Empowering the People of God: Catholic Action before and after Vatican II

by Christopher D. Denny, Jeremy Bonner (Editor), Mary Beth Fraser Connolly

Overview

The early 1960s were a heady time for Catholic laypeople. Pope Pius XII's assurance "You do not belong to the Church. You are the Church" emboldened the laity to challenge Church authority in ways previously considered unthinkable. Empowering the People of God offers a fresh look at the Catholic laity and its relationship with the hierarchy in the period immediately preceding the Second Vatican Council and in the turbulent era that followed. This collection of essays explores a diverse assortment of manifestations of Catholic action, ranging from genteel reform to radical activism, and an equally wide variety of locales, apostolates, and movements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823254002
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2013
Series:	Catholic Practice in North America
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jeremy Bonner is an independent scholar in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Mary Beth Fraser Connolly is the Assistant Director of the Lilly Fellows Program and Assistant Adjunct in History at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana. Her research interests include the history of American women and religion, with a particular interest in American Catholic women religious.

Christopher D. Denny is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John's University in New York City.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction: Jeffrey Burns
Part One: Catholic Action
1. Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York: The Case of the Catholic Club of New York City (Patrick J. Hayes)
2. The Liturgical Movement and Catholic Action: Women Living the Liturgical Life in the Lay Apostolate (Katharine E. Harmon)
3. "The Priesthood of the Layman": Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of San Francisco (William Issel)
4. From Participation to Community: John Courtney Murray's American Justification for Catholic Action (Christopher Denny)
5. Azzione Cattolica in an American Setting: The Society of Saint Charles-Scalabrinians and Catholic Action (Mary Elizabeth Brown)
Part Two: The People of God
6. Relevant Transformations: The Young Women of the Extension Lay Volunteers, 1961-1971 (Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello)
7. Reaching Out to the People of God: The Implications of Renewal for the Sisters of Mercy in Parish Schools (Mary Beth Fraser Connolly)
8. "This is Our Challenge! We will Pursue It": The National Council of Catholic Women, the Feminist Movement, and the Second Vatican Council, 1960-1975 (Mary Henold)
9. Who Will Guard the Guardians? Church Government and the Ecclesiology of the People of God, 1965-1969 (Jeremy Bonner)
10. Empowering the People of God: John Cardinal Dearden's Church of Tomorrow (Samuel J. Thomas)
11. Christian Unity, Lay Authority, and the People of God: The Community of Christ Our Brother in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, 1967-1969 (Andrew Moore)

Editorial Reviews

"Empowering the People of God gives a nuanced, complicated, insightful portrait of Catholic Action as a spectrum rather than a monolith. The volume is timely, not just for historians of American Catholicism, but also for those seeing to understand the deeper backstory to the contesting definitions of authority in the Church in the present moment."-Amy L. Koehlinger, Florida State University

From the Publisher

Empowering the People of God gives a nuanced, complicated, insightful portrait of Catholic Action as a spectrum rather than a monolith. The volume is timely, not just for historians of American Catholicism, but also for those seeing to understand the deeper backstory to the contesting definitions of authority in the Church in the present moment.

Oregon State University - Amy L. Koehlinger

Empowering the People of God is a major contribution to the "lived history" of Vatican II for the American Catholics. Catholics changed and the changes made a difference for the country as well as the Church. These thoroughly researched essays demonstrate that lay empowerment was taking place before the Council. The Council persuaded lay leaders that "the shaping of the Church's future was in their hands". How they handled those rising expectations is then the theme of six well chosen case studies. Anyone who wants to understand American Catholics must consider the history provided by this excellent book.

Professor Emeritus, College of the Holy Cross, and Distingusihged Visiting Professor at Large, University of Dayton - David O'Brien

I think a broad audience will enjoy this book about the practice of Catholic Action in America. It deals with Pope Pius Xl's call for the laity to engage in "Catholic Action" by assisting the clergy in carrying out the Vatican's definition of the Church's worldly mission, including its commitment to social justice. Millions of the faithful responded to this call, dutifully in he 1930s and 1940s and zealously after mid-century. The introduction to the book deftly contextualizes both periods of Catholic Action, and the essays explore the diversity of the activists reactions to this opportunity. Briefly put, the activists before mid-century conformed to the Pope's charge without challenging the Vatican's authority to define their options. But after 1950, in the new age of cultural individualism in American society and its institutions, the activists opted for the maximum feasible participation of the laity in the definition and implementation of the mission of the Church, a phenomenon that yielded todays' tripartite struggle, laic and clerical , among conservatives, liberals, and moderates for ascendancy in America's largest and perhaps its most quintessentially urban branch of Christianity.

Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History Emeritus, University of Cincinnati, and co-editor, The Urban Life, Landscape, a - Zane Miller