American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church Paperback – October 27, 1998

The background history and chronicle of Irish influences which dominated Catholicism in the United States answered many a question of mine. I'll wryly state that the sort of Catholicism that one finds in, for example, Andrew Greeley's novels had always seemed a caricature to me, but seeing the genuine history presented in American Catholic made me understand how very genuine some of the depictions are. The odd, "American Way," hybrid version of Catholicism in the States is quite clear in its development as presented here.
Another interesting, in fact astonishing, element which Morris develops was that Catholic universities, including those staffed by Jesuits, were downgraded by the academic community precisely because they integrated religious principles into studies. Considering the elimination of the latter caused problems of another sort later (I'll not spoil the reader's discovery of this by expounding), there was a far greater dilemma here than I had imagined.
This work is very valuable to those interested in either history or religious studies.

This is well done and well researched. A clear picture of Catholic history in America emerges. There are occassional lapses into judgement a bit strange for strict history. However, I would recommend this to anyone interested in this topic.

Excellent book in great condition.

Morris is a superb writer and researcher, and that makes for a first-class fascinating history. Highly recommended.

I have just begun reading it. I think the author writes very well, and I am enjoying it very much!

There is far too much detail. I didn't finish the book. It is a 450 page book that probably would have been good distilled to about 250 pages.

He wrote in the Preface of this 1997 book, "The bitter disputes over papal authority, women priests, marriage rules and sexual ethics are implicitly about the limits of adapting to American culture. Can the Church assimilate and survive? Or must it assimilate TO survive? Or will the 'Americanization' of Catholicism inevitably lead to the same institutional collapse that has been the fate of mainstream Protestantism?... As of this writing, there is no consensus on any of these issues, and the future of the American Church is very much in doubt... the first section of this book... takes the story from the Irish immigrations to the period just after World War I... The second part of the book... takes the story down to John Kennedy's election... In the last part of the book, I depart from chronological narrative in favor of a thematic exploration of the main issues facing the Church." (Pg. ix-x)

He notes, "The great instrument of Catholic separatism was the parochial school.: (Pg. 110) He observes, "No other American institution was as autocratic as the Church. There were, of course, boundaries on episcopal authority. Certain longtime pastors were 'irremovable.' Religious orders, make and female alike, could be very independent. Diocesan priests had real, if limited, rights of appeal from episcopal decisions." (Pg. 119)

He points out, "This pattern of immigration absorption also helps explain the Church's limited penetration in the black community. Irish priests, of course, were notorious for racial bigotry. The Catholic historian John Tracy Ellis was shocked in the 1940s to hear Cardinal John Glennon speak casually of a 'n____r.' But there were very few black Catholics, and for a long time the Church engaged in very little proselytizing of any kind. It was more than enough to keep up with the influx of people who were already Catholic." (Pg. 131-132)

He notes that "The [Second Vatican] Council was also the first ever to be conducted under the glare of the mass media, and that fact itself may have forever changed the balance of power between hierarchy and laity." (Pg. 326)

This is a very detailed, wide-ranging history of American Catholics, and will be of great interest to anyone wanting such a history.

I put down this book the night before the papal election, exactly at the point where Morris discusses how Ratzinger actually put the rein on some of John Paul II's more forceful moves towards declaring statements blocking women's ordination as infallible; carefully nuanced exegesis by Morris reveals very subtle but nonetheless wiggle room for future movement away from some of the last pope's more dogmatic pronouncements. He fits this into a battle between cardinals and the episcopate promoting a collegial right to establish doctrine based on their accumulated experience as part of the Church's magisterium against the centralisation of papal power. This data which may indicate the new pope's ability to create flexibility despite what on surface may appear to the casual observer only more rigidity, buried inside a footnote on pg. 349, is typical of the wealth of detail--you must read the extensive endnotes as well as the text proper to appreciate how thorough has been the author's research--found in this popular yet scholarly treatment of the Church from about the mid-19 c to the late 1990s.

In retrospect, some of the concerns Morris finds diminishing in his 1997 study have only increased, such as the pedophilia (or more often adolescent boys rather than pre-teens with priests, Morris and many critics parse) scandals that grew more prominent rather than less so in the beginning of the current decade. Vocations appear to keep tumbling at least in the West; non-compliance with Catholic teaching by the rank-and-file grows in the American segment due to democratic tendencies constantly eroding the earlier, pre-assimilationist culture that codified American Catholicism mid-20 c. These tendencies, as Morris shows, created tension from the later 19 c onward, and the battles with Rome by the U.S. bishops are far from new. Also, the role of the Hispanic church seems, despite many references, to be diminished (perhaps reflecting an East Coast orientation naturally taken for the majority of the narrative). As a related correction, St Thomas the Apostle parish in L.A. is not on its Eastside--typical of Morris's scholarship, this was a rare mistake in an admirably solid resource that taught me an enormous amount about everything from John Stuart Mill's liberalism to moral theology to John Ireland's far-reaching impact upon the course of the national Church. However, I was disappointed to find that two sources that would've aided Morris' often moving depiction of life in the triumphal, dogmatic, and secure mid-20c decades were absent from his notes: Garry Wills' "Bare Ruined Choirs," and Jubilee Magazine, a forerunner of the liturgical and cultural renaissance that the post-Vatican II era either expanded or truncated.

When describing how Fulton Sheen lectured, how the old Mass flowed, or how theologians battle it out over birth control, Morris never loses sight of the telling quote to illuminate larger issues. His discussion of subsidiarity and how polarised opposites Dorothy Day and Fr Coughlin could argue from this same basis of natural law and social justice doctrine fascinated me! From the Irish famine to Americanist vs. separatist controversies, through the dispersal of urban ethnics into suburbia, the connection between sex and rural ethos in traditional Catholicism, to current dichotomies in various dioceses in a time of fewer priests and more lay people running parishes, Morris is excellent. He's fair to all sides, although he shows a bit of bias against the hardest right-wing and left-wing factions both. His model is one of adaptation without dilution, certainly a challenge for such a vast institution on the one hand suffering losses to not only non-practicing millions but evangelical sects, on the other struggling to avoid the fate of mainstream Protestantism, which has, according to Morris, seemingly lost its moral and cultural clout in today's nation. Although on the Americanist controversy and the labor movement in the mid 20c, he bogs down in too much detail, at other moments, as in his travels in late-20c American parishes, his mastery of minutiae to explain big issues winningly works well.

As he warns, the tug of secularism--whatever one's view on the current state of Catholicism--presents a warning to those who want the Church to adjust totally to its surroundings. He takes heed of the fate of Episcopalians--fewer in all of America than Catholics in Los Angeles: "Once a religion assimilates to the culture, it almost invariably diminishes into a social center or a low-cost therapy program." (411)