Global Catholicism charts the complex history of the forces of renewal unleashed on the Roman Catholic Church by the Second Vatican Council and the counter-forces that were mobilised against it during the last half century. Ian Linden offers a comprehensive analysis of how much the Catholic Church has lived up to the Council's promise, come to terms with pluralism, modernity, and different forms of spirituality and become a genuinely world Church, the only competitor to global Islam in the twenty-first century. He focuses notably on changes that had wider historical importance than the internal evolution of the Roman Catholic Church as a religious organisation: war and peace, nationalism and democratisation in Africa, liberation theology, military dictatorships, guerrilla movements in Latin America, Africa and Philippines, interaction with communist governments, in culturation and relations with resurgent Islam.