Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography by James Pereiro

Abstract

472BOOK REVIEWS Catholic culture," effecting "changes in both the religious attitudes and the normative behavior of the larger Irish Catholic population" (p. 106); and finally, that by the 1860's, and despite their efforts to retain appropriate authority over their own organizations, women religious in Ireland lost much of the semiautonomous self-direction that had characterized their respective foundings and became increasingly subject to episcopal and clerical control and supervision , as an integrated part of the centralized Catholic establishment. In a book that rightly seeks to discover, in the records of the women religious themselves and in as much detail as possible, the actual data about the emergence, development, and public reception of Irish religious congregations, the opportunities for factual error, misinterpretation, and over- or underemphasis are understandably numerous and to some extent unavoidable. In the treatment of Catherine McAuley and the Sisters of Mercy each of these problems occasionally occurs. For example, some biographical information about McAuley is incorrect; her attitude against "particular friendships" was expressed in relation to communal charity, not in relation to chastity; and the motive for the 1864 assembly of Mercy superiors, from which the Mercy Guide was issued, was preservation of the charism and spirit of the Institute in diverse settings, not resistance to episcopal or clerical control. This reviewer is not in a position to question the accuracy of data and interpretations related to the other religious congregations discussed in the book: the Presentation Sisters, the Irish Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of St. Louis, the Sisters of the Holy Faith, the Brigidine Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, and the Ursuline Sisters. The book leans heavily toward certain generalizations that, as stated, probably do not exactly fit each of the religious congregations: for example, that the Irish women who entered these communities were primarily middle class and wealthy; that altruistic devotion to the service of the poor was not their decisive characteristic; that they were supported financially and politically by those eager to develop the middle class and maintain class divisions; and that by and large the Irish clergy and bishops restrained rather than assisted them. The chapter on "Intimate Boundaries" (the longest in the book) is particularly puzzling in its suggestive treatment of "sexual intimacy" as the real fear behind the respective superiors' injunctions against "close and exclusive relationships" between women in their communities. Mary C. Sullivan, R.S.M. Rochester Institute ofTechnology Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography. By James Pereiro. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1998. Pp. xiii, 360. £45.) Shortly following the death of Manning in January, 1892, Charles Gatty wrote in The Catholic Times that "whilst Cardinal Newman was busy building a BOOK REVIEWS473 fortress of philosophical theology for students and men of letters, Cardinal Manning was wrestling in the open with polticians and philanthropists. ... He led his timid phalanx into the thick of the fight and made them feel that they were Englishmen as well as Catholics. . . ." This manner of pitting the man of philosophic habit against the man of practical achievement has prevented attempts to arrive at a balanced appreciation of Manning's intellectual talents and acumen. With one or two notable exceptions, there has been a tendency among historians to ignore him as theologian, to dismiss his intellectual capability as being of the second order, and to consider his writings as little more than ephemera "written for the moment," as Sheridan Gilley has put it "and, like the moment, quickly gone." James Pereiro's study of Manning's religious development is thus of singular importance. Essentially, Manning's theological journey received a major stimulus from the nature of his early pastoral ministry at Lavington. There he learned to question his sacerdotal rôle and to consider the authority by which he received and maintained it. Referring to this period, he was to reflect: "I was as one manu tentans, meridie coecutiens but a divine Guide, as yet unknown to me, always led me on." The necessity for a divine commission for his life and his life's work remained an omnipresent need. He began to perceive "the principle of Christian tradition as an evidence of the truth" and "the visible unity of the...