Can someone recommend a good, easy to read book about the dark side of the Catholic church. It’s a popular subject in fiction, and there were (are) some pretty outrageous shenanigans afoot, but I’d like some facts.
Nothing that’s gonna get me shot, mind you. But some dirt would be cool. 
I am familiar with a book called The Bad Popes by a Chamberlin, a book that apparently is good enough to still be in print… Look it up on Amazon and then follow the “if you like this” links and you’ll probably find a few more things like it.
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David Kertzer (who also wrote this ) received many bad reviews by Catholic readers, though none that I’ve read could show clear evidence that Kertzer’s research was shoddy. It’s about a nasty incident in Bologna in 1858 when a 6 year old Jewish boy was removed from his family on direct orders from of the church because his nurse had baptized him as a Catholic. Pope Pius IX (the same pope who declared the papacy infallible in ex cathedra matters as well as the first to condemn first trimester abortions as murder) became the boy’s legal guardian; he became a priest, lived to be a very old man, refused to see his birth family, and ironically had been marked for deportation when he died in 1940 because the Nazis who were exerting pressure on Italy considered him a Jew.
For real controversy (I have literally known fanatical Catholic apologists to begin screaming when this book is mentioned), there’s Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pope Pius XII . It actually isn’t quite as vitriolic as its title implies, ultimately concluding more that the Vatican could have done a whole lot more to help the Jews/afflict the Nazis that proving any intentional complicitness.
For a good book on the Crusades (all of the Crusades) I reccomend Robert Payne’s Dream and the Tomb. It’s not fiction, but he has a novelist’s touch when it comes to detail and really brings a personal feel for the period.
well, there are the comic book revelations of “former Jesuit priest Alberto Rivera” written by one Jack T. Chick L
also, 50 YEARS IN THE CHURCH OF ROME by Charles Chiniquy and THE AWFUL DISCLOSURES OF MARIA MONK
I DON’T REALLY ENDORSE ANY OF THESE G
Thanks, all. That should keep me going for a while.
First, I think, it’ll be The Bad Popes.
Ain’t amazon a wonderful thing?
Peace,
mangeorge
Wait, Jack Chick as in the demented evil vitrolic cartoonist? He wrote a book? You’d think all the concentrated bile would melt it.
A long section in Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly deals with the Renaissance Popes.
If you can find a copy, check out The Crusade Through Arab Eyes which is a history of the Crusades told from the Arab point of view.
Was it Michael Palin of Monty Python fame who wrote a very easy to read book on the Crusades? I have a copy in a box somewhere.
I’m not sure about Palin, but Terry Jones of Monty Python (who is also an expert in medeival literature and a very good amateur historian) produced an excellent 4 part documentary of the Crusades. It’s accurate, has a good deal of humor, and some really cool special effects (including Byzantine mosaics coming to life and an 11th century movie theater showing newsreels of the Crusades.) It’s available through Netflix and many video stores, or at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005U8F3/qid=1072672199/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-8233950-0472821?v=glance&s=dvd
Sorry, it was Jones: the book I have accompanies the documentary.
“Eleanor of Aquitaine” (The Biography, not the bodice-ripper), sorry can’t remember the author. Her first husband was St. Louis, her uncle was Raymond of Antioch, her son was Richard Lion-heart. She even goes to the Holyland with Louis. She is all over the Crusades.
For fiction that reads ‘real’; “Deus Lo Volt” by Connell. First person account of the second Crusade.
For a worse period of RC history, “M; The Man who would become Caravaggio” about the Counter-Reformation. Maybe the most repressive regime in history.
I second Nemo’s recommendation of Tuchman’s “The March of Folly” The Renaissance Popes are among the stupidest people that will ever be allowed to rule.
Tallyan- the Alberto Rivera series is in five comics which supposedly chronicles his career as a Jesuit priest who infiltrates & destroys fundy Protestant churches until he converts & then relates how the Catholic Church is Mystery Babylon of the Book of Revelation & is the root of every evil in the past 1700 years (Islam AND the Inquisition, Communism AND Naziism, Freemasonry AND KuKluxKlannery, and on & on),
“Dungeon, Fire and Sword” by John J. Robinson deals with the Knights Templar during the crusades.
This knightly order (the first non-secular order of knights) was both sponsored by HMC, and later, destroyed by the same.