Vatican I - John W. O'Malley

The enduring influence of the Catholic Church has many sources-its spiritual and intellectual appeal, missionary achievements, wealth, diplomatic effectiveness, and stable hierarchy. But in the first half of the nineteenth century, the foundations upon which the church had rested for centuries were shaken.
In the eyes of many thoughtful people, liberalism in the guise of liberty, equality, and fraternity was the quintessence of the evils that shook those foundations. At the Vatican Council of 1869-1870, the church made a dramatic effort to set things right by defining the doctrine of papal infallibility.

In Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, John W. O'Malley draws us into the bitter controversies over papal infallibility that at one point seemed destined to rend the church in two. Archbishop Henry Manning was the principal driving force for the definition, and Lord Acton was his brilliant counterpart on the other side. But they shrink in significance alongside Pope Pius IX, whose zeal for the definition was so notable that it raised questions about the very legitimacy of the council. Entering the fray were politicians such as Gladstone and Bismarck. The growing tension in the council played out within the larger drama of the seizure of the Papal States by Italian forces and its seemingly inevitable consequence, the conquest of Rome itself.

Largely as a result of the council and its aftermath, the Catholic Church became more pope-centered than ever before. In the terminology of the period, it became ultramontane.

John W. O'Malley is University Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University and the author of many books, including Four Cultures of the West, Trent, Vatican I, What Happened at Vatican II, and The First Jesuits (all from Harvard); The First Jesuits has been translated into twelve languages. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a recipient of the Harvard Centennial Medal as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Society for Italian Historical Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Catholic Historical Association. O'Malley is a member of the Society of Jesus and a Roman Catholic priest.

[O'Malley's] oeuvre now forms a satisfyingly coherent whole.As authoritative as it is accessible.
Times Literary Supplement - Stella Fletcher

An eminent scholar of modern Catholicism.O'Malley.invit[es] us to see Catholicism's recent history as profoundly shaped by and against the imposing legacy of Pius IX.
Wall Street Journal

With Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, John O'Malley, S.J., the worldwide dean of church historians, has completed his trinity of works on church councils. O'Malley completes his masterclass in church history and ecclesiology of the last 500 years, telling us as much about the church now as then.
America - Christopher Bellitto

The best available [work] in English on Vatican I.O'Malley's account of the debate over infallibility is masterful.The descriptions of the council's setting and procedure convey a feel for what the bishops experienced there.
Commonweal - William L. Portier

O'Malley offers a comprehensive and gripping narrative of Vatican I.In his eminently accessible volume, O'Malley repeats the success of his earlier histories of Vatican II and Trent.[He]
weaves together the doctrinal issues with the personalities of the principal historical characters in the drama of controversy and conflict.[This] belongs to a long and productive career of exposing a wide readership to the fascinatingly complex history of the Church.
The Tablet - Hilmar M. Pabel

O'Malley gives an accessible, even-handed overview of the council with a minimum of interpretive gloss. He excels in describing the ways in which the council initiated deep changes that still affect the everyday lives of Catholics.
First Things - Russell Hittinger

Much needed and very informative.O'Malley's book shows the many ways in which the church we know is still very much shaped by the First.Vatican Council. Put differently, the modern church is still, in certain ways, the work of reactionaries.
National Catholic Reporter

Provides an elegant historical narrative.
Times Higher Education - John Cornwell

A fascinating and dispassionate glimpse into a pivotal and dramatic period of Catholic Church history.
Library Journal - James Wetherbee

[A] judicious work of scholarship, carefully researched and elegantly narrated.
Patheos - Thomas Albert Howard

A concise and accessible overview of the Council and the history that led to it.O'Malley does an excellent job of narrating the dynamics at play as the Church picked up the pieces from the devastation of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.
Denver Catholic - Jared Staudt

To be the premier historian of the modern ecumenical councils would seem an odd bit of praise, but John O'Malley, S.J., is exactly that and with characteristic grace. His history of Vatican I is a marvelous bookend to his field-shaping history of Vatican II and possesses the lucidity, insight, and erudition we associate with one of the world's leading historians of Catholicism. It immediately becomes the standard history.
John McGreevy, University of Notre Dame

This excellent book fills a critical need for an up-to-date and comprehensive account of the events, the personalities, and the elaboration of the doctrine at the First Vatican Council. O'Malley draws from the best and most recent historical sources published in multiple languages to weave together masterfully the complex convergence of social, political, intellectual, and ecclesial movements that contribute to a culture of ultramontanism, the horizon against which one must understand both the event of the council and its teaching.
Catherine Clifford, Saint Paul University