraits of the exemplary Damien of Molokai and Charles de Foucauld; and (6) the story of a soul, Thérèse of Lisieux, le petit modèle for the soldiers of Christ to fight the good fight. A singularly unhappy age, alight with the blaze of revolution and war, the years 1870 to 1939 witnessed wave after wave of assault upon Christ and his Church. Lavish in detail, vigorous in analysis, and dramatic in telling, Daniel-Rops' The Church of the Revolutionary Age: A Fight for God is proof positive of Christ's promise that the Church is built firmly upon rock, and the powers of death and gates of hell shall not prevail against it.