For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805-1925 by JoEllen McNergney Vinyard

Abstract

322book reviews ent times and places have understood the images. It is also unfortunate that the University of California Press only reproduced small black-and-white photographs , thus ignoring the rich potential that the images have to convey information . Visual Piety joins a number of new books on "lived religions" whose authors persuasively argue that historians of religion can no longer afford to ignore the spirituality of the majority of religious people. Colleen McDannell University of Utah For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805-1925- ByJoEllen McNergney Vinyard. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1998. Pp. xviii, 310. $49.95 clothbound; $18.95 paperback.) Make it local and the story is well told. Mrs. Vinyard transforms the national story of Catholic education, told so ably by Timothy Walch (Parish School: A History ofAmerican Catholic Parochial Education from Colonial Times to the Present, 1995) and Harold Buetow (Of Singular Benefit: The Story of Catholic Education in the United States, 1970), into an engaging encounter with the past by focusing on the City of Detroit and its Catholic schools. While Catholics and Protestants in Detroit attempted to open schools in the first period of this story, only the rapid increase in population during the 1830's brought success. The newly developing public school movement competed with these parochial efforts. Taxes were first assessed in the 1840's. This gave rise to Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere's request for public funds for his schools in 1853. This fight differed from those in NewYork and Philadelphia since Detroit was nearly 40% Catholic and the anti-Catholicism was not as vitriolic. Rather, there were more opponents to the bishop's plans within the Catholic fold. Vinyard's book concludes with the account of the state initiatives in the 1920's to force all children to attend public schools. Catholics and Lutherans successfully countered the bigotry, particularly of the Ku Klux Klan, which threatened them. The heart of the book (chapters 3-7) is most fascinating. The author weaves a fabric of ethnic and convent threads through the parochial establishment and management of the city's Catholic schools. Vinyard indicates the differing educational philosophies of the several religious communities which dominated the Detroit educational scene; she notes the strengths and weaknesses of the diverse forms of the sisters' training. Education in Detroit remained tied to parishes, often due to ethnic forces. Parishes and their daughter establishments developed great loyalty to particular religious communities. The author's richest portrayal is of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Michigan , who held a near monopoly of education in Detroit in the 1800's. BOOK REVIEWS323 Vinyard regularly relates the Detroit scene to parallel events in the nation, seeing both similarity and contrast. One major difference was how strongly the ethnic plurality of Detroit resisted national forces for the centralization of Catholic education in local dioceses. In Detroit the parish remained the locus of the school. One ethnic group which is well represented in this work is the large Polish community,which, due to its own inner divisions, relied on two religious communities, the Felicians and the German School Sisters of St. Francis. Vinyard 's central account ends with the beginning of Catholic high schools. Mrs. Vinyard paints a detailed and attractive picture of a community's struggle to educate its youth, depicts the disparate forces at work in that community which allowed for a colorful diversity in the overall unity of the piece, provides national scenery for background, and induces pride for all who had a hand in producing the current educational landscape. Note only that the text should read "John Lancaster Spalding" on page 93EarlBoyea Sacred HeartMajor Seminary Detroit, Michigan Sharing the Bread in Service: Sisters ofthe Blessed Sacrament, 1891-1991¦ By Patricia Lynch, S.B.S. (Bensalem, Pennsylvania [19020-8502] : Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. 1998. Pp. viii,742.) Quite fortuitously, I happened to be doing some research at the Vatican Archives in the November week that Katharine Drexel (1858-1955) was beatified in 1988, and I found myself seated eight rows from the altar at St. Peter's Basilica for the ceremony. Even more amazingly, the pensione where...