No Easy Road: The Early Years of the Augustinians in the United States, 1796-1874 by Arthur J. Ennis, O.S.A. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS105 die entering classes of every fifth year from 1870 to I960. For this total of 10,621 students, data were collected for fifty-two variables, "including place of origin . . . , family background, religious affiliation, ethnic group, age, academic concentration, history of education financing, reason for leaving Georgetown, career, military service, and family connections with the institution ." A similar study was carried out on the faculty from the beginning to I960, but with "scaled-down variables" (p. 342n). The detailed results are set forth in twenty tables of "demographics," and woven into die relevant expository sections of nearly every chapter of the book. Three additional tables of a more conventional sort report annual enrollment figures, degrees awarded, and numbers of Georgetown alumni who served in the Civil War (218 for the Union; 867 for the Confederacy). The density and richness of the portrayal of the Georgetown community this mammoth undertaking permits is unparalleled in the literature on Catholic higher education, and, I venture to speculate, for American higher education at large. Although nothing like a summary is possible here, we can note that Curran establishes the strongly "Southern" character of Georgetown through virtually all its first century; that he uncovers many connections with the nation's political and military elite arising from its strategic location in the District of Columbia; and that he traces very interesting fluctuations in the relative numbers of Catholics and Protestants in the student bodies of the college, the medical school (established in 1849), and the law school (established in 1870). All this—in addition to Curran's superb handling of special topics, such as the impact of nativism and the Civil War, and of standard themes, such as student life and curricular development—give this book a special place in the literature of the field that matches Georgetown's special place among American Catholic institutions of higher education. Philip Gleason University ofNotre Dame No Easy Road: The Early Years of the Augustinians in the United States, 1796-1874. By Arthur J. Ennis, O.S.A. [Cassiciacum: Studies in St. Augustine and the Augustinian Order, Volume XII (American Studies).] (New York: Peter Lang. 1993. Pp. viii, 472.) This twelfth volume in the American Series of the studies in St. Augustine and the Augustinian Order presents a story of heroism told exceptionally well and documented thoroughly as it traces the growth of the founding Augustinian community to what is presently three provinces and one viceprovince established separately with a total membership of 65 1 . If this definitive work has any small shortcoming it is that Father Ennis in 106BOOK REVIEWS his modesty does not credit the tremendous priestly help the Augustinians have always been to what would become the Archdioceses of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, but especially in those early years with ever mounting thousands and thousands of Irish immigrants into priest-scarce Philadelphia, the leading seaport until the completion of the Erie Canal. Most of the Augustinians in this early period were Irish, making them doubly acceptable to the vast majority of immigrants in the Philadelphia, New York, and Boston areas. The Augustinians also shortly after the foundation of the Diocese of Philadelphia supplied that great necessity of higher Catholic education in what has now become the imposing Villanova University. Chapter XII, "Ruin and Recovery," relating as reported "Ecclesia Bellissima Nostra Combusta Est ab Americanis" (so-called Native Americans?) is an outstanding chapter. Father Ennis corrects those exaggerated ecumenists who assert that religious bigotry did not play a major role in the 1844 incendiary riots when nativists and Scots-Irish united in enmity toward the Catholic Irish, even diough some of the Northern Irish were foreign-born and tíierefore did not possess the high and noble trait of "nativism in its purity." The author pinpoints Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick's greatest concern as the increasingly anti-Catholic climate in the public schools—the use of Protestant prayers, hymns, and religious services, and above all, the flagrantly anti-Catholic bias found in many secular textbooks and in school libraries. The bishop wrote "a courteous letter begging for free and equal treatment and citing the stated policy of religious tolerance based on the laws of the...