Notes and Comments

Association News

During its 93rd Annual Meeting held in New Orleans on January 3–6, 2013, the American Catholic Historical Association announced its academic/scholarly prizewinners at Antoine’s restaurant in the French Quarter on Saturday, January 5. They included the recipients of the John Gilmary Shea Prize, the Howard R. Marraro Prize and the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award for 2012.

John Connelly (professor of history, University of California, Berkeley) was given the John Gilmary Shea Prize for his book From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). As the Shea committee noted, Connelly has made a unique contribution with his original and thoroughly researched study of how and why the Holocaust changed the attitude of the Catholic Church to the Jewish people and resulted in Nostra Aetate, the declaration of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that revolutionized the relationship between Catholics and Jews. He has demonstrated that this change was due not only to popular revulsion at the horror of the Holocaust but also was rooted in the groundwork laid by Catholic scholars in 1930s who were pioneers in combating anti-Judaism within the Catholic Church. Connelly’s book is noteworthy not only for the range and thoroughness of his research and the clarity of his presentation but also for his dispassionate and nonpolemical approach to a highly controversial topic.

Anne Jacobson Schutte (professor of history emerita, University of Virginia) was selected as the 2012 Marraro Prize recipient by the ACHA for her book By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). In announcing the award, the Marraro committee noted that

[i]n a lively text marked by vivid examples, Anne Jacobson Schutte masterfully revises our picture of how religious houses fit into early modern family dynamics. Men as well as women were forced into vows, often through a violence shaped by strategy and circumstance that left deep scars. Schutte carefully lays out the institutional apparatus of the houses and the legal processes for release from vows, and offers a rich store of data for further examination.

Benjamin D. Reed (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) received the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award for “Devotion to Saint Philip Neri in Colonial Mexico City.” The committee members agreed that Reed’s research on the Oratorians was of exceptional significance. The Oratorians, as he explained, contributed to “modernizing the role of priests” during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries at a time when modern Catholicism was experiencing major changes due to the Council of Trent, the Reformation movements, and the increasing European involvement in the Americas. According to the committee, his innovative work will provide

the first in-depth history of [one of the] Congregations of the Oratory in the Spanish Empire. Mr. Reed’s proposal demonstrated several strengths. His project is thoughtful and well-conceived. He has already completed a significant amount of research and he communicates his findings clearly and precisely. The project requires considerable methodological sophistication, which is reflected in work already completed. As historians begin to study the effects of Vatican II, Mr. Reed’s study of an earlier reform movement will be of considerable interest.

The Reverend Marvin R. O’Connell (professor emeritus of history, University of Notre Dame) was selected for the Distinguished Scholar Award, in recognition of his achievements as a master historian of people, movements, and institutions stretching from Rome to St. Paul and from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century. He launched his scholarly career in 1964 when Yale University Press published his book Thomas Stapleton and the Counter Reformation. Displaying the remarkable range and versatility that would be the hallmarks of his scholarly career, O’Connell turned next to The Oxford Conspirators: A History of the Oxford Movement, 1833–1845 (New York, 1969). Five years later, he contributed The Counter Reformation, 1559–1610 (New York, 1974) to the famous Rise of Modern Europe series. Turning next to the American Church and his own Minnesota, O’Connell published John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul, MN, 1988...