Paul VI: The First Modern Pope

by Peter Hebblethwaite

Book Overview

A thoughtful, highly acclaimed biography of Giovanni Battista Montini, Paul VI, which sheds light on and powerfully underscores the personal and ecclesial sides of a man who brought modernity to the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080910461X
• ISBN13: 9780809104611
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Paulist Press
• Length: 749 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.5" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Awesome

This was just a great, insightful, and very well written work on a Pope and an era that is tremendously important to the Church and Italy today!

A more gripping and true tale of intrigue in the Vatican than any DaVinci Code: Hey, Tom Hanks! FILM

This is as comprehensive a study as possible of our greatest Pope of the 20th century, yet I await the annotated edition! Each page here could be magnified tenfold with notes explaining each person place and thing, and action, yet in very little space of nearly a thousand pages Peter includes indications of the epic sweep of the life of Paul VI. Peter has produced his typically comprehensive, objective and all-inclusive report of the life of the great and wise Pope Paul VI, whose like we may never again enjoy as Church. Certainly our best read and most thoughtful Pope, when early re-assigned from Rome to Milan he needed two vans only to carry his personal library. My kind of future Pope, who later travelled the world (the first to do so) with trunks full of books. This thick tome by Peter in its fullnses nearly fails to inform, as one gets lost in the thicket of forgotten names and intrigues survived by the young Montini. Yet several long beloved names also emerge, including Jaques Maritain, Yves Congar and so many others, it is so refreshing and delightful and inspiring to read of once more, and to learn of this quiet yet deeply effective Pope's influence and interests. Please save this book for a quiet weekend in which you can do nothing else but read. Dedicate your full attention to this phone-directory thick report (if telephone directories still exist now), and feel the urge to check references and allusions. YOu may find this book serves as a tree trunk branching to several other books you had always wanted to read, referred to in passing as thus which inspired our greatest Pope of memory. The amount of material included here is dazzling, and yet there is such great complexity to report that most can only be mentioned in passing. Nevertheless Peter does a remarkable job of crystallizing the essence of events. For instance he pegs that creepy MacArthyite Catholic Convert Claire Boothe Luce perfectly, including in response to her arrogant gushing enthusiasm a remark by a member of the hierarchy that he too was a Catholic. Peter perfectly pictures her influences, motives and connections, succinctly as needed, while leaving us thirsting for more. For here we see once more what a vibrant and active and influential Church we once were in so many ways, and we mourn for instance the loss of the priest-worker movement over a half century ago, which might have kept us alive. Read this book and share it with your children more sacredly than any similar novel of intrigue such as CS Lewis or Harry Potter, as this is real, non-fiction, and gripping. Then study the reports of the rather swift and mysterious passing of the first John Paul. Truth is ever stranger and more alluring than fiction. The truth within this thick book fills us with strength, joy and wisdom, in the spirit of this strong and intelligent and effective Pope, the last Italian of our holy Roman Catholic Church. Lustrous in detail, perceptive in its explanation of where we ha

A good biography of the greatest pope

Because I believe Paul VI was by far the greatest Poper ever and thanks to his tireless efforts there is a Church today that sounds realistic to the world, I welcome this book that I bought back in 1993. The missing star is because, in my view, the author does not follow enough in Paul's sanctity. I recommend that any interested party goes over his prayers, and they will find that his deep intellectual skills were based and sustained upon an impressive spiritual life.

More to Paul VI than at first thought

Before reading this I tended to label Paul VI unfairly has a highly 'conservative' Pope who wrote 'Humane Vitae'. Having read this I realised that he wrote this encyledal partly because he thought he would be betraying the Church in the face of theological history and partly out of fear as to what it would lead to. He was also a highly complex man prone to fits of depression, and yet in some ways a warm and caring man. Like the US President Lyndon Johnson, Paul VI has suffered unfairly partly due to having a highly popular predessor. Sadly in Paul VI's case he also had a highly popular successor partly due to the shortness of his reign.

A well written biography of a modern pope.

Hebblethwaite tells Paul's story with detail in a style that is easy to read . The reader watches Paul as he becomes involved in the international Church and finally as the Pope who guided the Church in concluding the sessions of the Second Vatican Council and implementing its decisions in a fast changing world. It is a good read for anyone interested in the man or the Council.