Kirche und Katholizismus seit 1945. Band 4: Die britischen Inseln und Nordamerika (review)

In four chapters of unequal length this modest but well produced book informs German-speaking readers about the Church and Catholicism since 1945 in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The presentations, well translated from English (save for a glitch regarding the length of Father Robert Drinan's United States congressional terms), are uniformly clear and well written. They are introduced, as one expects in a scholarly German work, by extensive bibliographies, and supported by ample footnotes.

The Irish Jesuit Oliver P. Rafferty describes the situation of Catholics in Great Britain. No longer a small despised minority, British Catholics today, thanks in good part to the leadership of the late Cardinal Hume, are "more alive, less alien, and more integrated into society than at any previous time in history." Despite a steep decline in religious practice, the number of Catholics who still practice their faith is far higher than that of all other Christians combined. Though this would qualify them to exert their influence on various levels, "English Catholics remain reluctant, because of their history, to assume a leading role in society."

Rafferty's chapter on Ireland deals separately with the Church in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. Despite clergy sexual abuse scandals, the materialism engendered by unprecedented economic prosperity, and widespread rejection of the Church's teaching about sexual morality, "the Irish remain a deeply religious people.... Sixty-three percent of Irish Catholics are still at Mass on Sunday, a higher percentage than even in Poland."

Jean-Claude Petit writes about the Church in Quebec. All-powerful as late as the 1960's, the Church's only remaining trace of its former power and glory is the large number of imposing church buildings and other institutions with their ugly silver-painted roofs. Petit cites evidence, however, that Quebec Catholics are starting to develop "a new self-understanding, and fresh credibility."

Roberto Perrin portrays the Church in English-speaking Canada. Once a small minority alienated from the overwhelming Protestant culture, Canada's Catholics are now a multi-cultural community and the largest religious body in the country. Led by bishops far more independent of Rome than their counterparts in the United States and characterized by strong concern for social justice, Canadian Catholics today, Perrin writes, are "like Canadian society as a whole, in a time of transition."

The longest chapter, almost half the volume, is that on the United States. It is written by the American Jesuit Gerald P. Fogarty (whose name is several times misspelled). Fogarty is uniquely qualified for his task and executes it well. He brings alive the exciting days of the Council. Though the pre-Vatican II American bishops, "more organizers and doers than thinkers and theologians," were ill-prepared for the Council, "they played a leading role in the areas of ecumenism, religious freedom, and relations with non-Christians" [i.e., Jews].

Fogarty introduces European readers to Cardinal Spellman, neither thinker nor theologian, but a stout defender of a national church which could boast, as late as 1962, that seventy-five percent of its members attended Sunday Mass. Fogarty cites the November, 1963, Council intervention of Auxiliary Bishop Stephen Leven of San Antonio, Texas, refuting the charge that American support for ecumenism reflected weakness in Catholic commitment: "It is not our Catholics who stay away from Sunday Mass, do not receive the sacraments, and vote Communist. Our Catholics are good Catholics, loyal to us bishops and to the Holy Father. We have not lost the working classes. They are the foundation and principal support of our church." Fogarty's laconic comment: "That was an unmistakable allusion to conditions in Italy." That such blunt speech is inconceivable today is a measure of how completely the American hierarchy has been transformed in the present pontificate. Fogarty concludes with a full description of postconciliar developments and the situation of American Catholics in 1999.

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