Review of "Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice" by Thomas Bokenkotter

The story of the Roman Catholic Church’s transformation from entrenched defender of the ancien régime into one of the world’s great advocates of democracy, freedom, and economic justice is indeed a remarkable one. In the century between Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors and the Vatican II documents Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, the Church moved from vigorously condemning modern liberalism to issuing support for the principles of the free society. The history of Catholic social teaching has received considerable attention from scholars in recent years, especially in light of the encounter with theologies of liberation (and the responses issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 1984 and 1986), the Church’s central role in the revolution of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, and John Paul II’s strong advocacy of the free society in the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. Thomas Bokenkotter’s Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice is a useful addition to this literature on the development of Catholic social thought since the French Revolution. Bokenkotter identifies his specific objective for the book as understanding the Catholic Church’s evolution from “one of the most conservative and even reactionary of the world powers” into “a very progressive force in world affairs.”