Reviewed by: A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American by Kathleen Sprows Cummings Carolyn Osiek Sr., RSCJ A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American. By Kathleen Sprows Cummings. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 320. $28. The perpetual attraction of the communion of saints, though questioned periodically, never seems to diminish. In this time when some previous canonizations are second-guessed in light of new revelations and rethinking, Cummings traces how from 1880 to 2015, the quest for home-grown American saints began as the nation's status was rising, reached its apex, and "unraveled as social and cultural change prompted all Americans to question whether they could be said to share one common identity" (237). The quest mirrors the ongoing vicissitudes of the relationship of the U.S. Church to the Vatican, in which access to power, inner workings, and familiarity with procedures matter significantly, and where the process can say more about the promoters than about the saint. The first promotion attempts in the United States were launched at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 for the Jesuit martyrs Jogues and Goupil and for Kateri Tekakwitha, under the patronage of Archbishop Gibbons, but canonization would not come until 1930 and 2012, respectively. These early attempts and some later ones as well suffered from lack of access to the inner workings of Roman ways in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on the part of their promoters. Contrary to public image, a canonization process must begin locally at the diocesan level, with requests—but not cult—on the part of laity. What happens from then on depends on proper procedure and beneficial connections. Several examples illustrate this point. The cause of Elizabeth Seton was introduced in Baltimore in 1917, the year in which the code of canon law explicitly prevented women from being postulators of a cause at the Vatican, something only changed in 1983. The account of Seton's cause in chapter four of C.'s book details the role of Cardinal Spellman and the post-war power of the American Church to promote "Elizabeth of New York." Her cause was bogged down by a manipulative promoter and the complications of seven different communities of the Sisters of Charity claiming her, until, with no help from the promoter, about whom they regularly protested and to whom they were regularly sent back, they collaborated to present a common front. Frances Xavier Cabrini captured American hearts as an immigrant more than as a missionary, though she was in her own eyes and that of the Vatican, the latter. Her personal friendship with Vatican insiders, including the pope, helped her cause to advance rapidly, yet ordinary U.S. Catholics embraced her as characteristic of what many saw as "the best aspects of their own American narrative" (105). She died in 1917, and her cause, introduced in 1928 in [End Page 128] Chicago, culminated amazingly fast in the decree of canonization in 1944, the celebration postponed because of war until 1946. The cause of Philippine Duchesne, French missionary of the Society of the Sacred Heart, took a different path. After her beatification in 1940, canonization stalled, until the interest of the congregation in pursuing canonization waned in the 1970s through lack of interest in further embedding her in a patriarchal system, the growing feeling that the necessary expenditure could be better diverted to social ministry, and the certainty that she would have preferred it that way. That was the situation until, totally unexpectedly, the Vatican took the initiative to move the process forward in 1987 for a papal visit of John Paul II, who canonized 482 and beatified 1,341. Nevertheless, her canonization took place not on U.S. soil but at the Vatican in 1988. The stories of John Neumann, Katherine Drexel, and many others are part of this fascinating history of American sainthood. The search for "ordinary" saints who can inspire the lives of ordinary people continues. What C. demonstrates is that, in spite of the best intentions, knowing whom to approach and how to do...
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Jul 31, 2021
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