Reviews for Catholic nationalism in the Irish revival

The average rating for Catholic nationalism in the Irish revival based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-05-27 00:00:00 Larry Dian I was really going to give this book a good review, because it tries to be objective. Unfortunately, it cannot expect spirituality of any sort and labours to present the movements of the sixteenth century entirely as political battles between the popes and the various kingdoms. A twentieth century political and human-rights world view is effectively placed against a society from a different time. The other preoccupation of the author is with the Jesuits. He spends too much time trying to decide whether or not the Society of Jesus was instrumental in the Catholic Reformation. Were they or weren't they? No answer. After dawdling around, he decides that the use of words like 'probably' and 'possibly' is best. That's silly. Just as silly as saying that S. Peter Canisius was cold in his method, because he viewed suffering as a God given means of purification - a very Catholic perspective. Finally, the books stupidity can be demonstrated by the following description of the eccentricities of the good priest, Fr. Philip Neri of Rome: '...he was certainly not perfect... could be intolerant and hurtful... he represented a branch of Catholicism that was deeply spiritual when... much of the sixteenth-century revival was... intolerant puritanism and rigid discipline... while popes were sweeping Rome clean of homosexuals, Philip was openly taking great pleasure from a non-physical relationship with the young boys who made up a significant part of his following...' (p.112) So then, a great Catholic saint is made into a homosexual and the author claims to know nothing about what drove him to his work, although several histories reveal a direct spiritual awakening effected by God in the catacombs in Rome. What more about the spiritual awakening of saintly men? There is S. Vincent de Paul of France. Now then, the author cannot say what suddenly changed the life of this man either, but he can suggest that 'he came to believe in the act he put on for his wealthy benefactors, and that he decided to devote the same drive and energy to goodness that he had previously devoted to ambition.' It's plain that Mr. Randell chooses which books he wants to read history from, and they are not often the books written about the instruments of the Catholic renewal by the people who knew them. I do not recommend this book. I give it one star, my lowest ever on this application, if only for calling S. Philip a homosexual. My copy's going into the bin.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-17 00:00:00 Allen Gabbard A friend leant me this book to help with my History A Level but I found that most of it wasn’t relevant to what I was doing, but it did provide a bit of background information to the topic I was doing. However, the majority of the information didn’t sink in as I found it a rather boring book. Due to my limited amount of knowledge on the Catholic and Counter Revolutions, I can’t really comment on how good and how accurate this book is. I can only tell you how I found reading it. I found the majority of it extremely boring but it’s important to note that I have no interest in this topic. The only section I found interesting was that on the Jesuits but I felt that the question they set about answering in this section wasn’t actually answered. Without any knowledge on this book I can’t really write a worthwhile review on it and I just wish it could have been more engaging (and more relevant to my A Level).