Practicing Catholic

This personal history of the American Catholic Church during writer Carroll's lifetime traces the transformation of a medieval institution, suspicious of American ideas of freedom and democracy, into a church that has begun to embrace basic American principles of pluralism and respect for conscience. The book tells the story of heroes (Pope John XXIII, Thomas Merton, Cardinal Richard Cushing, William Sloane Coffin), and great events (Vatican II, the Kennedys, the end of the Cold War). Considering the new meaning of belief in a secular world, it stands against the fundamentalisms of…