Includes bibliographies and index.

Part one : The emerging world church -- Catholicism in transition / David Martin -- Changing Vatican policies, 1965-85 : Peter's primacy and the reality of local churches / Peter Hebblethwaite -- Part two : The European heartlands -- The paradoxical evolution of the French Catholic church / Henri Madelin -- Secularization, pillarization, religious involvement, and religious change in the low countries / Karl Dobbelaere -- Authority, change, and conflict in Italian Catholicism / Paul F. Furlong -- Spanish Catholicism in transition / Aurello Orensanz -- Catholicism in German-speaking central Europe / Karl Gabriel, Franz Xaver Kaufmann -- Stages of religious change in Hungray / Miklós Tomka -- Polish Catholicism in transition / Barbara Strassberg -- Part three : The English- speaking world -- Ireland : the exception that proves two rules / Máire Nic Ghiolla Phádraig -- Into the mainstream : recent transformations in British Catholicism / Michael P. Hornsby-Smith -- American Catholicism / John A. Coleman -- Canada, Australia and New Zealand / Hans Mol -- Part four : The third church -- Cuba and Nicaragua : religion and revolution / Margaret E. Crahan -- Brazil and Chile : seeds of change in the Latin American church / Madeleine Adriance -- Too weak for change : past and present in the Venezuelan church / Juan Carlos Nararro -- East, Central, and Southern Africa / Adrian Hastings -- The evolution of Catholicism in Western Africa : the case of Cameroon / Meinrad P. Hebga -- Christians of Lebanon and the Middle East twenty years after Vatican II / Jean Aucagne -- The Phillipines : church at the crossroads / John J. Carroll -- The Indian Catholic community : a minority in search of security / J. Walter Fernandes -- The awakening of a local church : Japanese Catholicism in tension between particularistic and universal values / Jan Swyngedouw.