This essay was written to submit Prof. M.A. Harp as a historiographic essay assigned in her class at the Department of History at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. in May 1998. All copy rights belong to the writer.
Yuki Yamazaki
Professor Maureen A. Harp
HIST 662
11 May 1998
We cannot approve the opinions which some comprise under the head of Americanism. If, indeed, by that name be designated the characteristic qualities which reflect honor on the people of America, just as other nations have what is special to them; or if it implies the condition of your commonwealths, or the laws and customs which prevail in them, there is surely no reason why We should deem that it ought to be discarded. But if it is to be used not only to signify, but even to commend the above doctrines, there can be no doubt but that our Venerable Brethren the bishops of America would be the first repudiate and condemn it, as being especially unjust to them and to the entire nation as well. For it raises the suspicion that there are some among you who conceive of and desire a church in America different from that which is in the rest of the world.1
Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Testem Benevolentiae (January 1899) condemning Americanism was an enormous shock not only for contemporary liberal priests in the American Church, but also American Catholic history which more or less pursued the idea of Americanism since the time of John Carroll. Moreover, it affected the current of the historiography on American Catholicism, as well. Even in the 1950s, Francis Curran lamented the lack or limitation of books on American Catholic history.2
This historiographical current did not change until the 1960s. However, after the 1960s, the American Catholic history has been obviously vitalized to describe the Catholic contribution to the society. This took place partly because of the emergence of the Social History movement in the 1960s. However, the most significant event in the Twentieth century American Catholicism--also for world Catholicism--was the Second Vatican Council. Its approvement of ecumenism gave the American Catholicism the ability to expose their history in order to pursue accommodation with American society; this history seeks a way of synthesizing both American values and Catholic values. How did the Second Vatican Council and other factors affect and change of historiographical trend? How has American Catholic history grown since that? Which are the issues that remain to be solved in future research? This paper will explore the historiography of the American Catholics with several historical works after the 1960s dividing them into each decade. Also, this examination will suggest a few points which may be expanded in future works.
Testem Benevolentiae was issued in order to respond the controversy of Charles Maignen who condemned "Americanism" represented by Isaac Hecker and "the Ireland party" in American Catholic church.3 The careless French translation of Walter Elliot's The Life of Isaac Thomas Hecker included the preface by a progressive priest Felix Klein which criticized French priests, implicitly applauding Hecker's democratic spirit and resolute behavior as an activist. Although what Maignen criticized was Klein's preface, it was gradually shifted to Hecker's reform ideas of the American Church.4
After the 1860s, the mass immigration responding to drastic social changes of the United States--industrialization, urbanization, professionalization, etc., called for the American Catholic Church to take any measure in meeting the needs of the immigrants. Most of those immigrants, most of whom were unskilled and poor, were Catholics from Southern and Eastern Europe. They also suffered from discrimination by other Americans, not only because of their poverty but also because of their loyalty to Rome and not to America. They were thought inappropriate citizens. Reacting to this social question facing the Catholics, the American Church divided into two currents: liberals led mainly by Irish priests; and conservatives led by German priests. Liberal priests sought a way of synthesizing Americanness and Catholicity as well as holding optimistic expectation to achieve it: this idea of synthesis is called Americanism. For them, the mix of Catholicity and Americanism entailed an understanding of a mutual transformation guided by the Holy Spirit's movement in the free climate of American life. It was a very unique experience in the world Catholic history as well as an experiment to respect the republican/democratic idea of the nation to coexist with other religious denominations: a pragmatic experiment to establish a politically independent Church from Rome.
However, even progressive Pope Leo XIII, who strongly supported social reforms to labor unions in another encyclical Rerum Novarum, condemned this Americanism in the encyclical Testem Benevolentiae. It was apparently a huge shock for the liberals in the American Catholics which prevented them from pursuing their purpose and methods at least until the 1920s. In reality, they needed to wait until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to begin contemplating the synthesis of both American and Catholic heritages.
The 1960s was extremely important for the American Catholics for two reasons: One is the Second Vatican Council which officially approved the ecumenism and the church with their nations' cultural and traditional heritages; and another is the presidential success of John F. Kennedy. This event gave Catholics the confidence that their church, to which the new president belong, was no longer an immigrant church but an integrated part of America. Although Kennedy's emergence as the first president of Catholic faith played a significant role in Catholic social history, the Second Vatican Council was a huge watershed for American Catholic historians, enabling them to reexamine the Americanism in the late Nineteenth century. For what the Second Vatican Council approved was exactly what the liberal priests in the late Nineteenth century had pursued. Historians were ready to reexamine the history of the late Nineteenth century American Catholics although they were hesitant before the 1960s to write about what liberals had pursued in the turn of the century.
The comparison of two historiographical essays written in 1950s and in the late 1960s gives some sense of the change of the historiographic trends on the American Catholicism. Francis Curran, S.J.'s "Some Problems of and Historian of the American Church"5 depicts pessimism that the accessible works of the American Church history was hopelessly limited to. Francis Curran condemned that most of its history have been published as great prelates' biographies shortly after their deaths. He regards that the history of the Church during the last quarter of the Nineteenth century is only one exception for historians. Since this history was marked by quarrels (arguments by liberals and conservative who were highly able), and quarrels are usually well documented, Francis Curran regarded many historians were attracted to them. However, even with such a long-argued topic, Francis Curran complained that few historians had given a proper perspective to describe these histories of quarrels. What Francis Curran predicted for the future in this essay was increasing attention to the Church history by secular historians and their contribution and cooperation with religious historians to describe American Church history on "the largest scale, scientific, scholarly, multi-volume."6
Only within half a decade, some of Francis Curran's predictions were beginning to take place. After the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1964, many historical works immediately responded and various reexaminations started with newer and clearer perspectives. In 1968, David O'Brien gave some summarization in his essay "American Catholic Historiography: A Post-Conciliar Evaluation"7 about the difference of the historiography of the American church before and after the Council. In this essay, O'Brien clearly states that the most important assumptions, which dominated American Catholic thought and found expression in historical writings down to the late sixties, was the assurance that there was no fundamental incompatibility between the demands of full Americanism and loyal Catholicism. His assumption suggests that the Testem Benevolentiae never collapsed against the idea of Americanism through the entire American Church history. This thought was not clearly present in the current of the historical works.
O'Brien agrees that his predecessors took conservative, as well as traditional, methodologies to examine the American Church history and that they had many problems on the analysis of the Church history. O'Brien divides these methods into three and discusses how these historians examined the American Church history. The first group is denominational historians who heavily emphasized upon episcopal biography, intensely concerned with the internal controversies of the late nineteenth century, and lacked interest in non-Irish Catholic groups and in the supposedly conservative Nineteenth century bishops.
The second group is American political historians on Catholicism. However, historians found little information on the political attitudes and behavior of Catholics or the political role of the Church as well as overlooked the hierarchy's frequent involvement in partisan politics with this method. O'Brien introduces Francis McManamin's notion that the Vicar General of the New York Archdiocese sent a letter to Tammany Hall stating the clergy's unanimous opposition to a candidate when Henry George was running for Mayor of New York in 1886.8 The New York conservatives used Tammany Hall in the controversy against the liberals.
The third group is intellectual historians. However, while playing a crucial part in the contemporary hierarchy of the profession and their role in vitalizing American religious history was of great importance, the intellectual historians took little interest in American Catholicism. O'Brien laments that there were only a few monographs before John Tracy Ellis wrote "American Catholics and the Intellectual life" in 1955.9 As O'Brien notes, intellectual life reflects the perennial problem of the Christian in society from a Catholic and an American context, people's intention to accomplish, and their evaluation in what difference it made that a portion of the population was Catholic. Therefore, some historians including Ellis and Francis Curran recognized in the mid-1950s the necessity of description of the American Church history in the context of the relation with society.
Perhaps this trend was concerning not only the Council, but also with a burgeoning of the social revolution of the 1960s America. The Social History movement encouraged to reveal every factor of the society equating the one which had been thought minority with the one thought the majority. As seen in the symbolic historical work in the 1960s, Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture & Society in Industrializing America,10 historians started writing ethnic/immigration histories as well as lower-class people's histories. History no longer meant "the biographies of great men," or only an "institutional history." Also, in the 1960s, historians started seeking the social relations of one group with other groups.
Will Herberg states that "American Catholicism has successfully negotiated the transition from a foreign church to an American religious community."11 Also, Henry Steel Commager concludes that the 1890s was a watershed between two eras of American thought, and "that the Catholic church was, during this period, one of the most effective of all agencies for democracy and Americanization"12 in his The American Mind. Just as non-Catholic historians had started ecumenical accounts on their counterparts, O'Brien emphasizes the necessity of portrayal of the American Catholic history in a context of united Christians in a secular and pluralistic society.
Moreover, both Francis Curran and O'Brien share the idea that the American Catholicism should not be discussed within a context of the history of a minority. Both assert that all Americans are members of overlapping religious, ethnic, social and economic minorities. Only perspectives with such dynamism enable to explore how the American Catholics--especially liberals--in the late Nineteenth century took pragmatic decisions depending more on the social necessity than on reference to their theoretical implications. Both noticed, but contrasted to Francis Curran, O'Brien's historiographical examination predicts the various possibilities of future works on the American Catholic history.
In the 1960s, the history of American Catholicism hit a big turning point. In accordance with the social revolution and Social History movement, the American Catholic history acquired clear perspectives on pluralism and ecumenism from the Second Vatican Council as well as pragmatism and egalitarianism from the social revolution. It was the first time after the Testem Benevolentiae that historical contexts with non-Catholic historians on various factors in society like ethnicity and class structure were taking into account. Although some works are still just scratching the surface of the history of the society and the Church, the 1960s and the 1970s are very important transitional time for historiography of the American Church.
Andrew Greeley's The Catholic Experience: An Interpretation of the History of American Catholicism13 was published fully influenced in this social and academic climate of the 1960s. Greeley tries to consider American Catholicism as a reflection of the society. Especially on the late Nineteenth century, Greely regards that a good deal of the new optimism characterized Catholicism which was similar to the contemporary optimism of the whole country. In his account, this naive nation's faith in progress had rubbed off on the liberal segment of the Catholic hierarchy. This notion is parallel to Orestes Brownson's account of the commonality of the manifest destiny between the United States and American Catholicism. Greely mentions about his contemporary church has been developed both economically and educationally with their Protestant neighbors and Catholics having contributed to the society with the economical and educational forces just like their Protestant counterparts.
However, Greely's concern is still traditional rather than progressive. First, he depicts the American Church history as biographies of great prelates or great men while he tries to place the Church history in the context of social history. Although Greely makes one section of John F. Kennedy to describe his contemporary American Church history, it seems even abrupt because he ignores every social effort by the Catholic laity between the 1930s and the 1960s: after introducing John A. Ryan and Charles Coughlin, he wrote nothing before Kennedy's emergence.
Second, while all Greely tries a portrayal of the American Church in a social context, the methodology he takes is more intellectual than social or sociological. Greely describes the social problem reflected from the theological ideas of the great priests and the relationship between the American Church and Rome. While it is fruitful to disclose the ideas of the Church toward the society, the concrete social problems--what actually happened and what people intended to react them--remain still unclear. Therefore, his description seems as if it had only one-way account in the relationship between the Church and the society: only with the perspective to see the society from the Church, not vice versa.
Finally, Greely takes up the liberal priests in the late Nineteenth century as the subjects of criticism while regarding their controversies against the conservatives were crucially important in the progress of the American Church. In other words, at least on their controversies, Greely supports the idea of conservatives. Also, Greely tries to reveal the controversy discussing about the thoughts of higher rank priests like John Ireland, John J. Keane, John Lancaster Spalding and James Cardinal Gibbons. Adding to it, for Greely, the enthusiasm of the "arrogant liberals" who were "incurable optimists" must be judged as "a mistake" although one cannot help but wish that they had been right.14
Having a strong influence of the 1960s for the description of social history, Greely's work plays a symbolic role of transition in the American Catholic history. Greeley's work has a new method to discuss about the society, however, the inheritance of his predecessors' methodology of intellectual accounts and "biography of great men" is still outstanding there.
In 1970, another symbolic work appeared: Catholicism in America15 edited by Philip Gleason is a part of the series, "Interpretations of American History" projected by John Higham and Bradford Perkins. Higham and Perkins, non-Catholic historians, regarded that it was indispensable to have the American Catholic history in their project to describe the development of the United States. This series required each editor to examine his own judgment on the relative importance of different aspects or interpretations of a problem. Therefore, this book contains articles with widely diverged perspectives while having a common purpose to reveal the history of American society.
Catholicism in America contains ten essays that describe the relationship Catholicism and American society. Having more dynamic ethnic perspectives than ever, they discuss American Catholicism through urban life, controversies on education, women's emergence and intellectual contribution to the society. The opening essay of the book was provided with "the Formation of the Catholic Minority" by Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C. originally written in 1948. McAvoy starts his essay noting that "no minority group in the United States is probably formless and yet at the same time as rigid as the American membership of the Roman Catholic Church"16 since there has never been a real heresy during the three centuries and more of Catholic life within the boundaries of the present. For McAvoy in early as 1948, even the so-called heresy of Americanism existed more in the minds of European theologians than in the Catholics of the new world.
Gleason reveals his idea in the closing essay, "the Crisis of Americanization" that Americanization is a part of assimilation on the individual level which has not only brought Catholics abreast of their fellow citizens in respect to social and economic status, but also resulted in a new self-conception for those who have increasingly adopted the attitudes and believes prevailing in secular society. However, Gleason notices that if an immigrant group reached an analogous stage in the process of assimilation, its institutions and the group would face the challenge of finding some middle way between the opposing perils of self-isolation and total absorption. Embracing the norms and values of the dominant culture was tantamount to admitting that the group stood for no values of its own worth preserving: that it was prepared to confess its spiritual destitution and submerge itself in the "mainstream" of society. Gleason calls it the kind of "Americanization crisis."
As seen in the recent criticism against the assimilation models by Milton Gordon,17 the structure of assimilation between dominant group and sub-groups that Gleason's predecessors show is simplistic rather than the real conflicts the Catholics experienced about their self- estimation within the society had been. Gleason states that Americanization is a process toward crisis to deny their own values in the context of the relationship between dominant group and sub groups. Was it a crisis of their own identities what the liberal Americanizers in the Church sought? Did they require people to sacrifice their values? No. What they sought was a synthesis of both values. But this should not be simplified in this way. Although Gleason does not provide an alternative idea to solve this complexity, the fact is that he knew there was a contradiction to account Americanization in this context would affect later works.
Eight years later, David J. Alvarez strongly condemned the studies of American Catholicism before his colleagues had tended a portrayal of the Church as monolithic in structure, steady in purpose, secure in dogma and tradition, and resistant to change; consequently, that American society with its expectations and pressures received little attention except as the object, "sometimes accommodating, sometimes resisting," of the ministrations of the Church. Alvarez believes this view so simplistic that he tries to reveal how the Church, pursuing its mission in the United States, had to contend with cultural, ideological, and social forces which were sufficiently strong and pervasive to challenge some of the institutional and cultural tradition of the Church in An American Church: Essays on the Americanization of the Catholic Church which he edited in 1979.18 This challenge led not only to a process of adaptation to the American experience but also the result which a Church, in its perceptions of problems and prospects, became self-consciously American.
In accordance with Alvarez, some contributors suggest the important theme for contemporary American Catholic historians as well as predict the future historiographic trend with the social development through the 1960s. As a contributor of An American Church, Jay P. Dolan states that the history of American Catholicism generally meant the history of the church as an institution in his essay "New Horizons in American Studies."19 Although his predecessors like John Gilmary Shea, Peter Guilday, John Tracy Ellis, even Thomas McAvoy and Colman Barry had contributed immensely to the understanding of the past and to the scholarly upgrading of the profession, their intellectual concerns and the questions they asked reflected a denominational and institutional view of the church. For Dolan in 1979, even David O'Brien's notion in 1968 was no longer applicable.
Dolan recounts four developments in American Catholic historiography in the past twenty years as following: first, the theological or ecclesiological development emerged from the Second Vatican Council gave the laity an important place in the history of the Catholic community as historians started studying the laity with greater attention and concern than before. Second, the emergence of social history since the 1950s provided obvious implications for American Catholicism with the perspectives of family, city and community, class and social groups, the culture of communities, and social movements. Third, accompanying with the instant exposure of the mass media which synchronized with an era of American world hegemony and the emergence of an American Catholicism of appropriate dimensions, the cultural transformation and social revolution like the ecumenical movement, the race revolution, the general revolt against authority, the new ethnic succession, and explosive social and geographic mobility persuaded historians to ask new questions of the past. Finally, the fact that many new lay men and women from middle-class educated in non-Catholic universities have become professional historians and manifest a keen interest in studying their Catholic heritage has altered the writing of American Catholic history.
As Dolan describes, the new theology has broadened the concept of church and focused attention on the lay people. Social history has reinforced this trend and provided a model and methodology for the study of the community. The cultural revolution has underlined the importance of studying society from the bottom up, of seeing how the other lives. And the emergence of Catholics into the mainstream of middle-class America has made them less minority conscious and more inclined to view their church as an integral part of the total community.
Reviewing Dolan's notions, the aspects of all contributors for this book were new to the readers of the end of 1970s. Especially the essays on the laity by Richard Orsi about Humphry Desmond,20 by William Ellis about Patrick Callahan,21 the one on African-Americans in the American Catholic history by William Osborne22 and the one on women religious by Mary Ewens, O.P.23 seem to give significantly new accounts of the American Catholic history in the late Nineteenth century. These are different from other works heavily concentrating into the perspectives with the Church as institution and the prelates. Moreover, the works by Ellis and Ewens have another important transition in the American Catholic history: they describe rural or frontier Catholics, while most of other works are only concerned with the institutional affairs or social lives within urban parishes. They account much more crucial discriminations toward Catholics in rural areas and the pursuit of their faith without enough numbers of priests. As a transitional work from the 1970s to the 1980s, Alvarez--with colleagues--provided significantly diverged perspectives and these perspectives would form respective historiographical currents later.
Responding to these 1970s historians notions, the books published in the 1980s have clearer perspectives on the American Catholicism than ever, while also having strong influence of social history. These works in the 1980s seem to have play a significant role to place the American Catholicism in the American society and the world Catholicism. From this perspective, two of the most important works on American Catholicism during the 1980s are obviously James Hennesey, S.J.'s American Catholics (1981)24 and Jay P. Dolan's The American Catholic Experience (1985).25
The significance of Hennesey's research is on the fact he is primarily concerned with the impact of the American experience on official Catholic church policy and thinking. Also, Hennesey thought the world Catholicism in the Nineteenth century strongly affected the American church. Hennesey tries to account the ethnic conflicts within the American Church in the context of the world Church: the Nineteenth century, according to Hennesey, was a time of centralization and uniformity in world Catholicism; and in the United States, this tendency had its effects "not only in modifying the older independent American style, but also in fostering ethnic conflicts among various immigrant groups and in creating problems in the search for an authentic expression of Catholic life and belief among blacks, Spanish-speaking people, and Indians."26
In addition, Hennesey considered the role of the American Catholicism in the political context. Hennesey describes how the American Church formed a relationship with Rome while the nation had gradually acquired the world power in the late Nineteenth century. Especially through the four months' war with Spain in 1898, as well as some other events occurred in the late Nineteenth century America, such as the Open Door Policy for China and the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, Hennesey regards, Leo XIII and his advisers had their doubts about "Americanism" which might deny the old values of Europe: it was a contest between all that is old, vile, mean, rotten, cruel and false in Europe and all that is free, noble, open, true and humane in America.27
Overall, Hennesey provides the perspectives of world and political context adding to social context on the American Catholic history. However, he does not mention about the influence by the Hispanic Catholics which massively immigrated just after the war with Spain. Although Hennesey shows a strong concern to foreign affairs, there is still lacking of the diverged perspectives on ethnicity.
On the other hand, Dolan concentrate more into domestic and internal Church affairs. However, Dolan describes such an internal affairs often in a context of the relationship with society or other groups. Therefore, reading The American Catholic Experience, readers will know a total condition in America surrounding Catholic communities.
Dolan's aspects on the society and Catholicism are wide, deep and varied. Among these aspects, he especially emphasizes the significance of lay initiative in immigrant Catholics and gender roles in Catholic immigrant families, as well as the emerges of Catholic ethnic groups over time and the decentralized condition of the Church in the late Nineteenth century. Especially the notions on Rome's excessive cautious behavior against social reform which might turn to socialism are praiseworthy. As a total history of American Catholicism, Dolan's has the most descriptive and distinctive accounts of the issue of Americanism in the late Nineteenth century, cocentrating in the perspectives of relations with the society, Protestant counterparts, and Rome, and of both the clergy's and the laity's activities of social reforms relating to the problems on immigrants.
Another strong characteristic of Dolan's work is his successful synthesis of various methodologies. Although Dolan's research is powerfully based on social aspects, he also takes many other perspectives, like political, institutional and intellectual ones; something which was once antiquated in historiography. For example, Dolan explains lay people's spirituality and devotionalism to social reforms based on evangelism or social gospel as well as their activities. Along with lay's social activities, he also depicts the problems of Cahenslyism and Trusteeism by the laity as well as the one of the political Tammany Hall.
Finally, Dolan, unlike other authors, does not regard Testem Benevolentiae which put an end to the effort of the liberals. Although the activities and thoughts by the liberals, who espoused a liberal view when it came to defining the meaning of the church in the modern age, active virtues, or an active, energetic laity, the dwelling of the divine Spirit in individuals, a more tolerant attitude toward Protestants, the need for the church to adapt itself to the age, and the superiority of the American version of Catholicism to that of the Old World, were transformed and inherited to other individuals in the American Church who continued to explore the implications of modernity for theology which contained a part of Americanization in it. Therefore, the efforts to seek the American Church was kept until 1907 when another encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis was issued to condemn this modernism movement. Dolan trusts the dynamism of the individuals in the American Church at the turn of the century more than any other former historians.
The historiographic current on the American Catholicism at the turn of century also affects individual researchers. Since the 1970s, Robert Emmett Curran pursued an interpretation of the controversy in New York Archdiocese under its third Archbishop Michael Corrigan. In Emmett Curran's first work published in the late 1970s, an expansion from his doctoral dissertation,28 he emphasizes the fact Corrigan's conservatism as an individual formed the consolidation of conservatism and dependence trait to Rome within the American Church. While his concern was heavily tended to institutional accounts, Emmett Curran's essay published in 198029 concentrates in the thoughts and activities by the liberals among the same controversy as he wrote earlier. Later, his concern is shifted to lay involvements--like social economists and labor activists--in the controversy over Americanism in the New York Archdiocese in the late Nineteenth century.30
Through the dramatic development of the historiographic current in the 1980s mainly contributed by Hennesey and Dolan, later historical works tend to have their own unique perspectives. Hennesey and Dolan's works seem an important part of New Social History movement in the 1980s. Learning from their works, more historians try to interpret "real people's history" in the American Church.
Patrick Carey formed an old methodology of intellectual history into a new application to explain the society. While most of older intellectual history on the American Catholicism concerned only to the great prelates' theologies, Carey's American Catholic Religious Thought: The Shaping of a Theological and Social Tradition31 provides equal aspects to all of high-rank priests, lower-rank priests, and the laity. All Catholics whom Carey takes up are forceful social reformers and their theologies were always practical in order to realize or approach to the ideal society.
While the names of reformers which characterize this book might be Orestes Brownson and Dorothy Day, Edward McGlynn's social gospel is another important constituent part of Carey's research. Although McGlynn is always accounted as a liberal opponent against conservative Archbishop Corrigan, his social gospel was embodied with the idea of non-Catholic social economist, Henry George as a solution to the laissez-faire capitalism. With this concrete idea of social justice, McGlynn tried to solve the immigrants' problem of the poverty from which many of new Catholic immigrants suffered. Moreover, George's thought was shared by Protestant counterparts as well and the Catholic laity supported McGlynn with this idea. While McGlynn was excommunicated by Archbishop Corrigan, Carey's taking up McGlynn's social gospel reflects the author's strong concern of the priest's tolerant behavior to Protestants and the lay involvement in Americanization through the thoughts for social reform in the late Nineteenth century.
On the other hand, totally new methodologies also come into historical works after Hennesey and Dolan. Richard Orsi's The Madonna of 115th Street (1985)32 applies a completely different historical approach from his predecessors. Taking up only one festa in Italian Harlem from 1880 through 1950, Orsi gives both anthropological and historical accounts to the local community and faith in Italian Harlem of New York. Although Orsi's research has various importance as a local or community history, what Orsi takes up is a group which did neither accommodate with liberal American Catholicism, nor with conservative Roman Catholicism. Not only poorly served by the official church, but also holding suspicion against both Roman hierarchy and American assimilationists (in the view of the Italians), they maintained the festa of the Madonna of Mount Carmel as one of their few religious practices. Among the Italian immigrants in East Harlem, Catholicism became a popular religion, and they belonged to a very unique Catholic group separated from both liberals and conservatives. In other words, Orsi sheds light on the group, as a part of the American Catholics which was long ignored in discussions among liberals and conservatives about Americanism.
The emergence of gender studies gives another new account on American Catholics as well. James Kenneally's The History of American Catholic Women33 exposes much more optimistic history of the late Nineteenth century than any other historical works on American Catholicism. Although struggling just like their counterpart, the era of the late Nineteenth century for Catholic women--especially higher than middle-class women--were filled with opportunities.
While female Catholic social workers had been occupied only with religious women at first, opportunities of labor for women and professionalization at the turn of the century gave the lay women to be involved in social reforms. If they were nurses or teachers, they acquired more opportunities to participate in the Catholic hospitals or orphanage asylums. Especially it was important from the aspect of Americanism that these professional women contributed for the new coming immigrants to help the assimilation of the American life, mainly with language and education. Also, their contributions and thoughts of volunteerism and social reforms were often nurtured in the friendships with their Protestant counterparts. Catholic women seemed to have more liberal and freer ideas as well as acted more practically than their male counterparts. These middle-class women might be exceptional among the women in the entire nation of the era. However, their contributions were so significant at the Catholic volunteer facilities that helped the new immigrants practically could not be operated without these women's devotion. Women's perspectives is indispensable at least to complement the total history of the American Catholicism.
David O'Brien's newer research was published as Public Catholicism (1996).34 What O'Brien takes up there is "American Catholic History:" not the simple notion, but a special meaning with grateful Catholic affirmation of the American constitution, confident assertion of a Catholic place at the center of American culture, and cautious, somewhat independent dealings with Rome since the era of John Carroll. In other words, Public Catholicism is a history of Americanism and it is perhaps the first work of total history of the American Catholicism fully written with the perspective of Americanism.
In order to examine Americanization, O'Brien carefully explores the ethnic groups. As a result, he places African-American Catholics, Native American Catholics and Spanish-speaking Catholics appropriately in the total American Catholic history. Since these three groups had been often ignored in historical works on the American Catholicism before O'Brien, these statements make O'Brien's research outstanding in the historiography of the American Catholicism.
What O'Brien explicates was the role of Catholics and their church in the public arena--most particularly on the political and social life of the United States. At the center of this research, O'Brien tries to give an assessment of the impact of American life on Catholics and of Catholic religious life since the beginning of the nation's history and the substantial American Catholic involvement in American life.
In light of the historiographic current toward O'Brien's Public Catholicism, it seems as if O'Brien concludes the efforts of American Catholics for Americanization with most of important aspects. However, there are some more factors which may expand future exploration of this field. First, as Leslie Tentler states in her historiographic essay,35 the history of the Hispanic church in the United States should be explored for the ripe of American Catholic history. Although O'Brien takes up Hispanic Americans in the labor issues in his research, Tentler gives more concern to their style of a vibrant devotional piety. Like the Italians described in Orsi's, Tentler emphasizes that Hispanic males, in particular, have kept their distance from the institutional church and nursed a lively anticlericalism. Since the Gilded Age had its end with a symbolic event of "expanded" interpretation of the Monroe doctrine, which allowed the American government to interfere Spanish territories, Hispanic migration has had a significant role to American society at the turn of the century. Hispanic Catholics should be examined more diverged perspectives like the style of faith, economy, labor, education, etc.
Second, the most of historical works on American Catholicism have been heavily converged into the researches of the urban parishes: the history of Eastern big cities Catholics or the descendants of particular European ethnic groups. The frontier line reached the West coast before the late Nineteenth century. Not only in urban cities, but also in rural cities or communities, Catholic church had variety of problems with new massive immigrants; Catholicism required for the development of frontier areas as well as a new sort of missionary in the West. In newly established communities, the lack of priests gave particular roles to lay men and women as well as religious women. Also, Catholics in the West faced different type of serious discriminations from the urban Catholics. Although the concerns to frontier Catholicism have gradually emerged in the 1990s,36 there have been few historical books concentrated into the Catholicism in the West.
Finally, there are few historical works mentioning about the world Catholicism when they describe American Catholicism. There is few accounts how its centralism affected the American Church. This trait of the world Catholicism, on the other hand, sent many missionaries to the non-European regions. The late Nineteenth century is an era of enthusiastic missions in various religious groups. Especially from the perspective of Asia, numerous American Protestants and European Catholics sent their missions across the Pacific or the Continents. Also, many Canadian Catholics sent the missions across the Pacific. However, American Catholics sent no mission to Asia at that time. Regarding the missions to the Caribbean areas, American Catholics had a history of sending missions as well as other denominations did. Although strongly influenced of evangelism and social gospel by their Protestant counterparts in the late Nineteenth century, why didn't American Catholics send their missions holding Americanism which respected the culture of the nation whose official church was never Catholicism? Moreover, the nation's political interest went across the Pacific during this era. The controversies within American Catholicism at this time, and huge demand for missions to the frontier areas or relationship between Protestantism and the government might account for Catholic impossibilities to send missions across the Pacific. However, nothing can be found to clear an account of this issue. Although it might seem paradoxical, their impossibility of missions that other religious denominations did may provide some new accounts on the issues of American Catholicism in the late Nineteenth century when liberals had the hardship facing Testem Benevolentiae.
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Works Cited
Alvarez, David J. (Ed.) An American Church: essays on the Americanization of the Catholic church. Moraga: CA, 1979.
Berg, Carol, O.S.B. "Missionaries and Cultures." U.S. Catholic Historian 11:2 (1993): 29-36.
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