The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700.

Byrne, Joseph P.

By Robert Bireley, SJ. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1999. vii + 231 pp. $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Robert Bireley's overview of early modern Catholicism immediately invites comparison with Jean Delumeau's Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977) and John Bossy's Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). Bireley recognizes the impulse and dismisses any suggestion of redundancy by stressing both authors' insistence on viewing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the lens of medieval Christianity, rather than in terms of their own contextual challenges and realities, his approach. Bireley is neither as methodical about Catholicism as Delumeau, nor as comparative as Bossy needs to be. His is a synthetic treatment of the major events, trends, and personalities that constituted or aided the "refashioning" of Catholicism as it interacted with the broader trends and events in Europe and abroad. His wider scope sees this era as one among many in which Christianity has had to make "necessary accommodation to contemporary society and culture" (vi). Catholic reform had clear roots before the 1530s, and even before Lateran V, but found stiff competition in the Protestant movements of the mid-sixteenth century. Bireley posits that both reform movements, Catholic and Protestant, strove to renew Christianity in line with two larger societal trends: a desire among laity for meaningful spirituality in a culture that was rapidly becoming secularized, and the desire for, and pursuit of, greater order in society. He accepts Hubert Jedin's compromise position that Catholic activity was both a Catholic Reform that sought to meet societal demands and an attempt to restore order and unity by beating the competition (Counter Reformation), but prefers the label Early Modern Catholicism.

In organizing his material Bireley, a Jesuit and Professor of History at Loyola University in Chicago, emphasizes three main themes that emerge from his long engagement with the period. Two of these, education and confessionalization, Catholicism shared with organized Protestant movements. The third, centralization of power in the papacy, was unique to Catholicism, but not without analogues among Protestant denominations. His seven substantive chapters develop his themes while providing narratives of principal events, trends, and personalities. His intelligent choice of themes thus ties together the various elements of Catholic reform and Counter Reformation: new religious orders, the Papacy and Trent, European evangelization and popular piety, evangelization in Asia and the Americas, education, Church, politics and religious wars, and the Christian's place in the world. In each chapter Bireley deftly weaves the roles of education, confessionalization, and papal power as both influences and outcomes. In discussing new religious orders, for example, Bireley develops their educational roles in the context of broader functional evolutions (new, extramural ministries), their importance in maintaining and articulating Catholicism's integrity and leadership in the face of the Protestant challenges, and the importance of papal leadership in their respective origins and evolutions to the eighteenth century.

In each chapter Bireley pauses to sketch the life and importance of key figures: Loyola for the new orders, Borromeo for the reformed episcopacy, Philip II and Maximilian of Bavaria as Catholic absolutists, Jean Baptiste de la Salle as an example of "activist spirituality" in his concentration on the poor, Francis Xavier as missionary to Asia, and Galileo as victim of the triumph of "flawed theology ... over science" (198). This last case provides a good test of Bireley's objectivity: in essence, the Galileo affair was an example of the "failure of church authority to respond to the challenge of the new science" (192). In his brief narration of the facts, Bireley emphasizes the judicial process and the contradictions between old and new world views. In his conclusion Bireley notes that this case did not clearly inhibit Catholic participation in scientific inquiry and study. He admits the modern scholarly debate, but points to the increased role of mathematics and physics in Jesuit education, and to the work of men like Borelli, Riccioli and Pascal. To balance this view he notes that most Catholic scientists--apart from Descartes--worked in experimental rather than theoretical or speculative fields.

Where possible and appropriate, Bireley emphasizes the continent-wide desire among the laity for a greater individualization of piety and the Church's positive reaction. Protestantism presented viable alternatives in an ever increasing variety of forms; the Catholic Church responded by expanding traditional lay participation (for example, confraternities and third orders) and by creating new venues and ministries, especially of a socially ameliorative nature. Catholic laity and Protestants alike profited spiritually from preaching, catechesis, and formal education. Though the Roman church's political leverage declined, its centralized authority over its own was reinforced by theory, organization, and action. Doctrines were clarified, practices were made uniform, missions were overseen by papal offices, episcopal authorities were strengthened under papal leadership: the Church met, or at least addressed, the era's desires for coherence and rationalization of authority, as well as for individualization of religiosity, or so Bireley argues in his this cogent and valuable text.

As a synthetic work, Refashioning of Catholicism relies upon the labors of many others, but the dearth of notes--thirteen for the volume--means that the reader must either know the literature so well that she recognizes the references, or care ever so little. Whether one views this as a general history or as a textbook, this approach provides little satisfaction, despite chapter bibliographic essays. At times Bireley uses terms--for example, Molinist (142)--that he only defines further on (188, two chapters later): altogether minor annoyances in an admirable work.

Joseph P. Byrne
Belmont University