The Catholic Historical Review

Peter Wosh uses the archives of Covenant House and personal interviews to write a very readable history that provides a sympathetic and sometimes critical insider's view of the organization. He traces Covenant House's dramatic rise, its "fall from grace," and its triumphant resurrection. The history begins with the founder, Bruce Ritter, a man whose personal charisma and energy created the largest children's shelter program in the country and the pre-eminent charitable cause of the country's wealthiest and most influential Catholic philanthropists. [End Page 877]

After his father's death at an early age removed him from a comfortable middle-class home, Ritter's journey took him through the slums of Trenton, the U.S. Navy, the Franciscans, and finally to Manhattan College, where in 1963 he began to realize his life's vocation. Abandoning Franciscan conventions, he lived alone in a campus apartment, which quickly became a student refuge and makeshift counseling center. Apparently preferring the role of counselor to professor, he asked the Franciscans for permission to move to New York's Lower East Side to establish an inner-city apostolate.

This project began as a "ministry of availability." It soon became a house of refuge for homeless children. In 1969 the small group of like-minded souls who had been working with Ritter formed a "covenant" among themselves to live in community and carry out their ministry and "to effect . . . social change." In the following decade this small group would give life to the largest network of shelters for homeless children in the country. During its meteoric growth in the 1970's, Covenant House fundraising increased from $112,000 to over $6,000,000 annually. It would eventually reach $90 million by 1990. This rapid ascent forced Ritter to develop closer relations with Catholic power brokers and the hierarchy. He also created a strong administration and governing board to which he attracted "some of the most influential and successful firms in America."

Scandal threatened to destroy the institution in 1989 when a news reporter uncovered an illicit relationship between Ritter and a male prostitute. Within months, Ritter resigned, but the organization he single-handedly created had become such an efficient corporate entity that it survived and regained its place as the foremost organization in America in the care of children in distress.

In telling the story of Covenant House Wosh provides insight into the struggles of conscience that occur within such organizations, and the administrative dexterity needed to negotiate between the world of private charity and public scrutiny, and between the imaginings of a charismatic leader and the demands of a practical bureaucracy. But this book leaves many questions unanswered. Most importantly, why did Ritter's questionable conduct as suggested in the book (e.g., appeal letters with sexual overtones, private apartments where clients spent the night) not raise red flags for the Covenant administrators or the Franciscans? How did Covenant House negotiate issues of reproductive health with female clients whose realities certainly put them in conflict with traditional Catholic teaching? Was Covenant House's post-Ritter history as triumphal as the author suggests? These and other questions remain because this story is being told from the top down. Footnotes are numerous but they come predominantly from corporate archives. Few other voices are heard. This is an administrative history that celebrates twenty-five years of successful charity work. It tells a wonderful story of accomplishment, but good history demands better scrutiny.