Rome Reshaped: Jubilees 1300-2000 - Hardcover

O'Grady, Desmond

9780826412058: Rome Reshaped: Jubilees 1300-2000

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082641205X ISBN 13: 9780826412058

Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group, 1999

Desmond O'Grady has written a history of Rome and the papacy seen through the grid of the twenty-five Jubilees that have occurred since the practice was initiated seven hundred years ago. During each Jubilee Year the Holy See has asserted its centrality, its universal relevance, and responded to various challenges: the Islamic threat, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the loss of the Papal States. The story of the Jubilees is told by means of the following coordinates; the state of the city and of the church at the time, the most memorable episodes, and the reactions of the pilgrims, many of them kings, queens and emperors. These 'liminal', or threshold, moments find the church often at its best and its worst. The final chapter analyzes the announced goals and prospects for Jubilee 2000 and explains how the church hopes to ferry humankind into the third millennium with a new sense of history as a meaningful journey.

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About the Author:

Desmond O'Grady is an author and journalist who has lived in Rome since the 1960s. He is the author of ten books and a correspondent for numerous magazines in Ireland, Italy, Australia, the Uk, and America, including Commonweal, Newsday, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

From Publishers Weekly:

Is it possible to be an authentic Christian pilgrim today? Veteran Vatican reporter O'Grady (Commonweal, New York Times) is intrigued by the idea of pilgrimage as a spiritual discipline. The Year 2000 Jubilee announced by Pope John Paul II (the 26th Jubilee in the last 700 years) offers O'Grady the opportunity to examine what Jubilee has meant to countless pilgrims. O'Grady lines up nearly a score of themes related to Jubilee years of the past, sketching the ecclesiastic, cultural, theological, social, scriptural and political issues related to the idea of a Jubilee year. Along the way, various saints and sinners take the stage, including Saint Ignatius Loyola, playwright Oscar Wilde, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon. O'Grady ties the players and themes together under the umbrella of spiritual pilgrimage. He also examines Jubilee's salient political underpinnings (he contends that Pope John Paul II, for example, may have orchestrated the 2000 Jubilee so the Church can apologize for past wrongs). Scholars will not be satisfied with the book's dearth of academic research, but most readers will find it an informative and insightful discussion of pilgrimage and the upcoming Jubilee year. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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