This is the first biography of Edward J. Hanna, archbishop of San Francisco (1915–1935) and inaugural head of the National Catholic Welfare Council (1919–1935). Developed primarily from archival sources, it provides a “chronological and systematic presentation of Hanna's life and contribution to American society” (5) intended to complement treatments of the archbishop in scholarship on the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, Catholic Modernism, and immigration, labor, and social welfare history. Hanna's intellectual gifts, vision, charisma, pastoral skill, and generosity of spirit, argues Gribble, made him exceptional among Catholic prelates in his ability to operate successfully within the church and in the civic realm during a period of both complicated theological, political, and social change within the Roman Catholic Church and massive economic and social disruption in the United States.

Gribble uses the early chapters to establish Hanna's intellectual gifts, charisma, and pastoral skill. They cover his upbringing in a middle-class Irish family in Rochester, New York, his exceptional early educational career within both public schools and private Catholic institutions, and his selection by Bishop Bernard McQuaid to be educated for the priesthood in Rome in anticipation of founding a seminary in Rochester. It moves through Hanna's time in Rome, including his decision to study language, which contributed to his pastoral effectiveness with Italian communities in Rochester and later San Francisco. It presents Hanna's pastoral success in Rochester, his intellectual and social involvement with Protestant clergy and civic leaders, his work as professor and mentor in the new diocesan seminary, and his implication in the Modernist controversy. It describes Hanna's election as auxiliary in San Francisco; his extensive and successful involvement in an array of religious, civic, and social welfare organizations and activities in the city; and finally his election as archbishop in 1915.

From this point Gribble develops the threads of Hanna's religious and civic activity separately. He describes Hanna as an effective administrator who advanced the centralization of power in the archdiocese, an advocate for Catholic education, a mentor to his clergy, and a staunch proponent of the assimilation of immigrant Catholics into U.S. political and civic life. The volume emphasizes Hanna's participation in municipal affairs, his advocacy for the poor, especially children, and his ecumenical and interfaith involvements. Hanna won the affection and respect of all classes of citizens in San Francisco, argues Gribble, because of the alignment between his philosophy of self-sacrifice “that followed the pattern of Christ” and his actual behavior toward all (115).

Entire chapters are devoted to the archbishop's involvement in labor and immigration issues in San Francisco and the state of California. Four chapters on Hanna's role as head of the NCWC follow. These are organized respectively around domestic issues, notably birth control and family rights, immigration, the drive to federalize education, and international issues, particularly U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union and U.S. involvement in Mexican political affairs of church and state. The last two chapters treat Hanna's final years. The first discusses his service on state commissions that were part of Roosevelt's Depression recovery program and his mediation of the 1934 West Coast dock strike. The final chapter, working with the incomplete but currently available archival sources, deftly handles Hanna's forced retirement and removal to Rome, explaining it in terms of dementia and, perhaps related, personal indiscretion.

This is a welcome and serviceable biography of Edward J. Hanna. Gribble's careful presentation of archival materials and his detailed notes and bibliography add to its utility. At the same time, the ambition to provide a comprehensive account leads to abbreviated interpretation at intriguing junctures. Two examples illustrate.

Hanna enjoyed and maintained intellectual, social, and civic friendships with Protestants throughout his life. One friend from his years at the Rochester Free Academy was Walter Rauschenbusch, later a major theologian of the Social Gospel movement, with whom he kept up an intermittent correspondence. In 1898 Hanna became the first Catholic priest invited to join the Fortnightly Club, a literary and social discussion group of Rochester's leading citizens. The group provided him important intellectual stimulation and social support, and Hanna visited the club even after moving to San Francisco. To what extent did these connections expose Hanna to Protestant and Progressive thinking on social welfare, inform his political theology, and contribute to his confidence as a civic leader and to his skill at mediating labor disputes? Did these interactions propel Hanna toward employing social science research in assessing large-scale problems, even as his piety and episcopal persona remained seemingly quite traditional? And, did his experience in these relationships provide him perspective that enhanced his ability to articulate the Catholic Church's agenda on social and international political issues as head of the NCWC?

Gribble draws on multiple resources to establish Hanna's intellectual capacities, including the fact that he was granted his doctorate honoris causa by Pope Leo XIII based on his performance in a public academic disputation. He also includes testimony from contemporaries that Hanna was intellectually lazy and undisciplined as a scholar. Gribble concludes his treatment of Hanna's implication in the Modernist Controversy with the judgment that Hanna moved away from any original theological thinking and subsequently defined the theologian's task as “to support revealed truth with intellectual tools” rather than “test new waters of progressive thought” (63). Finally, was Hanna a brilliant but undisciplined thinker? Did he repudiate his modernist theological proclivities or subsume them into social welfare work? Or, was his intelligence more social than scholarly, contributing to his capacity to facilitate committees and mediate conflicts? Was it pastoral persona and interpersonal skill, not critical thought, that account for Hanna's influence?

In what it raises but leaves unexplored and unresolved, this volume invites fuller interpretation of Edward J. Hanna as an exemplar of religious leadership in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. In what it accomplishes, this biography points to the fruitfulness of examining the relationship between Catholic ecclesial and civic life during this period for understanding both U.S. Catholic and U.S. religious history more broadly.