A concise history of the Catholic Church / Thomas Bokenkotter.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 431-475) and index.

Jesus -- The church spreads across the empire -- A church with authority -- Constantine favors the christians and inaugurates a new era of church history -- Worship, faith, and life in the early church -- The final victory over paganism -- Jerome -- Augustine -- Pope Leo wins a great victory for papal primacy at Chalcedon -- The popes and Franks join forces to create a new unity: christendom -- Hildebrand's revolution makes the popes supreme in christendom -- The papal monarchy at its zenith -- The eastern schism -- Church and society in western christendom -- The aristotelian invasion -- The decline of the papal monarchy -- The papacy survives the great schism and puts down conciliarism -- The church falls to reform itself in time -- Luther splits christendom -- Calvin makes protestantism an international movement -- The Catholic Church recovers its spiritual elan -- The challenge of the new thought -- The church torn by internal strife: Jansenism and Gallicanism -- The French Revolution shatters the Church of the Old Order -- Pius IX says "no" to the liberal catholics -- The syllabus of errors squelches the liberal catholics -- Pio Nono carries ultramontanism to a grand triumph at Vatican I -- Social catholicism and christian democracy -- The modernist debacle -- The church moves out to the whole world -- The american church -- The popes of the twentieth century -- The resurgent liberal catholics ring down the curtain on the post-trent church at the second vatican council -- The sound and fury of renewal -- The bark of peter in stormy seas (1976-1989).