Tar Heel Catholics: A History of Catholicism in North Carolina (review)

The story of the establishment and unfolding of Catholic life in North Carolina is not one of high drama, and perhaps for that reason, has long awaited its chronicler. Well into the twentieth century the lives of its members, both lay and clerical, were often characterized by a sense of spiritual isolation in a state so overwhelmingly Baptist and Methodist in allegiance that Catholics were considered at best curiosities. To be sure, some notable ecclesiastical figures like John England of Charleston, South Carolina, and a generation later James Gibbons (who served as Vicar Apostolic of the state from 1868 to 1872) attempted to cobble together a modest network of congregations. Permanent growth of the fledgling community was inhibited by the devastation wrought by the Civil War, the impermeability of the state to the successive waves of largely Catholic immigrants changing the demographics of Northern and Midwestern states in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the persistent legacy of anti-Catholicism infusing Southern Protestantism. It is not surprising then that only one truly distinguished native North Carolinian Catholic, William Gaston (a judge, congressman, and staunch Whig who was offered a Federal cabinet post by William Henry Harrison) emerged from this milieu, his memory enshrined in a biography written by J. Herman Schauinger over fifty years ago.

Now an exhaustive and absorbing history has been written by a man who exemplifies in some ways the changing face of the Church in the state today. William Powers is a former priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn who has lived in North Carolina since 1999 after retiring as a professor from a community college on Long Island. Around him exists a Catholic community comprising some 300,000 people, many of them relatively new to the state, whether from the northern states of the United States or from Central America or from Southeast Asia. In the not too distant past, the situation was very different, and the reviewer can only applaud Powers' sense of historical balance in spending as much time exploring the early days of the Church as the more recent past.

At one end of the chronological scale, he has assiduously mined the archival records to throw light on hitherto unheralded priests, nuns, and lay people of the missionary years. Several thumbnail sketches are memorable, including those of Dr. John Monk (1827-1877), a convert physician who brought more people into the Church in Newton Grove than any prelate could do throughout the state; Edward Conigland (1819-1877), an Irish plantation owner whose faith during frequent tribulations is recorded in moving letters; Frances Fisher (1846-1920), a Salisbury author and benefactor of the still thriving Sacred Heart parish in that city; and Father Michael Irwin (1864-1952), who lost his young wife and became a priest in 1900, serving two parishes each for a quarter-century. These and other biographical accounts merge to create a picture of courage and faith in difficult circumstances.

At the other end, conversations with retired priests whose reminiscences go back to the beginning of the episcopacy (1945-1974) of Vincent Waters will resonate with those who have lived in the state at any time prior to the widespread influx of industry, banking, and research companies that have marked the decades since the 1970's. It is, however, in the lengthy discussion of the Waters years that the lens of history becomes somewhat clouded. Clearly Vincent Waters (1904-1974) is the dominant figure in the history of the Church in North Carolina. The statewide diocese of Raleigh was created in 1924, but when Waters became its third bishop in 1945, it still counted fewer than 14,000 adherents. Waters not only saw the Catholic population more than quintuple, but selflessly ceded half his fold to the new Charlotte diocese in 1972. The author is clearly not sympathetic to many of Waters' convictions, referring to him as "an ecclesiastical dinosaur...