Black Legends and the Light of the World: The War of Words with the Incarnate Word by John C. Rao, D. Phil., Oxford University, Associate Professor of History, St. John’s University. When it is published, the book will be available on store.Catholicism.org.
Below is a summary of the book’s material. The Remnant has posted an interview with the author.
Black Legends and the Light of the World is a thematic discussion of the whole of Church History. It has three purposes. The first is to explain the successes of Catholic Christendom as the product of faithfulness to the fullness of the message of the Incarnate Word regarding the individual and society. A second is to connect its failures to an all too frequent clerical and lay Catholic willingness to believe and follow the guidance of rhetorical “word merchants” who either falsely blacken Christ’s teaching or emasculate it, rendering it incapable of changing fallen men and nature. The third is to demonstrate the essential unity of such destructive rhetorical game playing in its perennial war of words against the substantive natural and supernatural correction and transformation of man and society through the Word—from the age of the Sophists to that of Global Pluralism.
