Magnificat: The Life and Times of Timothy Cardinal Manning by Francis J. Weber

Abstract

670BOOK REVIEWS the same time, they were committed to liberal social action. For the next fiftytwo years, until its demise in 1993, Christianity and Crisis was an important part of the Protestant left. Mark Hulsether's new book is a well-written and well-organized account of the history of this magazine. Hulsether's primary interest is in the way that Christianity and Crisis shifted "paradigms" from Christian realism to liberation theologies. In its first decades, the major emphases of the magazine were "anticommunism, New Deal type economic reform, and pro-western international development," and the magazine consistently worked in conversation with the secular elite. Sometime in the late 1960's, however, the magazine began to focus more on contextual theologies and to stress "possibilities for radical change from the standpoint of oppressed communities" (p. xvii). Hulsether describes this paradigm shift as a real transformation, and yet he also discerns continuities within the magazine across the decades. He notes that the magazine adopted a dialectical style in which articles typically affirmed "X, but at the same timeY." Even in the early years of the magazine, the kinds of emphases that the magazine developed later appeared on the "Y hand," as Hulsether calls it. Hulsether is thus able to describe both the gradual extension of early themes and the dramatic transformation of the magazine at the same time. This sensitivity to complex developments sheds helpful light on the "shattering of consensus" and the magazine's subsequent "picking up of the pieces." Hulsether is effective at describing the history of the magazine, but his goal is more ambitious as well. His book aims to use "Christianity and Crisis as a case study to tell a larger story about trends in postwar Protestant social thought and political activism" (p. vii). He stresses three trends: "the simultaneous upsurge of fundamentalism and stagnation of liberalism in postwar Protestantism, the explosion of multiculturalist approaches to U.S. religion, and controversies about Niebuhr's legacy in light of critiques launched by liberation theologies" (p. xxviii). Hulsether does a nice job of describing the impact that these trends had on the magazine. He says less about what his particular case study can tell us about the larger story, or even how Christianity and Crisis played a role in shaping the larger story. As a result, his work is less effective at his more ambitious goal. Nonetheless, it remains an engaging and informative piece. Harvey Hill Berry College Mount Berry, Georgia Magnificat: The Life and Times of Timothy Cardinal Manning. By Francis J. Weber. (Mission Hills, California: Saint Francis Historical Society. 1999. Pp. iv, 729. $35.00.) Timothy Manning was born in Ballingeary, County Cork, Ireland, where children and adults all spoke Gaelic. His father was a blacksmith,who suffered from BOOK REVIEWS671 the Irish Curse and thereby incurred his son's permanent disapproval. His mother was a daily communicant, and the cardinal later said that his earliest memory was the way she taught him to make the Sign of the Cross. The family's food came from the garden and the domestic animals, and the boy's clothing was made of wool taken from their own sheep. It was a good place for training in Christian simplicity. Young Timothy's education was received in a two-room school, where the master insisted that all the pupils learn their lessons by memory, including the entire text of several Shakespearean plays. Later, Manning studied with the Irish Christian Brothers and in the Jesuit college at Mungret. Influenced partly by a priest-cousin in California, young Manning applied to Bishop John J. Cantwell and was accepted as a student at Saint Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park. A story about the trip to America says a good deal about the personality of young Timothy Manning. During the ocean crossing he saw another boy from Ireland and noticed the fellow again on the train going west. Saying a brief hello, one of them admitted that he planned to enrol in a "private Institution," while the other said he was going to California for "research." Spotting each other again on the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, and later on the train to...