num_pages: 272
description: "The Catholic Church was the only the Church, according to Lennie Bruce — the extreme taken as a type, the most fixed part of religion's stable landscape. If the forces of change can make it crumble, then what social institutions can hope to stand?"Mr. Wills takes the disarray of the Catholic Church as a model of institutional breakdown, tracing parallel agonies in church and state. A crisis of authority has followed on the false optimism of the Second Vatican Council, just as it did on the empty hopes of President Kennedy's "Camelot." The demise of liberalism, the rise of radicalism, the hardening of reaction — the same story unfolds in its sacred and secular versions.The author combines reportage and analysis in a way that makes this book a supplement to Wills' study of social change in Nixon Agonistes. He asks whether life can rise again from our institutional ruins, and finds promising signs of this, not only among Catholic "prophets," but Protestant and Jewish ones as well.
language: English
title: Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy and Radical Religion
titlecomplete: Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy and Radical Religion
genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion
ratings_count: 25
awards: awardedAt: 94723200000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Contemporary Affairs
publisher: Doubleday & Company