John Cornwell has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Dark Box.
The Dark Box
Summary
Confession is a crucial ritual of the Catholic Church, offering absolution of sin and spiritual guidance to the faithful. Yet this ancient sacrament has also been a source of controversy and oppression, culminating, as prize-winning historian John Cornwell reveals in The Dark Box, with the scandal of clerical child abuse. Drawing on extensive historical sources, contemporary reports, and first-hand accounts, Cornwell takes a hard look at the long evolution of confession. The papacy made annual, one-on-one confession obligatory for the first time in the 13th century. In the era that followed, confession was a source of spiritual consolation as well as sexual and mercenary scandal. During the 16th century, the Church introduced the confession box to prevent sexual solicitation of women, but this private space gave rise to new forms of temptation, both for penitents and confessors. Yet no phase in the story of the sacrament has had such drastic consequences as a historic decree by Pope Pius X in 1910. In reaction to the spiritual perils of the new century, Pius sought to safeguard the Catholic faithful by lowering the age at which children made their first confession from their early teens to seven, while exhorting all Catholics to confess frequently instead of annually. This sweeping, inappropriately early imposition of the sacrament gave priests an unprecedented and privileged role in the lives of young boys and girlsa role that a significant number would exploit in the decades that followed. A much-needed account of confession’s fraught history, The Dark Box explores the sources of the sacrament’s harm and shame, while recognizing its continuing power to offer consolation and reconciliation.
©2014 John Cornwell (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Pontiff in Winter
Summary
Pope John Paul II is one of the most famous and influential political figures of the world. Now, best-selling author and journalist John Cornwell has written an accessible and provocative portrait of this highly charged figure, focusing primarily on the last five years and the major world events, and scandals within the Church, that have impacted the papacy. The result is a thoughtful assessment of John Paul II's legacy to the Church. In an age when many people see the Catholic Church as an institution in crisis, Cornwell raises the level of debate by posing difficult questions; chief among them is the effectiveness of a system that grants lifetime power to an individual vulnerable to the vicissitudes of aging and illness.
©2004 John Cornwell (P)2004 Books on Tape
Hitler's Scientists
Summary
When Hitler came to power in the 1930s, Germany had led the world in science, mathematics, and technology for nearly four decades. But while the fact that Hitler swiftly pressed Germany's scientific prowess into the service of a brutal, racist, xenophobic ideology is well known, few realize that German scientists had knowingly broken international agreements and basic codes of morality to fashion deadly weapons even before World War I. In Hitler's Scientists, historian John Cornwell explores German scientific genius in the first half of the twentieth century and shows how Germany's early lead in the new physics led to the discovery of atomic fission, which led the way to the atom bomb, and how the ideas of Darwinism were hijacked to create the lethal doctrine of racial cleansing. By the war's end, almost every aspect of Germany's scientific culture had been tainted by the exploitation of slave labor, human experimentation, and mass killings. Ultimately, it was Hitler's profound scientific ignorance that caused the Fatherland to lose the race for atomic weapons, which Hitler would surely have used. Cornwell argues that German scientists should be held accountable for the uses to which their knowledge was put, an issue with wide-ranging implications for the continuing unregulated pursuit of scientific progress.
©2003 John Cornwell (P)2003 Listen & Live Audio, Inc. Recorded by arrangement with Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Church, Interrupted
Summary
Church, Interrupted: Havoc & Hope: The Tender Revolt of Pope Francis is a revealing portrait of Pope Francis' hopeful yet controversial efforts to recreate the Catholic Church to become, once again, a welcoming place of empathy, love, and inclusiveness. Best-selling author, Vanity Fair contributor, and papal biographer John Cornwell tells the gripping insider story of Pope Francis' bid to bring renewal and hope to a crisis-plagued Church and the world at large. With unique insights and original reporting, Cornwell reveals how Francis has persistently provoked and disrupted his stubbornly unchanging church, purging clerical corruption and reforming entrenched institutions, while calling for action against global poverty, climate change, and racism. Cornwell argues that despite fierce opposition from traditionalist clergy and right-wing media, the pope has radically widened Catholic moral priorities, calling for mercy and compassion over rigid dogmatism. Francis, according to Cornwell, has transformed the Vatican from being a top-down centralized authority to being a spiritual service for a global church. He has welcomed the rejected, abused, and disheartened; reached out to people of other faiths and those of none; and proved a providential spiritual leader for future generations. Highly acclaimed author John Cornwell's riveting account of the hopeful - and contentious - efforts undertaken by Pope Francis to rebuild the Catholic Church. • Well researched and brilliant, listeners, scholars, and fans of John Cornwell will want to listen to his most controversial and compelling work yet. • More than a third of America's 74 million Catholics said they were contemplating departure in 2018. It is estimated that over the past 20 years, the Catholic Church has been losing two-and-a-half billion dollars annually in revenues, legal fees, and damages due to clerical abuse cases. The decline in church attendance, marriages, and vocations to the priesthood and sisterhood tell a story of major decline and disillusion. Cornwell showcases Pope Francis' way forward, a hopeful message that gives reinvigorated reasons to stay with the church and help be the change the new generation would like to see. • For listeners within and outside Catholicism fascinated by the future and restructuring of the church, this will be a book they want to listen to again and again as the church continues to change and grow.
©2021 John Cornwell (P)2021 Chronicle Prism