“This volume represents a coming-of-age for US Catholic historiography” (325). Jeffery M. Burns’ astute observation in the text's epilogue provides a succinct summary of the text's significance. Fourteen leading scholars, representing the breadth of contemporary American Catholic Studies, contribute essays organized around three themes. The first five essays, under the theme “Beyond the Parish,” explore Catholic life beyond the familiar urban immigrant neighborhoods. Patrick Allitt chronicles the waxing and waning of anti-Catholicism from the colonial era to the present. The other four focus on disparate sites of significant American Catholic influences: Timothy Matovina, Latinos in the Southwest; Jeffrey M. Burns, California's Catholic dissenters: Jeffrey Marlett, rural Catholics; and Roy Domenico, US diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Two of the four essays in part 2, “Engaging the World,” view American Catholicism through the lens of cultural history with illuminating results. Una M. Cadegan analyzes the complex intersections among “American and Catholic and Literature,” and Anthony Burke Smith details the multiple manifestations of “Catholics in American Popular Film.” In the other two, American Catholics engage the world through apostolic missions. Robert E. Carbonneau, CP, narrates missionary work in China, and Margaret M. McGuinness recounts the dedication and ingenuity of the intrepid Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine in the disparate locales of Manhattan's Lower East Side and rural South Carolina (1910–1970). The final theme, “Prophetic Catholicism,” features five essays. Christopher Shannon surveys the centrality of a “liturgical social vision” (220) in the distinctively Catholic dimensions of twentieth-century American Catholic social thought. The next three essays examine particular intersections of Catholic commitments and public movements. Cecilia A. Moore explores in fascinating detail Catholic engagement with African Americans at the intersections of anticommunism and interracial justice; James P. McCartin delves into Catholics’ disparate displays of public piety in civil rights, antiwar, and anti-abortion activism; and Karen Mary Davalos offers an inspiring historical account of Mexican Catholics’ faith-based organizing for safe, affordable housing in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. In the final essay, Chester Gillis offers a nuanced analysis of post–Vatican II American Catholicism, concluding with the clergy sex-abuse crisis and the shortage of priests. Despite his account of these troubling trends, Gillis ends on a hopeful note in recognizing present-day sites that carry forward a vibrant US Catholicism.
This brief overview of the essay collection makes evident the editors’ commitment to displaying the complexities of Catholic communal life in the United States: Latinos in the Southwest, Chicago's Mexican Catholics, California's Catholic dissenters, African American Catholic activists, Catholic agrarian reformers, and US political officials. The collection also displays the wide variety of methods used to study US Catholicism. Approaches include cultural and social history, praxis-based liberation theology, ethnography, historical theology, women and gender studies, literary criticism, and film studies. Taken together, these fourteen essays expand our understanding of Catholic engagement in American life. Catholics influenced popular art, print culture, and Hollywood cinema. They supported America's Cold War efforts against communism, missionaries abroad in China, and at home, white and Black Catholics working together for racial justice. Catholics organized and participated in America's agrarian movements as well as movements of protest against war, racism, inequality, exploitation of workers, and abortion. Women religious, as evident in McGuinness’ essay on a single, relatively small community, ventured far beyond Catholic school classrooms, including Lower East Side homes to nurse 1918 flu pandemic victims and impoverished rural South Carolina to serve a majority non-Catholic community.
Some readers might find the collection too varied both in topic and approach. Given the breadth and diversity, there were surprisingly few editing issues like the fleeting distraction of identifying Wendell Berry as the Passionist priest Thomas Berry. Those with very specific interests, for example, African Americans and Catholics, should review the volume. Most essays, like Moore's, have excellent notes for further exploration. Many of the essays serve as introductions to these authors’ monographs or articles that expand on their particular topics. The collection is suitable for advanced courses in historiography, American Catholic studies, or US Catholic history. It should be added to library collections as an important reference in Catholic history and cultural studies.
