Overview

The fifth volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish CatholicismEDcovering the period from the Great War, through the Second World War and the Second Vatican CouncilEDsurveys the transformed ecclesial landscape between the papacies of Benedict XV and Pope Francis. It explores the efforts of bishops, priests and people in Ireland and Scotland, Wales and England to respond to modern challenges and reintegrate the experiences and expertise of the laity into the ministry of the Church. Alongside the twentieth century's designation as an era of technological innovation, war, peace, globalization, decolonization and liberation, this period has also been designated 'the People's Century'. Viewed through the lens of the Catholic church in Britain and Ireland, these same dynamics are explored within thematic, synoptic chapters by leading scholars. As a century characterized by the rise, or better renewal of the apostolate of the laity, this edited collection traces the struggles to reconcile tradition, re-evaluate hierarchical authority, adapt to social and educational mobility, as well as to adjudicate serious challenges from outside and withinEDincluding inflammatory biopolitics and clerical sexual abuseEDto religious belief and the legitimacy of the Church as an institution.

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9780198844310

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Author Information

Alana Harris is Director of the Liberal Arts programme and a Reader in Modern British Social, Cultural and Gender History at King's College London, having previously taught at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. Her books include Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism 1945-1982 (Manchester, 2013), Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 (London 2014, edited with Timothy W. Jones), and The Schism of '68: Catholics, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945-75 (London, 2018). Her research specialisms, explored in numerous journal articles, encompass the histories of gender and sexuality; ethnicity, race and migration; devotional cultures and material religion.

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