ABSTRACT
The rituals, structures and mentalities of the Catholic religion permeated European culture, politics and society during the first half of the twentieth century. Its influence was certainly not universal. The other major faiths of Europe-Protestantism, Orthodoxy and Judaism-dominated much of northern and eastern Europe while elsewhere the position of Catholicism was incessantly challenged by the secular ideological forces of liberalism and socialism as well as by processes of social, economic and scientific change which undermined the institutional structures and intellectual ascendancy of the Catholic religion. Catholicism was a powerful influence over the lives of many Europeans but it was rarely an uncontested one. Nevertheless, the resilience of the Catholic faith was impressive. Whether it was the crowds who flocked to its many sites of pilgrimage, the large numbers who joined its expanding networks of social organisations or the even more numerous multitudes who made the simple but significant gesture of participation in its acts of ritual, Catholicism remained a major and sometimes dominant presence in the fabric of community and individual existence.
