Church and age unite : the modernist impulse in American Catholicism /

Appleby's study must be placed among the best on modern American Catholicism. He has masterfully crafted out of careful archival research a compelling narrative of the impact of European theological modernism on the American Catholic intellectual community, a narrative aptly described as "a trajectory of thought" beginning with John Zahm's attempt in 1895 to reconcile evolutionism with Catholic theism and extending to William L. Sullivan's anti-Roman manifesto, Letters to His Holiness, Pope Pius X, by a Modernist (1910). In between Appleby engagingly tells the poignant stories of idealistic priests who were committed to raising the standard of theological discourse among US Catholics but who naively miscalculated Vatican perceptions and intentions and so, following modernism's condemnation in 1907 and the enforced Oath against Modernism of 1910, ended their days in obscurity. Thanks to this study, the contention by some ecclesiasts that there was no real modernism in the US church can now be definitively relegated to the dustbin. Appleby's effort in his conclusion to relate this history to the modern church is rather more obfuscating than clarifying. His language and historical judgment are generally erudite throughout, but one slip requires correction: the ghostwriter of Pascendi dominici gregis (1907) was not Jean-Baptiste Lemius (p. 58 and passim) but his brother Joseph. The work could have been strengthened by relating theological modernism to the broader contemporary cultural modernism. And John Slattery's reported observation that Pascendi "is a political document" is intriguing and begs analysis and exploration. Proofreading was subpar, and the book lacks a separate bibliography. General readers as well as scholars will enjoy this work. D. G. Schultenover; Creighton University