Dialogue on the Frontier: Catholic and Protestant Relations, 1793–1883 by Margaret C. DePalma (review)

BOOK REVIEWS e eloquent essay on the city and 0 * 4. &, Si« 1,.£. A'2. » rh , 3 ' %, 3, 4 ;%» 1* 1* late 1990s to be particularly 5% S »*, 1, 5 - =*, ': t, " '« ' %'' * 41'* 1«' 4* useful to his own work and an 35* k, » 7, 45. 2 r, *, 42,' 3 interesting way to approach f' 4, 4, I - 5 8. rox.. I I 0'. . 1 St,11'= 14* questions of urban renewal and environmentalism, deindustri and something has to be done with the material alism, and environmentalism, Andrew S McElwaine examines one waste pile, etc This volume is a very welcome addition to that 238 acres along Nine Mile Run Once open wa- format Tarr has brought together a number of wellterfront , then seventy years as a dump site, and written essays and produced a book of real value now undergoing redevelopment for housing, it is to urban,environmental,and industrial historians a fascinating example of civic irresponsibility and It should also prove valuable to city and corporate corporate abuse managers facing similar issues in their hometowns Samuel R Hays,a long time Pittsburgh resident, Many cities can learn from the struggles that have and senior member of the community of envi- faced Pittsburgh, first to grow, then to reinvent ronmental writers, concludes the volume with an itself as a viable and productive community This book can help Sandy Norman Florida Atlantic University t®; 80 ® Pa %** 11> Margaret C. DePalma. Dtalogue on tbe Frontier: Catholic and Protestant Relations,17931883 . Kent Kent State Univ{rs ty Press, 2004 236 pp ISBN 0873388143 ( cloth), $ 55 00 4.* F .. 4 A /[argaret DePalma argues that although v 1. Catholics west of the Appalachian Mounf . rains ( primarily Kentucky and Ohio) experienced 1; some antiCatholicism between 1793 and 1883, 9 their relations with Protestants were « more fluid Al . rr : ion ,448, . M, R.Mut. )ld# M.# A i>, ti i ; n:, Id d , 11( 1• \ Ille: k dirine rh,dntivi•13,*• r· hi % r: an #, 1CRE# 11* than on the eastet n seaboard "In fact Protestants 1.J.1, 11.., 11„, i , p „ t . 13, 1 1 1 112 "*, n= It,0, 1 Z 0 3. ' k ' 31 , 4 31 '54 4 , » s,*«* and Catholics carried on a " dialogue of mutual 9 31 411 86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY necessity that allowed them to build a region and a nation" ( xi). The book demonstrates convincingly that the relations between Protestants and Catholics on the frontier were more complex than hitherto presented. DePalma focuses her text upon the careers of three Catholic clerics ( Stephen Theodore Badin, Edward Dominic Fenwick, and John Baptist Purcell ) who were leaders of their respective Catholic communities. The book is a historical study of the interaction of these clergymen and their sometimes hostile and sometimes cooperative relations with their Protestant neighbors. The first chapter gives a brief historical sketch of frontier Catholicism by tracing the origins and development of Catholicism in the missionary and colonial period, focusing in particular on the career of Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore who was instrumental in providing the initial leadership for Catholics as they moved into Kentucky and Ohio at the end of the eighteenth century. The next five chapters outline the historical stages of the dialogue between the three Catholic clerics and their Protestant neighbors. Badin opened up an era of cordial dialogues with Protestants between 1793 and 1820. By 1822, with the consecration of Edward Dominic Fenwick as bishop of Cincinnati ,the dialogue with Protestants continued, but for the next ten years was mixed with antagonistic religious debates. Three chapters on Fenwick's successor ,Bishop John Purcell of Cincinnati,delineates an era of defense and distrust ( 183355 ), a period of Catholic monologue (18551872 ), concluding with a return to more ironic dialogue at the end of Purcell's episcopacy (187383 ). On the frontier Catholics and Protestants faced some of the same problems: lay control over parishes , financial matters, objections to the clergy's strict moralism, needs for religious buildings and institutions, bank failings).On various occasions their mutual problems provided a common ground for dialogue and drew them together in cooperation ,but the apologetic dimensions of Catholic and Protestant religious traditions periodically clashed and came into open public...