Catholic America Research Articles

Monumental Women: Commemoration, Vocation, and Irish Migration at Notre Dame

Headlines about memorials tend to skew toward the negative, emphasizing the removal of controversial monuments. Yet there is a substantial generative aspect to conversations about representation in public landscapes. In my case, paying more attention to public landscapes at my home institution led to new insights about the history of the Sisters of the Holy Cross at the University of Notre Dame, founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross near South Bend, Indiana, in 1842. Framed around a discussion of Catholic sisters’ invisibility in Notre Dame’s campus architecture, this article centers on a ‘questing’ trip Holy Cross superior Mother Angela Gillespie took to Ireland in 1873 in search of new members. It examines what precipitated Gillespie’s journey, what the subsequent arrival of some 40 postulants portended for Catholic America, and what themes and approaches it might suggest for the larger historical study of Catholic sisters at a pivotal historiographical moment.

Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era by William S. Cossen (review)

Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era by William S. Cossen (review)

Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. By William S. Cossen

Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. By William S. Cossen

Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era by William S. Cossen (review)

Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era by William S. Cossen (review)

John Moore: Catholic Pastoral Leadership During Florida's First Boom, 1877–1901 by Michael J. McNally

Reviewed by: John Moore: Catholic Pastoral Leadership During Florida's First Boom, 1877–1901 by Michael J. McNally Barbara E. Mattick John Moore: Catholic Pastoral Leadership During Florida's First Boom, 1877–1901. By Michael J. McNally. St. Augustine, FL: Diocese of St. Augustine, 2020. 456 pp. $29.99. Brave is the author who writes the biography of a relatively obscure man! Michael J. McNally, a priest in the Diocese of Palm Beach, has done such a work for Bishop John Moore, the second bishop of the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine who served from 1877 until his death in 1901. Using only snippets of materials, he describes Moore's youth in Ireland, his 1848 emigration to Charleston, South Carolina, and then his life as a seminarian in France and Rome. Official documents shed light on Moore's career as a priest and bishop. McNally poses the question, "But why bother to know [Moore] at all? . . . he is a virtually unknown prelate in the historiography of Catholic America's late nineteenth century. . . Yet he is arguably one of the most important Florida bishops and leaders, since it was he that [sic] guided ecclesiastical affairs during what might be called Florida's First Great Boom from 1877–1901" (3). Moore was a dutiful, hard-working shepherd and financier for his flock in the Diocese of St. Augustine, dedicated to the Catholic Church no matter how difficult his circumstances. He faced the Civil War, the destruction of his cathedral with the resulting need for incessant fundraising, and a major yellow fever epidemic in Jacksonville, Florida. [End Page 99] Amid all of that, he also seemed to encounter frequent personnel issues, not just with his priests and women religious, but also with his superiors. One of McNally's sections discusses Moore's dealings with the women religious in his diocese. McNally's books, Catholic Parish Life on Florida's West Coast, 1860–1968 and Catholicism in South Florida, 1868–1968, provide valuable contextual information concerning the Benedictines and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Of particular interest to me, was his interpretation of the events concerning Mother Lazarus L'hostel, the Provincial General of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine. Moore accused her of violating an 1890 papal decree, Quemadmodum, which forbad religious superiors from questioning the consciences of their subordinates, something that was to be left to confessors. It also required that the decree be read to each community annually, on no specific date. Failure to comply with the decree would lead to the superior's excommunication until the offender made a formal confession to her or his confessor. Mother Lazarus had, indeed, forgotten to present the decree one year, but gained Bishop Moore's permission to read it before the sisters on a date other than the original one he had provided; he said that the important thing was that the decree be read once a year. Mother Lazarus had continued to read it on the alternate date, at the sisters' annual retreat. For twenty-one years, Mother Lazarus enjoyed a warm, supportive, fatherly relationship with Moore. On September 6, 1899, Bishop Moore was on a begging trip to Pennsylvania when he suffered a heart attack and stroke. On November 14, 1899, without any warning, Moore ordered Mother Lazarus to call together the sisters at the Motherhouse in St. Augustine. He, accompanied by an assistant, arrived and deposed her as the Provincial Superior because of her disobedience in not having the decree read each year, advising her that she was under papal excommunication. Furthermore, a few days later, he exiled her to the community in Tampa as a teaching sister, never to hold office in the community again. Most historians have seen this shocking event as a major anomaly for Bishop Moore, and attribute it to the effects of his stroke. McNally agrees, but then speculates at length that perhaps Mother Lazarus had flaunted the decree and its requirements. I see this as a stretch; my research reveals Mother Lazarus's gentle character and devotion to her vow of obedience. Given the lack of personal letters or writings, McNally put much effort, beginning in 2003...

Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America

Book Review| July 01 2019 Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America. By John Loughery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. 424 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $32.95 (cloth). William B. Kurtz William B. Kurtz University of Virginia William B. Kurtz serves as Managing Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America (Fordham University Press, 2015). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2019) 38 (4): 96–98. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.38.4.0096 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation William B. Kurtz; Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2019; 38 (4): 96–98. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.38.4.0096 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Spirituality and Vision at the Root of the USCCB

The Spirituality and Vision at the Root of the USCCB Douglas J. Slawson (bio) Tuesday, September 24, 2019, marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). When the editors of American Catholic Studies invited this commemorative piece to celebrate the occasion, the lead article in the then-current issue of the journal (Fall 2018) was “Reflecting on the Trajectory of American Catholic History” by David O’Brien. He contends that much of American Catholic history has been “told ‘from the heart of the church,’” that is, stressing the Catholic in American Catholic, thereby reinforcing “identity with and loyalty to the church” through a Catholic subculture. O’Brien notes that “how one tells the American Catholic story really matters.” Emphasis makes a difference. “If the American Catholic story is primarily an American story, told in and with the American people, it may encourage Catholics to draw on their Catholic heritage to find meaning and purpose in their social experience,” writes O’Brien. “That American story of American Catholicism may even open hearts to one or another form of solidarity, even civil religion, endowing the shared experience of Americans with religious meaning.” He decidedly favors a movement toward American Catholic history. “We are all called to help renew American society,” he declares, “and the Catholics among us have a special reason to respond to this call because we are called to transform the world into the Kingdom of God.”1 The man who founded the organization that served as model for the USCCB and whose thinking and spirituality informed and guided the first sixteen years of the bishops’ conference was wholeheartedly American and Catholic: Paulist Father John J. Burke. For him, the two [End Page 99] words were practically interchangeable.2 So, in celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the conference, it will be worthwhile to explore the vision and spirit at the root of the organization. Spirituality A native of New York City, Burke was born to Irish immigrants and grew up almost in the shadow of St. Paul the Apostle Church on Columbus Avenue at 60th Street, established by convert Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers. It was there that Burke became acquainted with the Paulists and likely knew the founder himself, who died at the parish in 1888 when the young Burke was thirteen. Later in life, the latter acknowledged that Hecker and one of his early disciples, Father Walter Elliott, exercised a determinant influence on the person he became. Burke found Hecker’s American spirit and mysticism especially appealing. Hecker’s theology was incarnational: in Jesus, humanity and divinity became one, and humankind was uplifted and transformed. Soul and body were destined for union with God and their every faculty and power had that union as its end and purpose. Rather than set aside or repress human instincts, affections, and desires, the true Christian strove to direct them toward their proper goal. Moreover, Hecker sensed a deep harmony between the Catholic faith and American principles, which led him to develop an apologetic that blended Catholicism with Americanism and gave their combination a millenarian thrust: a Catholic America had a mission to the larger church and world—to guide both in the present age.3 [End Page 100] To convert Americans, the Catholic Church need not argue doctrine, but demonstrate instead how the spirit and institutions of the country were more Catholic than Protestant, by which Hecker meant Calvinist. The Declaration of Independence, for example, posited the goodness of human nature, the freedom of will, and the inalienable rights of persons, principles which were also articles of Catholic faith. The Declaration gave rise to a political system based on “a mere naturalism.” Using the Catholic axiom that grace built on nature, Hecker saw a “necessary bond” between the principles of that document and those of the church because “the truths of the natural order serve as indispensable supports to the body of revealed truths of faith.” Protestantism, on the other hand, held for the total depravity of human nature, the loss of free will, and the forfeiture of natural rights. To be consistent as an American, therefore, a...

American Catholics and “The Use and Abuse of Reading,” 1865–1873

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker launched several publishing ventures to advance his dream of a Catholic America, but he and his partners soon found themselves embroiled in a debate with other American Catholics, notably his friend and fellow convert Orestes Brownson, over the “use and abuse of reading.” Although the debate was certainly part of a contemporary conversation about the compatibility of Catholicism and American culture, this essay argues that it was equally rooted in a moment of American anxiety over a shifting social order, a moment when antebellum faith in the individual was being tested by the rights claims of women and Americans of color. Tacitly accepting and internalizing historical claims of intrinsic and through-going Catholic “difference,” claims offered both by American Protestants and American Catholics like Brownson, scholars often presume that debates within American Catholicism reflect “Catholic” concerns first and foremost, qualifying their utility as sources of “American” cultural history. By examining American Catholic discussions of reading, individual liberty, social order, and gender in the 1860s and 1870s, this essay argues that Brownson's arguments against the compatibility of American and Catholic life were in fact far more representative of ascendant ideas in American culture than Hecker's hopeful visions of a Catholic American future made manifest through the power of reading. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that American Catholicism can be a valuable and complex site for studying the broader history of religion and culture in the United States.

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America

Book Review| July 01 2017 Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America. By Kristen Layne Anderson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. 278 pp. Figures, notes, bibliography, and index. $48 (cloth). William B. Kurtz William B. Kurtz University of Virginia William B. Kurtz serves as Digital Historian of the John L. Nau III Center for the Study of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America (Fordham University Press, 2015). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2017) 36 (4): 104–108. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.36.4.0104 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation William B. Kurtz; Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2017; 36 (4): 104–108. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.36.4.0104 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

William B. Kurtz. Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America.

William B. Kurtz. Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America.

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. by William B. Kurtz

Reviewed by: Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. by William B. Kurtz Christian B. Keller (bio) Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. By William B. Kurtz. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. 236. Cloth, $120.00; paper, $35.00.) William Kurtz's new study of Catholics in the Civil War era and how the conflict contributed to the creation of a separate Catholic identity justifies the lavish praise found on the book's back cover. It is a solidly researched study, balancing a healthy amount of archival sources and printed primary sources, period newspapers, and the best (although by no means all) of the secondary sources available. Kurtz, like Susannah Ural before him with her well-known The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861–1865 (2006), conducted a sizable amount of research overseas in Irish repositories, and he even managed to plumb the famous Auswandererbriefesammlung in Gotha, Germany, which was the source for Walter Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich's edited and translated letter collection, Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home (2006). But Kurtz also demonstrates in his work a careful rereading [End Page 333] of tried-and-true domestic primary source materials, especially ethnic and religious newspapers like the Boston Pilot and the Catholic Herald of Philadelphia. In so doing, he continues the trend of strong research that is evident in recent titles published by Fordham's series on the North in the Civil War. The book, which is also well written with a crisp prose that drags only in a few sections, is divided into eight chapters, a useful introduction and conclusion, and appendices on the known Catholic newspapers, priests who served as chaplains in the Union army, and female Catholic organizations that contributed nurses to the Federal cause. Kurtz's major thesis is that antebellum anti-Catholic nativism, borne of Anglo-Americans' fears of Irish and German Catholic immigrants changing American culture, prompted most northern Catholics initially to support the Union war effort to prove their loyalty and defend their faith through patriotism. But as the war progressed, casualties among Catholic soldiers mounted, emancipation and the draft became contentious issues (especially among Irish Catholics), and prejudice against Catholic immigrant soldiers continued unabated. Thus, by the end of the war, northern Catholics overall had undergone an alienating experience that only reinforced their allegiance to their faith and, in some areas, retarded their assimilation process into greater American society. In the postwar decades, Irish Catholic veterans attempted to varnish their often unpleasant wartime service by celebrating a more optimistic memory of their experiences under arms, one that frequently fused with a greater celebration of Irish ethnic contributions to the war. Kurtz explains how and why Catholics enlisted in Irish and nonethnic regiments alike, priests and nuns volunteered as chaplains and nurses, bishops politically bolstered home-front fervor for the Union, and newspaper editors became barometers (or directors) of Catholic opinion on the northern war effort. His first chapter, on the Mexican War and nativism against Catholics, is a significant contribution to the literature in its own right and sets the stage nicely for the rest of the book. The second chapter examines Catholic motivations and responses during the secession winter and first year of the war, including the lively dissension that existed among antiwar editors and clergy and those supporting the Lincoln administration. There is not a great deal of new material here that has not already been covered elsewhere, but Kurtz's inclusion of German Catholics in his analysis is refreshing and novel. Throughout the book, in fact, he carefully includes German Catholic perspectives wherever possible, even if the evidence base is weak or was difficult to access (which is no fault of the author). The third chapter, on Catholic soldiers in the Union army, is highly satisfying on one level and frustrating on another. Kurtz offers a superb analysis [End Page 334] of how Irish Catholics in blue felt about major wartime issues, such as the advent of black soldiers and prejudice exhibited by Protestants, but falls short in evaluating their actual battlefield...

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Reviewed by: Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic Americaby William B. Kurtz Mary C. Kelly Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. By William B. Kurtz. The North’s Civil War. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. [x], 236. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8232-6886-3; cloth, $120.00, ISBN 978-0-8232-6753-8.) Nativism, reinforced by the massive influx of immigrants during the Irish famine of the 1840s, revitalized perceptions of American incompatibility with Catholic loyalty to Rome. Debates over manifest destiny, the [End Page 186]U.S.-Mexican War, abolitionism, and sectionalism exacerbated the Catholic Church’s embattled condition in the Civil War era. William B. Kurtz’s study of Catholicism at a pivotal juncture in American history effectively documents a tumultuous progression. Kurtz initially unscrambles bitter sectional tensions disrupting northern Catholic fidelities to church, region, and party before and during the Civil War. Most Catholics opposed prowar Republicans, he notes, but wartime service allowed War Democrats to enhance their prospects as “true Americans” (p. 43). Catholic colleges supported the Union army, while the reputations of New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania regiments soared. Commanders Thomas F. Meagher and Michael Corcoran, alongside other soldiers, supported emancipation, temporarily affirming the compatibility between faith and patriotism. The more than six hundred nuns who bolstered the national Catholic profile more than “the actions of Catholic chaplains or soldiers” contributed much, Kurtz continues, but ethnic prerogatives continued to challenge assimilation prospects (p. 68). Bishops’ indecisiveness on emancipation neutralized the value of Catholic military service for many northerners, while debates over abolition sidelined the repeal movement for Irish Americans committed to their home-land’s independence. Catholic advocator Orestes A. Brownson’s prowar, pro-emancipation stance confronted the conservative stance of New York’s Archbishop John Hughes, who based his opposition in economic and faith concerns and not in mere “unprincipled obstructionism,” Kurtz argues (p. 109). The brutality of incensed Irish New Yorkers who lashed out against conscription in the 1863 draft riots is adroitly counterpoised against bishops’ efforts to renounce the violence and contextualize factors of “patriotism, disaffection, ethnicity, class, and racism” underpinning the clash (p. 110). The virtual erasure of Irish Catholic sacrifice in the Union army from contemporary culture is recognized, while Kurtz positions the failure to exempt clergy from the draft against Protestant hostility to Pope Pius IX’s “mostly humanitarian” appeal for an end to the war (p. 121). But Protestant antipathy to a cohort associated with such violence, and therefore seen as incompatible with America’s founding principles, eclipsed the pope’s call. Proposals for Catholic veterans to defend the Papal States against Italian nationalist forces seemed to confirm Catholic disloyalty as Thomas Nast’s cartoons kept draft riot memories alive. Kurtz concludes that while Knights of Columbus and Ancient Order of the Hibernians commemorations of Irish Civil War heroism asserted local and regional Catholic cultural empowerment, negative perspectives remained until their abatement during World War II. Several focuses merit additional scrutiny, including Father Edward Purcell and the Cincinnati-based Catholic Telegraph’s “fierce advocacy of the war and emancipation,” Horace Greeley’s anti-Catholic attitudes, curtailment of U.S.-Vatican diplomatic relations in 1867, and Catholic cohorts other than Irish or German (p. 123). Kurtz is unduly cavalier in citing Irish priority of church over radical nationalism, but deft in summarizing that “[s]upport for Ireland, the working class, and the church were not necessarily incompatible, and were in many cases simply three different but related parts of Irish Catholic Americans’ daily lives” (p. 132). His contention of Catholic aspirations to [End Page 187]“uphold law, order, and stability” also warrants further exploration, while the “separate Catholic America” of the title is somewhat disingenuous—Catholics arguably forged a distinct, rather than “separate,” religious culture in the modernizing United States (p. 91). Any book tackling such thorny topics should inevitably prompt such questions, however. Kurtz is to be commended for his masterful interrogation of the fusion of faith, national crisis, and ethnic identity at a critical moment in American history. This is a notable and welcome contribution to Catholic, Civil War...

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Excommunicated from Union: How Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. By William B. Kurtz. [The North's Civil War.] (New York: Fordham University Press. 2016. Pp. x, 236. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-82326886-3.)Excommunicated from Union is at once a narrative of American Catholics' experiences in Civil War and a history of those effects war wrought on American Catholicism. William B. Kurtz contends in this volume that the American Civil War played a pivotal role in accelerating antebellum trend in American Catholicism toward isolation and separatism (p. 8). Loyal Catholics in 1861 viewed Civil War as a stage upon which to perform their roles as patriotic citizens and, in so doing, gain respectability in American culture. Ultimately, however, Catholics grew disenchanted with war, and their disenchantment yielded devastating consequences for coreligionists seeking assimilation into American mainstream. In end, for most Catholics who endured it, the war proved an alienating experience (p. 128).The author develops a compelling narrative throughout. Nativism during America's war with Mexico and anti-Catholicism in American culture made Catholics eager to prove their Americanness at outbreak of war. Kurtz details wartime experiences of Catholic Civil War soldiers and immigrant families, blending these narratives with considerations of Irish and German ethnicity. He skillfully demonstrates how war especially displaced German Catholics from American culture. The heroism of priests on battlefront and of nuns in field hospitals helped to temper stereotypes of Catholic religious orders and momentarily improved perception of Catholic patriotism among Protestants. As war protracted, however, it exposed fissures in Catholic opinion concerning slavery, Republican politics, and emancipation. Catholic war enthusiasm divided and waned, and its critics loudened. Although Catholics worked tirelessly in latenineteenth century to perpetuate authentic memorials of their Civil War sacrifice, they were still seen as an anti-modern, anti-democratic, and alien threat to nation's Protestant identity, its democratic government, and its society (p. 144).Significantly, author amplifies a range of Catholic voices. Public intellectuals, clergy, newspaper editors, women, and soldiers join together to deliver a rich sound and range of historical perspectives. These perspectives complement work's lengthened chronology. …

Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Reviewed by: Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz Emily Suzanne Clark Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. By William B. Kurtz. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. 250 pp. $120.00. American Catholicism and the Civil War each have a robust historiography, however these are historiographies that rarely intersect. William B. Kurtz’s Excommunicated by the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America is one of the few books that tells the story of American Catholics during the Civil War. Beginning with the Mexican-American War and concluding with Reconstruction, Kurtz’s work focuses on the Border States and the North and utilizes Catholic newspapers, the writings of the clergy and elite lay Catholics, and the ways in which Catholics remembered the war. Although the Civil War provided an auspicious opportunity for American Catholics to prove their patriotism, Excommunicated by the Union shows that the war alienated many Catholics and played a role in the creation of what other scholars like Martin Marty call the “Catholic cocoon.” Historians have long connected nativism in general and anti-Catholic nativism specifically with the creation of Catholic and ethnic subcultures, but Kurtz’s work further shows that this was not inevitable. He explains, “pro-war Catholic leaders and soldiers were unable to convince other Americans that their religion posed no threat to America’s republican government and institutions” (8). This post-war [End Page 96] withdrawal was further exacerbated by the success of conservative bishops in the late-nineteenth-century Americanist controversy. Kurtz’s monograph is evenly paced and follows a clear chronology that allows him to build his argument. He begins with Catholic patriotism and nativism during the Mexican-American War, which allows him to introduce Catholic distrust of the Republican Party. Part of their unease came from nineteenth-century Catholicism’s preference for “stability over reform” (29). Despite that distrust, Kurtz shows readers how northern Catholics supported the war in its early years. Chapters three and four examine Catholic soldiers and chaplains as well as the nursing efforts of Catholic nuns. As the author pushes back on the assumption that all Catholics were anti-war and instead reveals their patriotism, he also reiterates that many northern and border-state Catholics, like their Protestant neighbors, believed that whites were the superior race. It is complicated terrain that Kurtz navigates well. His exploration of Catholic soldiers’ reasons for serving and the section on the nursing activities of nuns are key places where Excommunicated from the Union really shines. The voices, experiences, and perspectives of these previously overlooked Catholics prompt important historiographical questions that reinforce Kurtz’s argument. From there the book moves onto issues of division: first slavery and then increasing opposition to the war. As the casualty count and financial cost of war rose, more and more Catholics expressed their concern over emancipation and the utility of war. The role of the New York draft riot and Pope Pius IX’s letters for peace loom large here. Those who continued to support the Union’s cause increasingly worried that their Protestant neighbors would further suspect their patriotism and loyalty. The final two chapters explore anti-Catholicism after the war and Catholic remembrance during Reconstruction. Familiar nativist tropes returned and did so with allusions to the Confederate rebellion. Catholic veterans offered important counter-narratives but few other than fellow Catholics were interested in their stories. Excommunicated by the Union fills a significant historiographic gap by exploring American Catholicism during the Civil War. As such, Kurtz brings together two rich historiographies and offers a fascinating narrative of their intersection. Hopefully another historian will heed a similar call for the story of Confederate Catholics. At the time of the Civil War, the majority of American Catholics were in the North or border states, but hearing southern voices alongside Kurtz’s subjects would enrich this text further. This book is a must for college libraries and would do well in a graduate course on American Catholicism or the Civil War. Due to its narrow focus, assigning the full text for an undergraduate course is unlikely...

Excommunicated From the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America

Excommunicated From the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America

William B. Kurtz, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America

William B. Kurtz, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America

Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church

Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church