Around the time of Innocent III (1198–1216), the appetite for justice was providing the popes with an opportunity to expand their authority. The popes responded to the need and to the opportunity primarily by encouraging appeals to the papal court, where the cases were commonly delegated to clergymen near the origin of the case, clergymen who acted as papal judges delegate. The use of this procedure expanded rapidly in the second half of the twelfth century and was especially encouraged by Innocent himself. The need and the opportunity were there, but how good was the response? The purpose of this article is to see how and how well papal justice worked in France around the time of Innocent III and, in the process, to compare it with alternative forms of judicial procedure available at the time.

One of the more active historical controversies centers around the precise relationship of religion to politics during the period of the English Civil War. While all historians recognize the crucial role played by Puritans in the rebellion against Charles I, the extent to which religious considerations influenced political activity within the Long Parliament remains open to question. A major reason for the dispute is that terms used by contemporaries tend to be misleading. Thus, the two parties which are said to have dominated the Long Parliament during the 1640s are known by descriptive names (“the Presbyterians” and “the Independents”) that the bear little resemblance to their actual platforms.

The attempt to arrive at a balanced and objective understanding of the relationship between the German Protestant church, which is predominantly Lutheran, and the rise of National Socialism is an almost impossible task today. For what we now hear about the Protestant church of the thirties tends to be written by those who were vindicated by the turn of events, while those who supported Hitler and National Socialism have tended to remain silent, understandably enough. The flood of books and articles by the Confessing Church gives the misleading impression that the stand of the church toward the Nazi state was one of resistance and opposition. Instead, the main Protestant response to Hitler and to the nationalistic forces he represented ranged from inactive indifference to over-whelming support. The Confessing Church, which did display a courageous though not always consistent opposition, at best never spoke for more than about one tenth of all Protestant Christians.

Delegates to a special meeting of the Federal Council of Churches in Columbus Ohio, in March, 1946, adopted a report which committed the Council to work for a non-segregated church in a non-segregated society and called upon its constituent communions to do likewise. The statement represented a new departure, but its timing—coming at the end of the Second World War—was also significant. Although the position of the Federal Council was in advance of any positain yet taken by the major protestant denominations individually, it indicated that American protestantism was beginng to be challenged in a new way by the question of race. In the yers immediately prior to 1939 the denominations paid little attention to race as a social issue: by 1945 it was frequently the subject of denominational pronouncements and editorials in the church press. This contrast in the reponse of the churches suggests that the years of the Second World War had been crucial in placing new pressures upon white attitudes toward black Americans.

In the 1860s Walt Whitman described New York as a “city of spires and masts” with “the flags of all nations … duly lowered at sunset.” To this celebrator or urban life New York was a “city of the world! For all races are here; all the lands of the earth make contributions here.” The cosmopolitan character of New York was especially reflected in the city's Roman Catholic community. In the words of John Hughes, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York at mid-century, his “people were composed of representatives from almost all nations.” There were Italian and French Catholics, German and Irish Catholics as well as white and black American-born Catholics. And if one looked long enough, he would come across Catholic merchants from Spain and Catholic chefs from Switzerland. But within this polyglot community the two most significant ethnic groups in ante-bellum New York were the Irish and German immigrants.

Thomas T. McAvoy has written in his study of “Americanism” in the Roman Catholic Church: “The history of the modernist controversy in this country has not been written and the destruction of pertinent records will make such a study very difficult.”. “Modernism” was quite evidently a movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. It had its roots and took its strength there. There, too, it was destroyed. For the most part, American Catholics did not contribute to “modernism”s evolution, development and defeat. But eventually the main current of “modernism” in Europe rolled its waves onto American shores. Amidst many other streams, its waters flowed into the life of one man, William L. Sullivan, an Irish Catholic and Paulist priest.

Europeans who came to America from the sixteenth century on, came not to discover a new world but to re-create their own versions of Europe. Whether Spanish conquistador or Virginia planter, each hoped to make America and native Americans into the shape of idealized Europes and Europeans. Of all those who made such plans, it was the Society of Jesus that had sufficient authority and manpower to put its visions into practice. Jesuits who came to New France in the 1630s brought not only Christianity but a whole complex of European social and political values. To examine Jesuit “civilization planning” in New France is to see in microcosm a significant part of early European-Indian relations.