American Catholics and Slavery: 1789-1866. An Anthology of Primary Documents ed. by Kenneth J. Zanca. (review)

510BOOK REVIEWS Life" Father Guest examines health and sanitation, discipline, and cultural change at the missions. A second article, "Junípero Serra and the Indians," defends the religious ideaUsm of the great missionary and his companions.A third article on "Discipline in California Mission life" concludes that discipline at the California missions was mUd, about what might be expected in simUar institutions anywhere in the world at the time. "The missions," writes Father Guest, "need to be viewed as expressions of Spanish reUgious culture" (p. 295).The final article, "The California Missions Were Far from Faultless," deals with such topics as the ethnocentrism of the missionaries and the persistence of superstition among the converts. As in the other essays, Father Guest concludes that many ofthe criticisms ofthe missions are based on isolated incidents, taken out of context.Answering the accusation that the Indian converts did not reaUy accept Christianity, Father Guest describes the obvious fervor ofthe Indian Christians . In one particularly long quotation from the death register for Mission Santa Cruz, the missionary priest recaUed the saintly Ufe of a young woman name Antonina in terms that bear repeating: "She busied herself with common and ordinary chores to which her lot in life had assigned her, doing them with aU the perfection possible for her, doing them for God,which is what perfection consists in" (p. 371). AU of the articles are based on thorough research Ln the original sources, most of which are avaUable at the Santa Barbara Mission Archive library. The prose style is clear and concise.The page layout is pleasing.The index is thorough . If there is a fault in Father Guest's work it is that he assumes the critics of the missions are people ofgood wUl who really want to be engaged Ln scholarly discourse. Harry Kelsey Huntington Library San Marino, California American Catholics and Slavery: 1 789-1866. An Anthology ofPrimary Documents . CompUed and edited by Kenneth J. Zanca. (Lanham, Maryland: University Press ofAmerica. 1994. Pp.xxxi, 290. $4950.) Kenneth Zanca, professor in the department of reUgious studies at Marymount CoUege, has compüed a series of documents dealing with CathoUcism and slavery Ln the United States.This work, 'which began as a coUection to aid his own teaching, includes more than one hundred documents ranging from Scripture texts and excerpts from Early Church Uterature to quotations from the antebeUum Catholic press and the bishops' pastoral letters of the midnineteenth century. An introduction begins each section with an explanation before each document. The coUection has been divided into three categories : the CathoUc tradition regarding slavery; sources that trace the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America (the author Includes such docu- BOOK REVIEWS511 ments as Jefferson's Notes on Virginia and the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ); and the observations of Catholics on slavery between 1789 and 1866. Professor Zanca has produced an anthology that should be of use to aU students of American church history. Interest in Black CathoUc history in the United States is growing rapidly. HopefuUy in a subsequent volume Professor Zanca wUl consider placing the documents in chronological order.The present arrangement causes too much repetition. A case in point is the treatment of Pope Gregory XVTs condemnation of the slave trade (1839) on page 27, reaction to the condemnation of the slave trade on page 128, reference to Gregory XVTs apostoUc brief on the slave trade on page 221, and finaUy the treatment of it by Bishop England on page 191 . Professor Zanca makes a very good effort to explain the proslavery mentality of the Catholic clergy and people, placing this mentaUty within the context of the time. It is interesting to note that Félix Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, had no difficulty in denouncing slavery with passion and feeling as moraUy reprehensible (p. 121) whUe American bishops could only bring themselves to avoid it as a political issue. Surprisingly Zanca includes none of the anti-slavery speeches of Daniel 0'ConneU,who fiercely condemned the pro-slavery stance of the Irish in this country. Zanca seems less famUiar with the documents that reveal the thoughts and feelings of Black Americans. He overlooked "The Journal of...