Church History books I highly recommend

[Michael Wilson]

"A History of the Catholic Church", Msgr. Phillip Hughes, three volumes. Loreto Publications.
Church history can be confusing, and dry, with a multitude of names, dates, characters etc. Rev. Phillip Hughes has done a fantastic job in summarizing a lot of information and presenting it in an attractive readable format; It is Fr. Hughes's talent to tell the story in a manner that is both interesting, informative and very entertaining; if I didn't know it was all factual, I would have taken it for a fictional novel. I have not read the volumes in order; I started with Volume II "The Church and the World the Church Created", In which he states the following in his introduction:

The Church was born into a world society in whose organisation it had no share. The principles on which that society or civilization was organised-theories of man's nature, his origin and destiny; theories of man's relation to the world and to his fellows; theories of moral values-in no way derived from  the Church, to which in time that civilization was precedent. From the first moment of corporate life, however, the Church put forth new principles on all these fundamental matters. But before, in the West at least, those principles had begun to command the general assent, the old political body began to disintegrate and to pass under the control either of pagans of a more primitive culture or else of heretics, of minds imperfectly Christianized. And old world was ending, a new world in process of formation upon its ruins. In that transition there is one all present, unceasingly active institution, which continuously exercises an influence upon all those who, consciously or unconsciously, are guiding mankind through the transition, upon the generals and their advisers, upon the administrators, the shapers of laws, the new barbarian kings-even when these are heretics. That institution is the hierarchically organized Catholic Church.

I was influenced into reading this, by (what else) a discussion on one of our threads on the fact that some Popes were not very virtuous men; which I knew was true; but getting the into the details of the "why's" and "wherefore's", re-assures one that the Church, although composed of fallible even sinful men, is guided by the Holy Ghost and will never fail; even if it may appear so, as it has in past dark times.
Five Stars.