1 of 4
Catholic writers throughout the twentieth century have tried to improve their church's public reputation. It is not, they have declared, the leader of reaction, the champion of archconservatism, and the enemy of freedom. On the contrary, it pioneered humane, non-Socialist alternatives to capitalism, it cared for the poor and needy, and it resisted the degradation of mass society. In fact, no beacon of human rights has cast more light into the murky modern world.
These Catholic apologists have not always been able to convince their Protestant and secular brethren, and they have sometimes been forced into special pleading and the making of artful omissions, but their case, strong in patches, does deserve a respectful hearing. Brown and McKeown's The Poor Belong to Us and Thomas Bokenkotter's Church and Revolution are latter-day contributions to this tradition, each emphasizing the enlightened, progressive, and humanitarian character of Catholicism while minimizing its autocratic and intolerant side. Bokenkotter's is much more fun to read and comes about as close as any book on Catholic intellectuals can to being a real page-turner. Brown and McKeown's sober study is more limited, but its modest scope and meticulous approach make it ultimately more convincing.
Bokenkotter, a Cincinnati priest, professor, and social activist, likes to make bold, eye-catching statements. In a brief introduction, he declares that the Catholic church now leads the world's "progressive" forces, and that the Catholic social conscience has been gaining force in the two centuries since the French Revolution. He then tries to substantiate the claim with nearly 600 pages of biographical sketches.
The book provides a handy introduction to the lives and works of about 30 Catholic writers and politicians. It is particularly strong on the first generation of nineteenth-century "liberal Catholics," Felicite de Lammenais, Jean-Baptiste Lacordaire, and Charles Count de Montalembert; on the founder of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, Frederick Ozanam; and on the pioneers of twentieth century neo-Thomism, Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier. There is an informative chapter on the hero of Italy's anti-Fascist Christian Democrats, Don Luigi Sturzo, and a quick tour of the English, American, Salvadoran, and Polish highlights, represented by Cardinal Manning, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, and Lech Walesa, respectively.
The subjects are an oddly miscellaneous lot: politicians, writers, priests, bishops, charity workers, and utopians, many of whom never thought of themselves as progressive Catholics and who would flinch at the idea of being brought together between the same covers. The book itself wanders all over the place, partly because Bokenkotter's indulgent editor permits him 30-page digressions that have little or nothing to do with his main theme. A chapter on the Irish revolutionaries Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, for example, scarcely mentions their religious lives or their connection to Catholic philosophy. And no wonder: there is no connection. Collins was a ruthless revolutionary, whose contributions to twentieth-century terrorism are much easier to discern than any enhancement of the Catholic humane tradition. A chapter on Konrad Adenauer, the post-World War II German chancellor, is incongruous, too. He came from a Catholic family, but neither his career nor his political thinking had much to do with the church.
The chapter on Karl Marx is stranger still. It outlines the revolutionary scheme laid down by Marx and other antireligious, "scientific" socialists in the midnineteenth century as a way of setting the stage for his Catholic counterparts Wilhelm von Ketteler and Henry Manning, but it also ranges far beyond the book's ostensible subject, to discuss Marx's relations with Hegel, Proudhon, Engels, and Bakunin. Rather better is a chapter on Albert de Mun (1841-1914), the paternalistic right-wing army officer, papal loyalist, and scourge of the Dreyfusards, who nevertheless advocated an enlightened Catholic social policy to bring estranged French working men back to the church.
share this page
RSS Feed
