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The Catholic Historical Review 89.4 (2003) 817-818



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Slovaks on the Hudson: Most Holy Trinity Church, Yonkers, & the Slovak Catholics of the Archdiocese of New York, 1894-2000. By Thomas J. Shelley. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2002. Pp.xv, 273.)

Over the past several decades, regional or local studies of Slovaks in the United States have increasingly replaced previous broad examinations. Thomas J. Shelley, a professor of historical theology at Fordham University, follows this trend. His interest in Most Holy Trinity appears to stem from the fact he was the temporary administrator of the church in 1993.

The volume begins on a proper footing in the preface when the author rightly points out that among the Slavs in the U.S. only the Poles outnumbered the Slovaks over the past century, "but the Slovak presence in this country has been largely unnoticed and unstudied" (p. xii). He is also correct when he states that Yonkers can be considered a microcosm of occurrences in large, industrial urban centers teeming with immigrants from East and Southeast Europe.

With its impressive title, and quite descriptive subtitle, one would expect to discover a detailed history of Roman Catholic Slovaks in Yonkers, revolving around their national church, Most Holy Trinity. Unfortunately, despite its preface and lofty title, the author fails to fulfill that promise. Rather than focusing on the Slovaks, as Shelley states in his preface, the book is more of a history of Yonkers and its people with an overview of Roman Catholicism in this city and the surrounding areas. For example, the first two chapters, out of a total of ten, cover background information with scant attention paid to Slovaks. The remaining chapters contain, at most, half of their information on the Slovaks. The majority of the material covering the Slovaks understandably relates to the church. The author provides some information about fraternal organizations associated with the church but rarely gives any detail about them that could have provided a fuller and richer treatment of the subject.

Numerous other problems plague this book. Diacritical marks should have been used fully or not at all. At times, material appears that seems out of place. For example, blacksmiths wore black shirts in a Labor Day parade ten years before Mussolini thought of it. In addition, the author makes some strange statements, misnomers, and other observations, including that there were no language barriers between Ruthenians and Slovaks, a Hungarian saint by the name of Ladislav, Austrians were a small minority of the total population of the Habsburg monarchy, the Slovaks had a parliament in 1947, calling the main institution of higher learning in Slovakia Bratislava University, the communist subversion of Czechoslovakia took place during the 1948 Berlin Blockade, and that the 1908 Cernová massacre occurred in Czernova.

Despite its numerous shortcomings, one can gain a glimpse of the problems of awakening nationalism of the Slovaks in America, problems the church encountered between nationally conscious Slovaks and Magyarone priests, the interwar golden age of an ethnic parish, the decline of the parish with the advent [End Page 817] of suburbia, and the trials and tribulations of its continuance in the future. All of this could have been addressed in a volume half this size.



Gregory C. Ference
Salisbury University

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