A wide array of topics are covered here, including the fascinating stories of a number of the popes, the origins of priestly celibacy, as well as a summary of the great councils of the Church and what they did and did not decide. O’Malley is a masterful writer and elucidates complex ideas in a way that the average lay person can not only understand, but also appreciate. A key highlight is the chapter from an address the author delivered about his own life of learning and navigating academia. It is humble, encouraging, and filled with quite a bit of history itself from the author’s multiple decades of experience as a student, priest, scholar, and teacher. As is the case with most of O’Malley’s corpus of work, this collection will please even the most cursory student of history and whet readers’ appetites for more.

Publishers Weekly

Readers who are serious about their love of the Church will find this book to be of immense interest and insight.

St. Anthony Messenger

If the historian's work is to make sense of the past, the effort is often shaped according to matters of the moment. This is history with a purpose, at work in the service of the present and is largely what O'Malley is about in this highly readable collection of lectures, book chapters, and previously published essays. A constant theme throughout is 'what happened in the past gives helpful perspectives on the present' (95). But this is not simply a collection of O'M.'s short historical writing: this is a handbook of historical pathways to contemporary Roman Catholic ecclesiology. And it's done with a personal touch.

Theological Studies

John O'Malley, SJ, is the uncontested dean of Catholic historians in this country. Like everything he writes, his new book, a collection of superb essays, is based on his vast learning and written in sparkling prose. I cannot recommend his scholarship or his writing highly enough.

James Martin, SJ, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and Jesus: A Pilgrimage

Only the best historians, who have spent a lifetime at their craft, can compass their learning into the brief scope of an essay. In the present volume, John O’Malley has done this time and time again to stunning effect on a range of topics in Catholic Church history, where he is the consummate guide. The elegance of expression in these essays is the direct consequence of his mastery of the subject.

Jeffrey von Arx, SJ, president and professor of history, Fairfield University

Immensely learned and deeply humane, O’Malley demonstrates how Catholics cannot understand their present without understanding their past. His sparkling prose and acute insights are not to be missed by anyone concerned about the state of Roman Catholicism today.

M. Cathleen Kaveny, Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston College