A More Perfect Legacy: A Portrait of Brother Ephrem O'Dwyer, C.S.C., 1888-1978 by Brother Philip Armstrong, C.S.C. (review)

book reviews147 weakened Thomism's grasp on the councU and aUowed the Americans' social thinking to shift more toward poUtical and pragmatic theology, one which suddenly fevored state intervention, social salvation, and lobbying by the bishops in very particular aspects of legislation. He notes that the councU,to the contrary, taught that this was the arena of the laity, not of the clergy. Warner explains that this change was the deUberate agenda of a new group of leaders in the bishops' conference after its reorganization into the NCCB/USCC in 1966. Joseph L. Bernardin, the General Secretary of the Conference chosen by Archbishop John Dearden of Detroit and Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan ofAtlanta,is presented as the advocate ofa much-needed relevancy for the conference. He Usts Marciniak, Bordelon, Colonese, Rausch, and Hehir as stauncher advocates of a deUberate retreat from a natural-law ethics than Bernardin's pragmatism envisioned. Subsequent episcopal statements on Racism, the Vietnam War, War and Peace, and the Economic Pastoral aU evidenced this new activism. The one gUtch Ui this program was the need to address the issue of abortion, which Warner beUeves the conference finally avoided by wrapping it in a consistent ethic of life ideology. Warner concludes his book with an editorial/homUy calling on the American bishops to imitate PopeJohn Paul's focus on truth and the virtues needed to attain that truth; these should be the substance of their statements, not particular poUcy advocacy which merely renders the conference just another lobbying group. Warner weighs into a heady debate in this book. He does note some significant changes both Ui the style and content of American social teaching. His charges, however, wUl only be demonstrated when a true history of the conference and its members is written. His stroke is too broad and insufficiendy supported to be anything more than a conversation starter or a stimulus to yet more extensive research. EarlBoyea SacredHeartMajor Seminary Detroit, Michigan A More Perfect Legacy: A Portrait of Brother Ephrem O'Dwyer, C.S.C., 1888-1978. By Brother Philip Armstrong, C.S.C. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 1995. Pp. xxü, 402. $2995.) When in 1943 Father ArthurJ. Hope's Notre Dame: One Hundred Years was pubUshed, a Holy Cross brother teaching at the university wrote to Brother Ephrem O'Dwyer: "Few pages are devoted to our Brothers whose work made ND possible. That was to be expected.We shaU survive it as we survived the [Fa- 148BOOK REVIEWS ther John A] Zahm regime" (p. 281). Brother Ephrem himself had in 1933, when treasurer of the university, expostulated with Father (later Cardinal)John O'Hara, acting president, for having Ui his annual report to the trustees omitted brothers as prospective beneficiaries of a fund for the training of members of the Holy Cross Order. Ephrem complained also of the way the brothers were slighted on campus and reminded O'Hara that Notre Dame had been founded by Father Edward Sorin and five brothers (actually seven) and that for many years the brothers' efforts had contributed more to the upbuUding of the university than had those of the priests. Such discontent led to the estabUshment in 1946 of a separate province for the teaching brothers (and coadjutor, or nonteaching , brothers who wished to join them). Brother Ephrem O'Dwyer, its first provincial, was considered by the brothers their second founder. For ten years Brother Ephrem presided over the rapid expansion of a province that stretched from Massachusetts to CaUfornia, estabUshing in the process fifteen new institutions, mostly high schools, and laying the bases for the division ofthe province into three separate ones m 1956. He would serve as provincial for the Eastern Province until 1962 and then in several teaching and adrninistrative capacities until his retirement in 1971. Aspaterfamilias he died in 1978 at age ninety. His biographer, himself a former provincial, satisfied that the intervening years have been insufficient "to have honed his craggy character into an aUbrushed,preternatural myth"(p. 326),has attempted through an exhaustive search ofseveral Holy Cross archives and the reminiscences ofmany confrères to present a balanced portrait of a tireless and efficient administrator, a man who...