Catholic Social Justice Activism: Progressive Movements in the United States by Sharon Erickson Nepstad (review)

Catholics have been talking about the end of the world for a long, long time, even as it itself ended worlds through empire and inquisition. But we are currently living through a renaissance period of global apocalypticism, and though Indigenous communities and grassroots organizers have been defending life for generations, in recent times this genre of prophetic discourse has gone noticeably mainstream. Our current moment is a self-evident intensification of apocalyptic factors—pestilence, authoritarianism, economic polarization, and the realized eschatology of ecological collapse. And while these forces mean different things to different people, there is a palpable shared sense of quickening. Catholicism is as much a tradition of memory as any, so it is perhaps unsurprising that people would look back to historical icons for guidance. But as the new millennium has witnessed successive waves of catastrophe, progressive Catholics have asked what insight leaders from the tail-end of the previous one might have to offer. Since Occupy Wall Street emerged in 2011, a cottage industry has emerged of opinion pieces asking some version of "What would Dorothy Day do?" in times such as ours. Or César Chávez? Or the Berrigan brothers? Or Mary Daly?

In a sense, Sharon Erickson Nepstad's goals in Catholic Social Activism: Progressive Movements in the United States sync up very nicely with Day's own simple mission for the Catholic Worker newspaper, which Day bluntly described in its first issue (May 1, 1933) as a call to attend "to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program—to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual, but for their material welfare." In her own opening remarks, Nepstad notes that "many assume that the Catholic Church is inherently conservative, based on its stance on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and divorce." Much of the text is devoted to building out a much more complex vision of modern Catholicism, by uplifting narratives of activists and community organizers, theologians and vowed religious, who have composed what used to be called the twentieth century's "Catholic counterculture." But one of the brilliant aspects of Nepstad's work is the way she locates Catholic movements for gender equity, worker dignity, anti-militarism, sovereignty, migrant rights, and environmental justice at the heart of Catholic culture, rather than as historical marginalia. The writing is clear and compelling—in many ways it is a highlight reel of the best of modern Catholicism's response to "the social question." Nepstad also lays bare the clear limitations of "liberal/conservative" descriptors by highlighting the Catholic particularity and demonstrating that solidarity is not the same as uniformity.

Nepstad points to the liberationist mandate that Catholic ethics is something people do, perhaps informed by—but certainly not restricted to—magisterial pronouncements. Catholic Social Activism really shines in Nepstad's concluding chapter, in which she outlines five "key themes in progressive Catholic movements." There might be room for a bit more elaboration in the distinction between "protest" and "resistance"—particularly our current cultural movement when the term "resistance" has become such a ubiquitous colloquialism. But the list distills common lessons from across the different chapters and breaks the third wall—directly addressing the reader about what to expect from a life dedicated to conscientious disobedience to powers of domination. In addition to gathering and weaving this rich tapestry of modern Catholic life, Nepstad makes a subtle but very helpful theoretical intervention, by emphasizing the "lived" nature of U.S. Catholic movements for justice. Although "lived religion" is not the exclusive domain of the laity, Nepstad deftly telescopes between the structural elements of the church's social program, Catholic Social Teaching (in capital letters), and the level of praxis—one informing the other, although not always seamlessly. As Nepstad notes, although Catholicism is commonly seen, from without and within, as an essentially trickle-down economy of dogma, the ecclesiastical relationship...