I was originally excited to see notice of this book: The Roman Catholic Church: A History by Edward Norman. A coffee-table style, richly illustrated history of the Church was badly needed, I thought. Well – it still is.

Oh, the images are nice, but the important part – the text – leaves much to be desired. Of course the Catholic Church is a rather large entity with a zillion facets that you could attempt to cover in a history, with no success, especially in just one volume. But this book – well, it’s hard to say exactly what it is a history of. In a way, it’s primarily a history of the papacy, but it’s even incomplete in that respect. It seems to be fundamentally about the institutional church’s relationship to the secular world. I guess that’s it.

So there is no – absolutely no- treatment of the development of sacraments, including the Mass. Just the minimal on spirituality – from the original monastics over to mendicants, etc. Doesn’t cover the Gospels, Paul much at all – just sort of jumps into Rome.

Nice images, but not a very helpful text, sad to say, even as a quick overview, since so many important elements of church life aren’t even mentioned.