A Popular History of the Catholic Church Author:Philip Hughes The task before the historian of the Church is simply this--to say how the divinely founded society has fared in the two thousand years or so since it entered on its mission, how far its field of action has expanded, how far its mission has been helped or hindered, by whom or by what natural circumstances. — This book offers itself as an introduc... more »tion of the most elementary kind that will relate as parts of an organic whole 'the main events which directed the course of the current or were regarded as specially symbolic of each passing age' and that will roughly estimate the effect on the general development of the chief or the many personalities with which the history of the Church has been enriched.« less