One might see the work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Garry Wills as a series of salvos against blithe assumptions that theo­logians are inclined to make about the unchanging continuity of Catholic teaching and tradition. In his new book, Wills returns again to his favoured theme of change and transformation – not stability and paralysis – as the special genius of Catholicism, a sign of its enduring life and vitality. As an historian and linguist, Wills is attentive to many contingencies that have shaped the Catholic Church’s ritual concerns and normative predilections over the centuries: institutional contexts, idiosyncratic leaders, political skirmishes and more. Exhibiting apparently boundless learning and capacity for enquiry, Wills roams