Chesterton Wakes Up in Ponchatoula

BY MICHAEL PASQUIER

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) commented on what he saw as “The Paradoxes of Christianity” in his 1908 book Orthodoxy. “The real trouble with this world of ours,” he wrote, “is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.” Surely the famous English author of the Fr. Brown detective stories and Roman Catholic convert wasn’t referring to the peculiar convergence of Catholicism, economic development, and the personal devotion of a medical doctor turned entrepreneur in the sleepy town of Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

Located near the northwestern shore of Lake Pontchartrain about an hour away from New Orleans, Ponchatoula takes its name from a Choctaw word for “flowing hair” and claims to be the Strawberry Capital of the World (to go along with the Crawfish, Rice, Frog, Dog Trot, Buggy, Zydeco, and around twenty other “Capitals of the World” that dot the south Louisiana landscape.) Now it seems that the 5000+ inhabitants of this old railroad town have another claim to fame: the erection of the first statue of G. K. Chesterton in the United States. Robert Benson, a local dermatologist and self-described product of “area Catholic schools,” plans to unveil the statue later this year upon the opening of the Chesterton Centre, a commerical multiplex that will include stores, restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, and the doctor’s own medical spa. In an interview with the Ponchatoula Times, Benson hopes that the depiction of Chesterton will look “as if he fell asleep on the train, which he often did, and just got off in Ponchatoula.”

Of course, Chesterton never set foot off a train in Ponchatoula, though he did go on speaking tours of the United States in 1919 and 1930. What I Saw in America (1923) was the product of Chesterton’s first visit to the country that he famously stated “is founded on a creed.” Before you make plans to go where no Chesterton has gone before, keep in mind the dated advice of the man himself. “Travel ought to combine amusement with instruction; but most travellers are so much amused that they refuse to be instructed. I do not blame them for being amused; it is perfectly natural to be amused at a Dutchman for being Dutch or a Chinaman for being Chinese. Where they are wrong is that they take their own amusement seriously. They base it on their serious ideas of international instruction.” The same might be said of those (or one person) who travel to the past and pluck an image of a man out of a book and plant him in a time and place a world away from Victorian England.  It's not that similar things haven't been done before; think the Lost Cause of the South.  It's just that such occurrences raise so many questions.  Is there a nostalgic movement to reclaim so-called Roman Catholic "orthodoxy" afoot in America?  You bet.

Humanae Vitae at 40

Paul Harvey

In today's New York Times, Peter Steinfels surveys the 40-year anniversary history of Humanae Vitae, which has been seen variously as a prophetic statement of the Church's Truth about sexuality, or as one of those encyclicals which fail the test of being "received" throughout the Church. Steinfels explains:

Most Catholics have neither read “Humanae Vitae” nor followed these debates. What they know is that the church authorities condemn contraception and that this condemnation is somehow the linchpin of Catholicism’s sexual wisdom.

That is another dividing line between Catholic supporters and critics of the encyclical.

Like most people, both factions are quite willing to recognize a dark side to the contemporary sexual revolution. The supporters believe that contraception has been the battleground on which Catholic sexual morality must stand or fall — especially if it is to have any impact on that revolution.

The critics believe that this focus has been a tragic error and that it has exiled the church to the sidelines in the culture’s current struggles over sexuality.

And now, Monty Python's irresistibly disrespectul parody will be going through my head: Every sperm is sacred . . . well, you know the rest.

Addendum: John Fea graciously has ignored that last little sophomoric interlude to add the following helpful reference: For an interesting conservative defense of "Humanae Vitae" check out this essay in *First Things*: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262

Religious Liberties and Anti-Catholicism

Paul Harvey

A few days ago, I posted some bibliographic suggestions, from H-AMREL, for studies of early and more contemporary anti-Catholicism. Tracy Fessenden subsequently sent me a note about a forthcoming book from Oxford by Elizabeth Fenton (coming out in 2010 or thereabouts, I believe), which appears among other things to be a synthesis of much of this work, and something that many of you will look forward to. It reminds me of a more literary, American Studies take on some of the arguments Philip Hamburger proposed in Separation of Church and State. Anyway, for your interest, here's a precis and an appetizer:

Religious Liberties examines the anti-Catholicism’s seminal importance to the liberal democratic tradition in the United States. Charting the echoes of the Continental Congress’s early characterization of Catholicism as “dangerous in an extreme degree… to the civil rights and liberties of all America” through literary and political texts of the nineteenth century, this book argues that the rhetoric of pluralism so central to U.S. liberal democracy emerged in tandem with a discourse that characterized the U.S. as “free” by placing it at odds with the Catholic. The book begins by arguing that late-colonial responses to the toleration of Catholicism in Quebec laid the groundwork for an anti-Catholic liberalism and then goes on in its chapters to show how such anti-Catholicism structured early national novels concerned with territorial expansion, literary and political responses to the Mexican War, debates over women’s suffrage, antebellum colonization schemes, and late-nineteenth-century critiques of political corruption. Religious Liberties aims to illuminate the ways in which a variety of texts from the early and nineteenth-century U.S. aligned the nation with Protestantism and thereby ensured the mutual dependence, rather than the “separation” we so often take for granted, of church and state.

Summer of Love, Listening, Death Cab Meets Cutie, and Mortal Kombat

“Send Me an Angel”: Some Spiritual and Historical Ruminations on Contemporary Music

by Ed Blum

I’ve spent the summer on the road. Virginia may be made for lovers, but southern California is made for drivers. If I want to meet Matt Sutton for dinner in Huntington Beach, I have to drive; if I want to get to downtown San Diego, I have to drive. If I want to make a meeting, I have to drive. My poor little Honda Civic is taking a beating; thankfully my radio has been blaring some new songs that continue to inspire my spiritual strivings and interest in religion. I wanted to take you on a quick jaunt through the emotive, sensual, fun, and energizing moments I have had in the car with some new (and not-so-new) songs.

Since driving is my theme, it is fitting to begin with the band Death Cab for Cutie. I hate their name... or rather the second half of their name. For some reason, the word “cutie” irritates me. “Death Cab” strikes me as a better name, but that would be too dark for their fun, albeit eerie, pop. My favorite Death Cab song is “Soul Meets Body,” because it makes me think of the intersection of race and religion – where the soul and the body meet, collide, and blend. But that’s an old song, a more recent one chock full of religious inspiration is “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” It’s a relatively slow song with simple guitar accompanying voice. One portion of the chorus brings me great hope. Lead singer Ben Gibbard smoothly voices of the hereafter:

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

I am fascinated by the idea of heaven and hell being satisfied, that both are full, that neither will take new visitors. It comforts me – perhaps I deserve to go to hell, but will not have to because there are no more vacancies. And heaven has rarely appealed to me. So what will the dark be like if heaven and hell are satisfied? I do not know, and I find the confusion inspiring.

Then, Death Cab juxtaposes an experience in Catholic School with alleged true love:

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

Since I never went to Catholic school, I have no idea how common this is. I have heard a tale or two of the meanness of nuns; and we all know about the sexual voraciousness and deceit of the Catholic church, but the nun’s claim to be teaching love through the physical violence is striking. And, as historians, we know that Catholic school teachers have not been the only ones to use physical force to uphold principles. In the late 1850s, a Boston court dismissed charges against a teacher for beating a Catholic boy because he refused to read the Protestant 10 commandments. In this case, little Thomas Whall had his knuckles bruised not by a lady in black, but by a prejudiced, evil teacher who viewed Catholicism as an impediment to the glory of American liberty. Each time I hear these Death Cab lyrics I think about the stereotype of Catholic mistreatment of children and the amnesia about Protestant abuse. Then I feel a contradiction within myself about the song: I wonder if I’m OK with hell being satisfied when it comes to those who violate children? I wonder if I would want hell to have vacancies for men like the teacher who beat Thomas Whall?

Then there’s Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” Cold Play got a bad rap in the Judd Apatow film Forty Year Old Virgin. As actors Seth Rogin and Paul Rudd (two of my absolute favorites) played video games (I believe it was Mortal Kombat), they accused each other of being gay (a “put down” in films that elicits a ton of laughter and shows me just how homophobic our culture is). At one point, one explains that he knows the other is gay because he listens to Coldplay. I really enjoy Coldplay, and don’t see it connected to my sexuality at all. “Viva La Vida” is a fascinating song, where the chorus runs:

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

I’m not going to comment on the chorus, but it is so clearly replete with religious imagery that it strikes me as a spiritual onion – layers upon layers, some of which lead to tears when exposed. There is another line that captures my attention. Near the end, the singer exclaims: “For some reason I can't explain / I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.” Now, most lyric databases have Coldplay claiming that they know Saint Peter “will” call his name. But my ear hears another lyric. I hear the singer claiming that Saint Peter “won’t” call it. You can judge for yourself. But following my own ear, I am thrown back to the problem of heaven and hell – the problem from which Death Cab had almost saved me. What do I think of Saint Peter at the pearly gates? Will I get in? And what of the people I study? Did Saint Peter call their names? Or, and more importantly for my scholarship, how did their beliefs about heavenly lists influence their choices? Were American missionaries the bourgeois, imperialist, and hyper-nationalists I and so many others paint them as or were they people hoping that heaven had vacancies and that Saint Peter would call their name (or perhaps the names of the individuals they encountered abroad)?

These are the questions I have as I speed up the 5 to Los Angeles. These are the thoughts I have as I scroll through the radio stations. Just as songs like “Send Me an Angel," “Like a Prayer," and just about anything from Phil Collins led me to spiritual highs and questions as a teenager, so now Cold Play and Death Cab let me ruminate on my own spirituality and my life in the religious history of our nation.

There are so many other songs that I could discuss that whirl me into different worlds of American religious history. Bruce Springsteen, Dave Mathews, and The Killers all have great songs about Jesus that are helping me on that project; Eminem was inspiration for Reforging the White Republic; Jars of Clay, and their song “Redemption,” gave me the rhetoric and spirit to approach lynching and the sacred in W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet. Eventually, I plan on writing some on demons in America, and I have a coterie of devil songs just ready to roll on my I-Tunes. I would love to hear more about how music is influencing you, your religious life, and your scholarship. Please feel free to comment or drop me a line.

Sideburns, Cassocks, Capes, and Bird Nests

BY MICHAEL PASQUIER

I come across quite a few pictures of Roman Catholic priests in my line of work. I’m an historian of American Catholicism who specializes in the history of the priesthood during the nineteenth century, so I guess it makes sense that I’ve seen my fair share of sallow faces resting atop all sorts of outfits, from fancy fringed cassocks to austere woolen sacks. But after all these years of rushing through dusty archives and scanning illegible texts for “the good stuff,” I guess I’ve forgotten how to stop and smell the roses, or, in this case, stare at some old guy.

Pick up any book about Catholicism written over forty years ago and you’ll find that almost all of the illustrations bear the faces of pope after cardinal after bishop after priest after deacon after brother after alter boy. Collared men in robes were all the rage. And then everything changed when Pope John XXIII had the bright idea of giving his church a fresh haircut in the form of a Second Vatican Council. All I’ve got to say is, “what does a bald man know about haircuts, anyways?” Apparently quite a bit, because Catholic historian after Catholic historian systematically cut the clergy out of their new social histories of “the people,” culminating in 1985 when Jay Dolan and Robert Orsi changed the field of American Catholic studies forever with their two groundbreaking books The American Catholic Experience and The Madonna of 115th Street. The nail in the coffin of old Father Frowny Face came when nuns and sisters started to let down their hair and Catholic historians started to pay attention to the incredible lives of women who used to wear habits.

And the rest, as they say, is historiography. But what if historians decided to retrain their eyes toward the old institutional histories of Catholicism, only this time looking through the theoretical and methodological lenses of recent scholarship? Of course, I don’t mean to say that the study of the Catholic priesthood is dead (Leslie Tentler’s Catholics and Contraception comes to mind); it’s just that there are a lot of dead men who could use a makeover.

To get you started on the road to rewriting the rewritten history of American Catholicism, I thought I’d introduce you to a few men in my life. Mind you, these are all relatively well-known clergy. I find that some of the most fascinating, flawed, heroic, pathetic, human priests are usually the ones without photos or paintings to go along with their stories told in maybe one or two letters to a local bishop.




Antonio de Sedella (1748-1829), a.k.a. Pére Antoine. Spanish Capuchin friar and pastor of St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Rejected the authority of the Spanish governor when he established the inquisition. Rejected the authority of the first bishop of Baltimore and the pope when he refused to relinquish his pastorship of the cathedral. Lover of women and father of children. Owner and baptizer of enslaved Africans. Freemason. Subject of recent archeological dig. Popularized side-Antoines until a guy named Burns came along and ripped off his style.








Abram Ryan (1838-1886), a.k.a. The Poet-Priest of the South. Son of Irish immigrants and Old Virginny. Member of Vincentian Order. Confederate chaplain and brother of killed Confederate soldier. Author of some the Lost Cause’s favorite poems “The Conquered Banner” and “The Sword of Robert E. Lee.” Subject of a recent biography. Suffered from catoptrophobia (fear of mirrors).








Augustine Tolton (1854-1897), "mistaken" a.k.a. The First Black Priest of the United States (see James Augustine Healy, ordained in 1854, second bishop of Maine). Born into slavery in Missouri. Believed to have fled with mother to the free state of Illinois during Civil War. Forbidden to enter American seminaries. Studied for the priesthood in Rome. Considered missionary vocation in Africa. Pastor of black congregation in basement of white church. Died in Chicago. Subject of republished biography. Dressed in his Sunday best.








Fulton Sheen (1895-1979), a.k.a. The First Great Catholic Televangelist. Small-town Illinois boy trained at the Leuven. Host of the syndicated T.V. hits “Life is Worth Living” and “The Fulton Sheen Program” from 1951 to 1968. Currently under consideration for canonization. Argued that people who don’t believe in angels are Communists. Wore capes, for crying out loud! Definitely DID NOT suffer from catoptrophobia.

Anti-Catholicism Bibliography Addendum

To the previous post, Tracy Fessenden wrote the following comment, which I'll post here to make sure everyone sees it, and the reference to what appears to be a fascinating forthcoming book: I wanted to let readers know that Elizabeth Fenton is writing a book, "Religious Liberties: Anti-Catholicism and Liberal Democracy in U.S. Literature and Culture, 1774-1889," which should be out on Oxford in the next year or two. What I've seen of it is fabulous.

A Teachable Moment: Sally Quinn's Communion Snafu

Kelly Baker

Just last week, I passed out guidelines for ethnographic projects to my students. This project is basically a field visit to a religious site of which they are unfamiliar, and because of this unfamiliarity, I spend much time on etiquette. Channeling my best imitation of an authoritative and slightly parental voice, I emphatically command, "You all are guests, and I expect you to be on your best behavior." This is followed by threats about how I don't want future students banned from particular religious sites because of the behavior of my current students. Despite my best efforts, some of my students still manage to do inappropriate things, but usually these actions are not traumatic for the students or the religious community.

This is why I was so surprised by the Sally Quinn's decision to take communion at Tim Russert's funeral. Russert was Catholic, and Quinn is not. Quinn is the co-founder of the "On Faith" blog co-hosted by the Washington Post and Newsweek, and frankly, I would think she should know better. The controversy over her decision has been more about her reaction to the experience. She wrote:

Last Wednesday at Tim's funeral mass at Trinity Church in Georgetown... communion was offered. I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started "On Faith" and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I'm so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him. And it was worth it just to imagine how he would have loved it. After I began "On Faith," Tim started calling me "Sister Sal" instead of "Miss Sal. (For the full text, click here.)

At Slate, Melinda Henneberger, a Catholic, wrote about that Quinn's description:

This reads a little too much like a restaurant review for my comfort; Christ Almighty: Tangy Yet Nauseating? And good as he was, we don't really take Communion to feel closer to Tim Russert.

Not surprisingly, the Catholic League, headed by William Donohue, reacted quite vehemently to Quinn's commentary about being "nauseated." After being lambasted for her choice, Quinn used a "WWJD?" defense by suggesting inclusion should be more important than formal rules about ritual. She, additionally, claimed to pluralist in her response to various religions.

What proved fascinating to me about the whole ordeal is Quinn's lack of understanding of Catholic communion. Supporter of pluralism or not, she overlooked (perhaps, ignored) that for Catholics communion contains the actual presence of Christ. At America, James Martin, S.J., noted the importance of this ritual for Catholics as well as incredulity at Quinn's lack of knowledge:

Catholics believe in the "real presence," the actual presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist: the bread and the wine. It is a central element of our faith, and reception of Communion is something that a Catholic does not do lightly. Which is something of an understatement. "First Holy Communion" is an important passage to adulthood; and even afterwards adults are asked to approach Communion reverently and without being conscious of any grave sin. Catholics also know that the very word "Communion" means that you are in "communion" with the rest of the Catholic church, and accept its beliefs.

Therefore, it is probably not too much to expect that the co-founder of a prestigious online blog about religion run by two of the nation's premier journals, would understand something about the most basic practices of the Catholic church. Most intelligent people know a few facts about the Catholic church: this is one of them. And even if one doesn't know this, one would know to act with great care when in the midst of a worshiping community not your own. (For example, I am always exceedingly careful not to offend anyone's sensibilities when in a synagogue, a mosque or a Christian church or meeting place not affiliated with the Catholic church.) An essential element of respect for another religious tradition is approaching their holy places, people and ceremonies with sense of reverence, even awe.

That's why the words "transubstantiation notwithstanding" are difficult to hear. If one knows enough about Catholicism to mention "transubstantiation" then one should also know that the word "notwithstanding" makes little sense in that context.

Martin's uplifting of respect for religious spaces and peoples is not only necessary to prevent offense, but it is also about good manners. My students laugh at my focus on etiquette for their projects. I regale them with tales of past students and their snafus, but I also make it quite clear that sacred space should be approached thoughtfully and carefully. So hopefully, they leave my classroom prepared for encounters with those who are religiously different and with a sense that they should be on their best behavior because these are sacred spaces. I am still scratching my head at Quinn's actions, and in my next class, her actions will be a prime example of how not to interact with other religious peoples.

The Theodicy of George Carlin

Paul Harvey

"Like so many of his cultural brethren, Carlin could not begin to uncurl his fingers from the rosary beads he spat upon," Kathryn Lofton writes in her piece Theodicy of George Carlin, just up at Religion Dispatches. Must reading as usual from our esteemed colleague, and must reading for all ambivalent fans (as I was) of Carlin.

A New Ultramontanism

MICHAEL PASQUIER

Recently, I’ve been reading quite a bit about ultramontanism. Just in case you’re wondering what in the heck I’m talking (I mean, writing) about, look no further than Félicité de Lamennais, French philosopher and political activist committed to the restoration of Roman Catholicism to its rightful place of authority in post-revolutionary France and the rest of Europe. Followers of Lamennais imagined the pope as the ideal patron of a Catholic renaissance during the nineteenth century. They considered the papacy to be the ultimate source of truth and the only acceptable arbiter of human reason that could stand down the arrogant threats of the Enlightenment, classicism, and rationalism. Literally, the word “utramontanism” refers to support for those “beyond the mountains” (ultra montes), in this case, the popes on the other side of the Alps.

Now, before you begin to think that the title of this blog has changed to “Religion in French History,” may I remind you that any discussion of Roman Catholicism in the United States requires at least some reference to non-American persons, places, or things. Such is the case when you’re trying to keep track of hyphenated folks like Irish-American Catholics, Italian-American Catholics, Polish-American Catholics, Latin American Catholics, African American Catholics, and Mel Gibson-American Catholics.

But just when I’m about to resolve myself to the fact that I’m not going to be able know exactly how many ways there are to be Catholic in America today, I overhear a couple of guys in a coffee shop complaining about how most Catholics just don’t understand that there is only one way to be Catholic, and that’s true traditional orthodox Roman Catholicism. I’ve italicized “true traditional orthodox Roman Catholicism” (and now I’ve put it in quotation marks) because that’s what my unsuspecting conversation partners finally agreed was the best way to describe themselves. “It’s the pope, man. It’s all about the pope,” the gentleman in the blue t-shirt said to the other gentleman in the purple polo shirt. “I mean, what else is there. He’s the man,” Mr. Blue T-Shirt continued. To which Mr. Purple Polo Shirt replied, “Yeah, I mean, if it’s the truth, it’s the truth, right?” At this point, I think it would be best that I stop giving you the actual dialogue of the conversation and stick to the gist of their thoughts, which basically boils down to the notion that if the Roman Catholic church is the only true church, and if the pope is the infallible leader of that church, then there is only one way to be Catholic, and that’s the Roman way. Or, to distinguish it from ethnic or cultural forms of hyphenated Catholicism, it’s the true traditional orthodox Roman Catholic way.

I should mention that all of this talk about the authority of the pope at a coffee shop started because two men were excited about their first experience of a Latin mass one weekday morning in June. As far as I could tell, Mr. Blue T-Shirt and Mr. Purple Polo Shirt had just attended a Tridentine mass for the first time. In case you were wondering, there has been quite a conversation, if not a debate, happening in Catholic parishes throughout the United States ever since Pope Benedict XVI issued the papal letter Summorum Pontificum last July on the use of the Roman liturgy of 1962—the liturgy that preceded the reforms of Vatican II, restricted the use of the vernacular in mass, and required that the officiating priest celebrate mass facing the tabernacle above the altar instead of the congregation. In another letter, Benedict insists that a return to the Tridentine mass should not be interpreted as a reversal of Vatican II’s 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium. He justifies a return to the pre-Vatican II liturgy on the grounds that there is an urgent need to repair “divisions” in the church by uniting all Catholics in mass.

Benedict doesn’t specify what he means by “divisions.” Instead of guessing what he means (though I think we all have our own hunches), I’m reminded by my little episode with Mr. Blue T-Shirt and Mr. Purple Polo Shirt just how fascinating the idea of the pope really is. The pope can be anyone to anybody—Peter’s successor, living saint, prophet, anti-Christ, opium dealer of the people. In this case, I listened to a couple of Cajun Catholics expressing their popular ideas about official church matters. Isn’t it always the case that popular and official forms of religion have a way of devouring each other the second they take the form of thinking, feeling, moving human beings in contact with the world around them? So keep your eyes peeled and your ears opened for a Tridentine mass(goer) near you. It’s on the minds of a lot of Catholics in the United States.

I’d like to make two more points before I sign off. First, Walker Percy once said that one of his favorite pastimes was to sit and listen to people talk at the local Waffle House, so don’t judge me. Second, toward the end of their conversation, Mr. Purple Polo Shirt turned to Mr. Blue T-Shirt and said, “Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus, but I love his mama a little bit more.” One word: Awesome!

"I Hope Their Souls Will Soon Be White"

Paul Harvey

Hot off the presses, a terrific article and must read for American religious historians, by our contributing editor Michael Pasquier: “ ‘Though Their Skin Remains Brown, I Hope Their Souls Will Soon be White’: Slavery, French Missionaries, and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the American South, 1789-1865,” Church History 77 (June 2008): 337-370.

Pasquier’s nuanced and well-researched piece argues this conclusion (among others):

“French missionary priests, who were immigrants for all intents and purposes, responded to the practice of enslavement as Catholics and ultimately justified the practice of enslavements as Catholics. They embraced the American institution of slavery by using non-American theological and philosophical arguments, ultimately finding commonalities in the conservative and authoritarian social orders of the American South and the Roman Catholic Church. But more important, they embraced the American institution of slavery because of their practical experiences as missionaries to enslaved persons and as owners of slaves. Put simply, the experience of evangelizing and owning slaves cannot be underestimated when explaining how ‘Catholics became American.’”

Later, he writes:

“The commonalities of southern Protestant and Roman Catholic social ethics hinged on a conservative understanding of the construction of a Christian social order. Despite their common conclusion, Protestant ministers and missionary priests developed their proslavery ideologies in different places and for different reasons. With the sectional conflict of the 1850s and 1860s, evangelical Protestantism and southern conservatism combined to produce an unintentionally common bond based on Christianity and slavery.”

And finally:

“the more French missionaries acted according to their understanding of Catholicism, they more they identified with southern culture and defended the institution of slavery.”

As it happens, I read this piece while making my way all the way through Erskine Clarke’s truly epic Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, which traces the life of the family, white and black, surrounding the family of the “apostle to the slaves,” Charles Colcock Jones. Jones found himself inexorably compelled to support the very institution that he bitterly criticized as a seminary student at Andover and Princeton. More on this book in a blog post in the near future – in the meantime, read Kelly Baker’s review/conference presentation on this book, from her previous blog post.

Catholics and Political Endorsements

Art Remillard

Over on the Spiritual Politics blog, Mark Silk's recent post on Father Pfleger, Catholics, and political endorsements includes this invocation given by Monsignor Jim Silante at a recent New York GOP fundraiser.



Will this make the news cycle? Probably not. Despite the partisanship, Silante isn't nearly as animated as Pfleger, who fed the media narrative on Obama's questionable religious connections. And the competing narrative--that Catholics favor Republicans--just isn't that new or interesting.

Penitente Renaissance

I recently reviewed a rather unusual picture text on the Penitente Brotherhoods of northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, for a local interest newsletter. It occurred to me the book's subject may be of interest to a wider audience. While this is a work of an enthusiast and caretaker of a tradition, not a scholarly book per se, the subject may interest some readers of this blog, and some of you may want to get this for your school libraries. Hope this is of interest to some --

Ruben E. Archuleta, Manifesting Hope: Penitente Renaissance (Pueblo West, CO: El Jefe, 2007).

Such a labor of love as Ruben E. Archuleta's Manifesting Hope: Penitente Renaissance could only have been accomplished by an insider to a religious tradition famous, and sometimes infamous, for its secretiveness and insularity. Author Ruben Archuleta, formerly the Chief of Police in Pueblo and now an author and santero, writes that “the Hermanos of Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico are as fine men as anywhere to be found. They are holy, endowed, by an age-old spirituality, especially the spirituality of the orders of begging friars. As Fray Angelico Chavez taught in My Penitente Land, the Brotherhoods live in the lands of sheep and shepherds, living in the rough, dry barren uplands similar to those of Palestine and Extremadura” (27). The abundant and extravagantly produced color photographs in this volume lie as testament both to the rugged and isolated rural conditions in the New Mexico/Colorado highlands that rural and largely Hispanic residents have faced, as well as the remarkable durability of religious practices in these depopulated counties that stand about as far (not geographically, but culturally) from megachurches and pop “praise music” as one could get.

Archuleta’s work on the Penitentes makes a nice accompaniment to scholarly works in this area, notably including Marta Weigle’s Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood, originally a University of Pennsylvania dissertation in 1971 which still stands as the most thorough and complete documentation of the history and cultures of the La Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno (The Pious Fraternity of Our Father Jesus the Nazarene), popularly known as “The Penitentes.” Established, in all likelihood, sometime in the early nineteenth century, the Society is based in northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado in Hispanic communities largely removed from the major arteries of American life. The Penitentes are known for organized yearly processions commemorating Christ’s suffering. In years past, sometimes those commemorations featured acts of penance such as self-flagellation, from which the Penitentes gained a bit of dark renown.

Historically, the Penitentes were hardly viewed so favorably as they appear in books such as this one specifically designed to honor them. From their earlier days in the nineteenth century, Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy expressed his displeasure with Hispano practices, mostly by attempting to ban them. Of course, Lamy faced a formidable opponent in Fray Antonio Jose Martinez, who had been a defender of Hispano rights in Mexican territory prior to the North American conquest. Lamy attempted to institute a regime of European Tridentine Catholic practices, which forbade practices not specifically sanctioned by centralized church authorities. Much later, in the twentieth century, the Church finally recognized the Brothers as a legitimate part of church tradition. By that time, it appeared the Penitentes could die out entirely; that did not happen, as this book testifies, but the numerous photographs of older men, eroding walls and roofs on the moradas, and counties facing significant economic and social challenges suggest that the Penitente renaissance remains a work in progress, and the brotherhood a legacy of southwestern Hispano Catholicism whose future is both promising (due, in part, to outsider interest in the santos and other artistic monuments to southwestern Latino devotion) and imperiled (due to an aging population and struggling local branches of the brotherhood).

For years, I have assigned to American religious history students a classic of the field: Robert Orsi’s Madonna of 115th St., a work which studies the practice of penitential Catholicism among (mostly female) Italian Catholics in uptown New York, East Harlem, from the late nineteenth century and down through much of the twentieth century. In the case of the devotions paid to this apparition of the Madonna, women control virtually everything about the practice. Italian-American men, largely anticlerical in sentiment, serve at most as auxiliaries to a set of practices which enshrine female suffering and sacrifice. After discussing this book with students, I often ask them, why are Catholic devotional and penitential practices so largely contained with the worlds of women, while parallel practices in the Latino Catholic world are defined and regulated by men? In asking this question, I am thinking primarily of the Brothers of Light and the Brothers of Blood, the orders which have carried on the practices so colorfully documented in this book. Someday, maybe, a scholar in American religious studies will suggest why the Penitentes, so unusually for American Catholic devotional practice, remain a world of men, with women primarily serving as auxiliaries and helpmeets. In the meantime, this book will provide both information and visual pleasure to its readers.

Reading the Faithful

Darren Grem

Now that teaching's done, I've been able to get to my summer reading stack (and put the hurt on some dissertation chapters). First on my list was James M. O'Toole's The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America, recently published by Harvard UP.

I've been needing to brush up on my Catholic history, and this is an effective synthesis, telling the "bottom-up" story of American Catholicism from the perspective of lay Catholics. O'Toole's treatment is nicely divided into six "ages" - "The Priestless Church," "The Church in a Democratic Republic," "The Immigrant Church," "The Church of Catholic Action," "The Church of Vatican II," and "The Church in the Twenty-First Century" - that non-specialists and, especially, students, will find a helpful conceptual model for comprehending American Catholic history. To be sure, I doubt that Catholic historians will find many startling arguments in here, but I've found his narrative eye-opening, particularly his chapters on Catholicism in the the colonial era and early republic, and his treatment of the pope's relationship to the American "faithful" (as lay Catholics preferred to describe themselves). The implications of his book, as O'Toole sees them, are pressing since "A new age of the church in America has begun, and what form that church will take, what combination of old and new, will be up to its people to decide." One of the faithful himself, O'Toole wonders aloud: "What will be our collective national culture and ethos? How shall we behave toward each other, and especially toward the more unfortunate among us? What kind of discourse will we have with one another about what really matters to us as individuals and as a nation?" Most of those questions, O'Toole points out, are old ones, but also questions that Catholics share with most Americans. As such, his history is not just a religious history or a denominational history, but a readable, pertinent, and timely national history.

Where Have All the Bible Salesmen Gone?

MICHAEL PASQUIER 

I taught a course on religion in the American South this past semester.  We started with Jon Sensbach’s 2007 article in the Journal of Southern History, “Religion and the Early South in an Age of Atlantic Empire.”  We ended with Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood (1952).  Talk about a wide time span, not to mention a topical (not tropical) gulf between a heavy historiography of the colonial South and a fictional rendering of the twentieth-century South.  As you might imagine, we covered a whole lot of material in between, from Afro-Catholicism in colonial New Orleans (more slaves went to mass than whites?) to white evangelical Protestants and the music of Johnny Cash (who’s the man in “The Man Comes Around”?), and from the depiction of women in Gone With the Wind (Scarlett O’Hara was an Irish Catholic?) to the rise of Pentecostalism (who’s this Randall Stephens guy?).

During the final week of class, as my students and I discussed some of the major issues threading the entire course, a confident graduating senior asked a tough, sarcastic question: “Where have all the bible salesmen gone?”  She was thinking about our few encounters with "God’s peddlers" throughout the semester: Manley Pointer in O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People” (1955), Big Dan Teague in the Cohn Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), and Paul Brennan in the Maysles Brothers’ documentary Salesman (1969). 

For the life of me, I could not think of a good answer.  I still can’t think of a good answer.  No bible salesperson has ever knocked on my door.  Sure, I’ve kindly declined the little green books from my fair share of Gideons on university campuses, but giving away cheap prints of the New Testament is a bit different from selling expensive family bibles.  So, instead of answering the question directly, I did like any stammering professor would do; I asked the class what they thought.  Specifically, I tried to facilitate discussion about the representation of bible salesmen in the stories we watched and read in class.

First up, Manley Pointer, bible salesman turned prosthetic leg thief who really knows how to pick ‘em in Hulga Hopewell, an atheistic, nihilistic, skeptical philosophy Ph.D. who thinks she can pull one over on the presumably innocent bible thumper, only to be drawn up into the loft of a barn by the hard-drinking, card-playing Pointer who admits “I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and who runs away with Hulga’s leg.

Next, Big Dan Teague, self-described “man of large appetite” with a patch over one eye and a piece of fried chicken in the other who lures Ulysses and Delmar out to an isolated pasture where the robust bible salesman, whilst perspiring through his white linen suit, chooses to thump his companions instead of the bible.

Last (and probably least well known), Paul Brennan, the real-life Irish Catholic bible salesman who friends call “The Badger” and who gets denied at the doorsteps of countless homes across Massachusetts and Florida, thus introducing thousands of viewers to one of the most poignant depictions of the relationship between work and religion in American film.  See the film and you can also meet the Gipper, the Rabbit, and the Bull.

I’m left with three questions:

1. Where are all the bible salesmen in the history books?

2. Why the bad rap?

3. Where can a young professor with no summer income get a job selling bibles (or mufflers, for that matter)?  

Catholic Worker's Birthday

Paul Harvey

Happy 75th birthday to the Catholic Worker -- with a tribute (and HT to) here, and selection of writings, research guides, and further information here at the Catholic Worker Movement website.

All Pope, All the Time

Paul Harvey


The New York Times rounds up Pope-in-America coverage here. The Pope will find students at the Catholic University of America to live a Catholicism that's not "in your face." As one student puts it, “It is as religious or as Catholic as you want it to be . . . It’s not really in your face.”

The article nicely fits the "transformation of American religion" thesis outlined by Alan Wolfe in his book of that title. Interestingly, in my class where we used that book, students split evenly on whether they thought Wolfe provided a fair outsider's assessment of the state of American religion, or whether he "patronized" his subjects--with the more religious students seeing the latter (partially because of Wolfe's icy words about content-free and vapid "praise music"and the Prayer of Jabez, compared to which, he says, Prosperity Theology is positively intellectually rigorous and demanding). I'm not sure if anyone else has had any experience going over that book with students; would be interested to hear of it here.

"But the Holy Father Is Coming"

MICHAEL PASQUIER

Yesterday, a student asked me if she could be excused from class next week.  “But we’re going to review for the final exam,” I replied.  “But the Holy Father is coming,” she responded.  I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.  However, I’m reminded by my devout student that the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States is a pretty big deal for many American Catholics.  It’s also an interesting moment for us religious studies types to observe the carefully choreographed collision of American culture and Roman Catholicism in the twenty-first century.  

Benedict XVI, formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Radzinger, will be visiting Washington, D.C., and New York City from April 15 through 19.  He is scheduled to meet President Bush and the First Lady, Catholic bishops, Catholic teachers, Catholics kids, non-Christian religious groups, Protestant groups, packed crowds at Nationals Park and Yankee Stadium, the United Nations, and Ground Zero. 

Here’s a quick tip sheet for things to look out for.

1. Immigration—In his “Video Message to the United States,” the pope spoke in both English and Spanish.  Today, almost 40 percent of the U.S. Catholic population is Hispanic.  You can read an interview with U.S. Ambassador Francis Rooney to the Holy See for some insight into the discussion over the issue of immigration, as well topics such as aid to Africa and the war in Iraq.

2. War and Peace—The pope will be meeting President Bush and other world leaders at the United Nations.  He will also be praying at Ground Zero in New York.  For some perspective on the Vatican’s responses to recent global conflicts, see Michael Sean Winters’ Washington Post editorial, “Wholly Different Angles on the World.”

3. Interreligious Dialogue—In addition to his controversial Regensburg lecture in 2006 and baptism of a prominent (ex)Muslim in 2008, the pope has also organized an interreligious dialogue between Catholics and Muslims to begin this November.  Francis X. Clooney, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard, reflected upon the pope’s dialogical tactics in a Commonweal piece, “Learning to Listen: Benedict XVI and Interreligious Dialogue.” 

4. American Political Ideology—Many scholars (some more qualified than others, including myself) have commented upon the changing political face of Catholicism in the United States.  In my opinion, John McGreevy’s article in the American Quarterly on “Catholics, Democrats, and the GOP in Contemporary America” is by far the most careful examination of the current religious/political landscape.  But, if you want to get a first-hand account of what McGreevy is saying about the recent coalition of neoconservatives and some American Catholics, look no further than First Things, the publication of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s Institute on Religion and Public Life, which describes itself as “an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”  Read Neuhaus’s instructions on how to listen to Benedict.  Or watch him cover the pope’s visit on EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network).

I’m always fascinated by the scholarly and popular coverage of a papal visit.  From Samuel Morse’s conspiratorial diatribes against popery in the nineteenth century to Wolf Blitzer’s complementary commentary on the death of a Polish pope in the twenty-first century, it’s difficult to count the many ways in which people have represented popes and their messages.  There will be many people claiming to know what this visit means for the present and future state of the Roman Catholic Church around the world and in the United States.  I find myself enjoying the noise and confusion and debate and pontification (get it?).  And there’s usually a moment—a particularly poignant voice that silences the cacophony or an insidious gaff that creates an even louder disruption—when I’m reminded that all of this commotion matters.  But for the life of me, I don’t know how to make sense of it.

Catholics, Single-Issue Politics, and a Visit from Karl Rove

ART REMILLARD

It’s election season in Pennsylvania and that means it’s time for some good ole’ fashion single-issue politics. Case in point: Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA, where last week Senator Hillary Clinton spoke before a crowd of over 2,000. Prior to her arrival, Erie Bishop Donald W. Trautman criticized the college “for not reflecting the pro-life stance of the Catholic Church regarding abortion.” In protest, the bishop announced that he would not speak at Mercyhurst’s graduation next month.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette responded disapprovingly in an editorial, which read in part…

Bishop Trautman . . . has the same right to free speech as anyone else and he
also has his own duty as a bishop to speak out on moral issues of the day. But
none of that makes his rebuke of the college wise. For one thing, it amounts to
taking political sides. For another, it is based on a considerable misunderstanding. Mercyhurst College. . . was not endorsing Mrs. Clinton's views on abortion by inviting her, no more than a newspaper endorses every letter to the editor or op-ed article in the forums it provides for free expression. As it happens, Mrs. Clinton never mentioned abortion; her speech was about economic issues.

The editorial also reminds readers of President Bush’s visit last year to St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, PA.

Although Mr. Bush has been pro-life in the sense of seeking to protect the
unborn, the seamless garment of his philosophy is tattered by his pro-death
penalty stance and his instigation of a foolish and unjustified invasion of
Iraq.

Faculty, students, and alumni from St. Vincent’s protested the event. But the editorial didn’t mention whether any bishops denounced Bush’s presence at the college. I doubt there was any such proclamation. Nevertheless, the Post-Gazette went on to state my own thoughts on the matter, that universities and colleges (whether religiously oriented or not) should enthusiastically welcome public figures such as Clinton and Bush. Their voices stimulate the intellectual atmosphere, making for great conversations afterward.

Still, if Bishop Trautman and those sharing his politics wish to reclaim their “seamless garment” moral credentials, they’ll have a chance soon enough. An e-mail just arrived in my inbox announcing that Karl Rove will be speaking this Wednesday at my school, St. Francis University. This should be interesting...

Free Tour of Colonial New Orleans, Courtesy of Our Newest Contributing Editor

WELCOME TO OUR NEW CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, MICHAEL PASQUIER! HERE'S HIS BRIEF INTRODUCTION AND FIRST POST.

Hello Friends,

My name is Mike Pasquier. Currently, I’m a visiting faculty member of the Department of Religion at Florida State University. I’ll be joining the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University in the fall. But before I move to Baton Rouge, I’ll be spending a year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Until now, I’ve focused my research on the history of Catholicism in the American South, Catholic devotional culture, and the relationship between religion and colonialism in Louisiana.

I’m finishing a book manuscript tentatively entitled “Les Confrères et les Peres: French Missionary Priests and Frontier Catholicism in the United States.” And I’m conducting new research on the intersection of African religions, Native American religions, and European Christianities in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during the eighteenth century. I’m also co-editing (w/ Tracy Fessenden) a special issue of the Journal of Southern Religion (on religion in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). Here in my first post

My first post takes us on a tour of the colonial New Orleans explored in Emily Clark's
Masterless Mistresses.

___________________________________________

A STROLL DOWN CHARTRES STREET

(Also an introduction to religion in New Orleans via Emily Clark’s Masterless Mistresses)

I’d like to take us on a brief tour of New Orleans. No, this isn’t one of those silly “Haunted Tours,” although they are kind of interesting. And, no, this isn’t a chance for us to walk straight from the Fairmont Hotel (home of the Sazerac, the “original cocktail” to Bourbon Street, although I do recall not recalling similar experiences while an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University. Instead, let’s begin by standing on Decatur Street just outside the gates of Jackson Square while facing the St. Louis Cathedral with the Mississippi River about 100 yards behind us.

At the risk of belaboring a very tired metaphor, I would like for us to imagine standing at a crossroads—a historical and cultural crossroads. Behind us flows one of the longest running natural (and rather muddy) transporters of peoples, ideas, and technologies connecting the Atlantic and Caribbean worlds to the interior reaches of North America and indiscriminately cutting through our imaginary conceptions of regions like “t