American Catholic: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States byJames HenneseyReview by: Neil BettenThe American Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 5 (Dec., 1982), pp. 1477-1478Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1857088 .

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United States 1477

the Middleman theory that the group in question exploits the society by making itself indispensable and also keeps itself aloof from the society while exploiting it. There are better ways to explain why the Japanese-American communities remained seg- regated than the Middleman Minority theory can offer.

The authors would like to recast the Japanese- American experience in the Middleman Minority crucible. To do so, the concept is redefined to mean an ethnic group that concentrates its activities in the trades or small enterprises, including small farms. So defined, the significance of the concept for ethnic relations theories becomes ambiguous. For example, the Japanese minority was not unique among groups on the West Coast entering into small enterprises; by the authors' definition though, all other groups fitting into this category would have to be called Middleman Minorities. Moreover, the au- thors' contention that the agricultural area, where many Issei found their livelihood, can be redefined as a Middleman trade or business is unconvincing: the Issei role in the fields was as a producer-seller, not buyer-seller. And those who opened small busi- nesses in urban areas catered usually to immigrant Japanese needs. Further, the authors state that the Issei were interested in their sons remaining in the ethnic economy and that the Nisei really wanted to stay there. This contention fits the Middleman hypothesis but supporting evidence is scanty. Most other sources argue that the Issei desired to have their children gain a better livelihood, regardless of location, and that the Nisei preferred to leave the ethnic enclaves for their own economic betterment. The high percentage of Nisei who went to college, majoring in such fields as engineering, education, architecture, and foreign trade, indicates that there was less interest in remaining in small businesses within their parents' trades.

The Japanese-Americans have been and will con- tinue to be the focal point for varying interpretive studies. An economic or class analysis of the Japa- nese minority could be made plausible, although there would be points of inconsistency, but the Middleman Minority thesis does not capture the essence of the many-faceted experiences of this group.

TETSUDEN KASHIMA

University of Washington

JAMES HENNESEY. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States. Fore- word by JOHN TRACY ELLIS. New York: Oxford University Press. 1981. Pp. xvi, 397. $19.95.

James Hennesey attempted to write a broad-rang- ing history of the American Roman Catholic com-

munity. He fulfilled his task admirably. He presents an encyclopedic knowledge synthesized and inter- preted so that the trees never obscure the forest. This book can be read with value by either layman or scholar. It is a thorough success.

The book is divided into three parts. The first hundred pages, almost one-third, describe and ana- lyze the "basic 'American period,'" from 1634 to 1829. During these years relatively few Catholics settled in what is now called the United States. If Hennesey had devoted less space to the early peri- od, having few Catholics, he could have more fully examined the "immigrant period," the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. During these years Catholics increased in number from approxi- mately three hundred eighteen thousand to over twenty million. Moreover, it is surprising that in a book that the author describes as a "peoples history" there was so little discussion of the social conditions of ordinary working-class Catholics. There is little flavor of the massive poverty faced by Irish-Ameri- cans, and of the wretched urban slums from which they rose. In a sense, the Irish conquered the slums, partly through nonclerical leaders-the children and grandchildren of the Irish poor. Only one paragraph is devoted to the late nineteenth-century Catholic lay political leadership. Although urbanists have produced considerable scholarship in the last decade pointing out the efficacy, and advantages that "boss" politics added to city life, Hennesey mentions only the negative aspects, which undoubt- edly existed. The same chapter had more than twice the amount of material devoted to Catholic mission- ary activity in the Rocky Mountains than was devot- ed to Catholic laymen (often Irish) that governed the major cities of the nation facing explosive urban growth. In general the lay Irish have not been given enough attention.

Polish, Lithuanian, Croatian, Italian, and other new immigrant groups could have been further explored as well. Hennesey, on the other hand, provides considerable information on other Catho- lic ethnic groups that are rarely explored in general Catholic histories. He discusses black Catholics in relation to civil rights, missionary work, slavery, lay societies, and as clerics. Likewise, native American Indians and Latins are similarly examined.

The last chapters deal with twentieth-century developments, both as an aspect of the immigrant experience and from the perspective of the 1960s, the latter being a time of turbulence within, and outside of, the church. The author's examination of Father Charles Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy are particularly thorough. Hennesey does not gloss over what might be considered unpleasant detail. It continues to be refreshing that Catholic scholars produce objective monographs, particularly at a time when certain other religious institutions exert

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1478 Reviews of Books

pressure upon their academic constituents to pro- duce a literature that is theologically "correct."

On the whole, this objective and highly profes- sional work by one of the major historians within the church is a solid contribution to American Catholic historiography.

NEIL BETTEN

Florida State University

CHARLES SHANABRUCH. Chicago's Catholics: The Evolu- tion of an American Identity. (Notre Dame Studies in American Catholicism, number 4.) Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1981. Pp. xi, 296. $18.95.

Stimulated by broad interest in the sources of con- temporary social problems, American historical scholarship has provided in the last generation a vast literature on the themes of industrialization, urbanization, and the Americanization of immi- grants. One result has been a new interest in the Catholic church, the church of the immigrants so obviously present in every industrializing center, its parishes, schools, and voluntary societies-major, if not dominant elements in the lives of masses of factory workers-its symbols and beliefs central to the consciousness of strategically situated popula- tions. Church historians themselves, having mined the ecclesiastical records of the nineteenth century, saw the need for such a social history of American Catholicism, which would locate the American Cath- olic experience in the concrete situations of Ameri- can life. The convergence of these streams of inter- est is generating a flourishing field of American Catholic studies represented in part by the "Notre Dame Studies in American Catholicism," of which Chicago's Catholics is the fourth publication.

Charles Shanabruch examines the organized Catholic response to ethnic diversity in the nation's most cosmopolitan and eventually largest diocese. In Chicago, as elsewhere, the task of church leader- ship was to preserve the faith and loyalty of successive groups of immigrants, "melding these miscellaneous peoples into a organized Catholic body," while at the same time winning for the church a secure and respected place in a not always receptive society. After recounting the chaotic early history of Chicago Catholicism, whose first mission- ary bishops were overwhelmed by ethnic rivalries, Shanabruch demonstrates how three successive bishops, Patrick Feehan, James Quigley, and George Mundelein, guided the rapidly growing Chicago church through the twin obstacles of inter- nal diversity and external hostility. First, the quiet, retiring Feehan fostered the growth of national parishes, developed a network of supportive priest- advisors representative of the church's diversity, and

skillfully used national loyalty to build "a confedera- tion of immigrant parishes and institutions." Inter- nal rivalries were overcome by accommodating the demands of each major group for parishes and schools. Feehan's "loosely run, pluralistic adminis- tration, one that did not espouse a particular nation- alistic conception of religious behavior," provided space for popular initiatives and made few demands on particular Catholic groups.

At the same time, Catholics were gradually brought to a sense of unity, a "supra national Catholicism," by the shared participation in resisting and eventually overturning the Edwards law, which limited their right to maintain independent schools. Quigley, succeeding to the see in 1903, continued this process, giving careful attention to each group while cementing "the coalition of nationalities" through clerical discipline, emphasis on the church as a conservative, constructive force in the city, expansion of charitable services, opposition to radi- calism and middle-class progressivism, and support for labor unions and bread-and-butter social re- forms. It remained for George Mundelein to take the next step to a more fully American Catholic identity. Building on the expanding population of native-born Catholics and priests, Mundelein limit- ed parochial autonomy, ended the building of new national parishes, established a diocesan school board, with common texts, and a diocesan charities office for centralized funding of social services. With a "near mania for order," Mundelein built a more organized, episcopal-centered church, which em- phasized unity achieved through a clerical chain of command, while championing the conservative val- ues required by democracy. Loyalty to America, through the church, in bond drives and good citi- zenship campaigns, now took precedence over the cosmopolitan, ethnocentric, parochial Catholicism of the earlier generation. Internal diversity re- mained, circumscribed by tighter clerical discipline and increased episcopal power centered in growing bureaucracy, while Catholic separatism persisted, strengthened by the cultural conflicts of the twen- ties. Out of the internal dynamics of unity and diversity and the external conflicts with recurrent waves of nativism, the bishops, by emphasizing organizational imperatives, had built a church that while "never monolithic, but one from many ... moved toward being one with America while remaining one with Rome."

By carefully studying the organizational response of the church to urban growth and expansion, Shanabruch has made an important contribution to America urban and social history as well as to Catholic studies. His work corrects some earlier judgments about the impact of nativism, the inter- relation of ethnic groups, and the means by which bishops controlled their diverse flocks, while it puts

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