Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (review)

This is an important book. Peter D'Agostino, late associate professor of History and Catholic Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, received the 2003 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for this, his first book. Unfortunately, due to his murder in Oak Park, Illinois, on June 22, 2005, the author's contribution to the debates that this book is likely to engender is concluded. In addition to his significant contribution to the fields of Italian Catholicism and U.S. immigration, D'Agostino raises what I believe to be important challenges to long and widely held presuppositions of contemporary American Catholic historiography. As a result of the re-claimed Americanism of much of mid- and late-twentieth-century U.S. Catholic scholarship, the drive toward a democratic ethos within the American Church was presumed to be a consistent and dominant theme. D'Agostino's research demonstrates that many Italian immigrants never in fact assimilated into this (theoretical) template, but rather maintained vital connections to political, social, devotional, and other currents dominating their nation of origin, and in doing so, significantly influenced important components of the U.S. Church.

In 1994, D'Agostino published an article in the pages of this journal, "Italian Ethnicity and Religious Priests in the American Church: The Servites, 1870–1940." In this article and others, and then in this book, D'Agostino has convincingly concluded that immigrant clergy, the "Roman Question," the relationship of the Vatican to Italian Fascism, and the construction of ethnic identity were all major factors in establishing Italian immigrants as co-creators of the American Church, and not merely passive recipients of ministry extended to them and of the forces of assimilation, along Americanist lines. The immigrants were, after all, also emigrants. The result is a proposal for a "trans-national" view of American religious history and the recognition of a truly international Catholic culture in which these immigrants/emigrants actively participated.

Some of the conclusions reached by the author will not be comfortable ones for American Catholics. He argues that as a result of the Roman Question, American Catholics (especially Irish and German Americans) distinguished themselves from other Americans through their participation in a trans-national culture. As a result, he notes, there never was an anti-Fascist movement among American Catholics. The pair of priests named as examples of voices of protest, James Gillis and Giuseppe Ciarrocchi, is offered, it seems, as the exception that proves the rule. In the post-World War II period, Paul Blanshard and various American intellectuals accused the Catholic Church of a deep affinity with Fascism. D'Agostino suggests that the roots of the reality to which they drew attention lay more in culture than in ideology. It was only after the question of the Holy See and its relation to the modern Italian state had been resolved, especially within the context of Cold War realities, that U.S. Catholics would willingly set aside that which separated them from their fellow citizens.

The only error that I noted is found on page 123. It is a significant one. The author asserts that after attempts at several levels to persuade Woodrow Wilson to meet with Pope Benedict XV during a scheduled visit to Rome in January, 1919 (while on his way to Versailles), the proposed meeting never took place. In fact, it did, on January 4 (see Frank J. Coppa, The Modern Papacy since 1798 [London: Longman, 1998], pp. 166–167). While D'Agostino was certainly right to note Wilson's apparent disdain of the papal peace initiatives as well as the efforts to overcome the strictures of Article XV of the Treaty of London, excluding the Holy See from the peace conference, in his enthusiasm for his thesis, he perhaps misses the nuances of the papal position that made increased compromise with the Italian...