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The Second Spring of the Church in America (review)
- The Catholic Historical Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 88, Number 1, January 2002
- p. 170
- 10.1353/cat.2002.0019
- Review
- Additional Information
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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 170
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Brief Notices
The Second Spring of the Church in America
Kelly, George A. The Second Spring of the Church in America. (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press. 2001. Pp. viii, 195. $25.00.)
In this book Monsignor Kelly, a founder of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and the author of The Battle for the American Church, provides some history, a bit of journalism, and plenty of opinion about the Church in the United States. He focuses on the state of Catholic higher education and the role of the diocesan bishop. He is analytical and prescriptive in his approach. Among his heroes and chief points of reference are John Hughes, James Gibbons, Dennis Dougherty, and Francis Spellman.
Kelly is most informative with regard to the history of the 1967 Land O' Lakes conference and the subsequent responses of the Holy See, the American bishops, and Catholic educators. But his fundamental thesis, that "the Church of the United States is worse off [today] than it was in 1962" (p. 77), is largely advanced with scant statistical and anecdotal evidence, and undermined by an uncritical view of "Americanist tendencies" present in the policies and methodologies of his heroes. While he makes occasional references to problematic perspectives and attitudes that were current before the Second Vatican Council, he continually returns to his idyllic view of the past, contrasting the present to the "golden age," when the Church was "at the peak of her piety and development" (p. 6).
His textual references and endnotes are sometimes vague, and even where he quotes from what he says were public statements, he often fails to ascribe them to a specific source. Kelly is particularly harsh in his judgment when it comes to the Society of Jesus. Ultimately, while Kelly's work may provide an important perspective and much "insider's information" from a cleric who has long fought his generation's culture wars, he does not contribute much to scholarly history, except, perhaps, as an example of the polemic of the times.
James F. Garneau
(The Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, Ohio)
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