Overview

Vatican II profoundly changed the outlook and the message of the Catholic Church. After decades, if not centuries, in which Catholic public opinion appeared to be primarily oriented towards the distant past and bygone societal models, suddenly the Catholic Church embraced the world as it was, and it joined in the struggle to create a radiant future.The Sixties were a time of great socio-cultural and political ferment in Europe as a whole. Especially the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s witnessed an astounding range of 'new' and 'old' social movements reaching for the sky. Catholic activists provided fuel to the fire in more ways than one. Catholics had embarked on the quest for new horizons for some years prior to the sudden growth of secular activism in and around the magic year of 1968. When secular radicals joined up with Catholic activists, a seemingly unstoppable dynamic was unleashed.This book covers five crucial contributions by Catholic communities to the burgeoning atmosphere of those turbulent years: a) the theological innovations of Vatican II, which made such an unprecedented engagement of Catholics possible in the first place, but also post-conciliar theological developments; b) the resurgence of the worker priest experiment, and the first-ever creation of autonomous organisations of radical parish priests; c) the simultaneous creation of grassroots organisations - base communities - by (mostly) lay activists across the continent; d) the crucial roles of Catholic students in the multiform student movements shaping Europe in these years; e) the indispensable contributions of Catholic workers who helped shape - and often initiated - the wave of militant contestations shaking up labour relations after 1968.

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9780199593255

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Reviews

Horn's book deserves to be read widely by students and scholars of social movements, the history of the Left, church history, and post-war western European history. Hugh McDonnell, CritCom

Horn's impressive book will be the essential starting-point for all future work in this field. Hugh McLeod, Catholic Historical Review Gerd-Rainer Horn presents us with a trendsetting volume which will provide new momentum to research on European religious and social history of the 1960s and 1970s. Johannes Wischmeyer, SEHEPUNKTE By means of the methodology of comparative political science, Horn thus reintroduces into the history of the New Left actors and movements that have been relegated to the shadows for a long time and that, moreover, had contributed significantly to its political culture and key ideas. Alessandro Santagata, Il Manifesto Horn's book deserves to be read widely by students and scholars of social movements, the history of the Left, church history, and post-war western European history. Hugh McDonnell, CritCom

He has produced a highly scholarly work of singular importance, one that is credible, authoritative, and remarkably complete. It requires and deserves to be read carefully ... Horn is brilliant at capturing the overlap between the visions of a radical theology and the movements its proponents endorsed ... The best way of appraising this work is to treat it as the definitive benchmark for understanding the rise and fall of progressive Catholicism in the countries selected for study. * Kieran Flanagan, Catholic Social Science Review * an absolutely fascinating book * Patrick Gruson, Archives de sciences sociales des religions * Horn's impressive book will be the essential starting-point for all future work in this field. * Hugh McLeod, Catholic Historical Review * Gerd-Rainer Horn presents us with a trendsetting volume which will provide new momentum to research on European religious and social history of the 1960s and 1970s. * Johannes Wischmeyer, SEHEPUNKTE * By means of the methodology of comparative political science, Horn thus reintroduces into the history of the New Left actors and movements that have been relegated to the shadows for a long time and that, moreover, had contributed significantly to its political culture and key ideas. * Alessandro Santagata, Il Manifesto * Horn's book deserves to be read widely by students and scholars of social movements, the history of the Left, church history, and post-war western European history. * Hugh McDonnell, CritCom *

Author Information

Born and raised in West Germany, after his Abitur Gerd-Rainer Horn emigrated to the United States where he then lived and worked for twenty-six years, along the way obtaining his B.A. (Minnesota), M.A. and Ph.D. (Michigan). He taught at Montana State and Western Oregon University before moving to the University of Huddersfield and then the University of Warwick in England. In 2013, Horn finally returned to Europe, now teaching at Sciences Po (Institut d'Études Politiques) in Paris. Focussing on the transnational dimension of continental western European social movements between the 1920s and the 1980s, Horn's particular areas of expertise include the political itinerary of social democracy, the socio-political challenges of the immediate post-WW II period, the cultural and political innovations of the 1960s and 1970s, in addition to the phenomenon of progressive Catholicism in Western Europe.

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