The official organ of the United States Catholic Historical Society, U. S. Catholic Historian focuses on the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. Each issue contains several articles focused on a theme selected by the editor in consultation with his editorial board.

Larkin examines baroque Catholicism, the project to reform religious culture in Mexico, and the new pious practices that reformers and the faithful negotiated as the colonial period moved toward a close. He argues that baroque and reformed Catholicism rested on different understandings of the very nature of God. Baroque Catholicism privileged a corporeal conception of God; whereas reformed piety promoted a more spiritual one. Religious reform, he argues, coincided with secular reforming projects, all of which participated in and influenced new forms of epistemology and subjectivity that established the conditions for the contested beginnings of the modern era in eighteenth-century Mexico.

In 1727, twelve nuns left France to establish a community of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans, the capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Notable for founding a school that educated all free girls, regardless of social rank, the Ursulines also ran an orphanage, administered the colony’s military hospital, and sustained an aggressive program of catechesis among the enslaved population of colonial Louisiana. In Voices from an Early American Convent, Emily Clark extends the boundaries of early American women’s history through the firsthand accounts of these remarkable French missionaries, in particular Marie Madeleine Hachard. These fascinating documents reveal women of determination, courage, and conviction, who chose to forgo the traditional European roles of wife and mother, embrace lives of public service, and forge a community among the diverse inhabitants—enslaved and free—who occupied early New Orleans.

The passing of John Paul II provoked questions about the Pope, particularly in his relation to modernity. Was he opposed to the tenets of modernity, as some critics claimed? Or did he accommodate modernity in a way no Pope ever had, as his champions asserted? In The Way of Life, Carson Holloway examines the fundamental philosophers of modernity-from Hobbes to Toqueville-to suggest that John Paul II's critique of modernity is intended not to reject, but to improve. Thus, claims Holloway, it is appropriate for liberal modernity to attend to the Pope's thought, receiving it not as the attack of an enemy but as the criticism of a candid friend.

Employing fresh, innovative readings, Edgardo Colon-Emeric examines and underscores the centrality of the concept of perfection for the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley—and finds them, surprisingly, largely complementary.

Utilizing the image of a “kneeling ecumenism,” he offers a practical account of how ecumenical conversations can move forward. At a time when many Methodists struggle to understand Catholicism and many Catholics know little of Wesley and Methodism, this stimulating work provides the church as a whole a communal grammar of holiness, in demonstrating how the theologies of perfection of Aquinas and Wesley have significant messages for both groups.

Catholic institutions of higher learning are at a crossroads: How can they remain true to their roots while recognizing that many of their administrations, faculties, and student bodies have little connection with the tradition? How can these institutions

After introducing the reader to Bonaventure as General Minister of the Franciscan Order, this volume presents twenty documents and helpful introductions to their importance.