Varieties of Ultramontanism ed. by Jeffrey vonArx, SJ. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS717 struggle for religious liberty within church structures. While acknowledging in the introduction the importance of the question of gender (meaning women) in the history of religious liberty, the absence of an in-depth analysis ofthis phenomenon is a regrettable lacuna—though several articles at least treat the issue briefly. Though there is no bibliography, there are fifty-two pages of notes, many of which refer to primary sources. This book is of value to historians of religion and of the nineteenth century and will be useful in graduate seminars. It offers plenty of food for thought and ably demonstrates avenues for further research. Under one cover, it explores the concept of religious liberty in several countries (e.g., England, France, Germany , Chile, United States) and suggests possibilities for comparative historical analysis. It is a model of scholarly collaboration and of how one concept can be examined in various contexts and circumstances. M. Patricia Dougherty, O.P. Dominican College ofSan Rafael Varieties of Ultramontanism. Edited byJeffrey vonArx, SJ. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press. 1998. Pp. viii, 152. $34.95 clothbound ; $1995 paperback.) Ultramontanism is among those big categories that are at once unavoidable and hazy. Its emphasis on the authority of the papacy and the Roman Curia in the government of the universal Church is obvious. Beyond that, ultramontanism is perhaps more often used as a shibboleth, whether of acclaim or of reproof , than as a tool of historical analysis. As Jeffrey von Arx, SJ., reasonably observes in introducing the essays he has collected in Varieties of Ultramontanism , it "can only be properly understood by a careful study of its place and functioning within a particular context." In an effort to refine ultramontansim into a more precise category, von Arx, who chairs the history department at Georgetown University, joined five other specialists to write on six cardinals who were "perceived in their time and in their locale to be very strong ultramontanes." The result is a lucid volume whose greatest contribution may lie in raising fundamental questions rather than delivering premature and partial answers. It is, however, striking that those ultramontane prelates whose minds were most immune to nostalgia for vanished regimes and least constrained by clericalism made the centralization of ecclesiastical authority seem as up-to-date and necessary as the contemporary centralization of political authority. Eric Yonke offers a detailed study of the "tough yet elegant" Johannes von Geissel, archbishop of Cologne from 1845 to 1864. Working in an often politically hostile environment, the aristocratic Geissel succeeded in renewing his local church along lines that were both devotedly Roman and patently modern. 718book reviews In contrast, as John W Padberg, SJ., suggests, the past was the cynosure for Louis-Edouard-Désiré Pie, modestly-born and unfailingly honest and intransigent . He blended loyalty to the Bourbon pretender as "God reestablished with his rights" and obedience to the Pope as the embodiment of the universal and supernatural dimensions of the Church. Emmett Larkin summarizes his magisterial history of Paul Cullen's decisive contribution to the modern definition of Irish national identity. Jeffrey von Arx's subtle, close reading of Henry Edward Manning's creative political theology is an impressive preview of his major study of that protean and elusive figure. It fell to the late John Ciani, S.J., to evoke Camillo Mazzella, S.J., a theologian who achieved high ecclesiastical station apparently without leaving much of an intellectual mark. In narrating the career of William Henry O'Connell, archbishop ofBoston from 1907 to 1944, Gerald R Fogarty SJ., once again displays his mastery of the inner history ofthe American hierarchy during that period. At times the contributors to Varieties of Ultramontanism look beyond their institutional and ideological concerns to suggest that the Roman allegiance possessed a spiritual power that virtually ensured its triumph. If the most characteristic feature of modern Catholicism has been emphasizing God's mercy over His justice, then ultramontanism proved, in the main, to be the ecclesiology of mercy. For those in grave need, Pió Nono would probably have been a more attractive confessor than Ignaz Döllinger. Robert E. Sullivan University ofNotre Dame For Whom There Ls No Room. Scenesfrom...