Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 10 — The Georgia Bulletin, April 20,1989
Critical History
Views Catholicism
In U.S. Public Life
PUBLIC CATHOLICISM by David O’Brien, Macmillan,
New York, 1989, 252 pp., one in a six-volume set $160 (hard
cover).
REVIEWED BY CHRIS VALLEY
David O’Brien, a professor of history at Holy Cross Col
lege, examines from a historical perspective the dilemma
“Makers of the Catholic Community,’’ a six-
volume history of the Catholic Church and its people
in the United States has been published under the
auspices of the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops to celebrate 290 years of Catholic life in
America.
the appointment of John Carroll as bishop of
Baltimore, the first diocese in the new nation.
Published by Macmillan Publishing Company, New
York, the books cover many aspects of the American
Catholic experience, from the pioneering efforts of in
fluential bishops to the impact of women, im
migrants, intellectuals, and minorities on the shape
of the American expression of faith.
The Knights of Columbus provided a generous
grant to the NCCB for the writing and editing of this
six-volume history. Christopher J. Kauffman, editor
of the U.S. Catholic Historian, edited the history.
The six volumes in the set, written by well-known
scholars, are: Patterns of Episcopal Leadership, Im
migrants and Their Church, Catholic Intellectual Life
in America, American Catholic Women, Public
Catholicism, and Living Stones.
Public Catholicism is the subject of the accompa
nying review. Other volumes will be reviewed in
future issues of The Georgia Bulletin.
The six volume set is priced at $160.
of Catholicism as it intersects American public life. His
book addresses “how Catholics thought about their respon
sibilities as participants in wider communities, local, state,
and national, and how they acted on their responsibilities.”
Public Catholicism is one volume of a six-volume history
of American Catholicism published in commemoration of
the establishment of the first diocese in the United States of
1789, the Diocese of Baltimore. The series was authorized by
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and underwrit
ten by the Knights of Columbus. As such, one might expect
a “corporation history” which is more a public relations
piece than a work of serious scholarship. Fortunately,
such is not the case. O’Brien’s book is a first-rate critical
treatment of various and often conflicting approaches to
Church and societal relations from the colonial times to the
present.
O’Brien identifies seven distinct approaches which cor
respond to seven historical events and trends rather than to
ideological positions on Church and societal relations.
These he names Republican, Immigrant, Industrial,
Liberal, Reform, Social and American.
What O’Brien terms “Republican Catholicism” refers to
the colonial and Revolutionary period in the English col
onies and the new nation. Roughly extending into the early
ninteenth century, this “Republican Catholicism” em
phasized what Catholics and the broader community held in
common rather than what separated them. “Republican
Catholicism” was, above all else, a private Catholicism
which left to the State the task of dealing with temporal
issues.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, European im
migration brought Catholics to the United States in greater
numbers than ever before. These immigrants brought new
needs which had to be addressed by the Church in America.
“Immigrant Catholicism” emphasized the building of a
distinct and separate set of institutions to help the
newcomers while preserving their fidelity to the Church.
Mutual aid and burial societies were formed: hospitals and
orphanages opened; and, most important of all, schools
were established.
The Industrial Revolution, which affected all of
American society in the post-Civil War period, created new
tensions for Catholics. The Church was both confused and
divided on how to respond to the exploitation of laborers
and the appeal to violence being made by Marxist radicals.
“Industrial Catholicism” eventually gave strong backing to
labor unions and social reform.
The late nineteenth century also saw the emergence of
what O’Brien calls “Liberal Catholicism.” This approach
attempted to bridge both the Republican belief about the
task of building the common good and the reality of
Catholic separatism which became more pronounced as the
number of immigrants continued to increase.
Growing out of the confluence of the Industrial Revolu
tion and emerging (admittedly short-lived) Liberal
Catholic thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, arose what O’Brien terms “Reform
Catholicism.” Catholics joined with other Americans to ad
dress social ills which spawned labor disputes, slums, child
labor, and militant socialism. The main problem with
“Reform Catholicism” was that it was a movement essen
tially of an elite. The great majority of Catholics simply
were not involved.
The period after World War I saw the emergence of what
O’Brien calls “Social Catholicism.” This was an approach
that consciously sought means to influence wider society
through forming Catholic opinion on racial, economic and
political issues.
The post-World War II years brought a certain type of
maturing to “American Catholicism.” Immigration in
large numbers effectively had ceased a generation earlier
The Church had been able to retain the fidelity of
newcomers while not only assisting in their adjustment but
also voicing their concerns to the wider community. In
some senses, Catholicism had finally “arrived” as an
American institution. A Catholic even was elected Presi
dent of the United States.
While O'Brien acknowledges these successes, he rightly
points out that there is still much more to be done if
American Catholics are to contribute their unique angle of
vision to American society and the ongoing debate over
public policy and the responsibilities of government.
Public Catholicism contributes much to our understand
ing and appreciation of our history as Americans within
the Catholic Church and as Catholics within American
society. O’Brien has provided not only a history of our peo
ple, but also a perspective on what needs to be done in the
future.
Chris Valley is a frequent contributor to The Georgia
Bulletin.
Catholic Novelist Prefers
To Attack Ills Of Society
BY JOSEPH LAROSE
NEW ORLEANS (NC) - Author Walker
Percy says a Catholic novelist “has a
vocation, like the priest or apostle,” but
that while the priest and apostle teach “by
design,” the writer does so indirectly,
transmitting “a theory of the way man is
or should be.”
The award-winning author and convert
to Catholicism made the comments in an
interview with the Clarion Heald,
newspaper of the New Orleans Arch
diocese. Percy and his family have lived in
Covington, La., across Lake Pontchartrain
from New Orleans, for 40 years.
“God help you if you set out to write an
edifying book,” Percy said, quoting his
friend Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic
novelist and short-story writer who died in
1964.
Percy, who considers Miss O’Connor not
only a great writer but a tremendous
Christian and “great lady,” said that “if
you set out to write a Christian book, to edi-
ty readers, you may write a good religious
tract, but it will be a poor novel.”
Christian-Catholic values are transmit
ted in fiction because as an author “you
can’t help but transmit the way you see the
world,” Percy said. “The way I see the
world is unlike the way the atheist does.
Every writer has to have a philosophy, a
theory of the way man is or should be.”
About his own Catholicism, he said that
once he decided to join the church, in 1947,
he “simply went to a Jesuit priest and told
him, ‘I want to become a Catholic.’”
What his novels convey, Percy said, is
first that “man is a pilgrim, a searcher.”
For example, he said, in his first novel,
“The Moviegoer,” which won a National
Book Award in 1962, he wrote about a
young man in New Orleans who “is very
materialistic,” but “when things don’t
work out, what develops is a search for
what is missing from his life.”
A second thrust is “the church’s notion
of fallen nature, of a wrong order even in
the best of circumstances,” Percy said.
And third is “the disintegration of
modern society. Things are falling apart,”
he added.
In his writing, Percy said, he likes “to
attack something wrong with society,”
and noted that Russian novelist Feodor
Dostoevski had influenced him most.
“Dostoevski writes about the falling
apart of Western civilization. He almost
predicted the rise of communism,” Percy
said, adding that in his own work he likes
“to do a number” on people.
“Today people are happy to have others
tell them what to think, to believe,” he
said. “They put their faith in experts.
We’ve become a society of experts on the
one hand and laymen on the other.”
In his latest novel, “The Thanatos Syn
drome,” a best seller, Percy presented “a
paradox” between use of behavior-
altering drugs and a saintly old priest,
regarded as an oddball, who warns against
social engineering.
“The priest remembered when he was in
Germany after the Nazis had come to
power,” Percy said. “It goes back to a fun
AUTHOR AT EASE — Louisiana writer Walker Percy relaxes with
his dog Luke on a comfortable porch. (NC photo by Monsignor Elmo
Romagosa, courtesy of Clarion Herald.)
damental philosophy carried to its
ultimate conclusion. Why not get rid of the
unfit?”
Reading “is a great pleasure,” Percy
said, adding that he is concerned by the
great amount of television young people
watch and how little they read. “We’ve got
to get young people turned on to reading.”
Computers, too, have had the effect of
making academics passive, he said. “Lost
is the idea of academic work; the focus is
only on business,”’ he added. “The com
puter is an extremely efficient mechanical
tool for business, but it’s a poor model for
human living.”
