The Catholic Church is one of the oldest institutions in the world, spanning the entire globe. There may be no more daunting task for a historian than to try to write a concise (but not too concise) history of the Church, especially in a compelling and unique way. Joseph Pearce has done just this in his latest book, titled The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions (Ignatius Press, 2023).
Pearce goes through the entire history of the Church, with a chapter dedicated to each century, while examining the Church’s life through three lenses: the good, the bad, and the beautiful. By taking this approach, he gives the reader a fresh perspective on many aspects of the Church’s history.
Pearce is the author of dozens of books, including biographies of G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Oscar Wilde, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, William Shakespeare, and more, and is the editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series. He has written books about literature, including Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know and Twelve Great Books: Going Deeper into Classic Literature, as well as Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England.
Pearce recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his new book, its unique approach to examining the history of the Church, and what such a historical survey turned up.
Catholic World Report: How did this new book come about?
Joseph Pearce: I wanted to present a panoramic history of Christendom from an authentic humanist perspective, i.e. a perspective rooted in Christian realist anthropology. Since history is first and foremost human and not merely a mechanism, or a process, or a deterministic “progress”, it is necessary, first and foremost, to know who we are.
My approach is rooted in the time-honoured Christian understanding of man as being uniquely made in the image of God but broken (fallen). He has three facets. He is homo viator, the travelling man on the journey of life who is called to be a pilgrim on the journey to heaven. Yet he is also homo superbus, the proud man who refuses the journey, choosing to pursue his own way of selfishness instead of the appointed self-sacrificial path. Finally, he is anthropos, who looks up in wonder at the mysteries of the cosmos, engaging with beauty and seeking to make beautiful things.
History is, therefore, a tapestry woven with these three essentially human threads.
CWR: It’s a unique approach to a survey of the Church’s history. Rather than just a chronology, it takes each period and looks at the good, the bad, and the beautiful from that time. Why take this approach?
Pearce: It does take a chronological approach, beginning with the life of Christ and proceeding with one separate chapter for each of the twenty centuries since Christ. But I chose to subdivide each chapter, i.e. each century, into the three essentially human threads: categorized as the good, the bad and the beautiful. The good in each century is the work of homo viator, those humble souls who pursue the good, true and beautiful as a means of serving God. These are the saints in each century, or those who were at least trying to be saints.
The bad in each century is the work of homo superbus, those proud souls who pursue power over others instead of seeking to serve others. Refusing to sacrifice themselves for other, they sacrifice others to the self.
The beautiful in each century are the fruits of the imagination, which shine forth in great works of creativity in the visual arts, music and literature. If we see history in this three-dimensional way, we see beyond flawed notions of “progress” to the true pattern of history, its essentially human character and dynamic.
CWR: Were there any centuries in which you had trouble finding either good, or bad, or beautiful? Or any centuries that were weighted heavily in one category or another?
Pearce: The same pattern emerges in all centuries. The war between good and evil, between homo viator and homo superbus, takes place in every human heart and therefore takes place in every age of human society. The good are invariably outnumbered and outgunned by the bad in terms of worldly or political power. This is why Tolkien refers to history as the “long defeat”, which contains only glimpses of final victory. The final victory is “off-stage” in eternity and the glimpses are provided by manifestations of the good, true and beautiful in time.
In Augustinian terms, we can say that the temporal City of God (the Church Militant) is always besieged by the temporal City of Man. The final victory of the eternal City of God (the Church Triumphant) is assured because it’s already been won but this victory is beyond the temporal domain of history. Apart from the struggle between good and evil, there are always glimpses of victory to be found in the great works of beauty in every generation. This is the third thread which runs through every culture in every century.
CWR: Most surveys of Church history focus on the saints, the popes, the wars, the heresies; very few include the “beautiful” aspect, exploring the art alongside these other facets. Why is this important? What sort of distinctive insight into the Church’s history can this give us?
Pearce: Benedict XVI, a truly great and greatly missed pope, wrote that the only defence of the Church is the saints she has nurtured and the great works of beauty she has inspired. In every generation, God’s creative presence in the creature called man manifests itself in works of art, music and literature which shine forth goodness, truth and beauty which serve as an epiphanous blessing to besieged humanity. In the same way that the love of the saints lights a candle in the darkness, so do great works of beauty. The saints and the arts are allies. They remind us that the power of darkness cannot conquer forever.
CWR: Was there anything you encountered in your research and writing that surprised you, maybe even something that challenged your understanding of some aspect of the Church’s history?
Pearce: If I’m to be honest, I’d have to say no. If anything, my research could be seen as a scientific experiment in which I was putting Christian anthropology to the test. Would it stand the test of time? In other words, would it stand the test of history? My research served to prove to me that the Christian understanding of humanity and history is the only true formula that unlocks the mystery of man’s journey through time. I hope that the historical evidence presented in my book will serve to convince the reader as surely as it has convinced the writer!
CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
Pearce: I’m hoping that readers will find enlightenment and encouragement through their engagement with the salient features of two millennia of history. I hope that they will see that “progressive” approaches to history are flawed because they are rooted in a fatal misunderstanding of humanity and, in consequence, of history.
History is human, which means that there will be no golden age of utopia in the future, any more than there was a golden age of utopia in the past. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, we live in the best of times and the worst of times, as did our ancestors. There is goodness, truth and beauty in every century, and there is wickedness, deception and ugliness in every century.
The only true golden age is not in humanity’s temporal future but in the eternal victory in heaven that’s already been won. This is why the only “end of the world” that each of us need to worry about is the end of our own world, i.e. the end of our own lives.
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Looking forward to reading Pearce’s book. I hope its more than just a cursory review of these three elements across a 2,000 year span. Although the focus was wholly different, Warren Carroll’s treatment of the history of the Church was a multi-volumed one.
Yes and no…
We read that “progressive approaches to history are flawed,” but, so too, is Pearce’s similar periodization of history? When the mystery and concrete fact (both!) of the universal Incarnation is always at the center of the academically superimposed chronology.
St. Augustine is noted by some critics (Friedrich Heer, “The [!] Intellectual History of Europe,” 1966) for his near-denial of “time” (“The City of God”—lovers of God vs lovers of the world). Augustine’s followers also notice the unsolved riddle of time behind and within his writing:
“Midway between these two cities, of which one is the negation of the other, there is situated a neutral zone where the men of our day hope to construct a third city, which would be temporal like the earthly city, yet just in a temporal way, that is striving toward temporal justice obtainable by appropriate means. Such an idea seems never to have occurred to St. Augustine, at least, he never spoke of it” (Etienne Gilson in his introduction to the Image edition, 1958).
So, the enduring riddle of time vs/and eternity, or what Danielou beautifully (!) harmonizes as the “rhythm [!] of being and becoming” (“Prayer as a Political Problem,” 1965).
Why not ground-level, bishop-“facilitated,” and symphonic convergence of continental “synods”—all harmonizing toward Teilhard’s evolutionary, periodized and end-state Omega Point? The birthing of oracles embedded in Gaudium et Spes:
“Thus the human race has passed from a rather static concept [?] of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one [?]” (n. 5). And, “The Church further recognizes that worthy elements are found in today’s social movements, especially an evolution [?] toward unity, a process of wholesome socialization [?] and of association in civic and economic realms” (n. 42).
Convergence? After all, it was the American (“backwardist”?) politician Wendell Willkie who coined the slogan “One World” (his book title, 1943)—a global travelogue also channeling Einstein, Nehru, Gandhi and others. Very progressive, synthesizing, pluralist, ecumenical, and interreligious…
Synodality? An authentic and needed dialogue, or Teilhard’s “Noosphere?”
Appreciate this article. Going to buy this book and if it is as good as the article indicates will buy it for a Christmas present for family members. Think as part of Catholic catechesis process. There is so much to know, good, bad etc., as the article and book shows. At our Church a few years ago, a Catholic History video series made by Ascension Press, was presented. It was very informative, unfortunately attendance was way too small. Since then have read a few Catholic history related books. Read one on the Counsel of Nicaea that really informative just to know that Catholic Dogma (teaching) just didn’t pop up out of nowhere. Also helped me understand why the Nicaean Creed was modified years ago to include the term “Consubstantial with the Father”. Think more articles covering Catholic History Books would be useful, maybe one just reviewing ones that have been out for awhile. Thanks again for this review.
“The Catholic Church is one of the oldest institutions in the world, spanning the entire globe.”
Indeed. It’s no wonder aspiring world dominators work tirelessly to take ownership of it.
A man, who once espoused white supremacy, imprisoned, tried and formed by adversity in Britain, finally conversion to Catholicism whose work now reflects a Catholic perspective. I agree with his rationale for finding good bad and beautiful throughout Church history.
My comment focuses instead on the degree of good and bad, and related beautiful specifically within the early to mid centuries and the present. Although Pierce’s citing of Tolkien’s ‘long defeat’ and eventual victory is comparable. Comparable to the early centuries of the martyrs, the virile faith of the early Fathers, spiritual beauty followed by intellectual beauty and the arts. A long defeat is seen in the procession of rationalist visions of the truth, one marker the critical scientific approach of Catholic genius Rene Descartes and his methodical doubt.
Today there is ‘infinitely’ more, to hyperbolize, evil than good. Our faith in the past digressively weakened, moments of heresy, the Arian, a single issue much too complex for the average man, most at unlettered peasant level. Today the entire spectrum has been mitigated by rationalized interpretations. What compounds the perhaps irreversible dilemma is the papal teaching of our present pontificate, who managed to wrench away the moorings of all moral, theological doctrine by systematic suggestion in words and in writing. While there’s greater evil than ever there’s greater good in the witness of the faithful, and the spiritual beauty of their loyalty to Christ, seen recently in the example of Card Raymond Burke.
As it is written “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:10-12
Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. Romans 8:18
Do you not like Pearce then?
It’s not important if I like him or not. Is he one of the elect of God is the real question. Does he trust in the cross work of Christ alone for salvation or in the man made traditions of a church?
Another fundamentalist post that has absolutely nothing to do with the article, which was obviously not read beforehand. You’re predictable if nothing else.