Creative Fidelity: American Catholic Intellectual Traditions (review)

This book is part of the series "American Catholic Identities," whose general editor is Christopher J. Kauffman. With other titles in the series, this volume provides an outstanding service to historians and others interested in the history of American Catholicism, by presenting a wide array of significant and often inaccessible primary documents.

Describing a volume such as this as "balanced" may be trite, but it is also high praise, which this collection fully deserves. To take one example, it is common to think of John Courtney Murray as the single significant American Catholic thinker on the issue of church and state. The editors rightly offer space to Murray's direct opponent (Joseph Clifford Fenton) as well as to an important earlier author, John A. Ryan.

This is not to say that the editors, in section and selection introductions, do not display a particular perspective. That perspective is one that celebrates the "dizzying and wonderfully creative explosion of world theologies, liberation theologies, ecumenical theologies, feminist theologies, mujerista theologies, and so on" (p. xxvii) that occurred after Vatican Council II. It is also one that exhibits the widespread tendency among historians of American Catholicism to overstate the negative intellectual impact of papal actions. In one selection introduction, Pope Pius XII's Humani Generis is deplored for casting a "chill in Catholic intellectual circles." The frost could not have been too severely damaging because, as the next sentence notes, the condemned ideas were "refined and incorporated into the theology informing the documents of the Second Vatican Council. . . ." Indeed, the very passage introduced by this comment is from a theologian's 1951 Theological Studies article, which praises the encyclical. Many Catholic intellectuals have considered papal directives to be aids rather than obstacles to their work, as the contents of this volume illustrate.

Turning to the meat of the book, its documents, the arrangement, instead of being strictly chronological, is chronological within each thematic section (e.g., education, social thought, spirituality, and art). This approach possesses both advantages and disadvantages but on the whole it is compelling. The breadth of topics and personalities covered is excellent. Documents date from 1787 to 1997 and include selections that treat both substantive intellectual problems, such as church and state, as well as the organizational aspects of intellectual life, such as the establishment of schools and seminaries.

Every reader will consider this or that gem within this treasure trove of historical documentation to be most valuable, but a strong case can be made for the long excerpt on education from the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. It is a crucial piece of American education history that is often cited but not readily accessible in its full text.

Two stimulating pieces appear in the spirituality and art section. The first is Justine Ward's 1908 analysis of liturgical chant and the other is Flannery O'Connor's 1969 discussion of Catholic fiction. These selections indicate the broad and eminently justifiable approach to intellectual life taken by the editors, an approach that not only encompasses music and literature but also demonstrates that American Catholics had interesting things to say about those subjects.

The weaknesses as well as the strengths of Catholic intellectual life in the United States are on display in this volume, and it is worth noting that neither the weaknesses nor the strengths are confined to one period or to one side in the debates. The editors' and publisher's provision of such a revealing and valuable set of documents is to be highly commended.