Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church. By Charles R. Morris. (New York: Random House, 1997. xiv, 511 pp. $27.50, isbn 0-8129-2049-X.)

There seems to be a perennial quest among professors of religious history for a single volume to introduce American Catholicism. Of the available options, surveys by Patrick Carey (1993), Jay Dolan (1985), and James Hennesey (1981) are popular choices. Charles R. Morris's contribution is a livelier read, befitting a journalist, but it fails to elevate itself by challenging reigning historical models of Catholic America. Curiously, it seemingly endorses an outmoded top-down notion of church history as priestly history. A Philadelphia native and author of a history of modern New York City (1980), Morris is attuned to urban populations and the dominant role of the Irish in the Northeast and Midwest but is less attentive to other regions and ethnicities. A greater flaw is the lack of attention to the agency of Catholic women. Aside from Dorothy Day and a few nuns singled out as teachers, nurses, and pastoral administrators, Morris's "saints and sinners" present the march of Catholic history as the work of undeniably colorful priests assisted by a cast of laymen. The gradual "feminization" of parish ministries since Vatican II is at least noted. . . .

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