With Hitchcock, the reader is in the hands of one of the most erudite and talented Church historians in the United States

Reconstructing the Christian Past

by Alvino-Mario Fantini

Renowned historian, James Hitchcock, has long been recognized for his books and essays on U.S. politics, Roman Catholic intellectual life, and the controversial reforms of the Church’s sacred liturgy. A man of deep faith, he belongs to the great tradition of other Catholic historians such as Lord Acton and Hilaire Belloc; but unlike these predecessors, who often ignored certain historical evidence, Hitchcock has relied on it scrupulously. And like Christopher Dawson, Hitchcock has sometimes taken a broad approach to historical understanding, often turning his investigations into meditations on the meaning of history; but he has not usually taken it to the cultural and sociological depths achieved by Dawson.

Hitchcock’s most recent book, however, History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium, is unlike any of his previous works. Guided by the ideal of being “honest”—which means using evidence with scrupulous fairness—the Princeton-educated Hitchcock has now produced a detailed but easily readable one-volume history of the Church, and the secular events which have influenced her growth and development. The end result is exhaustive, including all the important councils and events, movements and groups, and personalities that have contributed—for better or worse—to the long life of the Church.

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