Sorting Out Catholicism

In this expanded and thoroughly updated English edition of the Italian edition (2008), Massimo Faggioli offers us a history and broader context of the so-called ecclesial movements of which Focolare, Community of Sant'Egidio, Neocatechumenal Way, Legionaries of Christ, Communion and Liberation, and Opus Dei are only some of the most recognizable names. Their history goes back to the period following the First Vatican Council, crosses Vatican II, and develops throughout the twentieth century. It is a history that prepares the movements' rise in the last three decades, from John Paul II to Francis. These movements are a complex phenomenon that shapes the Church now more than before, and they play a key role for the future of Catholicism as a global community, in transition from a Eurocentric tradition to a world Church.

Dr. Massimo Faggioli is professor in the department of theology and religious studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia). He has written extensively on modern Church history and on the Second Vatican Council. He is the author of True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (2012), and John XXIII: The Medicine of Mercy (2014), both from Liturgical Press.