American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church. - movie reviews

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 10, 1997 by Raymond A. Schroth

My problem with this book is different. Other writers mercifully pad their pages with a little fluff that allows the reviewer to turn pages swiftly in the enjoyment of a "good read." But the merciless Morris forces the critic to savor every word, take notes and relish both the small-print footnotes at the bottom of the page, like the history of "probabilism" in the abortion debate, and the end notes, where we hear of a priest preaching in St. Patrick's Cathedral who assures his parishioners that, in spite of the pope's recent condemnation of capital punishment, they are free to make up their own minds. A freedom, says Morris, St. Patrick sermons hardly extend to other questions.

A Fordham faculty colleague pointed out a subtler problem, for which Morris is not responsible. "Catholics don't read," the colleague said. Every Catholic -- every literate American -- should read this book, especially if we want to understand what it means to be an American believer today. We might also want to commemorate, in an intellectual way, the fuss and fizzle of the "Americanism" encyclical.

Unfortunately, the historical process Morris describes, the forging of American Catholicism's ethnic-religious identity, did not make Catholics -- unlike the Puritans and the Jews -- a "people of the book," in the broadest sense of that term. The skills that build cathedrals and schools -- even universities -- are not the same ones that fill libraries and nourish the intellectual life.

Under the sway of a spiritual ethos that stresses submission rather than initiative, we have, with some exceptions, been collectively a "good flock" -- faithful followers rather than prophets and leaders. As a result, the full impact of American Catholics on the nation's character and morals has been far less than John Hughes' extravagant dream.