Historians have several good surveys of American Catholic history, but none of these attempts to render a history of the Catholic laity in the way that James O'Toole's very good narrative does. Rather than focusing on leadership and institutions, O'Toole focuses on the people who have made up the major force in American Catholic life—the average believers. While his organizational structure will be familiar to those who have read other surveys, the ground he covers reveals a great deal about the lived religion of Catholics in America.

O'Toole's narrative spans the American Revolution to the beginning of the twenty-first century, dividing this time period into six eras. In each of these, he reviews the character of the population, their experiences in practicing their faith, their relationship to the larger institutional structure of the Church and its leadership, and, finally, their relationship with the non-Catholic American population. This work is constructed from a truly wide range of archival sources and existing secondary work. Each chapter begins with the story of one representative Catholic from that era, lending a sense of personalism to each analysis.

O'Toole depicts the colonial and revolutionary Catholic community as one that survived without regular access to priests or the sacraments. These believers gathered for prayer and catechetical instruction, aided by prayer books and devotional handbooks. O'Toole argues that these persons exercised an “Enlightenment spirituality” that emphasized a rational engagement with the faith that would differ significantly from the perspective and practice of later generations of Catholics. A distinct minority within the newly forming republic, these Catholics slowly gained some acceptance from their Protestant neighbors by supporting the Revolution and expressing some distrust of the Vatican's desire to oversee the affairs of the American Church.

The early Republic was marked by the struggle for control between parishioners and the increasingly centralized control of the hierarchy. Established by local laypeople, early congregations had to work out a balance of power between trustee boards and their priests. Disputes were common and not unexpected, particularly in the context of the larger American Protestant community in which believers often had the power to control the appointment of their clergy. By the 1820s, the hierarchy found these democratic impulses threatening and worked to tighten their own control over Church property and governance. Bishop John England proved the exception. O'Toole provides the surprising story of the bishop of Charleston's efforts to draft a constitution for that diocese that was approved by the people and which resulted in almost thirty annual conventions in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. England's efforts were not reproduced by other Catholic bishops, but they hinted at the possibilities for active engagement of laypeople in the work of managing dioceses.

An effort to contain the history of the “immigrant church” is bound to come up short in some respects. Nonetheless, O'Toole's synthesis of this period goes a long way toward surfacing the commonalities of community building and devotional practice during these years. A picture arises of neighborhoods dotted with ethnic parishes, bustling with committed parishioners who actively contributed to the creation of those parishes. Increasing numbers of priests and nuns filled out the structure of these parishes and their schools. O'Toole goes into detail describing church architecture, priestly vestments, and the formality of the Mass, all in relationship to the experience of the people in the pews, who were often privately saying prayers and engaging in meditations that had little direct connection to the priests' celebration. Despite waves of nativism and xenophobia from their non-Catholic neighbors, immigrant Catholics existed in a world anchored by the Church, its practices, and its people.

O'Toole's rendering of lay Catholics during the bulk of the twentieth century emphasizes their growing activity as Catholics, both inside and outside the Church. A chapter on Catholic Action relates the varied causes of social action undertaken by laypeople, including those involved in the Catholic worker movement, the Holy Name Society, the National Council of Catholic Women, and other social justice groups. In addition to depicting this very public work, O'Toole traces the push for increase and regularity of Mass attendance, reception of Communion, and participation in confession. As O'Toole moves into the era of Vatican II, he continues to emphasize the importance of the involvement of the laity in the Church, suggesting that the traditions of Catholic Action in some way prepared them for their new incorporation into the Mass and the central functions of church life. He also covers the familiar ground of conflict and controversy dealing with birth control, abortion, and women's ordination. But, for the most part, O'Toole relates the story of American Catholics' changing practice of their faith through increased reception of Communion, tremendous declines in confession, and the varieties of new engagement with faith including Bible study, retreats, and charismatic movements.

O'Toole begins his final chapter, “The Church of the Twenty-First Century,” with the story of a hypothetical Los Angeleno born in 2012. This setup allows him to explore the changes that appear to be under way in the American Catholic community at the turn of the century, including the sexual abuse scandal among priests, the ever-diminishing ranks of the clergy, the increasing diversity of the community, and the place of Catholics in American public life. This forward-looking final chapter actually highlights some of the weaknesses of the book. O'Toole's focus here on the post-1965 diversity of the Catholic community makes the reader question the ways in which that long-standing diversity inflected the lived practice of Catholicism that he describes in a relatively monolithic way in previous chapters. Similarly, the narrative provides little sense of the ways geography matters to the laity's experience of their faith and the institutional church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, O'Toole provides a powerful introduction to the experiences and lived religion of American Catholic laypeople that will prove tremendously useful to those who teach American Catholic history and American religious history more generally.