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Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America
"Being Right is a significant book and a good read for anyone seriously interested in contemporary American religion." ―Nova Religio "It will be very useful to historians, challenging to theologians and indispensable to anyone trying to make sense of the bewildering variety of Catholic presence in the contemporary United States." ―American Catholic Studies Newsletter "Being Right maps the mental universe of this internally diverse group and offers basic insight into how they see things... " ―The Reader’s Review "Editors Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby and their collaborators immerse us in a roiling sea of contested assertion and testimony." ―First Things "An in-depth look at these groups, both as they see themselves and as they appear to trained scholars." ―David J. O’Brien, College of Holy Cross "Compliments must be given to Weaver and Appleby... who were able to recruit a distinguished, yet impassioned, group of essayists for this work." ―Journal of Church and State Whether they focus their criticism on pro-choice rhetoric and artificial birth control or the removal of religious symbols from public squares, the Catholics profiled in this book agree that the contemporary church is in crisis.
368 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1995
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September 23, 2024
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS ABOUT, AND BY, "CONSERVATIVE" CATHOLICISM
Mary Jo Weaver is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University; she has also written 'What's Left?: Liberal American Catholics,' 'New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority,' 'Cloister and Community: Life within a Carmelite Monastery,' etc. R. Scott Appleby is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, and has also written 'Fundamentalisms Observed,' Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History,' 'Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East,' etc.
They wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, "The research questions that eventually led to this book started with 'Catholic fundamentalism'... Appleby had embarked on his work... to locate and define family resemblances in ... modern religious fundamentalisms. Weaver, finding an increasing number of conservative Catholics in her courses ... had begun to wonder if the triumph of liberal Catholicism... was as clear and certain as it seemed... it was clear to us that there was a significant body of American Catholics united in their opposition to modernity... Could they effectively change the direction American Catholicism has been moving for the past thirty years?... they both saw in the disjunctions of modern Catholicism a reluctance to deal with history.
"Thirty years ago, nearly ALL American Catholics were 'fundamentalists' in the sense that we were shaped by a post-Tridentine mentality, marked by practices judged by the culture to be esoteric, and devoted to supernaturalism... [it] had, in fact, been one of the shaping experiences of our own religious lives...
"[We decided that we] should try to explain the last thirty years of American Catholic life as it was experienced by those we were calling conservative American Catholics. How did American Catholics get to the point where they needed adjectives to describe themselves?... We want to explore the mental universe of this group and to make it possible to understand what has happened to their hopes."
The first section of the book includes four articles providing "Contexts"; the second section is of "Insider Perspectives," including essays by James A. Sullivan, George Weigel, Helen Hull Hitchcock, and James Hitchcock; the final section is "Outsider Perspectives," and includes articles by Weaver and Appleby, Sandra I. Zimdars-Swartz, etc.
One essay notes, "Once the genie of reform was let loose by the Council, it proved impossible to keep it confined within officially approved limits. The literature of conservative Catholics laments the decline in traditional popular devotions, the abandonment of distinctive clerical and religious dress, the political activities of clergy and religious... the massive departures from the priesthood and religious life, the decline in membership and even the dissolution of Catholic professional associations, the abandonment of Gregorian chant and its replacement by Protestant hymns or by music that imitates popular musical styles... the spread of dissent... and the movement for the ordination of women. Growing up Catholic ... is now so different that a teacher has to explain many of the symbols and rubrics, gestures and rules that once characterized a quite distinctive Catholic subculture." (Pg. 18)
Helen Hull Hitchcock notes, "we can no longer assume that Catholic women DO affirm Catholic teaching. People now employ modifiers such as 'conservative' or 'liberal' before the word 'Catholic,' even though these are politically loaded terms which cannot be accurately applied to religious belief. Still, most Catholic 'conservatives' would agree that there is much to conserve in the Catholic faith, that active conservation of even the most essential elements of Catholic belief and practice has become necessary..." (Pg. 166)
This is a very informative, and reasonably "balanced" and objective treatment of "conservative" Catholicism by two acknowledged "liberals/progressives." It will be helpful to anyone studying modern Catholicism.
Mary Jo Weaver is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University; she has also written 'What's Left?: Liberal American Catholics,' 'New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority,' 'Cloister and Community: Life within a Carmelite Monastery,' etc. R. Scott Appleby is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, and has also written 'Fundamentalisms Observed,' Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History,' 'Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East,' etc.
They wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, "The research questions that eventually led to this book started with 'Catholic fundamentalism'... Appleby had embarked on his work... to locate and define family resemblances in ... modern religious fundamentalisms. Weaver, finding an increasing number of conservative Catholics in her courses ... had begun to wonder if the triumph of liberal Catholicism... was as clear and certain as it seemed... it was clear to us that there was a significant body of American Catholics united in their opposition to modernity... Could they effectively change the direction American Catholicism has been moving for the past thirty years?... they both saw in the disjunctions of modern Catholicism a reluctance to deal with history.
"Thirty years ago, nearly ALL American Catholics were 'fundamentalists' in the sense that we were shaped by a post-Tridentine mentality, marked by practices judged by the culture to be esoteric, and devoted to supernaturalism... [it] had, in fact, been one of the shaping experiences of our own religious lives...
"[We decided that we] should try to explain the last thirty years of American Catholic life as it was experienced by those we were calling conservative American Catholics. How did American Catholics get to the point where they needed adjectives to describe themselves?... We want to explore the mental universe of this group and to make it possible to understand what has happened to their hopes."
The first section of the book includes four articles providing "Contexts"; the second section is of "Insider Perspectives," including essays by James A. Sullivan, George Weigel, Helen Hull Hitchcock, and James Hitchcock; the final section is "Outsider Perspectives," and includes articles by Weaver and Appleby, Sandra I. Zimdars-Swartz, etc.
One essay notes, "Once the genie of reform was let loose by the Council, it proved impossible to keep it confined within officially approved limits. The literature of conservative Catholics laments the decline in traditional popular devotions, the abandonment of distinctive clerical and religious dress, the political activities of clergy and religious... the massive departures from the priesthood and religious life, the decline in membership and even the dissolution of Catholic professional associations, the abandonment of Gregorian chant and its replacement by Protestant hymns or by music that imitates popular musical styles... the spread of dissent... and the movement for the ordination of women. Growing up Catholic ... is now so different that a teacher has to explain many of the symbols and rubrics, gestures and rules that once characterized a quite distinctive Catholic subculture." (Pg. 18)
Helen Hull Hitchcock notes, "we can no longer assume that Catholic women DO affirm Catholic teaching. People now employ modifiers such as 'conservative' or 'liberal' before the word 'Catholic,' even though these are politically loaded terms which cannot be accurately applied to religious belief. Still, most Catholic 'conservatives' would agree that there is much to conserve in the Catholic faith, that active conservation of even the most essential elements of Catholic belief and practice has become necessary..." (Pg. 166)
This is a very informative, and reasonably "balanced" and objective treatment of "conservative" Catholicism by two acknowledged "liberals/progressives." It will be helpful to anyone studying modern Catholicism.
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