Priests, Prelates and People (International Library of Historical Studies)

The alliance between altar and crown had been an established fact for several centuries. Priests, Prelates and People records the Church struggling to adapt to the new political and social landscape ushered in by the French Revolution and shows how the formation of national states and identities was both helped and hindered by the Catholic establishment. Faced with the emergence of modern mass politics, the Catholic Church has frequently diverged from lay opinion. Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett show the Vatican increasingly out of step in the wake of World Wars, the Cold War and the massive expansion of the developing world, with its problems of population growth and under-development.