The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholicism since 1950 in the United States, Ireland, and Quebec (review)

A comparison of the rise and fall of three powerful Catholic churches in the United States, Ireland, and Quebec has proved to be a most interesting study and a stimulating read. Eight articles authored by academics from a wide variety of universities and disciplines contributed six specialized studies and two comprehensive overviews. A 2003 conference, “Decline and Fall? Roman Catholicism since 1950 in the United States, the Republic of Ireland, and Quebec,” sponsored by The Catholic University of America, was the source of these studies. Leslie Woodcock Tentler of the Department of History of the same university organized the conference and prepared a fascinating and scholarly volume.

The first two articles on the church in Quebec by Kevin Christiano (University of Notre Dame) and Michael Gauvreau (McMaster University, Canada) revise the popular contention that secularists were the source of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. They followed historical evidence that led them to the instigators, who turned out to be not secular deviants but rather the committed members of Catholic Action. The articles confirm that the well-educated and dedicated youth of Catholic Action in Quebec during the1960s and 1970s generated the revolutionary changes of the civil service and social welfare systems. Gauvreau points out that “the Catholic social movements and publications became the principal channels for the spread of contraceptive information and practices” (p. 75), but it was the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 that ended the liberal dream of a more open Church and precipitated a mass exodus.

The fate of the Irish Church is a different story from that of Quebec. In Ireland, the economic upturn of the 1980s and 1990s along with the clergy abuse scandals loosened the ties of the faithful to the traditional Church. Dermot Keogh (University College, Cork, Ireland) describes the painful march of the Irish state under Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey toward secularization to make the Republic of Ireland more inclusive for the future of a unified country. Lawrence Taylor (the National University of Ireland) decries “the hierarchy’s failure to deal adequately” (p. 161) with the recurring clerical scandals, and thus, although the traditional Irish spirituality is affirmed by Croagh Patrick and Lough Derg, it is not necessarily manifested in traditional ways. The intensity of their research seems to have limited the possibility for the authors that it was the paradigm shift of the 1960s, more than the political and ecclesial players, that has determined the direction that Irish Church has taken.

“The Catholic Church in the United States” by James Davidson (Purdue University) provides a contemporary analysis of the American Church. He sees the American hierarchy governing a Church as it existed in the early postwar years instead of confronting the postmodern Catholics of today. Davidson points out the two emerging cultures in the Church, one looking to authority for leadership, while the other stresses the personal faith of believers. The first group would favor Humanae Vitae, whereas the second group would deem it irrelevant to their faith. The upward immigration trends of Hispanic and Asian Catholics keep American Catholic statistics on the rise and looking healthy. Scott Appleby (University of Notre Dame) affirms the direction of this data.

Michele Dillon (University of New Hampshire) and Gregory Baum (McGill University, Canada) provide two comprehensive studies on the three national Churches. Dillon believes the American immigrant Church, previously an outsider, has become accepted through mature civic dialogue. Church individuals, she writes, by basing their dialogue on “empirically grounded rational discourse,” have preserved Catholic values in the halls of American power, and, despite scandals and problems, the laity continue to “view Catholicism as the frame for their faith about God and the afterlife”(pp. 258, 260). Baum provides an overview of the complex relationship of Quebec, Ireland, and American Catholicism. He has contributed an essay that integrates...