Father Robert J. Miller’s Faith of the Fathers is not primarily an academic work. The author himself says so early in the book; “…nor is its audience limited to academics or seminary students” (xv). Good. Refreshing, even, for one of the hallmarks of the Civil War religious historiography field into which Miller’s book fits is highly technical and fine-focused monographs written precisely for the specialist. Faith of the Fathers is a “resource-gathering tool” and “a much-needed, comprehensive update to the list of Catholic priests who served in the Civil War,” 126 in sum, Confederate and Union combined (xiv, xiii).

The book is well researched. Please see his “Toward a Roster of Catholic Civil War Chaplains” chapter, which includes essential biographical information as easily accessible and well compiled as looking up a football team online, and anyone who has mined the particulars of Bishop William Henry Elder’s (of Natchez, Miss.) Civil War diary, Father Peter Cooney’s War Letters, and read through Tissot’s “Letters of Civil War Chaplains,” published the year the Great War commenced, has done right by research necessities (24–57; 429, 430). Not an academic work, but researched like the best of academic works, well written too, not simply for academics but for anyone anywhere interested in the topic of Civil War chaplains from which he does not deviate throughout. It is, indeed, well sourced, well written, and focused. But, still more, and of ultimate importance in terms of scope and aim, the book has the warmth of a collection of letters between friends. Miller cares about his subjects, and it shows. That he does not try to hide this is positive and a good corrective to a profession too often obsessed with cold, “scientific” detachment. “In the process of completing what has been a decades long passion,” he writes, “I have made 126 new friends. Nearly every one of the priests mentioned in this book has become as familiar to me as next-door neighbors or family members” (xvii).

The book is divided into four sections – Troubled Times…,The Giants of the Catholic Chaplaincy, Difficult Situations…, and From the Vantage Point of History – and therein are various sub-chapters such as “God’s Marines,” “Chaplains for the Irish,” and “Reflections and Lessons” (111–135; 217–246; 327–353). Focus is once more the operative word. Or, if one prefers, predictability. One gets what one expects. Miller’s hope to produce a resource-gathering compendium succeeds as he methodically works his way through fact after fact. For example, we are told of a priest named Julian Guillou and given the dates of his life and the date of his ordination and, before moving on from him owing to death from yellow fever in 1863, are told he was assigned “at several makeshift area hospitals and also served briefly as chaplain with the New Orleans-based Washington Artillery” (256–257). The factual “roster” of chaplains from early on, in a compiled list, is matched throughout the book by similar “just the facts” informational reporting concerning who they were and what they did.

Miller is at his best in the chapter “The Wartime Ministry of Catholic priests,” unsurprising, as he is a priest himself writing about priestly duties and so brings with him an insider’s perspective. If a reader were to have only a general knowledge of what chaplaincy entailed without further specifics, and was desirous to know what, exactly, Civil War chaplains did, this chapter is a goldmine of information. “Aside from medical care,” Miller writes, “there were few things that could provide more comfort to a horribly wounded soldier than confessing one’s sins” (63). “Mass for the troops was a major personal and spiritual responsibility for priest-chaplains,” and, returning to the dying, “extreme unction was a vitally important spiritual practice” (67, 69). While Catholicism is “more sacramental and ritual at its core [than Protestantism]…Catholic priests were and are also powerful and effective preachers in their own right” (74).

The book’s strengths and weaknesses – all the same in approach, methodology, scope, and hoped contribution – march in lockstep, for the very same focus that will provide a most enjoyable book for specialists, Civil War enthusiasts, and American Catholic history aficionados interested in learning about wartime chaplains might be taken as narrowness for those readers hoping this book will provide a larger window into the war, the American Catholic story, or both. This book is exclusively about wartime chaplains. What Miller set out to do in the book’s opening is accomplished by the book’s end. He has given his readers an updated, complete, and thoroughly readable work that will undoubtedly become established as the primary touchstone for future scholars looking to work on this topic themselves. And with the ever-increasing call for detachment, professional objectivity, and scientific abstraction within the historical profession, it is nice to see that one can take much from a book an author has written about his “friends.”