Faith and the Historian: Catholic Perspectives (review)

In my first year of graduate studies I encountered a professor who had a bias against church history. In her historiographical view the moment the words church (particularly Catholic Church) and history were connected, propaganda, rather than true history, emerged. The eight essays in this volume edited by Nick Salvatore of Cornell University provide a more nuanced view of the relationship between Catholic faith and the writing of history. The volume resulted from a March 2001 meeting of historians gathered at Cornell to explore how an experience with Catholicism had affected their approach to history. The eight historians published in this volume are of various ages (birthdates from 1927 to 1959) and range from practicing cradle-to-grave Catholics to former Catholics. The common thread was that each was a historian “for whom Catholicism proved to be a formative experience” (p. 2).

The historians each viewed the impact of their Catholicism differently. For some their faith was the ongoing core issue of their lives that greatly impacted their approach to everything. For others, their Catholicism led them into the areas of research that proved to be the “stuff” of their careers. And for still others, their Catholic background gave them a sympathy and understanding for their historical subjects because of a shared faith and culture. It created what David Emmons (University of Montana) initially called a “hermeneutic of affection” (p. 50). Or, in the words of Mario Garcia (University of California, Santa Barbara), “What we chose to study is more than an intellectual or scholarly interest. History for us is also autobiographical” (p. 90).

The oldest of the contributors, Philip Gleason (University of Notre Dame) in his essay, “Becoming (and Being) a Catholic Historian,” critiques the tendency to overlook religion as a causal entity in writing history. He takes issue with those who would state that ethnicity is a more inclusive and more basic reality. Gleason does not agree with those who contend that “‘religion’ doesn’t count for much in terms of historical explanation” (p. 26). If Gleason saw Catholicism, and religion in general, as an important factor in the historical data, Maureen Fitzgerald (College of William and Mary), one of the youngest contributors, saw it as an equally important factor in her historical methodology:

I ascribe to no overarching method, certainly not one that needs to be replicated by anyone else. But in my work, my Catholic, or more precisely Irish Catholic, background, is frequently in tension with my training as an historian. It is often a creative tension, one that helps me question the presumptions in the fields with which I engage, or the presumptions of the historical actors about whom I write. This sometimes welcome, and often unwelcome, tension has given me a tolerance for ideological impurity that when I am at my best serves me and my work well, and when I am at my worst, makes my work impossible to do.

(p. 148)

At the end of his contribution, “Homecoming: A Catholic Hermeneutic,” Emmons revises his initial description of a “hermeneutic of affection.” He opts instead for a hermeneutic “of faith, of Catholicism. Affection did not define it. Affection was the result of it” (p. 77). Each of these historians, regardless of present church status, speaks of his or her Catholic experience with insight and affection. While an easy read, the volume serves as a helpful meditation on the stirrings of one’s own historical consciousness and invites other historians to add from their own experience. It should be required reading at the beginning of graduate studies for all history students who share a Catholic background. It would help them make sense of their work and their lives.