The Spirit of the Sixties: Making Postwar Radicalism by James J. Farrell (review)

128book reviews from the Apostolic Delegate asking him if he would accept elevation to the episcopacy. He accepted. He was made bishop March 31, 1965. He now asks whether the decision to accept was a mistake. His answer:"On what grounds?" There is no further reflection on the matter. He participated in the final session ofVatican Council II with the St. Paul delegation : Archbishop Binz, Auxiliary Bishop Leonard Cowley, and Father Kenneth Pierre. Interestingly enough, he has nothing to say about either Cowley or Pierre. Shannon involved himself in civil rights at Selma, in the anti-Vietnam War movement, and with the dissent to Pope Paul VTs encyclical Humanae Vitae. He reproduces a copy ofthe letter he sent to the Pope indicating his difficulties in assenting to the Pope's position. What may be new in his saga is the treatment he received from Cardinal Mclntyre and the Apostolic Delegate, Luigi Raimondi . While the Delegate's conduct fits in with the general appreciation of Vatican diplomacy, the claim that Mclntyre was able to terrorize all the bishops of the executive committee of the U.S. Bishops' Conference seems a bit of a stretch. Some explanation and reflection on these events would have added to the bare narration. It soon became clear that he would never get a diocese of his own. He reflects on a "close friend"who knew he would be an auxiliary bishop for the rest of his life. This could have been his colleague Leonard Cowley, who became an auxiliary bishop in St. Paul in 1957 and died in that post in 1973. In this context he confesses, "I dreaded the prospect of becoming only a 'confirming' bishop for the rest of my life." He went on a leave of absence, became Vice President of St. John's College at Santa Fe, New Mexico, resigned the active ministry, got lonely, contacted a widowed divorcee he had previously met, and married her. His career from bishop to husband took about four years. The rest of his life until retirement in 1988 was spent teaching, earning a law degree, and serving as CEO for a series of foundations. He now lives with his wife, Ruth, in the vicinity of St. Paul, where he was born in 1921. It is a quick read and an interesting story. John R. McCarthy Cleveland, Ohio The Spirit of the Sixties: Making Postwar Radicalism. By James J. Farrell. [American Radicals Series.] (New York: Routledge Press. 1997. Pp. 360. $19.99.) Toward the end of World War II Jean Paul Sartre wrote to Denis de Rougemont ,"You Personalists have won . . . everybody in France calls himself Personalist ." James Farrell has affirmed Sartre's concession with his new book on postwar radicalism. According to Farrell, Personalism provided the common thread that wove through the crazy quilt of Sixties radicalism. Perhaps Farrell BOOK REVIEWS129 has gotten it right. An era that defies coherent explanation possibly can only be defined by a philosophy that defies consistent definition. As John Hellman has pointed out,"Personalism . . . can only be described by its characteristics."And Farrell has done just that. He has presented American Personalism through characteristics of radicals who probably never read or even heard ofthis French philosophic movement. But as the author points out, although they had never been introduced to the theory of Personalism, many American radicals in the postwar era certainly acted as if they had. As with the French personalists, the dignity of the person remained at the core of radical action in the postwar United States. These new radicals, according to Farrell, rejected the cult of liberal individualism and proposed that the person was created for community and each person had a moral responsibility for the other. The author notes that "communitarian spirituality" was in fact the most distinctive aspect of Personalism. According to Farrell, Peter Maurin, the French peasant who along with Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker movement in NewYork, brought the idea of Personalism from the salons of Paris to the streets of New York, and through the Catholic Workers Personalism became intertwined into the fabric ofAmerican radicalism. He gives the Catholic Worker a heretofore ignored significance in postwar radicalism. Farrell supports his...