Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Church in Utah, 1776–2007 (review)

With this handsomely illustrated third edition of Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Church in Utah, 1776–2007, some readers may be surprised to learn of the sturdy historical connectors that bind American Catholicism and the American West. These two do not naturally mesh in the minds of Catholic scholars, who regard the "important" history of the American faith as eastern intellectual property. This recently redone volume by Bernice Maher Mooney and Monsignor J. Terrence Fitzgerald suggests the folly of such thinking for the following reasons.

First, this book convinces that western Catholicism stands on its own in the historical canon. Utah, often associated with cultural singularity, has seemed in its sacred and secular aspects to be the exclusive domain of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its followers commonly known as Mormons. Salt of the Earthconclusively challenges this notion, reminding that numerical size is not the single measure of religious spirit. Tracing the administrative record of more than 225 years, the book charts the chronology during which a mountainous and arid terrain was transformed into urban and rural clusters of Catholic life—one that is unique for its accommodations to geography and demography.

Second, Salt of the Earthgives witness to the men and women who sustained Catholicism in Utah. Here is a shifting mosaic of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans, who came together across an unlikely landscape to lay the foundations of their common faith, even as they learned to value each other's custom and ritual. Mooney and Fitzgerald demonstrate that Catholic Utah was and continues to be a bastion of hardy congregants, builders of their own Great Basin religious identity.

Certainly, the Catholic Church in Utah has not escaped setbacks and disappointments. Yet, across time the tempering strength derived from shared adversity—environmental or societal—may have launched social justice imperatives seen as Utah Catholics respond to modern political and economic pressures endured by many immigrant communities around the state. Whatever the reason, the Utah church entered this century with achievements envied by many—consecrating new parishes; opening a diocesan high school; increasing diversity of membership rolls; welcoming a youthful bishop; extending community outreach; and dedicating Mount Benedict Monastery, an independent priory of sisters associated formerly with the Benedictines of St. Joseph, Minnesota. All these current events speak to the legacy, vitality, and solidarity of a Catholic history embedded in land and experience.

Salt of the Earth, written in graceful, occasionally affectionate, prose, is not without flaws. Overall, it lacks penetrating analysis, and, chapter by chapter, the plethora of people and associations mentioned can be daunting. Although it includes useful appendices, stunning color plates, and up-to-date photographs, the book suffers from a frustratingly inferior index.

These comments aside, Salt of the Earthis a capstone piece in the career of Mooney, the long-time archivist of the Salt Lake City Diocese, who devoted her professional energies to the preservation and organization of the Catholic record of Utah. Thanks to Mooney's comprehensive and meticulous detail, this publication points scholars to a mother lode of Catholic research questions yet to be extracted from the mountain and valley settlements of Utah. In addition, Salt of the Earthbrings to mind other western archivists—sisters, brothers, priests, and lay workers—who, without recognition, have protected the documents of their dioceses and congregations for generations. Like Mooney and Fitzgerald, those archivists deserve the gratitude of scholars for the historical past they have preserved and for a research future they can provide, one that promises further illuminating insights into the Catholic Church and the American West.