Books
Upon This Rock
The Popes and Their Changing Role
Publishers: Melbourne University Press and Crossroad (New York)
Pages: xi and 405
Price: Various
ISBN:0-522-84849-4 (Australia) and 0-8245-1939-6 (US)
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Reviews for Upon This Rock
Michael McGirr in The Australian Book Review (August 2000) says that the book “is remarkably brief for the historical ground it covers and for the range of ideas it treats... The whole story is there, twenty centuries of it.... Even for a reader who has taken an interest in the strange fortunes of the papacy, Upon This Rock is an education. It is rich in personality and unwilling to settle for clichés. It is especially probing in dealing with the impact on Western civilization in the so-called dark ages and the experience of national identity and internationalization in the Middle Ages... Paul Collins is one of the most hopeful critics of the papacy. He has been accused of undermining the institution. The opposite is true. He concludes that the papacy has never been a ‘static institution’ and that its survival has depended on adaption and change. He wants it to breathe new life.”