Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People
By Thomas H. O’Connor
Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1998, 357 pages.

Does religion constitute an important public resource? Are churches part of a state’s “common wealth?” It depends on the religion, one might respond. O.K., so what about Catholicism, this state’s most important religion? Was–is–the presence of this large, highly organized church a good thing for the common life of Boston and Massachusetts?

Certainly, in the wake of the last generation of social history, it is fair to say that American cities, Boston among them, benefited from the presence of Catholic churches, each one usually defined in terms of a particular immigrant group. Parishes helped form neighborhoods, networks of families and institutions that gave stability to immigrant lives and brought some order to rapidly expanding, terribly managed cities. And there was always more. Catholic schools did not divide society as feared; in fact, they ably assisted the adjustment of outsiders to the city’s often unfriendly environment. Hospitals and a remarkable array of charitable agencies served the needy of all religions, mediating cultural differences. Together, Thomas O’Connor argues in his fine new history of Boston Catholics, “Catholic spirituality and Catholic social structure combined to produce a powerful unifying force that made religion a vital and all-embracing influence throughout the archdiocese for at least half a century.”

The fabric of loyalties from which all this emerged helped form the tough pluralism of competitive groups, each group making its way amid the many unforgiving marketplaces of American culture, economy, and politics. Revealing America’s hard edge of self-interest, some of this ethnic and religious self-making – like the business unionism and machine politics which emerged from the same soil–upset good people and real Christians. But, years later, when schools began to close, parishes disappeared, and hospitals and social agencies looked like any others, the value of such organized presence became more obvious.

So also did the gap between the political and social views of the hierarchy and great numbers of ordinary Catholics, who now often speak in different languages about the problems of the city. As far back as the battles between Federalists and Jeffersonians, O’Connor notes, “the political ideals of the common people were often at variance with those of the members of the hierarchy.” O’Connor thinks this division became chronic, extending “well into the twentieth century.” In the past as now, Catholic unity confronting external challenges often masked deep ethnic, class, and even ideological divisions within the church.

Thomas O’Connor is the city of Boston’s premier historian. His 11 books tell the city’s story, most of the time from the point of view of immigrants and workers. Religion cannot be left out, he tells us, “especially in Boston,” for religion is “absolutely central to a proper understanding of the community and its people.” In his newest book he gathers many threads of religion, ethnicity, and culture into the Boston Catholic story.

He ably traces the development of the city’s Catholics, starting with colonial persecution, when Catholicism was “an outlaw church” and the revolutionary extension of “liberty of conscience” to all Christians except “Catholics or papists,” who were considered “subversive of society.” Despite that chronic suspicion, Boston’s first Bishop, French exile Jean-Louis Cheverus, “earned the respect and friendship of prominent Bostonians, who regarded him as a cultivated gentleman.” O’Connor clearly admires Cheverus and the moderate, intelligent bishops who followed him and guided the massive Irish immigration of the 19th century, making room later for the newer groups from southern and eastern Europe and Quebec. Bishops John Fitzpatrick and John Williams were Bostonians who loved the city and cared deeply for its common life. Theirs was a balanced legacy that combined group loyalty and reasonable attention to the common good. William O’Connell arrived in 1905 determined “to fashion the character of American Catholics in a completely new mold.” He was far more Roman than his predecessors, inclined to nurture separatist instincts in his flock, teaching them to win respect by the strength of their organization and the preservation of their own distinctive Catholic traditions. One can hear gnashing of teeth across the city as O’Connell declares: “The once brow-beaten Irish-Catholics have come into possession of Boston.” His highly authoritarian administrative style and his frequent displays of Catholic power stood in sharp contrast to the modest manners of his 19th-century predecessors. In public life he was more notable for Catholic cultural crusades than for attention to the public good.

Boston Catholicism has done better in the last half century. O’Connor brings to life the generous, mercurial, enormously popular Cardinal Richard Cushing; he links Cushing with Pope John XXIII as “simple and saintly” men. Certainly Cushing set a direction far different from O’Connell’s: “He was genuinely interested in defining a new level of human and spiritual relations in an archdiocese that heretofore had not been particularly noted for being warm, welcoming or tolerant toward those who were new and those who were ‘different.'”

His successor, Humberto Medeiros, comes across here as an able manager of church affairs in very difficult times, but his public anguish and failure are evident as well. Cardinal Bernard Law gets very favorable treatment, though as he nears the present O’Connor grows more cautious. Perhaps he recalls the old dictum that one who follows history too close at the heels is apt to get kicked in the teeth.

O’Connor seems to regard the well-traveled Law as a cosmopolitan church man who tries to lift his people’s somewhat parochial sights to the mission of the church universal. O’Connor makes it clear that Law’s Boston church shares the divisions plaguing the American church as a whole. Nevertheless, at a time when few are doing much to revitalize civil society, or to offer alternatives to the Christian right in the discussion of religion and politics, Boston has the blessing of constructive pastoral initiatives and serious moral assessments of public policy.

Is Catholicism in Boston a good thing for the city? After reading O’Connor, we might be inclined to say that the church, its way of seeing the world, and its many organizations have meant a lot to the city. O’Connor clearly thinks so: “Catholic political leaders introduced a new and more compassionate view of public life that called for the government to take greater responsibility for the poor, the aged, the disabled, and those who could not care for themselves. They also urged a view of the legal system that emphasized the morality of justice as well as the letter of the law. And Catholic religious leaders felt free to use the constitutional benefits of a pluralist society to speak out on moral and ethical issues they regarded as unique to the character of their Church and essential to the faith of their people.” That is probably a bit too generous a reading, forgetting the mixed record on slavery, child labor, women’s suffrage, censorship, and birth control. But Catholicism retains its proven capacity to enrich the common life. The quality of its presence in years to come will be determined by the decisions its people make about their church in the years to come. We all have a stake in those decisions.

David O’Brien is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.