About this Issue

Abstract

About this Issue Nicholas Rademacher, Co-editor In our lead article, Richard Gribble, CSC (Stonehill College) sheds new light on the history of the censure of Father Leonard Feeney (1897–1978), a once popular Jesuit priest whose combative behavior and instigation of controversy on the church’s doctrine of salvation led to his excommunication from the Catholic Church. After providing an overview of Feeney’s position on the church’s teaching regarding salvation, his anti-Semitic rhetoric, and his defiance of his ecclesiastical superiors that led to his excommunication, Gribble reexamines the historical record and recounts the efforts of Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of Boston to secure Feeney’s reconciliation with the church near the end of Feeney’s life. Next, Samuel Mertz (Independent Scholar) examines the life and legacy of Father Thomas Tobin (1897–1978), a once-prominent but now largely forgotten public figure in mid-twentieth-century Oregon. A champion of labor rights and Catholic social teaching, the Portland priest rose to prominence during the Second World War as a trusted mediator between unions and management in Portland. But, as Mertz reveals, his influence waned as war-time solidarity on the homefront fractured in the post-war decades. This issue also includes another installment of our ongoing feature, “Forgotten Classics.” Carol K. Coburn (Avila University) revisits the groundbreaking and consequently controversial 1963 essay, “The Local Superior as Spiritual Leader,” by Sister Annette Walters, CSJ; Leslie Woodcock Tentler (Catholic University of America) brings David Lodge’s 1980 British novel Souls and Bodies to the attention of American readers as a “neglected classic” that charts the course to a pluralistic church before and after Vatican II; Ramón A. Gutiérrez (University of Chicago) reflects on the significance of Fray Angelico Chávez’s 1954 book, La Conquistadora: The Autobiography of an Ancient Statue, which tracks the Christianization of New Mexico from the perspective of a statue of Our Lady of the Rosary; and Angela Alaimo O’Donnell (Fordham University) recovers Elizabeth Cullinan’s fiction, including two novels and two short story collections, that broke new ground by revealing the world of Irish American Catholicism during the mid-twentieth century. In this issue’s cover essay, Judy Coode commemorates the 50th anniversary of the founding of Pax Christi USA. Drawing on interviews and archival material, she documents the origins of the organization and the expansion of its understanding of the peace of Christ to include nuclear disarmament, racial justice, and economic justice for all. Copyright © 2022 American Catholic Historical Society