A Catholic Chronicle
Thomas O'Connor's history of Catholicism in
Boston.
By Susan Setta
Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People, by Thomas
H. O'Connor, Northeastern University Press, 1998, 338 pages, $28.95
The latest work by historian Thomas O'Connor, a recognized specialist
on Boston history, complements his four earlier books by providing a detailed,
engaging summary of the trials and successes of American Catholicism as
they have unfolded in the Boston Archdiocese.
In colonial Boston, Roman Catholicism was barely visible, largely because
the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony had absolutely no
tolerance for it. Although the history of Boston's institutional church
begins in 1788 with the celebration of the first public mass, it was only
in the nineteenth century that Catholics received full religious liberty.
O'Connor demonstrates with chilling clarity Boston's deep-seated and persistent
fear of Papacy.
From the time Boston received its first bishop in 1808 to the present,
church leaders have faced external threats originating in the relationship
of Catholicism to the larger culture and internal threats stemming from
immigration, institutional organization, theology, and social issues. That
the church has succeeded, even thrived, against these adversities is a
tribute to the skill of its leaders and the strength of Catholic faith.
Like their counterparts throughout the United States, Boston's nineteenth-century
Catholics constantly faced anti-Catholicism. When Benedict Fenwick assumed
his responsibilities as bishop in 1825, this threat came in the form of
a movement called "nativism." Boston Catholics suffered tirades
from the pulpits of famous preachers such as Lyman Beecher, insults from
public figures like John Adams, and mob violence against Catholic institutions
and individuals.
Just one year after succeeding Fenwick, Bishop John Fitzpatrick faced
an explosive growth of Boston's Catholic population brought on by the Irish
potato famine in 1847. The huge influx of Irish Catholics strained resources
and reignited nativist prejudice. The level of state funding needed to
support the new Catholics further angered anti-Catholics and spawned the
rise of the Know-Nothing political party (thus named because it was so
secretive that members were instructed to answer "I know nothing"
when asked about the party). Winning the Massachusetts elections in 1854,
the Know-Nothings carried out oppressive actions that impinged on virtually
every aspect of Catholic life. To counter the nativist threat, Fitzpatrick
worked to make Boston Catholics central to the community by advocating
citizenship and regular voting and refusing to create separate school and
social systems for Catholics.
Fitzpatrick also confronted the dual issues of abolition and the Civil
War. Neither the bishop nor the majority of Boston's Catholics supported
abolition, but they did support the Union in the Civil War-at least, O'Connor
tells us, until Lincoln said he would free the slaves. Fearing job losses
and resenting the $300 fee required to avoid the draft, working-class Catholics
and others rioted in cities across the North. Fitzpatrick contained the
situation in Boston by deploying priests to patrol the streets and visit
troublesome parishioners. Boston's Catholics emerged from the Civil War
in improved economic and social positions. The Catholic men who proved
themselves loyal soldiers and the hundreds of nuns who nursed the wounded
did much to change national attitudes.
Although Boston's next bishop, John Williams, still faced the burden
of anti-Catholicism, the church had grown sufficiently strong for Williams
to focus mainly on internal issues and institutional development. When
Williams assumed his position in 1866, Boston was the second-largest diocese
in the country, but it had too few priests, no cathedral, no seminary,
and no parochial school system.
Archbishop William O'Connell arrived in 1908 to find a well-organized,
large archdiocese with a cathedral, school system, and health and social
service institutions. The new archbishop proclaimed, "The Puritan
has passed; the Catholic remains." He embarked on a program to create
a separate Catholic subculture, cautioning Catholics against joining Protestant
groups and forming Catholic Scouts and Catholic Youth Organizations. During
his tenure as cardinal, the numbers of priests and nuns swelled; the churches
were full; the pulpits were well staffed.
Because the era of organized wide-scale anti-Catholicism had passed,
the next bishop, Richard Cushing, was able to comment on national and local
issues from the standpoint of Catholic faith. The popular and influential
Cardinal Cushing, who served from 1945 to 1965, worked forcefully against
anti-Semitism and took on the issue of race relations locally, though he
could not seem to satisfy either side of the argument.
Because of the continued strength of Boston Catholicism, Cushing's successors,
Cardinals Humberto Medeiros and Bernard Law, have been able to continue
addressing both specific local issues such as the infamous Boston busing
crises and universal moral concerns such as capital punishment and abortion.
Yet a shortage of priests, a problem throughout the history of the Boston
Archdiocese, persists.
O'Connor is an able historian most skilled in his grasp of the intricacies
and nuances of Boston. He crafts a story that is always fascinating, though
it is often distressing. He states that he intends this text for the general
reader. He succeeds admirably, though I do prefer the style of his other
books, which are more scholarly and nuanced and carry more analytical assessment.
O'Connor is quite at home with Boston history but is less at ease in the
general field of American religious history. While he warns his readers
that this book is descriptive rather than theological, the lack of theological
analysis sometimes leaves unanswered questions. How, for example, did Bostonians
react to Pope Paul VI's birth control encyclical, "Humanae Vitae,"
which sociologist Andrew Greeley claims seriously weakened American Catholicism?
O'Connor's other books are sometimes more forthright in their assessment
and analysis of the church. For example, he deals far more directly with
the Boston Archdiocese's recent loss of political influence in Boston Irish
than he does here.
In 1995, Northeastern University Press distributed Jews in Boston, a
lavishly illustrated anthology. N.U. Press would have done well to copy
that elegant format in its presentation of Boston Catholics. Both books
chronicle the oppressive ways in which America has sometimes treated its
newcomers, especially those of different religious persuasions. Readers
should remember that the oppression visited on these groups has not disappeared
but is instead aimed at newly emerging religious and ethnic groups.
Susan Setta is an associate professor of philosophy and religion.
Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O. J. Simpson
by Gilbert Geis and Leigh B. Bienen
Northeastern University Press, 1998
Five dramatic trials-those of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the
Scottsboro "boys," Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Alger Hiss, and O.
J. Simpson-are probed in this riveting narrative by two criminal justice
experts. Geis, an emeritus professor of criminology, law, and society at
the University of CaliforniaIrvine, and Bienen, senior lecturer at
the Northwestern University School of Law, show how these controversial
crimes shed light on the tensions and inadequacies of the criminal justice
system. In each case study, the authors detail the crime, the police investigation,
the court proceedings, and the trial's aftermath. They also outline troubling
instances of overzealous prosecution, sloppy police work, judicial bias,
and media frenzy.
All-Night Visitors
by Clarence Major
Northeastern Univzersity Press, 1998
When Clarence Major's All-Night Visitors was first published in the
late 1960s, the controversial novel was severely abridged. This edition
is unexpurgated, restoring the full text of Major's critically acclaimed
work. Written in first-person, present-tense narrative, All-Night Visitors
is the riveting story of Eli Bolton-orphan, college dropout, Vietnam veteran,
and sexual voyager-as he struggles to establish a meaningful self-identity
in a chaotic and bigoted world. Major, an English professor at the University
of CaliforniaDavis, has written numerous other novels, including Such
Was the Season and Dirty Bird Blues, as well as several volumes of poetry
and works of nonfiction.
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