The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition & the Renewal of Catholic History by Christopher Shannon & Christopher O. Blum (review)

Shannon and Blum describe The Past as Pilgrimage as “an essay in the literal sense of the word” (xiii), a carefully crafted argument outlining “principles” for and providing exemplars of authentic Catholic history, narratives detailing the past within the overarching story of God’s salvific work in Jesus Christ. The authors identify this work as part of their generation’s task of recovering Christian traditions, reclaimed from the wasteland of post-Vatican II Catholicism. Recovery here is more than an academic exercise; it generates a renewal of authentic Christian culture which sustains Catholic historical work, manifested in teaching as much as publications, within a community where faith integrates every aspect of daily living.

The Past as Pilgrimage presents the argument in four chapters, bookended with an Introduction and Conclusion. As the first pages make clear, Alasdair McIntyre’s understanding of tradition serves as starting point and inspiration for their vision of the historian’s task, i.e., to provide narratives in “the service of the common good” (5) within the Catholic intellectual tradition. The Introduction features two examples that “display the art of the true narrative” (5): three sermons extolling the virtuous St. King Louis IX to Louis XIV’s subjects and The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. The first chapter deftly extends Peter Novick’s account of “objectivity” and the modern American historical profession to American Catholic historians. Shannon and Blum trace specific Catholic scholars’ improper “inculturation” (61) placing Catholicism within secular history’s nationalist liberal narrative to produce a “faithless history” (77) devoid of a “distinctly Catholic historical imagination” (78). The second chapter offers a way out of modernity’s faithless master narrative, predicated on the Catholic historian’s task of making right judgments. Shannon and Blum identify two kinds of “intrinsic principles of historical judgment. … narrative and dramatic” (92). Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History and John Henry Newman’s The Church of the Fathers illustrate historical narratives which assume the unity of faith and reason and testify to “the true immortality of the communion of saints” (108). The final two chapters turn to contemporary Catholic historians, first, Eamon Duffy, and then Benedict XVI. Following the Marxist-inspired British cultural historians, most notably, E.P. Thompson, Duffy illustrates “a proper inculturation of the achievements of modern professional standards”(61). Beginning with the critically acclaimed The Stripping of the Altars, Duffy’s writings present “Catholic History as the Communion of Saints” (128). Benedict XVI’s Wednesday addresses on the saints (general audiences, 2006-2011) provide “A Papal Proposal for a Renewed Hagiography” (139) within an “implicit master-narrative” in which “friendship with Christ” animates the Christian culture that gave rise to Europe’s civilization (148).

Shannon and Blum conclude the essay inviting serious engagement with rather than assent to their proposals, but their examples and claims may test the patience of even the most generous reader, especially those who, like me, come from the generation roundly indicted as producing faithless history. Yet strong reactions seem appropriate given that the questions go to the very heart of a Catholic historian’s work. Perhaps others, like me, will resonate with their desire to foster a Catholic intellectual community which encourages creativity in teaching and writing, beyond narrow academic monographs, to make the depth and breadth of Christianity come alive in the collective imagination of contemporary Christians.

Still any serious discussion among Catholic historians will prove difficult at best, and here I offer only one example. A lingering unease arose in me from the authors’ persistent use of “he” in reference to the generic “historian,” reinforced in choosing only men as exemplars of “the historian’s craft.” The authors might well dismiss my unease as that liberal penchant for cheap equality rather than hard-won Christian excellence given that women are mentioned as historical subjects, but my unease arises from the essay’s particular focus: the historian’s agency in exercising “right...