Spring
Books
Pride
and nostalgia from an amazing story
BOSTON CATHOLICS By Thomas
OConnor Northeastern University Press, 338 pages, $28.95
hardcover By ROBERT
DRINAN
I was predisposed to like this book
because I grew up in Boston and because its author, Thomas OConnor, was
for many years my colleague on the faculty of Boston College. At the same time,
I was prepared to suggest that the book does not adequately reflect the surging
voice of dissent against the church and even defiance that is present in
contemporary Boston.
I came to the conclusion that the author gently hints at the
dissent but that his role as a historian is to re-create the amazing story of
what Catholics did in the last two centuries in Boston. This he has done with
clarity, competence.
OConnors book is filled with vignettes like the scene
on Easter morning, April 16, 1865, the day after the Catholics of Boston heard
of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The faithful dressed in black, the
Te Deum was not sung, and strong men wept openly.
The triumphalism of the church in the first six decades of this
century is noted by OConnor but neither extolled nor derided. The author
simply tells us the story. He is also forthright in his reporting of the story
of the scandal involved in an illicit relationship between a woman and the
nephew of Cardinal John OConnor of New York who was a bishop in
Boston.
The telling of the achievements of Cardinal Richard Cushing is
done with candor. After 1960, OConnor writes, Cushings health
deteriorated, and as a result he became increasingly petulant and
quarrelsome, given to fits of self-pity and depression.
There are all types of other stories in this valuable and readable
book. There is new information, for example, on Cushings relationship
with the Kennedy family. Some readers may feel that OConnor treats
ecclesiastical officials with too much veneration, but the overall tone is not
excessively pious.
The tensions between the Protestant Brahmans of Boston and the
newly arrived Irish in the 19th and early 20th centuries is a constant theme.
The doings of Irish politicians such as James M. Curley are another.
OConnor, like a traditional historian, relates the
achievements of the official church including the numbers of parishes and
schools. There is little attempt here to discern and interpret the spirituality
of the laity or the relationships between Catholics and Protestants or
Jews.
The last chapter touches on the vast falling away from the church
among Bostonians, similar to dynamics elsewhere in the country. But the reasons
for this defection are quietly set aside as beyond the purview of the book.
Tom OConnors book is a good read. It will
bring pride and nostalgia to every Catholic, whether content or not with the
institutional church. Its story challenges those who love the church to make it
more attractive, and those who are inactive Catholics to wonder how they can
turn away from an institution that has compelled the loyalty of so many over so
long a period of time.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center.
National Catholic Reporter, February 5,
1999
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