Catholics in America: Religious Identity and Cultural Assimilation from John Carroll to Flannery O’Connor by Russell Shaw (review)

Catholics in America: Religious Identity and Cultural Assimilation from John Carroll to Flannery O’Connor, the work of the widely published journalist and author, Russell Shaw, provides fifteen vignettes of various champions of American Catholic history. Prefaced by an introduction and concluding with an afterword, Shaw has written a helpful monograph that gives some flavor to the variability of American Catholic life.

The introduction of this book sets the tone and provides its rationale. Acknowledging that immigration and assimilation built the American church, he suggests that assimilating into contemporary U.S. culture might be problematic due to the increasingly more inhospitable environment in America toward Catholic beliefs and values. He suggests that the people chosen for discussion in this volume represent several significant themes in American Catholic life: assimilation and how it was promoted by Catholic leaders, anti-Catholicism and the church’s response, the immigrant experience, hyper-patriotism as a means for assimilation, the ambiguities of American culture, the feasibility of evangelization and resolving tension between church and state. Through the stories, he seeks to ask if American Catholics should conform to or fight against contemporary American culture.

The aforementioned themes are illustrated by Shaw through his short vignettes. John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, used his progressive theology to encourage Catholics to become American in every way. In response to anti-Catholicism, Elizabeth Ann Seton started the Catholic school system and Father Michael McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus. Shaw uses Archbishop John Hughes to illustrate strident advocacy for Irish immigrants while Frances Xavier Cabrini, through her quiet establishment of hospitals and personal outreach became a champion for Italians. Cardinal Francis Spellman is used to illustrate an unabashed patriotism as a means to assimilate twentieth century immigrants. Dorothy Day, working with the poor, and Bishop Fulton Sheen as a media superstar illustrate various aspects of American culture. Isaac Hecker and Orestes Brownson, both converts to Catholicism, demonstrate how Catholics could transform American society. John F. Kennedy and John Courtney Murray are examples of Catholics who made a contribution in placing Catholicism within the democratic system of America.

Shaw’s vignettes do represent the specific theories he seeks to illustrate, but they also illustrate the author’s contention that assimilation into twenty-first century American culture may be problematic. He portrays those described in his book as the right people for the right time; they serve their function well for the time period in which they lived. Concluding with the afterward, the reader walks away asking the pertinent question if conforming to contemporary culture is helpful or hurtful to American Catholics. While leaning toward the latter view, Shaw draws no conclusion. Several of the vignettes, however, contain material that, in this reviewer’s mind, is not germane to the thesis, and therefore, detracts from the book’s value. For example, when discussing Elizabeth Ann Seton, Shaw describes the decline in contemporary Catholic education. The details that he gives concerning Henry Robinson’s novel, The Cardinal, described in a few of the vignettes, is not necessary.

Catholics in America provides a helpful introduction to American Catholic history by framing several significant theories around the lives and contributions of fifteen prominent men and women, ranging from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Very readable and a book that would be of interest to all who desire to know more about American Catholicism, including its use as an introductory text for high school or college courses, the monograph accurately and fairly presents an important thesis in American Catholic life today. Russell Shaw has made a positive contribution to the literature of American Catholic life.