Building the Church in America: Studies in Honor of Monsignor Robert F. Trisco on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (review)

Abstract

American Building the Church in America, Studies in Honor of Monsignor Robert F. Trisco on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Edited by Joseph C. Linck, C.O., and Raymond J. Kupke. [Melville Studies in Church History] (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 1999. Pp. xi, 292. $39.95.) Priest, professor, scholar, historian, editor, Robert Trisco has been a major figure in American Church History for over forty years. This collection of twelve historical studies presents a wide-ranging sweep of church history in the United States from the colonial period to the second Vatican Council. These studies reflect in one way or another the wide reach of Monsignor Trisco's contributions to the discipline of church history in his writing, teaching, and editorial and administrative tasks with The Catholic Historical Review and the American Catholic Historical Association. The contributions include events and persons that to many may seem obscure and less well known. They have the advantage, however, of calling attention to the Catholic Church's far-reaching presence in American life. Robert Emmett Curran's article on the involvement of in slavery, and most especially the part played by the bishops and the Jesuits in what they did or did not do, touches on an issue the consequences of which still split apart our nation today. Thanks to the late Thomas Spalding's Catholics in the Land of Billy the Kid, we have a picture of the little-known frontier of Catholicism in southeastern New Mexico. Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Anglo cattlemen, and priests-both inside and outside of Canon Law-reveal a Church, both colorful and unconventional. Rory Conley's article on German American and World War I lifts the veil on the now forgotten trials of Franz Joseph Feinler, a German-born American priest, unjustly imprisoned and almost forgotten in his time by a compliant American Church. The question of ethnicity and the American Catholic Church is treated again by Earl Boyea in the article, Edward Mooney and the Reverend Charles Cougnlin's Anti-Semitism, 1938-1940. Archbishop Mooney of Detroit was unable to ignore the blatant anti-Semitism of Coughlin's addresses and publications. Still the archbishop was presented with a dilemma between Coughlin's right of free speech and the racist propaganda in his public utterances and in his published views. At the same time, the author does not fail to acknowledge the unspoken anti-Jewish sentiment in much of the American Catholic mentality of the time. Questions regarding ethnicity within the religious communities is ably exposed by Charles O'Neill, S.J., in his analysis of the lack of understanding between the French and American-born Jesuits in the New Orleans Mission in the nineteenth century. was more or less a Protestant cause. It became a Catholic concern when American had to negotiate the acquisition and the consumption of wine for the Eucharist. Douglas Slawson's article,'Wine for the Gods.' Negotiations for the Sacramental Use of Alcohol during Prohibition is a reminder that freedom of religion in America was as often an issue as was race or ethnicity. The influence of an American Catholic layman in the history of the second Vatican Council is the behind-the-scenes article by Raymond Kupke on James Norris, who was the only layman to address a plenary session of the Council and perhaps the only one who influenced one of the major conciliar documents. …