|
|
|
Book Review
Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People. By Thomas H. O'Connor. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998. xvi, 357 pp. $28.95, isbn 1-55553-359-0.)
|
The social, ethnic, and religious transformations of Bostonfrom citadel of Puritan New England, to putative capital of Irish American Catholicism, to center of polyglot multiculturalismconstitute a fascinating and instructive chapter in the history of urban culture in the United States. The Catholic Church, agent of the second shift and inheritor of the third, was enormously influential in directing the course of those developments. Boston Catholics battled successive waves of nativist aggression, participated in the debates over biblical criticism and Darwinian evolution, divided viciously over race and desegregation policy (especially court-ordered busing), and figured prominently in the emergence and radicalization of Catholic feminism in the decades following the Second Vatican Council (19621965), which revolutionized the liturgy, social justice orientation, and basic self-understanding of American Catholics. |
. . . |
There are about 391 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|