AMERICAN CATHOLIC STUDIES NEWSLETTER CUSHWA CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF AMERICAN CATHOLICISM Latina Women of Spirit

1947 Ascensión it up.’” The immigration official picked up change in American society. Wome n & Higuera and her the certificate and handed it back to her. Spirit examined how the nuns themselves family entered the For a young girl born in the United States were shaped by their vocations and United States on a and raised in Mexico, the encounter was a ministries of education, health care, and bus, stopping at San powerful lesson about the significance of social activism in 19th- and 20th -century Diego to pass through being a Mexican- American woman in the America. For the most part, the exhibit Incustoms. Higuera was born near El Centro, United States, a lesson that Ascensión focused on Anglo-American sisters or Calif., in 1931. After several years of carried with her through the more than European sisters recently arrived from struggling to make ends meet during the half century she later served as a woman across the Atlantic. But parts of the exhibit Depression, her father had taken her religious. considered African-American sisters and family back to Mexico to live with his In the fall 2011 the traveling exhibit communities, focusing on American relatives. During the bus ride back to Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in sisters’ involvement in and opposition to California after World War II, Higuera’s America demonstrated to students, faculty, slavery, segregation, and, in the case of parents repeatedly reminded her that she and visitors at the University of Notre Civil Rights, their support for social was a U.S. citizen: “When we’d come back Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and numer- equality in the United States. my parents always told us … ‘Don’t forget ous others from the surrounding region Largely missing from the exhibit, you are American citizens.’” When an that Catholic sisters in America have a however, were examples of activist sisters immigration officer boarded the bus, he long history of engaging and re-shaping who shared common cultural and class expressed his doubts about her status: aspects of U.S. society. The exhibit, which origins with Latinos in the United States, “And then the officer dropped my birth was on display at South Bend’s Center for such as Mexican-Americans like Ascensión certificate. And I never forgot what History last fall, placed the history of Higuera. Higuera’s story offers a window courage I had. He said, ‘Pick up the certifi- Catholic women religious in the context into how these sisters worked to improve cate.’ I said, ‘No. You dropped it, you pick of broader social, cultural and religious their own lives and the lives of others by creating a middle ground between main- stream and marginalized communities in the United States. I N S I D E Many years after Ascensión Higuera had the encounter with the immigration Cushwa Center Activities ...... 2-8 official at San Diego, she became a mem- Announcements ...... 11 ber of the Society of Helpers (H.H.S.), a History of Women Religious ...... 13-15 religious community founded in Paris, France, in 1856, and active among the Publications: ...... 16-25 urban poor in the United States since the Upcoming Events ...... 26 see Latina Women of Spirit, page 8

VOLUME 39 NUMBER 1 SPRING 2012 CUSHWA CENTER ACTIVITIES

Catholic Sisters in America

As many of our readers already know, Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America was on display in South Bend from September through December, 2011. More than 9,000 community members, tourists, and school students viewed Women and Spirit last fall, adding to a cumulative total of well over one mil- lion viewers nationally. Sponsored and developed by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Women and Spirit was presented locally through a partnership formed with the More than 9,000 visitors viewed the Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America display while it Cushwa Center and other campus units at was on exhibit in South Bend last year. Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and the Center for History in downtown sponsored a lecture by theologian Sandra Carolyn Walker Bynum in which she South Bend. At the gala marking the Schneiders, I.H.M., on the future of reli- discussed shifts in the historiography of opening of the exhibit in South Bend, gious life; the Center for History hosted a women and religion over the last three I observed that it would be difficult to preliminary screening of Band of Sisters, a decades. think of a more appropriate combination documentary written and produced by In addition to these special events, of collaborators. The significance of Saint Mary Fishman (ND ’82), as well as a num- many of Cushwa’s regularly scheduled Mary’s is self-evident, as it was perfectly ber of other public events. At Notre Dame, fall events, including the annual Cushwa fitting that an institution founded and the Cushwa Center partnered with other Center Lecture, the Seminar in animated by Catholic sisters, a place that units on campus in highlighting the work American Religion, and the American has played such a storied role in Catholic and history of Catholic women religious Catholic Studies Seminar, dovetailed women’s history, would be a sponsor. But in a variety of disciplines and settings. with the themes of the exhibit (Read it was also symbolically important that The Institute for Latino Studies hosted a more under “Cushwa Center Events” Notre Dame joined this partnership, as lecture by Barbara M. Loste on the artist on page 26). In addition, the Cushwa its investment underscored that the history Corita Kent, and the Center for Social Center gathered a group of junior of Catholic sisters is not simply about Concerns sponsored a lecture and book scholars writing about the history of women: Indeed, the work of women reli- signing by Helen Prejean, C.S.J. Along Catholic women for a “Catholic gious has been and remains absolutely vital with the DeBartolo Performing Arts Women’s History Roundtable.” Several to the Catholic Church in the United Center, the College of Arts and Letters, senior scholars joined the conversation States. Finally, the fact that Women and and Play Like a Champion Today®, the as well. The group included presenters at Spirit was hosted by the Center for Cushwa Center sponsored a screening of the aforementioned events, such as Sarah History — and previously by the The Mighty Macs, a 2009 film about the Curtis, Shannen Dee Williams, Angelyn Smithsonian, Ellis Island, and other Immaculata College basketball champi- Dries, O.S.F., and Diane Batts Morrow. prominent museums around the country onship team. That event was followed by Other invited guests included: Kathleen — confirmed that the history so vibrantly a panel discussion which featured Teresa Holscher of Villanova University; on display was not only about and for Shank, the star of the Immaculata team, Monica Mercado, a doctoral student Catholics. Whether Catholic or not, it was Sister Marian William I.H.M., at the University of Chicago; Mary clear that Women and Spirit truly was an Immaculata’s former president, and Beth Fraser Connolly of Valparaiso American story. More than a dozen events Muffet McGraw, Notre Dame women’s University; Theresa Keeley, a graduate featuring the history of Catholic sisters head basketball coach (who played for student at Northwestern University; were held at the three partnering institu- Shank at St. Joseph’s University). The Christine Baudin Hernandez, a doctoral tions during the four months Women and History Department, Medieval Institute, candidate at St. Louis University, Spirit was at the Center for History. The and the Cushwa Center co-sponsored Martina Cucchiara, a postdoctoral fellow Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary’s a lecture by the renowned scholar at the University of Notre Dame; Felicia 2 Moralez, a graduate student in history Nineteenth-Century France (Northern the history of the French Empire and at Notre Dame (and the author of this Illinois University, 2000), and Views from world Catholicism, and the role of their issue's lead article). Over the course of the Margins: Creating Identities in Modern work in the shift from proselytism toward three days, participants in the roundtable France, co-edited with Kevin J. Callahan missionary service; second, tensions in attended Cushwa events, viewed Wo m e n (University of Nebraska, 2008). In Catholic approaches to religious liberty, as and Spirit, shared parts of their work, and Civilizing Habits, Curtis explores the lives seen in the practices that the three women discussed future directions for the history of three French women missionaries: adopted in their dealings with non- of women religious. Philippine Duchesne, Emilie de Vialar, Catholic people. He went on to suggest Listening to the conversation at and Anne-Marie Javouhey who evangel- that while the book “fits nicely into the the Roundtable, I was struck by an ized Missouri, the Mediterranean, and historical trend of feminization of interesting contrast: in 1987, the Cushwa Africa, respectively. In the process, Curtis Catholicism that French scholars have Center, with the help of the Lilly argues, they helped France reestablish a noted over the past several years,” it may Endowment, convened a group of histo- global empire following the Revolution. also lead us to what Kselman called “the rians of women religious to chart future They also pioneered a new missionary era Catholicization of feminism or women’s directions in the field. That gathering in which the educational, charitable, and studies,” a trend that is currently “paying subsequently led to the foundation of health care services provided by women excellent dividends” in both religious and the Conference on the History of became vehicles for spreading Catholic gender history. Women Religious. At that meeting, only influence around the world. Paradoxically, Focusing on the two main issues he two participants were not members of by embracing religious institutions had identified, Kselman asked several women’s religious communities; this designed to shield their femininity, these questions about the women’s move away time, only one of the participants in this women gained authority to travel outside from proselytism and Catholic approaches gathering was a sister. This shift reflects France, challenge church power, and to religious liberty. Did service replace dramatic changes over the last quarter evangelize non-Christians, all roles more proselytism in Catholic missionary century, including not only the dimin- common to male missionaries. Curtis’ thought and practice, and if so, how did ishing numbers of women religious but study, which was supported by both this process work? What are its implica- also, and far more positively, the integra- Fulbright and National Endowment for tions for the history of Catholicism tion of scholarship on sisters into other the Humanities fellowships, won the beyond its immediate impact on mission- subfields of American history. On that Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize ary work? And is it possible to see the note, I found it interesting that at least for the best book in history by a member women’s commitment to service as signifi- half of the participants introduced of the Western Association of Women cant apart from their intentions to prosely- themselves with the caveat, “I am not a Historians. Thomas Kselman, professor of tize, particularly since they served people historian of women religious ...,” and history at Notre Dame, and Angelyn with a view to converting them? On reli- followed that opening with an explana- Dries, O.S.F., professor emerita in the gious liberty, Kselman asked if the women tion that they used women religious as Department of Theological Studies at St. ever reflected on the key premise that subjects to explore broader themes, such Louis University, commented on the book. underlay conversion: that there was no as French empire, church and state, or Kselman began his comments with salvation outside the church. Furthermore, foreign policy. This observation, com- high praise for Civilizing Habits. He noted did these sisters contribute to greater toler- bined with the enthusiasm generated by its contributions to French history, the his- ance among Catholics by conveying the Women and Spirit and its supplemental tory of European imperialism, the history sense that people are free to choose their events, has left me very hopeful about the of religion, and the history of gender. And own religion? future of the field. for the purposes of the seminar, he said, we might also talk about its contribution to — Kathleen S. Cummings the history of Catholicism. On one level, Curtis’ book offers a transnational per- spective on American Catholicism, for it Seminar in American traces the entrance of Duchesne “into American history from the outside.” At an Religion even broader level, it shows how “ideas and institutions flow not just within but On November 5, the Seminar in American beyond and across national boundaries.” Religion discussed Sarah A. Curtis’ After noting the “very high standard” that Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries Curtis sets for archival work (she mined and the Revival of French Empire (Oxford, archives in France, Italy, Senegal, and the 2010). Curtis is associate professor of United States), Kselman identified two history at San Francisco State University. particularly interesting issues raised in the Her previous books include Educating the book: first, the role of women as agents in Faithful: Religion, Society, and Schooling in Sarah Curtis 3 C USHWA C ENTER A CTIVITIES

Dries was also impressed with Curtis’ well. In considering Dries’ points about grated French and female identities, con- “captivating” book. She registered her empire, Curtis noted that she was interest- gregational identities, and service obliga- particular fascination with Curtis’ use of ed in the period between 1800 and 1850 tions into a unified and fascinating whole. the words “invent,” “reimagine,” and “precisely because of its in-betweenness.” “imagination” in reference to the women’s People at the time did not know where, or Cushwa Center Lecture approaches to religious life in a non- if, a new empire would emerge. cloistered tradition. In her response, Dries Opening the larger discussion, Jim The fall 2011 Cushwa Center Lecture, personalized Duchesne as a way to show Connelly, C.S.C., asked about Duchesne’s held on November 4 at the South Bend people’s conscious appropriation of her practice of keeping girls in her school sepa- Center for History, featured a presentation story in the greater Saint Louis region; she rated into upper and lower classes. Did by Diane Batts Morrow titled “The then proceeded to indicate the theoretical this prevail throughout her life? In Experience of the Oblate Sisters of implications of Curtis’ work. With respect America, was she exposed to the idea that Providence during the Civil War Era.” to the latter, Dries asked whether it is pos- everyone is equal? Curtis responded that Morrow is professor of multicultural and sible to call the women “empire builders.” Duchesne retained her sense of hierarchy African American history at the University They pioneered new territory not only in America, which she did in part to meet of Georgia, and is widely recognized as the with respect to their religious orders, but parents’ expectations. Michael Carter leading authority on the history of black also with respect to religious life in gener- asked about Duchesne’s “historical imagi- Catholic sisters. A number of her publica- al. Dries then noted that Curtis’ book nation.” Did she see the recovery of tions have focused on the Oblate Sisters of opens up new questions about identity. Missouri as New France in its pre- Providence, founded in Baltimore and the For, to the extent the sisters imagined Revolutionary sense? Did she hope to first black Catholic sisterhood in America. themselves as part of a global French- export stories of native conversion and Her book, Persons of Color and Religious at Catholic empire, their self-image pushes Catholic heroism back to France? Curtis the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of readers to ask what an “international col- responded in the affirmative, and elaborat- Providence, 1828–1860 (University of lective identity” is, how people used it, and ed (via a related contribution by Kselman) North Carolina, 2002), is also on that what it meant to the persons involved. that post-Revolution missionary endeavors topic. The book has the distinction of Dries concluded by asking how Curtis tended to point outward and inward at the being featured in a 2004 Review located and used her sources, particularly same time. They were outward-looking Symposium of the U.S. Catholic Historian. in Senegal. evangelical variants of the impulse to It also won the Letitia Woods Brown After thanking the respondents for create new schools and infrastructure in Memorial Publication Prize, awarded by their “astute and generous comments,” France; and the French people looked on the Association of Black Women Curtis spoke about the time- and travel- them as intimately connected to the fight Historians for the best book on black intensive process of writing Civilizing for faith back home. Martina Cucchiara women’s history, and the Distinguished Habits. She then addressed a few of the asked whether the French embarked on Book Award from the Conference on the respondents’ points. Concerning the missions during this tumultuous period as History of Women Religious. Building on “Catholicization of feminism,” Curtis said a way to escape political difficulties in her book, which explored how the Oblate she hoped she was doing precisely that. France. Curtis answered that they did so Sisters challenged white expectations of Feminist historians, she surmised, have occasionally, but not as a general rule. One black women during the antebellum peri- been reticent to include Catholic women relevant example came in 1904, when the od, Morrow traced the sisters’ experiences because they embody “paradoxes” that do French government prohibited religious in the unstable and racially charged Civil not suit feminist tastes. The women in orders from teaching in schools. Those War era. She framed her lecture around Civilizing Habits, for example, are activists who belonged to teaching orders, Curtis the sisters’ ongoing defiance of white who support a domestic ideology and the continued, were left without work and expectations, resourcefulness in the face of subordination of women. At a very basic faced exile. The orders that had missions, hardship, and unflagging service to those level, Curtis stated, feminists simply do however, had an advantage. Subsequent in need. not understand such women. Turning to discussion covered a wide range of topics, Morrow began by noting the “excep- Kselman’s question about the shift in mis- including Duchesne’s and Javouhey’s tional” character of Oblate Sisters as black sionary attitudes, Curtis suggested that the concept of the “savage,” how post- Catholic nuns in white Protestant society. move toward service was a “conceptual Revolutionary missions financed their She then proceeded to detail the ways that breakthrough,” which perhaps fostered operations, and what Mark Noll called the they exercised “agency in service to others,” more tolerant, open missionary thinking. remarkably low tensions between even in the face of whites’ race-based It is possible that as missionaries developed Catholics and Protestants in St. Louis. The assumptions about them. Relying in large the outward appearance of tolerance, they session concluded with Kselman’s admira- part on the Oblate Annals to tell this were led to nurture an inward tolerance as tion for the ways that Curtis’ subjects inte- story, Morrow related how between 1860 4 light of the Oblate Sisters, who were black, forced the sisters to close their schools in free, Catholic, and civilized. She then Philadelphia (1871) and New Orleans related how even amid persistent difficul- (1873). In 1877 Miller died, which left the ties the sisters continued to exert them- sisters grief-stricken and uncertain of how selves on behalf of others. In 1865 they they would navigate future challenges welcomed and educated two black female without him. That same year, slaves who had belonged to Jesuit priests. Reconstruction ended and southern states And in 1866 (with the assistance of Fr. began to pass laws that separated whites Miller) they opened an Oblate orphan and blacks. “The nation looked on in asylum. But however much they did to silence,” Morrow concluded. But “the improve society, they could never fully Oblate Sisters and their education mission join it. As Morrow revealed through a formed part of the solution black people letter written by Archbishop Odin of New developed on their own to confront the Orleans (to which the sisters traveled in continuing challenges of freedom.” 1867), “black people constituted a tertium Diane Batts Morrow quid: in but not of both Church and socie- American Catholic ty and capable at most of a ‘comparative and 1865 the sisters opened a home for equality’ with the white race, the parame- Studies Seminar widows and the elderly, sheltered and edu- ters of which white people intended to cated black Catholics and orphans, and define exclusively.” On November 3, participants in the founded reputable schools for black chil- In turning to her final period, the era American Catholic Studies Seminar dren. At times, obstacles to their ministry of Congressional Reconstruction (1867 – discussed Shannen Dee Williams’ paper, seemed ubiquitous. In 1860 Fr. Dominic 1877), Morrow pointed out that the “‘You Could Do the Irish Jig, But Kraus, their director, said his last Mass and Oblate Sisters cooperated with the federal Anything Catholic Was Taboo’: Black departed. That same year their chapel government as it began to take a more Nuns and the Struggle to Desegregate U.S. closed as a public church. In 1863 an active role in protecting free blacks. In Catholic Sisterhoods after World War II.” Oblate school closed for lack of money. particular, they worked alongside the Williams is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers War disrupted the receipt of tuition and Freedmen’s Bureau, whose goal was to edu- and a 2011-2012 Visiting Scholar at the other funds. Additionally, The Catholic cate black people. Morrow related that in University of Memphis’ Benjamin L. Mirror, an official publication of the arch- 1867, the noted black publisher, teacher, Hooks Institute for Social Change. Her diocese of Baltimore, published editorials and civil rights leader William Howard paper traced black women’s largely unsuc- that defended slavery, attacked abolition- Day wrote an article praising the sisters’ cessful efforts to join white sisterhoods in ists, and spewed bigotry against the very free school. He was especially impressed America following World War II. Williams people whom the sisters were trying to with the protections it offered young black argued that post-war calls for racial justice, help. Despite these obstacles, Morrow said, women, and urged his fellow Protestants increased Vatican pressure, and the need the Oblate Sisters “demonstrated charac- to follow their example. The article was all for more female vocations prompted all- teristic initiative and resourcefulness.” the more meaningful because Day was white sisterhoods to begin admitting They inaugurated fund-raising concerts, Superintendent of Freedmen’s Schools. African American candidates. Still, most which helped to offset financial losses. In Losing money yet buoyed by Day’s appro- remained opposed to the integration of 1863 they opened an Oblate colony in bation, the sisters took initiative. They their ranks until the Civil Rights Philadelphia, and they found an ally in Fr. wrote a letter to Day explaining that they Movement of the 1960s. Moreover, many Peter Miller, an Oblate spiritual director needed government funds to support black sisters who entered white communi- who in 1865 subsidized a school for free teacher pay and building maintenance: ties endured years of bullying, neglect, and blacks. As the war ended, the Oblate the very areas that the Freedmen’s Bureau other forms of racist abuse from their Sisters seemed prepared to expand their typically subsidized. Although the funds white counterparts. According to ministry. never materialized the school survived, Williams, “it is nearly impossible to deter- Yet the era of Presidential and the sisters had again displayed their mine how many hearts were broken and Reconstruction (1865–1867), Morrow resourcefulness. how many black female vocations were lost continued, would test their resolve. As During the 1870s the sisters faced to the church due to these racist policies.” Maryland slaveholders enforced Black still more challenges. In 1870 they moved She maintains that it is painfully clear that Codes and manipulated apprenticeship to a new location after learning that the Catholic sisterhoods were among the laws, a Catholic Mirror editorialist opined city of Baltimore was going to build a fiercest strongholds of racial segregation that blacks were better off as slaves, and street through their property on and white supremacy in the 20th century. that only the Catholic Church could prop- Richmond Street. The city did not give Williams’ paper is a chapter from her dis- erly civilize them. Morrow noted the them enough money to complete the new sertation, “Subversive Habits: Black Nuns absurdity of this argument, particularly in building. Then, lack of financial support and the Struggle to Desegregate Catholic

5 C USHWA C ENTER A CTIVITIES

America after World War II,” which she backing up her claims that the church ‘like- is writing as a 2011-2012 Charlotte W. ly lost hundreds of black female vocations’ Newcombe Fellow. Her study, directed by on account of racist admissions policies; Deborah Gray White, examines how black that ‘these and other Jim Crow practices Catholic sisters responded to and negotiat- also drove thousands of African American ed the paradox of a segregated church and Catholics away from the Church’; and that lived out their faith in God, democracy, ‘scores of determined black Catholic and education in spite of this reality. women and girls’ were turned away by Diane Batts Morrow, professor of history white sisterhoods. Morrow further noted at the University of Georgia, served as that white directors were not the only ones respondent in the seminar. who knew about vocational options. Black The session began with a short pres- women who were “determined to become entation by Williams, in which she showed sisters” would have learned of colored pictures of several of the black sisters orders such as the Oblate Sisters of whom she discusses in the paper. Providence through Catholic directories, Following the presentation, Morrow Shannen Dee Williams newspapers, and magazines. “If the Oblate opened her comments with praise for sisterhood remained unknown,” Morrow Williams’ paper. She said that Williams’ Continuing her critique, Morrow said, “they were hiding in plain sight.” “promising and fascinating study” shows touched on a number of issues. She Morrow applauded Williams’ use of “tremendous merit,” even as it makes a questioned Williams’ argument that interviews with black women who had “significant contribution” to “American, 20th-century white sisterhoods ‘aban- personally experienced integration into religious, gender, and race history.” doned’ earlier efforts toward ‘racial and white sisterhoods. In this connection, she In the interest of strengthening the social equality’ in favor of ‘whites-only asked Williams if there were lapses in the study, Morrow noted several areas that admissions policies.’ In fact, Morrow published interviews that informed the might benefit from clarification and fur- noted, Williams devotes much of her questions she formulated for the live inter- ther analysis. In general, she said, Williams paper to proving that 19th-century sister- views. Furthermore, how many interviews should avoid equating “U. S. Catholic sis- hoods opposed the inclusion of blacks. did she conduct? What criteria did she use terhoods” with white Catholic sisterhoods. How, then, were their racial admissions in choosing subjects? And did she ask Numerous black sisterhoods (on which policies during the 20th century substan- those who had joined white sisterhoods Morrow herself is an authority) had exist- tially different? Continuity rather than before World War II whether they had ed “for between one and two centuries,” change seems best to characterize the thought about joining a black order? and need to be included as U.S. Catholic attitudes of white sisterhoods toward black Morrow then suggested that Williams use Sisters. Moreover, Morrow asked, why did women. members of black sisterhoods as a “control the black women whom Williams analyzes In response to Williams’ mention of group with whom to compare the experi- insist on joining white sisterhoods when black Catholics who fought for racial ences of black members of white sister- they might have joined black ones? equality in 1939, Morrow suggested that hoods.” Doing so might shed light on “Did membership in a white sisterhood,” Williams contextualize their work by similarities and differences in their experi- Morrow continued, “facilitate an ancillary including earlier examples of the same. In ences. Morrow concluded her comments goal of passing for white?” particular, Williams might consider an by again commending Williams’ work and Then, noting that Williams correctly 1817 letter from six black Catholics in noting that she looks forward to the “asks difficult questions of white Catholic Philadelphia that demanded Catholic opportunity to cite her study in the future. society,” Morrow pressed her to “demand schooling for their children; Harriet After thanking Morrow for her excel- no less of black society.” In an America Thompson’s letter to the pope in 1853 lent comments, Williams briefly addressed where racism pervaded, blacks often lambasting Archbishop John Hughes’ them. She acknowledged that an analytical thought about themselves in racist terms. racism; Daniel Rudd and his American rather than narrative approach might Given this fact, how might Williams Catholic Tribune, a black newspaper that strengthen her study, particularly in places account for blacks as both victims of insti- ran from 1885 to 1894); the five lay Black that seemed to call for statistical analysis. tutional racism and “agents” who deter- Catholic Congresses that met between She also looks forward to integrating many mined their own destinies? For Williams 1889 and 1894; and Thomas Wyatt of Morrow’s specific suggestions, which to explain how color issues played out in Turner and the Federated Colored promise to widen the study’s evidentiary black communities, Morrow suggested, she Catholics during early 20th century. base as well as its historical reach. might adopt an “analytical and critical” Morrow then pressed Williams to Williams proceeded to answer partici- rather than a “narrative” approach. include “concrete statistical information” pants’ questions about where the paper fit

6 into the larger organization of her disserta- who, as he faced re-election in 1916 and to freedom and intense religious fervor. tion; whether the project might serve to American involvement in the Great War, Kilmer identified so strongly with the Irish move historians beyond a “functional” remained ambivalent on what came to be cause that, upon enlisting in the military view of religion; and what it was like to known as “the Irish Question.” following America’s declaration of war on interview her subjects. On this latter “To study John Devoy’s life,” Germany in 1917, he requested a transfer point, Williams said that her interviews Schmuhl noted, “is to learn about single- to an Irish-American regiment. He was were informative and often profoundly mindedness in its most rarefied and tena- killed in action on July 30, 1918. moving. What impressed Williams most cious form.” Devoy dreamed of a free Schmuhl then turned to Woodrow about the black sisters was that, even as Ireland, and was largely responsible for Wilson, whom he described as the most they experienced the pain of prejudice, arming the rebels who fought during the challenging of the three figures. On the they harbored little resentment against Easter Rising. Clan na Gael, an Irish one hand, Wilson proudly invoked his white sisters or the Catholic Church. They republican organization that Devoy led, ancestry when speaking to Irish-American saw themselves less as victims and more as contributed approximately $100,000 (the audiences, a reliable constituency for nuns. Participants were also moved by the equivalent of $2.5 million in modern cur- Democrats. On the other hand, he calcu- experiences of Williams’ subjects, a feeling rency) for weapons and other costs associ- lated that to win re-election he needed to shared, as well, by Williams’ friends and ated with the Rising. Devoy even helped stress neutrality and squelch the notion of acquaintances who know about the proj- to plan the insurrection. He provided the U.S. involvement in overseas conflict. ect. As the session ended, it was clear that money for Roger Casement to travel from Wilson’s “ducking and dodging” on the Williams’ research raises moral and social the United States to Germany, so Irish Question, Schmuhl said, became such questions as well as scholarly ones. a pattern in 1916 that “reading his papers is an exercise in deliberate conflict avoid- ance.” Schmuhl noted that Wilson’s Hibernian Lecture ambivalence stemmed from a combination of factors. First, he viewed the Rising as “a This fall’s Hibernian Lecture, held on domestic matter for internal resolution by October 28, featured a presentation by Britain.” Second, he “strongly opposed Robert Schmuhl titled “‘All Changed, ‘hyphenism,’ if it diluted or took precedence Changed Utterly’: Easter 1916 and over a more inclusive ‘Americanism.’” America.” Schmuhl is the Walter H. Third, Wilson may have preferred English Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Chair in to Irish culture. Schmuhl cited a book by American Studies and Journalism and the Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt Director of the John W. Gallivan Program titled Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy at the Study (1966), in which the authors noted: University of Notre Dame. He joined the “Four times after ‘breakdowns’ [Wilson] Notre Dame faculty in 1980, served as the attempted to overcome his habitual symp- inaugural Naughton Fellow at University Robert Schmuhl toms by visits to the British Isles. His expe- College Dublin (UCD) in 2000, and rience in Ireland [in 1899] was confined to returned to UCD in 2009 as the first John Casement could try to persuade the a few days of contempt; but Scotland he Hume Visiting Research Fellow at the Germans to assist the cause of Irish inde- loved, the English universities moved him Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies. pendence. Schmuhl pointed out a “strik- to ecstasy and the English Lake District This lecture is adapted from his current ing” fact: Five of the seven signatories of became the home of his heart.” “It doesn’t book project, “The ‘Exiled Children’ the Proclamation spent time in America, take a credentialed successor to Dr. Freud,” and Easter 1916: America and Irish and Devoy knew four of them well. Schmuhl said, “to point out that the presi- Independence.” Meanwhile, Schmuhl continued, dent’s personal preferences for British life In the interest of broadening our view Joyce Kilmer praised the Irish rebels in could have been factors contributing to his of the event, Schmuhl proposed the Easter prose and poetry. Kilmer, who claimed policy views.” Rising “grew to a large extent in American he was “half Irish,” and had an ardent love Schmuhl explained that, following soil.” He illustrated this claim by an exami- of Irish culture, published a Sunday the Rising, Irish-American groups and nation of the roles of three very different Magazine article emphasizing the involve- others “answered the Irish Question as characters: the “plotter” John Devoy, an ment of writers in the insurrection. they saw fit.” The Irish Relief Fund, Irish exile who became an American citi- Kilmer’s own paper, The New York Times, Friends of Irish Freedom, American zen in 1895 and coupled a public career in devoted front-page attention to the events Committee for Relief in Ireland, and journalism with secret activity to bring in Ireland for 14 straight days (from April Eamon de Valera (president of Dail about an Irish republic; the “poet,” Joyce 25 through May 8). By May 4, Schmuhl Eirean, the lower house of the Irish Kilmer, an early 20th -century American said, the word “martyrs” was appearing in Parliament) raised money to assist their writer who composed verse and prose cele- the coverage, which signified a shift of countrymen. Meanwhile, the American brating the Rising; finally, the “president” public opinion. According to Schmuhl, Commission on Conditions in Ireland Woodrow Wilson of northern Irish stock, Kilmer was motivated by his commitment gathered testimony for a 1,000-page 7 C USHWA C ENTER A CTIVITIES report, “which had considerable resonance Mary Henold, Roanoke College, “A Gillian O’Brien, National University or when it was published.” Period of Adjustment: Laywomen’s Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland, “The Murder Schmuhl stressed that these activities Responses to the Vatican II Transition.” of Dr. Cronin: Irish Republicanism in took place outside the formal channels of North America and Ireland 1860-1900.” U.S. foreign policy. Particularly following Jonathan Koefoed, Boston University, Deirdre Raftery, University College the Easter Rising, he said, “[Americans] “Orestes Brownson and the Rejection of Dublin, Ireland, “Irish Women Religious came to believe in the cause of Irish free- Transcendentalism: A Case Study in in America, c. 1840-1940.” dom, and they did whatever they could to Cautious American Romanticism.” make independence a reality.” In this Peter R. D’Agostino respect, what Woodrow Wilson never Kevin Ryan, State University of New pursued at the official level what York at Buffalo, “Catholic Outreach in Research Travel Grant Americans accomplished on their own. the Urban North, 1965-1977.” William Butler Yeats’ assessment of the Please see Announcements on page 11 for Rising was that “All changed, changed John Sharpe, University of Delaware, a complete description of this new grant utterly.” Yet the story of that change, “Small-Proprietor ‘non-Marxist’ Anti- funded in conjunction with Italian Studies Schmuhl concluded, “cannot be told in its Capitalism: Reverberations in America at the University of Notre Dame. entirety without considering the role of Catholic Social Thought Across the Americans — a John Devoy or a Joyce English-Speaking World, From the The annual award for 2012 was awarded to: Kilmer — played.” Early Republic to the Progressive Era and Beyond.” Massimo Faggioli, assistant professor in the Theology Department of the Research Travel Grants Katie Sutrina, Northern Illinois University of St. Thomas, for his project University, “The Food Pyramid: “The Holy See and the Presidential These grants are used to defray expenses Mexicans, Agribusiness, Governments, Election of 1928.” for travel to Notre Dame’s library and and Communities in the Midwest archival collections for research on Migrant Stream.” American Catholicism. The following scholars received awards for 2012: Daniel Coughlin, Trinity College, Hibernian Research Cambridge, U.K. “English Speaking Award Bishops at Vatican II.” Funded by an endowment from the Matthew Cressler, Northwestern Ancient Order of Hibernians, these annual University, “To Be Black and Catholic: awards provide travel funds to support the Kathleen Cummings, Timothy Matovina, African American Catholics in Chicago scholarly study of the Irish in America. Massimo Faggioli, and Joseph Buttigieg from Postwar Migrations to Black Power.”

L ATINA W OMEN OF S PIRIT continued from page 1 late 19th century. Because the H.H.S. ment to Catholic social teaching, helped H.H.S. and started attending graduate offered a spirituality that encouraged her chart a steady course of social activism school under their sponsorship during the sisters to engage the wider society by help- from her teenage years as a migrant worker early 1960s, her connection to and ing the poor, and also as a result of her through her time as an activist nun work- involvement with several of these themes own immigrant ties to Mexico, Higuera ing with the UFW in California. Changes centered on her status as a Mexican was able to live out her vocation as a in the general tone of U.S. society during American and a Roman Catholic sister. member of the H.H.S. by becoming a full- the 1960s and 1970s, together with the She recalled that as a child when her father time volunteer with César Chávez and the American Catholic Church’s institutional “voluntarily” took her family back to United Farm Workers (UFW) during the reforms after 1965, formed the backdrop Mexico during the Great Depression, 1970s. Sister Ascensión’s own class and for Sister Ascensión’s activism. many Mexicans and Mexican Americans ethnic background, as well as her commit- For Sister Ascensión, who joined the faced a hard set of choices:

8 It was during the Depression in persecution of the church by Calles was lor’s in sociology and Spanish from the the 1930s when the United States unjustified. Even after the “Cristero” University of Illinois at Chicago. Later, government was sending so many Rebellion ended, church and state tensions during the 1970s, the H.H.S. also allowed Mexicans from Los Angeles. They continued into the 1930s: her to pursue and earn a master’s degree in used to fill up trains … and Pueblo I was baptized… [during] the per- social work from the University of Chicago. Nuevo [in Mexico], it was all the secution in Mexico. … My mother’s After completing her graduate degree people who lived there, with all family, they all worked to distribute at the University of Chicago in 1975, the people who were sent from Catholic things. So I got very Sister Ascensión dedicated herself fulltime Los Angeles. … And so I always much involved with that … I liked to working with the UFW in California. questioned that … I started to see it very much. And also because of By this period the UFW had acquired all these things. And I didn’t like the persecution in Mexico there national fame after its founders, César it at all. were lots of needs. And we didn’t Chávez and Dolores Huerta, had staged Back in Mexico, Sister Ascensión studied have enough priests. So we had to several national demonstrations and strikes and observed the family business, clothing go from one small place to a big on behalf of California migrants. In the retail. When her family returned to place for Mass, for the religious UFW Sister Ascensión encountered a California in 1947, Sister Ascensión was services. diverse group of people committed to cor- 16 years old, and despite the desire to In California Sister Ascensión continued recting the abuses endured by California continue working in the family business her involvement with the parish on the agricultural migrant labor. In addition to as they had done in Mexico, her family local level, serving as an assistant and help- working with figures such as Chávez and became migrant laborers to make ends ing translate sermons and prayer services Huerta — both of whom were also former meet. into Spanish for migrant workers. There migrants — Sister Ascensión recalled Sister Ascensión recounts that her life she encountered members of the H.H.S. working closely with a Protestant minister was very different in the United States She found that her shared religious and who “grew up” with the union, and trans- after returning from Mexico. Working cultural background, combined with her lating for several Jewish lawyers who repre- within the family retail business had made own work as a migrant laborer, helped her sented the UFW in court. The members life better in Mexico. Yet in the United meet many of the daily and spiritual needs of the UFW welcomed all faiths, though States, “it was very difficult for me … I of migrants from Mexico. the much-publicized photos and videos of used to work in an office, and I used to be While working with migrants as a Chávez and other union members attend- in charge of stores. And I was very young missionary, however, Sister Ascensión ing Mass and leading strikes while carrying but I was able to do that type of work. … recognized that members of the Catholic banners of the Virgin of Guadalupe high- When I returned to California … to be Church could at times be very unsympa- lighted the Catholic background of most able to survive, I went to work in the thetic to Catholics of different cultures union members and their leaders. fields. It was so difficult … to see Mexicans and classes. On several occasions Sister Sister Ascensión also emphasized her in the fields.” Although the U.S. govern- Ascensión witnessed priests who declared Catholic beliefs as a major motivation for ment legally classified her as a U.S. citizen, churches “not open” for Mexican workers. her social activism on behalf of migrant in daily life her cultural and ethnic differ- “There was an awful lot of discrimination,” workers. Her family had always empha- ences made this classification almost she recalled, “not just among pastors but sized the need to do good things for other meaningless. As she later reflected, Sister also among parishioners and parish com- people. Catholic teachings about the Ascensión was unsure how to reconcile the munities.” In most cases, this hostility inherent goodness of all human beings empowerment she had felt as a U.S. citizen toward migrants seemed to stem from class provided the ethical grounding for her on the bus in San Diego with the miserable and cultural differences. Recognizing that interest in social justice as an adult. conditions she endured in the fields of she herself occupied a kind of “middle” According to Sister Ascensión: California ground between the migrants and main- As Catholics, it was part of our During this period her experiences in stream, middle-class Anglo-American nature…doing those good things. the Roman Catholic Church provided a society, Sister Ascensión took it upon My family … they were also very, strong sense of connection to Mexico. herself to become more active with very good. And we used to do an There, her family had supported the anti- national groups associated with the awful lot of [good] things before Calles movement, which called for a halt Mexican American Civil Rights movement. becoming a sister. And so they of the persecutions of the institutional Sister Ascensión entered the H.H.S were not surprised when I became church by the administration of President in 1956 at the age of 25. Because she had a sister and I continued so much Plutarco Elías Calles. The 1920s and stopped attending high school to work social justice …When you have 1930s had been a period of great upheaval with her family in the fields, the H.H.S. that, when you are young you will and tension between supporters of the paid for her to complete her high school not forget that. And you try to do institutional church and the Calles govern- diploma. Recognizing her innate intellect, the best you can. ment, giving rise to the “Cristero” Rebellion. her community funded Sister Ascensión’s On an institutional level the Catholic Sister Ascensión and her family felt the undergraduate degree. She earned a bache- Church was undergoing changes on a

9 L ATINA W OMEN OF S PIRIT global scale, making leaders within the U.S. well as the U.S. Catholic Church, on traditions within the order as the result Catholic Church more responsive to behalf of Chicanos and Latinos. In addi- of interaction with popular Mexican engaging various aspects of secular society. tion, Matovina’s and Yolanda Tarango’s American devotions in Texas. Both of these The catalyst for this change, in Sister study, “Las Hermanas” in Hispanics in works focus on how religious belief func- Ascensión’s words, was the convening of the Church: Up from the Cellar (San tioned within Latino communities, and the the Second Vatican Council in Rome by Francisco: Catholic Scholars Press, 1994), effects of these Latina sisters’ efforts at reli- Pope John XXIII in 1962: “What hap- edited by Philip Lampe, focused on how gious instruction. pened is that at the time the Church had the structure, strategies, and goals of the Studies on the individual lives of the ecumenical council, Vatican II. And organization evolved in the decade and a Latina sisters are rarer, and for the most the Church opened up.” According to half since its 1973 founding. part they are based on oral histories and Sister Ascensión, the Church’s “opening Another body of scholarship focuses interviews. Sister Ascención’s history up” after Vatican II was directly responsi- specifically on the social effects of religious speaks to one important theme in this ble for many members of the H.H.S. belief and practice within Latina women growing body of literature in that her choosing to serve migrant workers as nurses, religious communities. Darryl V. activism bridged the cultural and social union workers, and language teachers. Caterine’s Conservative Catholicism and divisions separating Latino and Anglo soci- Without the encouragement provided the Carmelites: Identity, Ethnicity, and ety. Ana María Díaz-Stevens’ “Missionizing by the Second Vatican Council, it would Tradition in the Modern Church (Indiana the Missionaries: Religious Congregations have been less clear to Sister Ascensión University, 2001) of Women in Puerto that she was fulfilling her vocation as a traced the influence Rico, 1910-1960” sister of the H.H.S. by working with of the Carmelite Sister Ascension’s story and Anita de Luna’s Mexican and Mexican American migrants Sisters of the Most “Evangelizadoras during the 1970s. Sacred Heart of Los is a part of a broader del Barrio: The Rise Sister Ascension’s story is part of a Angeles, an order story in which Latina of the Missionary broader story in which Latina nuns — and founded by the Catechists of Divine more precisely, Mexican American nuns Mexican Mother nuns — and more Providence” — — have shaped American Catholicism and Luisa Josefa, on both published in aspects of U.S. society in the 20th century. various Latino and precisely, Mexican the winter 2003 Only recently have historians and other Filipino communities American nuns — issue of the U.S. specialists started examining these histo- in the United States. Catholic Historian ries not only as recovery projects on the Caterine found that have shaped American — trace the history history of marginalized groups in America, the Carmelite sisters’ of Latina women but also with a commitment toward neoconservative view Catholicism and religious communi- critical engagement of the sources. Several of the church’s role in aspects of U.S. society ties in Puerto Rico historians of Mexican Americans and the modern life gained and Texas within Catholic Church have explored the con- credibility in these in the 20th century. the context of U.S. nection between Latina women religious, communities because expansionism and Catholicism, and social justice in America. the order promoted Anglo American Two of the best-known studies are Lara traditionalist religious practices that were Catholic ethnocentrism that devalued Medina’s Las Hermanas: Chicana/Latina common in Latin America. Immigrant existing Latino religious traditions. Sister Religious-Political Activism in the U.S. communities could find solace in their María Luisa Vélez’s article in the Catholic Church (Temple, 2004) and marginalized social status as Catholics winter/spring 1990 issue of the U.S. Timothy Matovina’s chapter “Represen- oriented toward a Latino rather than an Catholic Historian, “The Pilgrimage of tation and the Reconstruction of Power: Anglo-Protestant cultural identity. In Hispanics among the Incarnate Word The Rise of PADRES and Las Hermanas” Faith Formation and Popular Religion: Community,” focused on Latina women’s in Mary Jo Weaver’s edited volume What’s Lessons from the Tejano Experience experiences of prejudice within women’s Left?: Liberal American Catholics (Indiana (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), Anita religious communities, raising the issue of University, 1999). According to Medina de Luna, M.C.D.P., examined the relation- cultural integration and exclusion for and Matovina, during the 1960s and 1970s ship between popular religiosity and cate- Latina sisters. The story of the first the Catholic identity of many Mexican- chesis in Tejano communities. De Luna Incarnate Word sister from the Americas, is American clergy and religious was not focused on her own order, the Missionary the subject of Kathleen McDonagh’s book, separate from their vocation as religious Catechists of Divine Providence, and God’s Border Rose: The Story of Mother leaders striving to change the world, as traced the development of catechetical Teresa (Rosa) Solis, IWBS, A Multicultural

10 Woman, 1840-1920 (Corpus Ascensión to serve God and improve Scholars who seek to examine the Christi/Brownsville: Sisters of the Incarnate her educational opportunities. Despite ambiguities of class and ethnic identity in Word and Blessed Sacrament, 2002). widespread social hostility toward Latinos, America during the 20th century, together Sister Ascensión’s life speaks to the Sister Ascensión gained acceptance into a with the influence of religion, can use ambivalent statuses of class, ethnicity, and predominantly white religious community. histories like those of Sister Ascensión citizenship that Latinos hold in U.S. society. Her life trajectory illustrates the need for as a template for forming a new model of The complex cultural and social milieu of further studies on pathways of integration cultural and social dialogue. Unlike the Sister Ascensión’s life as a Latina sister and mobility open to Latinas and Latinos, majority of studies that have focused on reveals new possibilities for academic whether it be in religious life, the Catholic cultural and social aspects that have sepa- study. Although she was a U.S. citizen by Church more broadly, or settings outside rated Latina religious from the rest of birth, Sister Ascensión came from an the ecclesial ambit. U.S. society and the other members of the immigrant background. As a result she The various aspects of her back- institutional Catholic Church, Sister possessed an awareness of the social, ground assisted Sister Ascensión in her Ascensión’s story demonstrates how some cultural, and class issues facing migrant dedication to social activism, in serving as individuals were able to challenge and go workers in America. Sister Ascensión lived a reminder that her experiences were all beyond the status quo. Her story is more the uncertainties of citizenship status com- too common for U.S. Latinos. Scholars can in line with members of religious orders mon to many Latinas in the 20th century investigate these prevailing themes in the such as those examined by Medina, United States. Born an American citizen, lives of Latina sisters through discovering Matovina, and Tarango, activist nuns she was labeled an undesirable member which religious communities recruited in who brought together disparate causes and of society and pressured to leave the U.S. areas with major Latino populations, how individuals regardless of differing racial, during the Depression. After returning often religious communities offered educa- class, and ethnic backgrounds. Her story to the United States, Sister Ascensión’s tional opportunities to Latina sisters, and also offers a view into how religious association with itinerant Latinos who the national and family origins of Latina communities facilitated educational, social were not fully accepted in any community sisters who are closely involved in provid- service, and immigration opportunities continued through her work with the ing immigration and other social services. for Latinos, all of which were themes UFW. Yet she also came from an educated, The complexities of Latina sisters’ class, examined in the traveling exhibit Women middle-class background, and like many ethnicity, and citizenship status in the and Spirit. Latinas who faced discrimination in the United States influence their social 20th-century United States, her entry into activism and must be investigated to fully — Felicia Moralez a religious community provided a path to understand how Latina sisters imagine a University of Notre Dame educational and socioeconomic mobility. just social order. Joining the H.H.S. enabled Sister

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Kathy is that I leave the center I esteem Message from the highly to an accomplished and visionary Cushwa Director successor. Please join me in congratulat- ing Kathy, and in supporting her in the I am delighted to inform subscribers to projects and initiatives with which she our newsletter that Professor Kathleen will enhance the center’s mission in the Sprows Cummings will become director coming years. I also want to take this of the Cushwa Center effective this sum- opportunity to express my gratitude to mer. Please find copied below the official all the Cushwa Center’s friends and announcement of her appointment from supporters. My decade as Cushwa direc- John McGreevy, dean of Notre Dame’s tor was a wonderful time of collegiality College of Arts and Letters. As most of and learning from the many scholars you know, Kathleen, Paula Brach, and I associated with the center. I thank have worked together for both of my you all and wish you all the best in y terms as Cushwa director. I could not our future work and participation in the have asked for better colleagues. But I mission of the Cushwa Center. think my deepest debt of gratitude to — Timothy Matovina Kathleen Sprows Cummings

11 A NNOUNCEMENTS

I am pleased to announce that Kathleen Call for Papers Religion and Citizenship at the United Sprows Cummings, Associate Professor of States Air Force Academy.” American Studies, has accepted a five-year Submissions for Catholic Practice in term as director of the Cushwa Center for North America Series Co-editors: Angela Fellowships the Study of American Catholicism, effec- O’Donnell and John C. Seitz, Fordham tive July 1, 2012. As many of you know, University: This aim of this series is to The Louisville Institute seeks to enrich the she is one of the country’s most accom- contribute to the growing field of Catholic religious life of American Christians, and to plished scholars of American Catholicism, Studies through the publication of books revitalize their institutions, by bringing notably as the author of New Women of devoted to the historical and cultural study together those who lead religious institu- the Old Faith: Gender and American of Catholic practice in North America, tions with those who study them so that the Catholic Identity in the Progressive Era from the colonial period to the present. work of each might inform and strengthen (University of North Carolina Press, The series editors welcome submissions the work of the other. The institute espe- 2009), a path breaking study of gender in a variety of disciplines and genres, cially seeks to support significant research and Catholicism. Her current project, for including empirical investigations as well projects that focus on Christian faith and which she won a National Endowment of as creative analyses and explorations of the life, religious institutions, and pastoral lead- the Humanities fellowship in 2010, is on contours of American Catholicism. Send ership. Research grant programs include: saints and saint-making and is an attempt, submissions to [email protected]. Dissertation Fellowship, First Book Grant in her words, to bridge the “divide Program for Minority Scholars, Project between institutional and popular reli- If you have questions, please contact Grants for Researchers, and Sabbatical gious history.” She is an innovative (and Angela O’Donnell /aodonnell@fordham. Grants for Researchers. Application dead- popular) teacher, with especially well edu or John Seitz /johnchapinseitz lines and grant amounts vary. Complete regarded courses on the history of @gmail.com. details are available at: www.louisville-insti- American Catholicism. tute.org, via e-mail at info@louisville-insti- tute.org, or by regular mail at Louisville Kathy has been associate director of the Remembrance Institute, 1044 Alta Vista Road, Louisville, Cushwa Center, the country’s premier Kentucky 40205. Center for research on American The Organization of American Historians Catholicism, since 2001. The center’s notes with sadness the passing of David The Archives of the Council Fathers director during that time, Tim Matovina, Montgomery, Farnam Professor of History Project seeks to commemorate the 50th professor of theology, is stepping down emeritus at Yale University, on December anniversary of the opening of the Second with the gratitude of the College and his 2, 2011. Montgomery was 84 years old. Vatican Council. The Pontifical Committee colleagues on the Cushwa board. Tim has for Historical Sciences together with the been a superb leader for the center and has David Montgomery is considered the Center for the Study of and Research on advanced its mission in multiple ways, dean of U.S. labor history. His book — a the Second Vatican Council of the from more fully integrating Latino/a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1988 — Fall of the Pontifical Lateran University are co- Catholicism into the research profile of House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, sponsoring a project to promote scholarly the center to a series of innovative projects and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925, research with the archives of the Council on global Catholicism, including an remains a critical work that documented Fathers titled “The Second Vatican Council ongoing project — conducted by a team the decline of the labor movement in the from the Perspective of the Archives of the of international scholars — aiming to United States. Council Fathers.” Collecting information write the history of the Second Vatican on where these papers are located will be a Council as experienced in 15 different Honors and Awards principle focus of the project. dioceses around the world. At the request of Archbishop George A presentation on the data collected for the The Cushwa Center’s history — begin- Niederauer of San Francisco, Pope project will be made at an international ning with its founder Jay Dolan (1975- Benedict XVI has conferred the conference planned for October 2012, 93), its second director Scott Appleby Benemerenti Medal on Jeffrey M. Burns, where sessions will be dedicated to (1994-2002), Tim Matovina (2002-12), archivist of the archdiocese of San promoting research that make specific use and now Kathy Cummings — is an Francisco, for his long service in the of the Archives of the Council Fathers. unusually distinguished one. Please join archives. me in thanking Tim for extending that For more information please contact the tradition, and congratulating and welcom- Friend of the Cushwa Center and North American Coordinators, Archives ing Kathy as she begins her new duties. assistant professor of sociology at the of the Council Fathers Project are Tricia University of Notre Dame, Mary Ellen T. Pyne, Ph.D. ([email protected]) — John T. McGreevy Konieczny, has received a Faculty for the United States, and Rev. Gilles I. A. O’Shaughnessy Dean Research Support Initiation Grant for Routhier, Ph.D., for Canada (gilles. her work “Serving God and Country: [email protected]).

12 HISTORY OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS

he History of Women ment on sessions are also invited. The 2012, by ACMRS, the statewide Religious began its formal language of the conference is English, research center sponsored by Arizona’s association with the Cushwa but proposals may be submitted in three public universities). Center with the previous issue English or French. T of the Center’s online The Correspondence of Mother Vincent newsletter. An informal relationship dates Send all proposals to: Whitty, 1839 to 1892, eds. Anne back 23 years to 1988 when a colloquium Elizabeth McGahan Hetherington and Pauline Smoothy sponsored by the Center, “The History of Chair, Planning Committee (Brisbane: University of Queensland Women Religious in the United States,” Department of History and Press, 2011), is an annotated collection stimulated a small group of women to Politics of over 430 letters written to, by or begin HWR. Networking has been facili- University of New Brunswick about Mother Vincent Whitty, leader of tated primarily through History of Women - Saint John Campus the first group of Mercy Sisters to come Religious News and Notes and a triennial P.O. Box 5050 to Queensland. As such, it provides a conference. Publication of the newsletter Saint John, New Brunswick valuable resource for those interested in concluded with the June 2011 issue. CANADA E2L 4L5 the resurgence of religious life for Past issues of the newsletter have been E-mail: [email protected] women in the 1800s. deposited in the History of Women Religious section of the University of Awards Anne Butler’s forthcoming volume, Notre Dame Archives. Conference news Nominations are invited for awards Across God’s Frontiers: Many Nuns for continues to be available on its web site given at the triennial conference: the Many Wests, 1850-1920 (University of www.CHWR.org. Distinguished Historian Award given North Carolina Press, 2012) brings to recognize lifetime achievement for together years of scholarship in what Ninth Triennial Meeting research and publication in the field, may well be the definitive work on the The Conference on the History of and the Distinguished Book Award for subject. Women Religious returns in June 2013 outstanding books published between to St. Catherine University in St. Paul, triennial conferences, in this case, books Margaret Nacke, C.S.J., Bearers of Faith: Minnesota, site of the Conference’s first with a publication date between May Undaunted Courage of Catholic Sisters academic meeting held in 1989. 2010 and January 1, 2013. Books must Under Communism (Privately printed, be published by a refereed press; those Sisters of St. Joseph, Concordia, Kansas, Call for Papers published privately will not be consid- 2011), presents personal testimonies by The Conference planning committee ered. Collections of edited documents Sisters in Central and Eastern Europe invites proposals for papers or panels and letters will not be considered. Lists who lived under the 40-year Communist that address questions, themes or issues of past recipients of both awards are rule there, The 73-page work is abun- that have shaped, and/or continue to given in the Conference Web site dantly illustrated. A related hour-long influence, the evolution of congregations www.CHWR.org. Send letters of documentary, Interrupted Lives: of women religious. Proposals that nomination as an e-mail to Awards Catholic Sisters Under European focus on community governance, ethnic, Committee Chair, Maggie McGuinness Communism, is available by calling linguistic or racial tensions, demographic ([email protected]) by January 800-235-8722, or see www.usccbpub- composition, inter-congregational coop- 1, 2013. lishing.org. eration, changing ministries, relations with clergy, hierarchy and secular insti- Publications Liberating Sanctuary: 100 Years of tutions, spiritual traditions or emerging A Companion to Catherine of Siena, eds. Women’s Education at the College of St. models of religious life are welcome. Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco and Catherine, eds. Jane Lamm Carroll, Disciplinary approaches may include Mayne Kienzle (vol. 32 in Brill’s Joanne Cavallaro, and Sharon Doherty history, sociology, anthropology, theolo- Companions to the Christian Tradition, (Lexington Books, 2012) is a collection gy, religious studies, literature, commu- 2011), offers a substantive introduction of essays that reveal a community of nication, cultural studies, art, to the world of Catherine (1347-1380) women who created a college over a architecture and material culture. as a church reformer, peacemaker, century ago (1905) that still flourishes Proposals for papers in the form of a preacher, author, saint and politically today. A “must read” for those interest- one-page abstract accompanied by a astute woman. HWR member Suzanne ed in bringing the story of Catholic one-page CV are requested by August Noffke, O.P., is one of the contributors. women into mainstream accounts of the 15, 2012. Panel proposals are encour- Noffke’s translation, Catherine of Siena: women’s movement in U.S. church and aged but individual proposals are also An Anthology is forthcoming (spring society. welcome. Volunteers to chair and com-

13 HISTORY OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS

Two recent publications shed light on Hope Retreat and Advices Concerning the Daughters were involved with the care the rationale for the fact-finding visita- Sick. The content analysis of Advices of alcoholics. Coskery’s use of language tion of women’s religious congregations documents the pre-1873 evolution of reveals her sensitivity towards those suf- in the United States initiated by the the nursing profession in America fering from this condition. In dealing Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes through the collective efforts of the with the mentally ill or the inebriate, the of Consecrated Life and Societies of Daughters and other congregations. Daughters often had disputes with Apostolic Life in January 2009. This study challenges an assumption physicians over diets for patients. Apostolic Religious Life in America still held that nursing as a profession Reportedly one doctor observed, “The Today: A Response to the Crisis, ed. commenced with the adoption of the only objection that can be made against Richard Gribble, C.S.C. (The Catholic Nightingale model at Bellevue Hospital [the sisters] is the fear so often realized, University of America Press, 2011) in 1873. Advices contains a plethora of that their mode of organization disposes includes presentations by the then-pre- details prescribed by Sr. Coskery regard- them rather to follow their own plans fect of CICLSAL, Cardinal Franc Rodé, ing wounds, diet, sickroom cleanliness and desires, than those of the physician” C.M., and others at the Symposium on and the importance of kindness when (217). The authors, perhaps betraying Religious Life held in 2008 at Stonehill caring for the mentally ill. their bias, write that Sr. Coskery knew College, North Easton Massachusetts. through experience that there was a Prophets in Their Own Country: Women Considerable attention is given to the limit to obedience to physicians when it Religious Bearing Witness to the Gospel 17th-century Vincentian spiritual came to patient care, noting that there in a Troubled Church by Sandra antecedents of the 19th-century were times when Coskery would decline Schneiders, I.H.M. (Orbis Books, 2011) American foundation. Readers are to administer an opiate and instead give is comprised of articles published by the reminded that the Daughters of Charity a cup of “hop tea” (218). author in the National Catholic Reporter were sisters first and nurses second, during the months following announce- receiving their on-the-job training in The professional lives of the Daughters ment of the visitation, along with an hospital or infirmary settings after they unfolded against the 19th-century extended introduction by the author. were formed by the community’s milieu of ubiquitous anti-Catholicism Mistress of Novices. voiced even by Dorothea Dix, the Notices prominent advocate of reform for the Remembrance Anastasia Coskery entered the commu- care of the mentally ill. As well, similar HWR extends its sympathy to the entire nity in 1829. A year later as Sr. Matilda to any formal organization, the U.S. Carmelite community on the occa- Coskery, she was on the infirmary staff Daughters contended with the internal sion of the death of Vilma Seelaus, at St Joseph’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland. politics of their religious community. O.C.D., January 27, 2012. From the In 1833 Sr. Coskery accompanied her About Coskery a contemporary wrote: Barrington, Rhode Island, Carmel, she sisters when the Daughters were asked “Everyone reverences [her] yet hearts do was a great scholar of Carmelite texts to staff the Maryland Hospital for the not cluster around Sister Matilda. [Her] and a leader in the renewal of contem- Insane in Baltimore. Within seven years, virtue . . . excites more respect than plative life. the Daughters left the Hospital in a dis- love.”(284) In the election for Mother pute over management issues regarding General in 1845 Coskery lost by 20 Book Reviews the care of the insane and the limits of votes. The post-election fallout saw Martha M. Libster and Betty Ann the sisters’ discretion in providing care Emmitsburg separate from New York, McNeil, D.C., Enlightened Charity, the (83). They opened their own institution and the Emmitsburg sisters seeking Holistic Nursing Care, Education, and eventually known as Mount Hope affiliation with the Daughters in Paris. “Advices Concerning the Sick” of Sister Retreat. Sr. Matilda Coskery became By 1850 the American Daughters, head- Matilda Coskery, 1799-1870 (Golden the first Sister Servant (superior) of this quartered in Maryland, had relinquished Apple Publications, 2009) Pp. 504. institution where a consultant physician the Seton garb and adopted the habit of was retained and moral treatment pro- the French sisters, including the large Coauthored by Martha Libster, a psychi- moted for the insane. The authors note: white cornette. atric nurse, and Betty Ann McNeil, “The ideal of moral therapy was that D.C., a professional social worker, this the patients create new lives within the Throughout the book the authors refer study focuses on the nursing history of asylum that they could then translate to to the continuing expansion of the “sec- the American Daughters of Charity in life outside the asylum” (191). ularization” of nursing — essentially the the 19th century and the community’s profession’s movement away from its care of the insane. It relies on two princi- The focus of the Daughters’ care was religious roots and ties, especially after pal primary documents written by Sister always to elevate their patients’ self- the Civil War. Even with the “seculariza- Matilda Coskery (1799-1870): Mount esteem. Advices also reveals that the tion” of nursing, however, for much of

14 the 20th century a nurse’s uniform cious and measured response to the included a reminder of the profession’s desire to serve the gospel as adult origins — the nursing cap, which many women. I sensed another desire: to may recognize as a modified nun’s coif. invest energies in ministry rather than dealing with an internal community life Enlightened Charity succeeds in captur- that was essentially about controlling its ing the nursing world from the 1830s to members. And yet that is exactly what I the late 1890s through the Daughters’ was missing. Response to the Word tells us role in the profession’s development. of all the meetings and correspondence Libster and McNeil praise Coskery’s meticulously required to separate and knowledge, particularly in the care of form a new community. While the insane, as exemplary. No doubt some Annamarie Cook was undoubtedly modern practitioners, schooled in phar- loved and admired for her guidance macological and integrative care and the through troubling and troubled times, I impact of their voice on patients, might still felt like this was an ode to a process resonate to the sentiment in Coskery’s and not to the spirituality that obviously observation expressed over a century motivated these sisters to disrupt their ago, “Your mild tone of voice, is like a lives for a greater cause. ray of light, or taking the hand of a blind man, saying: this way, my friend. Thus I was mindful while reading this of an you loan them your reason, till their’s earlier history by Constance Gaynor, [sic] returns.”(233) FSP, which, while providing some narra- tive of the process of separation and — Elizabeth W. McGahan establishment of their new community, University of New Brunswick- left me with a greater sense of heart and Saint John Campus spirit. This may be the result of one author versus a team of compilers and Response to the Word: The Memoirs and writers. Writings of Sister Annamarie Cook Foundress of the Sisters of the Living Response to the Word will be valued by Word 1914-2005, compiled by Sisters future historians for the founder’s mem- of the Living Word. (Privately printed, oirs, the raw data, the interview with Sisters of the Living Word, Arlington Cook in 1994, the history of the process Heights, Illinois, 2010. Pp. 180+xxviii.) and reasons (as much as one can under- The momentum begun by the Sister stand why we do something in the given Formation Conference and the Second moment) for creating a new community, Vatican Council caused sometimes nec- and records of some of the foundation essary fractures within religious commu- correspondence. Along with other nities. Provinces, intra- and inter-, recent histories of new communities, struggled with members whose ability Response to the Word will give future to embrace the call to transformation historians good data with which to work and re-formation occurred at different as they attempt to understand the paces. Some communities moved swiftly, momentous season of the Second and possibly too swiftly, for members Vatican Council for women’s communi- to integrate and embrace change; some ties. After all, was there any other moved too slowly, fearing change. I section of the Catholic Church that believe it is still too soon to make critical took the Council as seriously as and effective judgments on this. I suspect American sisters? that in another 50 years or so scholars will seriously explore “what happened,” — Laura Swan, O.S.B. with the necessary and healthy distance St. Placid Priory needed to make meaningful judgment Lacey, Washington possible.

As with many communities, Annamarie Cook and companions did not set out to break away from the Sisters of Christian Charity. Rather, it was a judi-

15 PUBLICATIONS

A Review: The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War (University Press of Kansas, 2010) by Anthony Burke Smith

The first thing I Catholicism and popular culture. While noticed was the Bing still an undergraduate, I discovered Crosby photograph Greeley’s God in Popular Culture (1988) in on the cover. It is hard the stacks of the Wheaton College library. to think of a better Interviewing him for my book People of picture for a work Faith (2003), I learned from his blend of on Catholicism and storytelling and social science. As he told Tpopular culture. With a Roman collar me in the interview, “I write stories about and a smile, Father Chuck O’Malley epito- the kinds of people I study sociologically, mized the “look of Catholics” in postwar particularly the Irish, who have been America. An antidote to centuries of anti- here for four generations, are now very Catholicism, Crosby continues to evoke American, very successful, but also distinc- nostalgia among the graying remnants of tive from other Americans.” the greatest generation. Present at the creation of American For me the nostalgia is of a different Catholic Studies, Greeley could only take sort. When I look at Bing, I remember the the field so far. A classic lumper, he has movies I watched during my years at the been critiqued by a generation of splitters. College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, As historian James T. Fisher noted in a Massachusetts. Part of a seminar on 2001 lecture, Greeley embraced a religious “Catholicism, Media, and Popular Smith. Like Chesterton and Roosevelt, essentialism that exaggerated the differ- Culture,” my evening film series included Smith was there to talk about religion and ences between Catholicism and Crosby’s Going My Way, along with Mean ethnicity. A guest in Professor David Protestantism. Others have moved beyond Streets and Clerks. O’Brien’s history class, he told students Greeley’s approach. In Catholics in the Every Tuesday I showed a film in the what was Irish and Catholic about John Movies (2008), Colleen McDannell and basement of Stein Hall. After the credits Ford’s Stagecoach. her colleagues historicized religion’s pres- rolled and the students departed, I As a young scholar in Catholic ence in Hollywood film, rejecting the rewound the videotape. Alone in the class- Studies, I understood the difficulty of notion of a trans-historical Catholic room, I looked up at the crucifix above the Smith’s assignment. Having taught the imagination. VCR, a fitting end to a night spent with same film, I knew the literature on Ford’s In The Look of Catholics, Smith builds Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro. On my Catholicism was quite sparse. In a quest on these critiques. Unlike previous stu- way to the car, I took in the lovely locust for the perfect text, I assigned Lee dents of religion and film, he shows how trees lining the entrance to the college. Lourdeaux’s Italian and Irish Filmmakers figures like Leo McCarey and John Ford Climbing the steps in front of Holy Cross’ in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola, and reflected shifts in Catholic political Dinand Library, I stood where G.K. Scorsese (1990) and Richard Blake’s culture. Instead of celebrating a Catholic Chesterton stood in 1931. From the top AfterImage: The Indelible Catholic sensibility from nowhere, he locates their of the stairs, I saw the porch where future Imagination of Six American Filmmakers movies within the context of 20th-century Celtics star Bob Cousy addressed an ador- (2000). As Blake’s title suggests, both American history. ing throng following a loss in the 1950 authors leaned rather heavily on Andrew Earlier treatments of Catholicism and NCAA semifinals. A half-century earlier, Greeley’s pioneering work in American popular culture rarely mention Franklin President Theodore Roosevelt invoked a Catholic Studies. Consistent with this Roosevelt or the Great Depression. In very different tribe of Celts, urging Holy approach, they emphasized the presence Blake’s AfterImage, the phrase “New Deal” Cross to establish an endowed chair in of ethnic sacramentalism in Ford’s movies. occurs just once. It is entirely absent from Celtic literature. As a sociologist and best-selling Lourdeaux’s Italian and Irish Filmmakers Nearly a century later, Holy Cross novelist, Father Greeley almost single- in America. By contrast, Smith begins by played host to historian Anthony Burke handedly invented the study of discussing the Catholic critique of 16 American capitalism in the midst of the approach to the problems of urban youth. Apache (1948), Irish-American soldiers Great Depression. Drawing on David In Boys Town (1938), he created a micro- participated in the rituals of frontier mili- O’Brien’s American Catholics and Social cosm of Roosevelt’s America. While tary life. According to Smith, the film Reform (1968) and John McGreevy’s Flanagan’s brick-and-mortar projects functioned as an “Irish American Catholic Parish Boundaries (1996), he explores resembled the WPA, his embrace of romance of the Cold War.” the emergence of a “Catholic front” that Protestants and Jews reflected the ethos of In The Look of Catholics, he critiques challenged the laissez-faire economics of what Kevin Schultz calls “tri-faith the “repudiation of the reformist values of Protestant America. America.” the New Deal era.” Articulating a highly Grounded in what Smith calls the These communal values could also be critical analysis of Going My Way (1944), “dense, lived communitarianism” of ethnic found in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), a Smith makes Bing Crosby Exhibit A in his neighborhoods and urban parishes, this film that dramatized the tension between a case against Catholic assimilation. In his social Catholicism found expression in “New Deal community of mutual assis- judgment, the baseball-playing Father a series of “Catholic spaces,” including tance” and the WASP tradition of evangel- Chuck O’Malley symbolized a retreat to religious radio, the Catholic Youth ical moralism. At the beginning of the the private sphere of home and leisure. Organization, and the Catholic press. movie, the Ladies Law and Order League Gone was the crusading zeal of the social While America magazine criticized capital- policed the frontier town of Tonto (“stu- reformer, replaced by a crooning priest and ism’s “exaggerated respect for ‘individual- pid” in Spanish), accompanied by the dis- his golf clubs. Smith attributes the movie’s ism,’” Archbishop John T. McNicholas cordant strains of “Shall We Gather at the benign view of American culture to direc- called for “Christian justice.” Monsignor River.” Stagecoach also featured a corrupt tor Leo McCarey’s West Coast back- John A. Ryan offered a spirited defense of banker who extolled the virtues of ground. Raised in the more assimilated the New Deal in a 1936 radio address. American capitalism: “America for environment of Southern California, From the very start, American Catholics Americans! The government must not McCarey became a passionate anti- were a key part of the New Deal coalition. interfere with business! Reduce taxes! Our Communist in the post-war era. This As early as 1932, Roosevelt quoted Pope national debt is something shocking, over Red-baiting zeal reached its zenith in My Piux XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, invoking one billion dollars a year! What this coun- Son John (1952). Depicting the conflict the authority of Catholic social teaching. try needs is a business man for President!” between a Catholic family and their More than previous treatments of Ridiculing this speech, the drunken Doc Communist son, it features a priest who Catholic politics, Smith relates social Boone (a stand-in for the stage Irishman) also appeared in Going My Way. In Smith’s Catholicism to the world of Hollywood responded, “What the country needs is opinion, it is the film’s true sequel. movies. In his view, Catholic filmmakers more fuddle.” Sharing his wares with the This same consensus view of and actors articulated a “reformist vision good doctor, the film’s mild-mannered Catholicism could be found in the pages of America.” Even the gangster films of the whiskey salesman called for “a little of Life magazine. Guided by Henry Luce’s 1930s “represented a pervasive challenge Christian charity one for the other.” vision of the “American century,” it cele- to the cultural status quo.” As Daniel In the 1930s, Ford described his poli- brated democracy and free market capital- Patrick Moynihan noted in Beyond the tics as “socialist democrat — always left.” ism. Such values were on display in a Melting Pot (1963), James Cagney was During those years he was a member of the profile of New York’s Cardinal Francis the quintessential Irish American, “fists Popular Front. Consistent with these Spellman. Featuring a photograph of the cocked, chin out, back straight, bouncing political leanings, Ford’s How Green Was Cardinal’s boyhood home, Life noted along on his heels.” He was also a symbol My Valley (1941) depicted a conflict that Spelllman was once “an American boy of working-class solidarity. Far from a between ethnic communalism and capital- who delivered groceries and played short- rugged individualist, he lived by the code ist exploitation. Though set in Wales, it stop and got his start in the democratic of the neighborhood. As bootlegger Paddy reflected his belief that “the Welsh are just atmosphere of an American small town.” Ryan proclaimed in The Public Enemy another lot of micks and biddies.” Not sur- Reinforcing the image of Catholics as loyal (1931), “You gotta have friends.” Such prisingly, Twentieth-Century Fox screened patriots, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen called communal bonds were also at the heart of the film in Pennsylvania’s coal country. America “a secondary cause under Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), a melodra- Such movies represented the high water Providence for preserving all the liberties ma featuring a friendship between a priest mark of Hollywood’s social Catholicism. of the world,” giving a Neo-Thomist spin (played by Pat O’Brien) and a gangster By 1945 Catholic directors had shift- to the Cold War. According to Smith, (played by Cagney). Rather than viewing ed to the right. Head of the film and pho- Sheen’s top-rated television program them as opposites, Smith describes them as tography unit for the Office of Strategic was yet another symbol of Catholic “cultural twin[s].” Services, Ford directed two World War II accommodation. The crusading cleric depicted in documentaries. In 1944 he joined the con- In the final analysis, The Look of Angels was part of a cohort of celluloid servative Motion Picture Alliance for the Catholics is a declension story. Tracing the reformers. The epitome of the socially- Preservation of American Ideals, a group “struggle between reformist and consensu- engaged priest, Spencer Tracy’s Father that later assisted the House Un-American al visions of American community,” Smith Flanagan embodied a communitarian Activities Committee. In Ford’s Fort argues that Catholics embraced the values

17 The Look of Catholics of “anticommunist righteousness, political Americanization. Dubbing himself the last Catholic Studies. Commenting on The conservatism, and a corporate order.” In Americanist, he emphasizes the “liberation Catholic Studies Reader, historian Paula his judgment, there is little continuity story” of Catholic upward mobility. Kane detects a “lack of consensus among between social Catholicism and the reli- Smith’s host at Holy Cross, O’Brien is now scholars and disciplines about what consti- gious complacency of the post-war period. his colleague at the University of Dayton. tutes ‘Catholic Studies.’” At Holy Cross I Not everyone accepts Smith’s inter- Though Smith thanks him in his acknowl- experienced this dissensus firsthand. pretation of Catholic popular culture. edgments, they disagree about the direc- During monthly colloquia and dinners, Historian Christopher Shannon covers tion of American Catholic history. colleagues presented conflicting approach- similar terrain in Bowery to Broadway: The O’Brien once showed me the es to Catholic Studies. Some saw it as American Irish in Classic Hollywood Norman Rockwell print in his office at an opportunity for spiritual formation. Cinema (2010). Guided by an apprecia- Holy Cross. Expressing his appreciation Others invoked Foucault. On more than tion of the “Irish-American urban village,” for civil religion, he has urged Catholic one occasion, these discussions would spill he comes to very different conclusions. scholars to embrace the best of American over into the rest of the week. Instead of equating Boys Town with the culture. If O’Brien had written The Look At Holy Cross I was always a big-tent New Deal, Shannon highlights Father of Catholics, it would have included a chap- person. I wanted a Catholic Studies that Flanagan’s negative view of the state. ter on James Cagney’s Yankee Doodle made room for theologians and anthropol- Rather than criticizing Father O’Malley’s Dandy, a cinematic tribute to George M. ogists, Americanists and counter- golf clubs, he notes Going My Way’s Cohan. As a fictional President Franklin Americanists, liberal Catholics and emphasis on the “moral primacy of the Roosevelt remarks in the film, “That’s one neo-traditionalists. Far from a problem, parish.” In Shannon’s reading, both films thing I’ve always admired about you Irish such diversity means that there is plenty reflect a Catholic emphasis on the local Americans. You carry your love of country to talk about. Joining the fray, Anthony and the particular. like a flag, right out in the open. It’s a great Burke Smith has written a fascinating While celebrating the Catholic New quality.” From Smith’s viewpoint, this is a book. It is required reading for all who Deal, The Look of Catholics takes a dim capitulation to American nationalism. care about the place of Catholics in view of post-war Catholic culture, criticiz- From O’Brien’s perspective, it means that American popular culture. ing its embrace of the American Century. American Catholics have come home. By contrast, historian David O’Brien These competing perspectives reflect — John Schmalzbauer has celebrated the romance of the internal diversity of American Department of Religious Studies Missouri State University

Recent publications of interest include:

Gary B. Agee, A Cry for Justice: Daniel Church an essential role in bringing about 2012, shares Rudd and His Life in Black Catholicism, racial equality. At its zenith, the Tribune his perspec- Journalism, and Activism, 1854-1933 had 10,000 subscribers, making it one of tive in this (Arkansas, 2011). Born a slave in the most successful black newspapers in series of Bardstown, Kentucky, by 1889 Daniel the country. Agee unveils the complex conversations Rudd grew to become one of the nation’s challenges and opportunities that Rudd on the pres- best-known black Catholics. As a Catholic and the black religious press faced. ent and writer and future of activist, he John L. Allen Jr., A People of Hope: Catholicism. used his Archbishop Timothy Dolan in Allen draws newspaper, Conversation with John Allen Jr. out a picture the Catholic (Random House, 2011). Religion journal- of future trends by exploring where Dolan Tribune, to ist John Allen Jr. profiles New York’s wants to lead, and asks how a church that promote a Archbishop Timothy Dolan, one increasingly bears his imprint might look vision of of the country’s most important Catholic and feel. justice that leaders through lengthy exclusive inter- presumed for views. Archbishop Dolan, who was James D. Bratt, ed., By the Vision of the Catholic elevated to Cardinal on February 18, Another World: Worship in American

1818 History (Eerdmans, 2012). Bratt samples bonds that Charles E. Curran, The Social Mission of the variety of worship practices in drive the the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological American history to show how worship political Perspective (Georgetown, 2010). Charles can be a fruitful subject for historians to activities E. Curran explores the social mission study and, of these of the U.S. Catholic Church from a alternatively, Catholic theological how past case orders as they perspective, studies can have engaged analyzing enrich our actively in a and assessing understand- variety of four aspects: ing of wor- political the impor- ship today. processes tance of The volume in order to protect and advance the social mis- contains interests of the transnational religious sion, who essays by his- communities to which they belong. carries it out, torian and how it is car- other scholars using a variety of method- Mark Chaves, American Religion: ried out, and ologies. In addition to the editor, contribu- Contemporary Trends (Princeton, 2011). the roles that the church and individual tors to this volume are Dorothy C. Bass, Chaves looks at trends in diversity, belief, Catholics play in supporting these efforts. Ruth Alden Doan, Paul Harvey, George involvement, congregational life, leader- M. Marsden, Timothy Matovina, Harry S. ship, liberal Protestant decline, and polar- Dorothy Day, The Duty of Delight: The Stout, Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Michael ization and draws on two important Diaries of Dorothy Day (Random House, Woods, and Joyce Ann Zimmerman. surveys: the General Social Survey, an 2011). Beginning in 1934 and ending in ongoing survey of Americans’ changing 1980, these diaries reflect Day’s response Catherine A. Brekus and W. Clark Gilpin, attitudes and behaviors, begun in 1972; to the vast changes in America, the church, eds., American Christianities: A History and the National Congregations Study, a and the wider world. Day experienced of Dominance and Diversity (North survey of American religious congrega- most of the great social movements of her Carolina, 2011). Twenty-two original tions across the religious spectrum, and time but, even while she labored for a essays contributed by scholars of American finds that American religious life has seen transformed world, she simultaneously religion provide an understanding of both much continuity in recent decades, but remained grounded in everyday human the diversity and the alliances among also much change. He challenges the pop- life: the demands of her extended Catholic Christianities in the United States and the ular notion that religion is witnessing a Worker family; her struggles to be more influences that have shaped churches and resurgence in the United States — in fact, patient and charitable; the discipline of the nation in reciprocal ways. Christians in traditional belief and practice is either sta- prayer and worship that structured her the United States have disagreed sharply ble or declining. This sourcebook provides days; her efforts to find God in all the about the meaning of their shared tradi- essential information about key develop- tasks and encounters of daily life. tion, yet, divided by denominational affili- ments in American religion since 1972, Previously sealed for 25 years after her ation, race, and ethnicity, they have taken and is the first major resource of its kind death, these diaries offer an intimate por- stances on every side of contested public to appear in more than two decades. trait of her struggles and concerns. issues from slavery to women’s rights. This volume’s essayists explore this paradoxical John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal, eds., Massimo dynamic of dominance and diversity of a Religious Intolerance in America: A Faggioli, faith that is often perceived as homoge- Documentary History (North Carolina, Vatican II: neous and monolithic. 2010). In this documentary survey of The Battle religious intolerance from the colonial era for Meaning Timothy A. Byrnes, Reverse Mission: to the present, Corrigan and Neal define (Paulist, Transnational Religious Communities religious intolerance and explore its history 2012). The and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy and manifestations, including hate speech, election of (Georgetown, 2011). In this examination discrimination, incarceration, expulsion, Benedict of the place of religion in world politics, and violence. Organized thematically, the XVI consti- Byrnes focuses on three Catholic communi- volume combines the editors' discussion tuted an ties — Jesuit, Maryknoll, and Benedictine with more than 150 primary texts and important — and how they seek to shape U.S. policy pictures that document intolerance toward element in the broad theological and eccle- in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico. a variety of religious traditions. siastical landscape of the debate about Based on fieldwork and on-the-ground Vatican II in recent years. In this book interviews, Byrnes details the transnational aimed at the public at large and specialists,

19 Recent publications of interest include:

Faggioli gives a comprehensive presenta- collection of essays covering cultural stud- Tolomato’s resident friar publicly repri- tion of the theological and historiographi- ies, history, theology, literature, and will manded Juanillo for practicing polygamy. cal debate about Vatican II. Faggioli asserts generate discussions about the place of In his anger, Juanillo gathered his forces that the attempt to go beyond “the clash of Catholic Studies in the United States. and launched a series of violent assaults interpretations” — Vatican II as a rupture on all five of Guale territory’s Franciscan in the history of Catholicism on one side, Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, The Maryknoll missions, leaving all but one of the the need to read Vatican II in continuity Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943-1989: province’s friars dead. Through a series of with the tradition on the other — is neces- Transnational Faith and Transformation newly translated primary sources, many sary because the ongoing debate about (Notre Dame, 2012). Maryknoll Catholic of which have never appeared in print, this Vatican II is largely misrepresented by the missionaries from the United States settled volume presents the most comprehensive use of “clashing interpretations” as a tool in Peru in 1943 believing they could save a examination of the 1597 uprising and its for understanding the role of the council “backward” Catholic Church from pover- aftermath. Viewed collectively, these in present-day Catholicism. ty, a scarcity of clergy, and the threat of sources not only challenge current repre- communism. Instead, the missionaries sentations of the uprising, they also shed Maura Jane Farrelly, Papist Patriots: the found themselves transformed: within light on the complex nature of Spanish- Making of an American Catholic Identity 25 years, they had become vocal critics of Indian relations in early colonial Florida. (Oxford, 2011). Writing in 1797, English United States foreign policy and key sup- minister, teacher, and sometime-historian porters of Jorge J. E. Gracia, ed., Forging People: Jonathan Boucher blamed "old prejudices liberation Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in against papists" for the American theology, the Hispanic American and Latino/a Revolution’s popularity — especially preferential Thought (Notre Dame, 2012). Essayists in in Maryland, where most of the non- option for this edited volume explore the ways in Canadian Catholics in British North the poor, and which Hispanic American thinkers in America lived. Historians since Boucher intercultural Latin America and Latino/a philosophers have noted the role that anti-Catholicism Catholicism. in the United States have posed and played in stirring up animosity against the Fitzpatrick- thought about questions of race, ethnicity, king and Parliament. Yet, in spite of the Behrens and nationality, and how they have inter- rhetoric, Maryland’s Catholics supported explains this preted the most significant racial and the independence movement more enthu- transforma- ethnic labels used in Hispanic America siastically than their Protestant neighbors. tion and Maryknoll’s influence in Peru and in connection with issues of rights, nation- Farrelly explores the evolution of “papists” the United States by placing it in the con- alism, power, and identity. Following the to “patriots” from England in the early text of a transnational encounter among first introductory chapter, each of the 17th century through the nine decades Catholics with shared faith but distinct essays addresses one or more influential preceding the American Revolution. practices and beliefs. thinkers, ranging from Bartolomé de Las Casas on race and the rights of James T. Fisher and Margaret M. Michael J. Francis and Kathleen M. Kole, Amerindians; to Simon Bolívar’s struggle McGuinness, eds., The Catholic Studies Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish with questions of how to forge a nation Reader (Fordham, 2011). In addition to Florida: Don Juan and the Guale from disparate populations; to modern serving as a launch pad for new series Uprising of 1597 (American Museum and contemporary thinkers on issues of called Catholic Practice in North America, of Natural History, 2011). In the late race, unity, assimilation, and diversity. The Catholic Studies Reader is a rare book fall of 1597, Guale Indians murdered five Each essay presents the views of key in an emerging field that has neither a Franciscan friars stationed in their territory authors in their historical and philosophi- documented history nor a consensus as to and razed their missions to the ground. cal context and provides brief biographical what should be a normative methodology. The 1597 Guale Uprising, or Juanillo’s sketches and reading lists, as aids to This volume is divided into five interrelat- Revolt as it is often called, brought the students and other readers. Contributors ed themes: “Sources and Contexts,” missionization of Guale to an abrupt end to this volume are José Antonio Aguilar “Traditions and Methods,” “Pedagogy and and threatened Florida’s new governor Rivera, Janet Burke, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Ted Practice,” “Ethnicity, Race and Catholic with the most significant crisis of his term. Humphrey, Iván Jaksic, Renzo Llorente, Studies,” and “The Catholic Imagination.” To date, interpretations of the uprising Oscar R. Martí, Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert, Representing the outcome of a multi-year emphasize the primacy of a young Indian Amy A. Oliver, Arleen Salles, Ofelia study entitled “Passing on the Faith, from Tolomato named Juanillo, the heir to Schutte, Ernesto Rosen Velásquez, and Passing on the Church: US Catholicism Guale’s paramount chieftaincy. According Diego von Vacano. in a New Century,” this interdisciplinary to most versions of the uprising story,

20 Jon Gjerde, and S. Deborah Kang, eds., Avis Hewitt and Robert Donahoo, eds., mitigate the Catholicism and the Shaping of Flannery O’Connor in the Age of effects of job Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Terrorism: Essays on Violence and Grace los s and 2011). While some religious and immi- (Tennessee, 2011). In any age, humans other finan- gration historians have construed the his- wrestle with apparently inexorable forces.. cial setbacks, tory of the nation’s encounter with In Flannery O’Connor’s time, the threats and improve Catholicism in 19th-century America in came from several sources such as World well-being univocal terms, Gjerde and Kang bridge War II, the Cold War, and the Korean dramatically. sectarian divides by presenting Protestants conflict. The first major critical volume on Although the and Catholics in conversation with each Flannery O’Connor’s work in more than a benefits of other. This approach reveals the ways in decade, this work explores issues of vio- wealth are which America’s encounter with lence, evil, and terror — themes that were significant, Catholicism was much more than a never far from O’Connor’s reach and that they are not enjoyed uniformly through- story of American nativism. seem particularly relevant to our present out the United States. Because religion is day setting. The 15 essays collected here an important part of cultural orientation Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended offer a wide range of perspectives that in the United States, religious beliefs Reformation: How a Religious Revolution explore our changing views of violence in should affect material well-being. Secularized Society (Harvard, 2012). In a post-9/11 world and inform our under- a work that is as much about the present standing of a writer whose fiction abounds Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P. and Michael M. as the past, Gregory identifies the unin- in violence. Written by both established Canaris, The Legacy of Avery Cardinal tended consequences of the Protestant and emerging scholars, the pieces that the Dulles, S.J. (Fordham, 2011). In his nearly Reformation and traces the way it shaped editors selected offer a compelling and 50-year career teaching philosophy and the modern varied picture of this iconic author and theology at Fordham and other distin- condition her work. guished universities, Cardinal Avery over the Dulles wrote and traveled extensively, writ- course of the David Lyle Jeffrey, ed., The King James ing 25 books and more than 800 articles, following five Bible and the World It Made (Baylor, book reviews, forewords, introductions, centuries. A 2011). The King James translation of the and letters to the editor, translated into hyperplural- Bible ushered in a new eloquence that at least 14 languages and distributed ism of reli- until 1611 had not existed in the English worldwide. This work serves as a compan- gious and language. Originally conceived to help ion to the previous volume of McGinley secular unify Protestants during the English Lectures, published as Church and Society beliefs, an Reformation, many of the Bible’s phrases (Fordham, 2008), and also provides an absence of any substantive common good, still saturate popular prose. This volume independent research guide for scholars, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, brings into conversation leading contem- theologians, and anyone interested in consumerism — all these, Gregory argues, porary scholars who articulate how this American Catholicism in the decades were long-term effects of a movement that celebrated translation repeatedly influ- immediately before and following the marked the end of more than a millenni- enced the language of politics, statecraft, Second Vatican Council. um during which Christianity provided a and English literature while offering framework for shared intellectual, social, Christians a unique resource for living the Tracy Neal Leavelle, The Catholic and moral life in the West. faith. Contributors include Mark Noll, Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French Alister McGrath, Lamin Sanneh, David and Indian North America (University of James L. Heft, S.M., Catholic High Bebbington, Robert Alter, Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania, 2011). Leavelle examines Schools: Facing New Realities (Oxford, and Laura Knoppers. interactions between Jesuits and 2011). Catholic high schools in the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the upper United States have been undergoing three Lisa A. Keister, Faith and Money: How Great Lakes and Illinois country, including major changes: the shift to primarily lay Religion Contributes to Wealth and the Illinois and Ottawas, in the 17th and leadership and teachers; the transition to a Poverty (Cambridge 2011). Keister 18th centuries. Abandoning singular more consumerist and pluralist culture; explores the way religious orientations and definitions of conversion that depend on and the increasing diversity of students beliefs affect Americans’ incomes, savings the idealized elevation of colonial subjects attending Catholic high schools. Heft and net worth. High levels of wealth can from “savages” to “Christians,” Leavelle argues that to navigate these changes enhance educational attainment, create employs dynamic concepts that explain the successfully, leaders of Catholic education occupational opportunities, generate social changes that all participants experienced. need to inform lay teachers more thor- influence, and provide a buffer against A series of thematic chapters on topics oughly, conduct a more profound social financial emergencies. Even a small such as myth and historical memory, analysis of the culture, and address the real amount of savings can improve security, understandings of human nature, the needs of students. 21 Recent publications of interest include: creation of colonial landscapes, translation Gurney had served as head resident at St. disparate movements. of religious texts into Native languages, Rose’s Settlement, the first Catholic settle- and the ment house in New York City. She founded David Morgan, The Embodied Eye: influence of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine when Religious Visual Culture and the Social gender and other communities of women religious Life of Feeling (California, 2012). Morgan generational appeared uninterested in a ministry of builds on his differences settlement work combined with religious previous demonstrates education programs for children attending work to offer that these public schools. McGuinness examines this a new, sys- encounters distinctive community of women religious tematically resulted in whose primary focus was neither teaching integrated the emer- nor nursing/hospital administration. The theory of the gence of com- choice of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine study of reli- plicated and to live among the poor and to serve where gion as visual unstable cross-cultural religious practices other com- culture. that opened new spaces for cultural munities Providing creativity and mutual adaptation. were either key tools for unwilling or scholars Timothy Matovina, Latino Catholicism: unable across disciplines studying the materiality Transformation in America’s Largest demonstrates of religions, Morgan gives a theoretical Church (Princeton, 2011). Most histories that women overview including case studies of the ways of Catholicism in the United States focus religious in seeing is related to touching, hearing, feel- on the experience of Euro-American the United ing, and such ephemeral experiences as Catholics, States served dreams, imagination, and visions. The case whose views in many dif- studies explore both the high and low of on such con- ferent capaci- religious visual culture: Catholic traditions cerns as ties as they of the erotic Sacred Heart of Jesus, the church contributed to the life and work of the unrecognizability of the Virgin in the reform, social American Catholic Church. McGuinness Fatima apparitions, the prehistory of issues, and explores how the Sisters of Christian Warner Sallman’s face of Jesus, and more. sexual ethics Doctrine were affected and how they Basing the study of religious images and have dominat- adapted their own lives and work to reflect visual practices in the relationship between ed public the transformations taking place in the seeing and the senses, Morgan argues debates. church and society. against reductionist models of “the gaze,” Matovina demonstrating that vision is not something provides a Dan McKanan, Prophetic Encounters: that occurs in abstraction, but is a funda- comprehensive overview of the Latino Religion and the American Radical mental way of embodying the human self. Catholic experience in America from Tradition (Beacon, 2011). McKanan chal- the 16th century to today, and offers an lenges simple distinctions between “reli- Mary Christine Morkovsky, C.D.P., Living in-depth examination of the important gious” and “secular” activism, arguing that in God’s Providence: History of the ways the U.S. Catholic Church, its evolv- religious beliefs and practices have been Congregation of Divine Providence of San ing Latino majority, and American culture integral to every movement in America Antonio, Texas, 1943-2000 (San Antonio: are mutually transforming one another. promoting liberty, equality, and solidarity. Congregation of Divine Providence, From Frederick Douglass, John Brown, 2009). This history examines the period Margaret M. McGuinness, Neighbors and and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 19th of 1943 to 2000, an era during which the Missionaries: A History of the Sisters of century to Dorothy Day, Martin Luther Sisters of Divine Providence redefined Our Lady of Christian Doctrine King Jr., and Starhawk in the 20th, their perspective and practices within the (Fordham, 2011). The Sisters of Our Lady American radicals have maintained a deep context of a changing American Catholic of Christian Doctrine community was faith in the human capacity to transform church. Morkovsky demonstrates that the founded in 1910 by Marion Gurney, who the world. McKanan treats the histories of sisters were well situated to embrace the adopted the religious name Mother religion and the Left as a single history, shifting demands of religious mission Marianne of Jesus. A graduate of Wellesley presenting Americanradicalism as a contin- because their very heritage was grounded College and a convert to Catholicism, uous tradition rather than a collection of in ongoing transformations. Those trans-

22 formations were played out on a highly perceived as the imprudent and secular community’s need for a safe haven. charged stage of oppression concerning excesses of Vatican II reformers, but espe- multi-racial relationships, one that further cially against what they viewed as an Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: prepared the sisters for the intense dynam- increasingly barbarous and anti-Christian How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar ics of modern church life. American society. The audaciously tri- America to Its Protestant Promise umphalist tone of Triumph sought to con- (Oxford, 2011). President Franklin D. Elaine A. Peña, Performing Piety Making vert Americans to Roman Catholicism and Roosevelt put it bluntly, if privately, in Space Sacred with the Virgin of to construct a confessional state, which 1942-the United States was “a Protestant Guadalupe (University of California, subjected its power to the moral authority country,” he said, “and the Catholics and 2011). Though quintessentially Mexican, of the Roman Catholic Church. Jews are here under sufferance.” Schultz the Virgin of Guadalupe inspires devotion explains how the United States left behind throughout the Americas and around the Tom Roberts, The Emerging Catholic this idea and replaced it with a new world. Peña’s study sheds light on the long- Church: A Community’s Search for Itself national image premised on the notion standing transnational dimensions of (Orbis, 2011). Long-time religion writer that the country was composed of three Guadalupan worship by examining the Roberts has been engaged in a search to separate, equally American faiths: production of sacred space in three understand the emerging Catholic com- Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Tracing disparate but interconnected locations — munity after the Second Vatican Council. the origins of the tri-faith idea to the early at the sacred Here, he presents his observations: a pic- 20th century, when Catholic and Jewish space known ture of a church that is still grappling with immigration forced Protestant Social as Tepeyac in the meaning of the Vatican II; responding Gospelers to combine forces with Catholic Mexico City, to dramatic demographic shifts affecting and Jewish relief agencies, Schultz illus- at its replica both the church and wider culture; absorb- trates that the tri-faith idea gathered in Des ing the implications of the new cosmology momentum after World War I, and that by Plaines, with its impact on traditional belief sys- the early years of the Cold War, the idea Illinois, and tems; accounting for the emerging leader- was becoming widely accepted, particular- at a sidewalk ship of women in the church and the ly in the armed forces, fraternities, neigh- shrine con- wider culture, and its impact on an evolv- borhoods, social organizations, and structed by ing concept of God; and reeling over the schools. Schultz argues that postwar Mexican sex abuse scandal, and what it has revealed Catholics and Jews used the new image to nationals in Chicago. Weaving together about the hierarchical culture. Roberts force the rich on-the-ground observations with gives equal attention to signs of renewal in country to insights drawn from performance studies, the community’s search for itself in the confront the Peña demonstrates how devotees’ rituals future. challenges of — pilgrimage; prayers, and festivals — pluralism. develop, sustain, and legitimize these Edward Rohs and Judith Estrine, Raised Challenging sacred spaces. Interdisciplinary in scope, by the Church: Growing Up in New York the image of Peña paints a picture of the lived experi- City’s Catholic Orphanages (Fordham the conform- ence of Guadalupan devotion in which 2011). In 1946 Edward Rohs was left by ist 1950s, different forms of knowing, socio-eco- his unwed parents at the Angel Guardian Schultz nomic and political coping tactics, concep- Home to be raised by the Sisters of Mercy. describes tions of history, and faith-based traditions Ed’s parents married and had other chil- how circulate within and between sacred dren but never came back for him. They Americans were vigorously debating the spaces. never signed the legal papers so he could merits of recognizing pluralism, paving the be adopted by another family, leading way for the Civil Rights movement and Mark D. Popowski, The Rise and Fall of bright and mischievous Ed to be raised in leaving an enduring mark on American Triumph: The History of a Radical five institutions of the Catholic orphanage culture. Roman Catholic Magazine, 1966-1976 system in postwar Brooklyn, New York, (Lexington, 2011). This is a history of from infancy in 1946 until he was dis- Mary C. Sullivan, The Path of Mercy: Triumph — a post-Vatican II, Roman charged as an adult in 1965. Rohs was one The Life of Catherine McAuley Catholic lay magazine — that examines its of thousands of children taken in by (Catholic University, 2011). Sullivan origins and decline, paying special atten- Catholic institutions during the tumul- places Catherine McAuley (1778-1841), tion to the editors’ often bellicose views on tuous post-WWII years and his adjust- founder of the Sisters of Mercy, in her Irish a range of issues, from church affairs to the ment upon release at age 19 was difficult. context, particularly in post-penal Dublin, Vietnam War, and civil rights to abortion. The story of this one man supplies needed where the destitution, epidemics, and lack Triumph’s editors formed the magazine historical perspective on an American soci- of basic education, especially of poor to defend the faith against what they ety that understood and acknowledged the women and young girls, led her to a life of

23 Recent publications of interest include: practical mercifulness. Using extensive Until about 1820, Turner contends, even time, Chesterton located God’ s mysterious primary sources and questioning aspects learned Americans showed little interest goodness within the existence of evil. of earlier accounts, Sullivan illumines in non-European religions. Growing con- Catherine's personality and details her life cerns about the status of Christianity gen- Robert Wuthnow, Red State Religion: recounting her efforts, using her inheri- erated American interest in comparing it Faith and Politics in America’s Heartland tance from her foster parents, to address to other great religions, and the resulting (Princeton, 2011). No state has voted the poverties of Irish people in her time. writings eventually produced the academic Republican more consistently than Founding the Sisters of Mercy in 1831, she discipline of religious studies in U.S. uni- Kansas. Arguing that Kansas is the place to sheltered homeless women, taught them versities. Fostered especially by learned understand “red state religion,” Wuthnow employable skills, opened a school for the Protestant ministers, this new discipline examines religiously motivated political daughters of the very poor, and visited the focused on canonical texts — the “bibles” activism in sick and dying in the slums of Dublin. — of other great world religions. This Kansas from Later she founded the same works of rather narrow approach provoked the territorial mercy in nine other towns in Ireland, and philosopher and psychologist William days to the in two cities in England. James to challenge academic religious present. He studies in 1902 with his celebrated and examines Susan Crawford Sullivan, Living Faith: groundbreaking Varieties of Religious how faith Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty Experience. mixed with (Chicago, 2011). While urban mothers politics as living in poverty have been a focus of Thomas G. Welsh, Closing Chapters: both ordi- scholarly research for decades, little atten- Urban Change, Religious Reform, and nary Kansans tion has been paid to an important force the Decline of Youngstown’s Catholic and leaders in these women's lives: religion. Based on Elementary Schools, 1960-2006 such as John Brown, Carrie Nation, in-depth interviews with women and pas- (Lexington, 2011). Welsh attempts to William Allen White, and Dwight tors, Sullivan presents these poor mothers' explain the disintegration of urban Eisenhower struggled over the pivotal views. Recruited from a variety of social parochial schools in Youngstown, Ohio, a issues of their times, from slavery and service programs, most of the women do onetime industrial center that lost all but Prohibition to populism and anti-commu- not attend religious services, due to logisti- one of its 18 Catholic parochial elemen- nism. Beyond providing new explanations cal challenges or because they feel stigma- tary schools between 1960 and 2006. of why Kansas became a conservative tized and unwanted at church yet, Sullivan Through this examination of Youngstown, stronghold, the book sheds light on the argues, religious faith often plays a strong Welsh sheds light on a significant national role of religion in red states across the role in their lives. Offering an analysis of phenomenon: the fragmentation of Midwest and the United States. Contrary how faith both motivates and at times American Catholic identity. to recent influential accounts, Wuthnow constrains poor mothers’ actions, Sullivan argues that Kansas conservatism is largely describes the ways faith serves as a lens Ralph C. Wood, Chesterton: The pragmatic, not ideological, and that reli- through which many view and interpret Nightmare Goodness of God (Baylor gion in the state has less to do with politics their worlds. 2011). The literary giant G. K. Chesterton and contentious moral activism than with is often praised as the “Great Optimist” — relationships between neighbors, friends, James Turner, Religion Enters the God’s rotund jester. Wood turns a critical and fellow churchgoers. Academy: The Origins of the Scholarly eye on Chesterton’s corpus to reveal the Study of Religion in America (Georgia, beef-and-ale believer’s darker vision of the Phyllis Zagano, Women & Catholicism: 2011). Religious studies — also known as world and those who live in it. Wood Gender, Communion, and Authority comparative religion or history of religions argues for a recovery of Chesterton’s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Zagano inves- — emerged as a field of study in colleges primary contentions: First, that the incar- tigates three distinct situations in the and universities on both sides of the nation of Jesus was necessary to reveal a Catholic Church, each pointing to what Atlantic during the late 19th century. world full not of a righteous creation but she highlights as Catholicism’s global weak In Europe, as previous historians have of tragedy, terror, and nightmare, and, spot: the role of women in the Church. demonstrated, the discipline grew from second, that the problem of evil is only Each of the three cases reflects the tension long-established traditions of university- compounded by a Christianity that seeks between communion and authority, based philological scholarship. But in the progress, political control, and cultural particularly where women are concerned. United States, Turner argues, religious triumph. Wood argues that, rather than studies developed outside the academy. fleeing from the ghoulish horrors of his

24 Recent journal articles of interest include:

Hans Bertsch, “The Missionary Explorer- Jean Gartlan, “Barbara Ward—Lay Woman Paula Kane, “The Mythologies of Las Scientist Father Eusebio Kino, S.J.: Faith, Extraordinaire,” U.S. Catholic Historian 29, Casas and Black Elk” U.S. Catholic Maps, Sea Shells and Mission San Xavier no.4, (fall 2011): 9-16. Historian 29, no. 3, (fall 2011): 93-4. del Bac,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture 22,” (2011): 68-85. Marie Gayte, “The Vatican and the Reagan Robert N. Karrer, “The National Right to Administration: A Cold War Alliance?,” Life Committee: Its Founding, Its History, Clinton A. Brand, “That Nothing be Lost: The Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 4, and the Emergence of the Pro-Life America, Texas, and the Making of (October 2011): 713-36. Movement Prior to Roe V. Wade,” The Anglicanorum Coetibus,” Catholic Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 3, (July Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture Richard Gribble C.S.C., “Religious 2011): 527-57. 22,” (2011): 48-76. Biography: The Melding of History and Christianity,” U.S. Catholic Historian 29, Robert N. Karrer, “The Pro-Life Amanda Bresie, “One Bread, One body: no.3 (summer 2011): 27-33. Movement and Its First Years Under Roe,” The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in American Catholic Studies 122, no. 4, Southeast Texas,” Catholic Southwest: A Kenneth L. Grasso et al., “Symposium: John (winter 2011): 47-72. Journal of History and Culture 22,” (2011): Courtney Murray’s ‘We Hold These Truths’ 21-38. at 50,” The Catholic Social Science Review Anne Klejment, “Dorothy Day and César XVI, (2011): 67-71. Chávez: American Catholic Lives in Patrick W. Carey, “England, Brownson, and Nonviolence,” U.S. Catholic Historian 29, Dulles: Religious Biography and the Patrick J. Hayes, “Redemptorist no. 3, (summer 2011): 67-90. Catholic Tradition,” U.S. Catholic Historian Biographers: Digging into the Lore and 29, no.3, (summer 2011): 1-7. Legend of the Baltimore Province” U.S. Timothy M. Matovina, “Latino Catholic Catholic Historian 29, no.3 (summer 2011): Biography,” U.S. Catholic Historian 29, no. Michael S. Carter, “Biographies in the 17-26. 3 (fall 2011), 59-66. Classroom,” U.S. Catholic Historian 29, no. 3, (summer 2011): 91-2. Scott W. Hoffman, “‘Last Night, I Cecilia A. Moore, “Writing Black Catholic Prayed to Matthew’: Matthew Shepard, Lives: Black Catholic Biographies and Jennifer Cote “‘Habits of Vice’: The House Homosexuality; and Popular Martyrdom Autobiographies,” U.S. Catholic Historian of the Good Shepherd and Competing in Contemporary America,” Religion 29, no. 3, (fall 2011): 43-58. Narratives of Female Delinquency in Early and American Culture: A Journal of Twentieth-Century Hartford,” American Interpretation 21, no. 1, (winter 2011): Robert E. Wright, O.M.I., “From Hispanic Catholic Studies 122, no. 4, (winter 2011): 121-64. Gateway to Border Byway: The Catholic 23-46. Church in the Middle Rio Grande District Suellen Hoy, “The Irish Girls’ Rising: of Coahuila/Texas Up to 1884,” Catholic Helena Dawes, “The Catholic Church and Building the Women’s Labor Movement in Southwest: A Journal of History and the Woman Question: Catholic Feminism Progressive-Era Chicago.” Labor: Studies in Culture 22, (2011): 3-22. in Italy in the Early 1900s,” The Catholic Working-Class History of the Americas 9 Historical Review 97, no. 3, (July 2011): no.1 (spring 2012): 77-101. 484-526. Stephanie A. T. Jacobe, “Thomas Fortune Jack Downey, “The Strong Meat of the Ryan and the Issue of Identity in Catholic Gospel: ‘Lacouturisme’ and the Revival of Biography,” U.S. Catholic Historian 29 no. Asceticism in North America,” American 3, (fall 2011): 35-41. Catholic Studies 122, no. 4, (winter 2011): 1-22. Jenna Weissman Joselit, Timothy Matovina, Roberto Suro, and Fenggang Yang, Mario Garcia, “The Catholic Church, “American Religion and the Old and New Mexican Ethno-Catholicism, and Immigration,” Religion and American Inculturation in El Paso: 1900-1930,” Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 22, no. Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History 1 (winter 2012): 1-31. and Culture 22, (2011): 39-47.

25 Archives Report

In September 2011 the Notre Dame Archives received 25 linear feet of records (1969-1989) of PADRES, an association of Hispanic priests in the United States. Rev. Virgilio Elizondo and Timothy Matovina arranged for the transfer of files assisted by Nolvia Ramos of the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame. The records were kept by Rev. Ramon Gaitan, president of PADRES, until it was dissolved in 1989. The files document board meetings, finances, correspondence, press releases, chronological files, proposals, legal files, incorporation papers, articles, and other items on issues of interest to members. The collection includes four linear feet of publications by PADRES and printed material collected by PADRES concerning Hispanic priests, bishops, sisters, and brothers; two linear feet of slides and photographic prints of Hispanic clergy and PADRES concerns; and one linear foot of audio recordings made by PADRES.

In October 2011 Sister Joan Williams, O.C.D., sent records (1965-2009) of the Carmel of Reno amounting to six linear feet, consisting of files documenting interactions with bishops of Reno, the Carmelite fathers, and other Carmelite nuns; files on meetings; surveys regarding Carmelite nuns; clippings; correspondence; files on deceased sisters and friends; and Clem family papers, representing among others General John Lincoln Clem, who served as a drummer boy in the Union Army during the Civil War and became the youngest noncommissioned officer in Army history.

Also in October Rev. Eugene C. Best donated 55 audio tapes containing radio interviews of participants in the Second Vatican Council. Best was Director of Radio and Television for the Diocese of Cleveland. He was an accredited journalist at Vatican II and hosted a regular radio program on which he interviewed participants in the Council — prelates, periti, and non-Catholic observers. In October Phyllis Burns sent a draft of an unpub- lished third volume of Robert Burns’ history of Notre Dame, Being Catholic, Being American: Hesburgh and the Modernizing of the University of Notre Dame. In November Carol Coburn sent records (1988-2010) of the Conference on the History of Women Religious, consisting chiefly of papers delivered at the conference.

In December Kathleen Helfrich sent the personal papers of Rev. Thomas Phelan, including papers documenting his involvement in the Catholic Art Association. She decided to send the papers to the Notre Dame archives because we already have the records of the Catholic Art Association. Fr. Phelan corresponded with Graham Carey among others interested in Catholic art. The collection includes the Catholic Art Association’s quarterly magazine, Christian Social Art Quarterly (1937-1941), Catholic Art Quarterly (1941-1959), Good Work (1959-1969), and more ephemeral mimeographed publications such as the CAA Newsletters.

— Wm. Kevin Cawley, Ph.D. Archivist & Curator of Manuscripts University of Notre Dame [email protected]

UPCOMING EVENTS

Hibernian Lecture American Catholic Studies Seminar in American Religion Seminar Kevin Whelan, University of Notre Dame The Unintended Reformation: How a Topic: “Notre Dame: The Irish William Kurtz, University of Virginia Religious Revolution Secularized Society Connections” Topic: “Catholic Memory of the American (Belknap Press of Harvard University Date: Thursday, August 30, 2012 Civil War” Press, 2011) Time: 4:00 p.m. Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 Author: Brad S. Gregory, Place: O’Connell House Time: 4:30 p.m. University of Notre Dame Dublin, Ireland Place: TBA Commentators: James Kloppenberg Cushwa Center Lecture Harvard University George Marsden Thomas Tweed, University of Texas University of Notre Dame Topic: “America’s Church: The National Date: Saturday, December 1, 2012 Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Time: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon Nation’s Capital” Place: Notre Dame Conference Center, Date: Thursday, September 13, 2012 McKenna Hall Time: TBA Place: TBA 26 AMERICAN CATHOLIC STUDIES NEWSLETTER

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