American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church by Charles R. Morris (review)

book reviews579 addition to teaching,women began work in health care and evangelization. The slogan became "Women's work for women," as their missionary movement became the "largest grass-roots movement ofAmerican Protestant women" in the late nineteenth century (p. 188). Robert makes pivotal in her work the Woman's Missionary Jubilee of 19101 1, celebrating fifty-one years ofwomen's mission activity. It was an ecumenical event, organized at the grassroots level to celebrate about forty missionary societies whose members were in the millions. Celebrations took place in fortyeight cities and many smaller localities. An event forgotten by historians, says Robert. The Roman Catholic Church labeled the United States itself mission territory until 1908, which is one reason for the relatively late development ofAmerican Catholic women in mission. Needs at home took first priority. Also, Catholic women had no access to the missionary life save through joining a religious congregation of celibate women. The Maryknoll Sisters were the first American congregation to devote themselves to missionary work. Robert does an effective job tracing the changes in mission theory in the United States afterVatican Council II. Robert brings to light American women in mission in an engaging and provocative manner, while her stories of individuals make their point and advance the argument. Because the work covers an enormous amount oftime and discusses many individual women, it begs for an index. That aside,what Robert has begun provides a rich field to inspire further research. Ann M. Harrington, B.VM. Loyola University Chicago American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who BuiltAmerica's Most Powerful Church. By Charles R. Morris. (NewYork:Times Books, Division of Random House. 1997. Pp. xni, 511. $27.50.) American Catholic historiography has varied in method over the last thirty years. Thomas McAvoy, C.S.C., utilized a traditional hierarchical model; James Hennesey, SJ., paralleled Catholic and secular history in the United States,while Jay P. Dolan opted for a social-history approach. In American Catholic Charles Morris has successfully utilized recent scholarship and extensive oral history to produce a highly contextualized work that combines the hierarchical and social models in a description ofthe twentieth-century Church and its root influences. This book, which is thoroughly readable, well researched and argued, insightful and candid, is a tribute to the scholarship and industriousness of the author. In Part I, "Rise," Morris describes the emergence of American Catholicism from an immigrant Church to acceptance in American society. Using the dedi- 580book reviews cation of St. Patrick's Cathedral as a background setting, Morris insightfully and forcefully argues that the American Church in the twentieth century was created from the influence of the Irish Church of the nineteenth century. The Irish potato blight and subsequent famine and diaspora brought a rigorist and militant brand of Irish Catholicism to the United States. Irish Catholics dominated the priesthood and hierarchy, bringing stability and recognition, but Morris candidly states, in a description ofthe NewYork City draft riots (1863) that"making all allowances, the Irish and their Church were racist, even by standards of the time" (p. 78). Morris concludes that the American Catholic compromise was "a peculiarly Irish-American one" (p. 109). "Triumph," the monograph's second section, describes the Church's movement from the separatist ghetto of the 1920's to its heyday in the 1950's. Morris demonstrates how American Catholicism grew to acceptance through its social activists of the 1930's, powerful and triumphant bishops, illustrated by Cardinal Dennis Dougherty of Philadelphia, and the Church's spectacularly positive presentation in popular motion pictures such as The Song of Bernadette and Going My Way. The high time of the fifties was capped with the election of John Kennedy to the Presidency in I960, an event which Morris describes as an unmistakable signal that the old separatist ways were gone. Morris shifts in Part III, "Crisis," from chronological narrative to descriptions of various contemporary issues. He candidly describes "the dark valley" of clerical misconduct and the laity's rejection ofHumanae Vitae. Through a comparison of the dioceses of Lincoln and Saginaw, Morris outlines the variance in theological vision in the American Church. Although generally positive on the state ofAmerican Catholicism, he concludes that...