Book Review

Canada and the United States

This is a pioneering study of American Catholic reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The clunky title of Deirdre M. Moloney's book perhaps obscures its impressive scope and richness of interpretation. This volume analyzes, for the first time ever, a broad range of lay Catholic reform efforts from roughly 1880 to 1925. Shaped by an emerging Catholic middle class, these efforts addressed a variety of ills in a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing society. Among the reforms surveyed are temperance, port assistance, rural colonization, charities and settlement work, and women's groups. While the lay and transatlantic aspects receive emphasis as promised, the book also carefully explores gender, class, and ethnicity in relation to each reform movement. Moloney further enhances her analysis of these religious reforms by situating them within the larger framework of American Progressivism.

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Although few antebellum Catholics were identified with reform, by the 1880s lay Catholics in America supported a variety of progressive activities. As Moloney notes, during this forty-five-year era they did so for a complex array of reasons, including civic awareness, ethnic, national, or denominational pride, and a desire to address issues raised by nativism. In a refreshing opening chapter, Moloney examines how Catholic converts lent an aura of respectability to the laity's growing social engagement. They and other progressive Catholics seized the opportunity presented by the 1893 Columbian Exposition to assert their claims that Catholics were already contributing to the advancement of American culture and society. Although early organizations often exclusively recruited male Catholics, formidable women's groups were eventually established. These women's organizations, representing competing understandings of gender roles, and mixed groups pressed for greater lay involvement in reform, sometimes nudging a reluctant bishop in the process.

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