The Catholic Studies Reader ed. by James T. Fisher and Margaret M. McGuinness (review)

By the 1980s, the prior emergence of interdisciplinary fields such as American studies and cultural studies had combined with demographic shifts among American Catholics and in Catholic higher education in the United States, to set the stage for the new fields of Catholic studies and American Catholic studies. Primarily lay scholars rather than clergy and religious, practitioners of these emerging disciplines are located in a variety of programs and departments at both Catholic and non-Catholic universities. The study of Catholicism as actual Catholics live and practice it is no longer the sole province of historians, theologians, or even of Catholics.

In this hefty anthology, originating from Fordham’s Curran Center and contributing to the Fordham University Press series Catholic Practice in North America, editors James Fisher and Margaret McGuinness have gathered seventeen essays that explore the terrain of Catholic studies from a variety of perspectives. The volume’s contributors, fourteen women and five men, mix significant pioneers in the field with a number of assistant professors. Fisher and McGuinness divide the collection into five categories: (1) “Sources and Contents” include essays on “life writing,” the Catholic intellectual tradition, passing on the faith, and the politics of Catholic studies; (2) “Traditions and Methods” explore issues of methodology in Catholic studies; (3) “Pedagogy and Practice” raises questions about the institutional location of Catholic studies and particular pedagogies involved in Catholic social thought, gender studies, and visual culture; (4) “Ethnicity, Race, and Catholic Studies” includes essays about Black Catholic studies, Asian American Catholic experience, and Hispanic Catholic studies, the last including methodological reflections from a non-Catholic scholar doing ethnography among Hispanic Catholics; and (5) “The Catholic Imagination” deals with the claim that Catholics imagine differently via three essays on poets, novelists, and Philadelphia wall murals.

The editors claim no “clear consensus” (p. 3) on what Catholic studies is or what a program in Catholic studies should include. In addition to historians, the contributors include scholars in literature, theology, American studies, and art history. This volume’s chief significance lies in the questions it raises and the reflections it offers about how to study Catholicism as a religion that people live: Who studies Catholics, with what methodologies, from which locations, for what reasons? What is the relation between Catholic studies and American Catholic studies? What does “Catholic” mean?

These essays will be of particular value for those doing programmatic or course planning in Catholic studies. Some stand out more than others. David O’Brien’s essay on “The (Catholic) Politics of Catholic Studies” is a “must” introduction to the challenges involved in successfully implementing a program in Catholic studies. Ann Taves on “Catholic Studies and Religious Studies: Reflections on the Concept of Tradition” fruitfully addresses explicitly the tension that runs through the book and, through the souls of scholars, between normative and descriptive approaches to studying Catholics. Thomas Ferraro’s rereading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in “Cultural Studies between Heaven and Earth” demonstrates just how dazzling Catholic studies might be in the hands of a true virtuoso practitioner. As an initial cartography of emerging disciplinary terrain in Catholic studies, this collection belongs in the library of any university where scholars and students might study Catholics. It has a helpful index. Although there is no bibliography, the full notes for each essay offer ample bibliographic entry to the variety of literature that makes up Catholic studies.