86 - The Bicentennial History of the Catholic Church in America: Historical Studies of the Catholic People in America, 1789-1989

The Bicentennial History of the Catholic Church in America:
Historical Studies of the Catholic People in America, 1789-1989
Edited by Christopher J. Kauffman
New York, Macmillan, 1989. 6 Volumes. $160.

One might well wonder why the Catholic hierarchy would commission a bicentennial history of its own existence. Ought they not have been fearful of what would happen if readers began to compare the present bench of bishops-O'Connor, Mahoney, Bevilacqua, Law-with the men of history-Carroll, England, Gibbons, and Ireland? It is a long way from the latter to the former-all of it down! It may be that the Bishops are too ignorant of their own past to be aware of the possibilities of such comparison or too arrogant to care. In any event, they have commissioned a series that is both ignorant and arrogant.

It is claimed on the dust jackets that the series is a history of "the Catholic people in the United States." In fact, it is a history of institutions-leaders, religious orders, dioceses, publications. There is virtually nothing in any of the volumes that displays any interest in or concern about the ordinary people. Four of the volumes do not mention Jay Dolan's attempt to get beyond institutional history to social history. A fifth volume mentions him once and then only in passing.

It is also claimed that each book is a work of "original scholarship," but, in fact, in great part the series is a rehash of existing materials, some of it of term paper or M.A. thesis variety.

88 - The Bicentennial History of the Catholic Church in America: Historical Studies of the Catholic People in America, 1789-1989

In none of the books is any attempt made to study the social, political, and economic history of the last fifty years of American Catholic experience with the survey materials now available, a method many historians use. Somehow, it seems to the authors that it is more valid and more useful to write about American Catholic Women (Karen Kennelly, C.S.J.) by collecting essays based on books and publications and dealing with religious orders and reformers instead of using empirical data to see what has been happening among Catholic women since the late 1930s.

Similarly, Margaret Mary Keher discusses Catholic Intellectual Life in America without any attention to the data on the emergence of a substantial lay intelligentsia in the last thirty years. Whatever its worth, the literature on this subject ought not to be ignored. If it is wrong, it should be discussed and refuted. If it is right, its findings should be considered.

Patterns of Episcopal Leadership, edited by Gerald P. Fogarty, is perhaps the most useful book in the series, the only one I could conscientiously recommend for college or university libraries. It consists of fourteen essays about bishops from Carroll to Cody (nice comparison, that) generally by authors who have written monographs on their subjects. While the essays are not "original" in the sense that they add anything new to our knowledge about the men, the collection does save the reader who is interested in a quick view of the best and the worst of Catholic leadership. John Tracy Ellis demonstrates in his essay on Gibbons yet a third way to describe the establishment of the Apostolic Delegation. In his earlier two-volume work, he implied that it was a good thing for the American Catholic Church. Later, in an essay in Commonweal, he bitterly attacked the event. In this book, he simply ignores it. Also, one might well wonder why there is no essay on John Lancaster Spaulding. Is the clique which dominates Catholic history afraid to face up to that tragic giant, even today?

Joseph Chinnici's Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States is in fact a history of books on the spiritual life. There is no reference to either Jay Dolan's study of the parish mission or the immensely important Sorrowful Mother Novena devotion. What actually went on in the prayer life of the faithful does not seem to interest the author.

Dolores Liptak's Immigrants and Their Church is marred by a mean-spirited anti-Irish bias. She says, without footnote documentation or reference that after the Civil War anti-Irish prejudice "was usually local and often trifling." How an editor could let such a patently false and blatantly biased quote slip by escapes me completely.

David O'Brien's Public Catholicism is written from the perspective of the 1960s messianic left on American society-which has marked much of his work-and ends up with a fervent plea for Catholics to be a critical (left wing) elite in the American body politic. While he has done more research than any of the other authors, this hortatory perspective weakens his scholarship. There are three references to Daniel Berrigan,

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two to Daniel P. Moynihan, one to Mario Cuomo, and none at all to Richard Daley, Robert Wagner, John Mitchell, or David I. Walsh. Moreover, after twenty years, it does not seem unreasonable to ask of O'Brien and other activists of that era a more critical evaluation of it. It ought not to be the only interlude in American history that is beyond serious re-examination.

In a short review of six volumes, one must necessarily be brief. Have I been unfair in my comments on these six volumes? Quite the contrary, the series is worse than I have indicated, a disgrace to American Catholics and proof for those who, like Ellis, have said that Catholics are not contributing to American intellectual life. The charge is no longer true, but you wouldn't know it from this bicentennial history, which, among other flaws, seems innocent of the way historiography is done in America today. The series will be an embarrassment to any serious Catholic scholar that reads it.

Andrew M. Greeley
The University of Arizona
Tucson Arizona