About This Issue

Are you aware of the first officially approved Marian apparition site in the United States, Our Lady of Good Help? Professor Karen E. Park (St. Norbert College), in our lead article, shares the story of Adele Brise and this event more than 150 years ago in rural Champion, Wisconsin, the 2010 approval of it by Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, and the narratives surrounding this apparition.

Professor J. Brooks Flippen (Southeastern Oklahoma State University) in “Carter, Catholics, and the Politics of Family,” examines how Catholicism reacted to the dynamism of the new family politics in ways that united many conservative Catholics and Protestants in a pivotal way during the years of the Carter presidency.

Timothy Walch, director emeritus of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and a distinguished historian of American Catholic education, shares an excellent review of recent initiatives in this very volatile and important area of American Catholic life, finding both adversity and opportunity.

“‘We’re Here for the Bodies’: How the Monastery of the Immaculate Conception became part of Maria College” is our cover essay, contributed by Elizabeth R. Bouchard, Sister Rose Hobbs, RSM, and Mary Guadrón, all of Maria College. The reward for such a clever title is that I won’t tell you more. Go read it and check out the pictures.

Our periodic gathering of dissertation abstracts shares the ongoing vitality in emerging scholarship dealing with the American Catholic experience.

American Catholic Studies is the happy recipient of eight awards in the 2012 Catholic Press Association competition, and we were pleased that three of the awards concerned our book reviews. Details of each award are found on the certificates reproduced on the following two pages. Congratulations to our award-winning authors and reviewers.