About This Issue

We are pleased to present Volume 122, Number 4 of American Catholic Studies. We think you will find all three of the essays found in this issue to be both informative and interesting.

Jack Downey is a doctoral candidate at Fordham University. His article, “The Strong Meat of the Gospel: ‘Lacouturisme’ and the Revival of Asceticism in North America,” examines the retreat movement founded by Onesime Lacouture, SJ, during the 1930s. Dorothy Day was a strong proponent of the retreat, and promoted it within the Catholic Worker movement.

“’Habits of Vice’: The House of the Good Shepherd and Competing Narratives of Female Delinquency in Early Twentieth-Century Hartford,” by Jennifer Cote (St. Joseph’s College, Hartford) focuses on Hartford’s House of the Good Shepherd. Professor Cote suggests that those studying reform movements in the United States should examine the narratives expressed by the Sisters, the residents of the house, and the reports found in local newspapers in order to gain a better understanding of “female delinquency in the industrializing east.”

Robert Karrer, President of Kalamazoo (MI) Right to Life, has written an essay entitled “The Pro-Life Movement and Its First Years under Roe.” Mr. Karrer uses many unpublished sources to shed new light on the development of the National Right to Life Committee, and to document its successes and failures through the 1970s.

This issue also includes a review symposium of America’s Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital by Thomas Tweed (University of Texas). We are grateful to Kathleen Holscher, Thomas Rzeznik, Amy Koehlinger, and Christopher Kauffman for their careful and thoughtful reviews and questions.

We are grateful for the support offered by our readers, and we look forward to working with you in the coming year.