|
THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE
Jeffrey Wills, editor Petersham, MA, Saint Bede's Publications * Pub. Date: August 1993 * ISBN-13: 9781879007000 * 224pp Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. bn.com Title of this Review: 'Harvard made us Catholics'' (Cardinal Avery Dulles, p. 119) Reviewer's rating of THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE * * * * * FIVE STARS Professor Jeffrey Wills's THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE (1993) is focused on Saint Paul's Catholic Church, set cheek by jowl against Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More generally, it contains a history of Roman Catholics, mainly Irish immigrants, moving into the Greater Boston area, eventually forming a majority of the urban population. Cambridge's diverse economy is sketched, to include a cigar factory, mighty Riverside Press and other sources of employment. But the dominant 'other' to Catholic residents of Cambridge was Harvard University. Slowly Catholics joined Harvard first as students, later as teachers. Some graduates became Catholic priests, with varying degrees of involvement with St Paul's church. The town of Cambridge had an inter-ministerial council and eventually a pastor of St. Paul's would head it. In its architecture St. Paul's challenged an increasingly secular Harvard through by displaying images of Catholic intellectual saints and educators. When the current structure was dedicated in 1916, Cardinal William Henry O'Connell warned of the tendency at nearby Harvard 'to separate science from faith and
spiritual from material forces. Prominent educators are striving to
undermine the foundation of all truth, the source of all knowledge, of
all life -- Christian faith' (9).
Down the decades most Catholic students found Harvard more of a help to their faith than an obstacle. Some of this is recorded in this book's Part II: 'In Their Own Words,' reminiscences of Catholics from different walks of life. A very rich book. I began to read it for scattered nuggets about Father Leonard Feeney, S.J. and 'the Boston Heresy Case' which he and others launched after 1947. I stayed for the rest of the book and finished fascinated. -OOO- Also recommended: --John Deedy. SEVEN AMERICAN CATHOLICS. --Avery Dulles: CHURCH MEMBERSHIP AS A CATHOLIC AND ECUMENICAL PROBLEM. --Joseph Ratzinger: THE DIALECTICS OF SECULARIZATION. Black Mountain 06/22/2008 ==-=-=-=-=-=-=-= II. amazon.com Title of this review: The Boston Heresy Case and Much More about Cambridge, Massachusetts Reviewer's rating of THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE * * * * * FIVE STARS Professor Will's 1993 THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE combines the best features of encyclopedia, reminiscences and genteel gossip. A fascinating read. Its backdrop is the history of Greater Boston and especially Cambridge, Massachusetts. How Harvard, America's oldest university, evolved from Congregationalist Trinitarian to Protestant Unitarian to secular. How Catholics of Cambridge grew from an almost invisible scattering of desperately poor immigrants to the majority of the town's population. There are economic snapshots of docks, cigar factories and a major printing plant. But, principally, the book tells how Harvard University and later Radcliffe College interacted with Catholic townspeople, students and faculty. Students who were good Catholics on arrival at Harvard College as undergraduates generally stayed good Catholics or became even better ones. Most of the time Harvard made life easier for Catholics than for Jews. Nominal Catholics had a good chance of losing their faith, simply because there were few campus support systems for them. The Irish students who did not live on campus but commuted from home usually grew in their faith, for they had family and parish to nourish them. Much of this is recorded in this book's Part II: "In Their Own Words," reminiscences of Catholics from different walks of life. Part II leads off with a long article by the son of Eisenhower's Secretary of State, the future Cardinal Avery Dulles, S. J., "Harvard as an Invitation to Catholicism" (119 - 124). Dulles begins: "'Oxford
made us Catholics,' wrote John Henry Newman. Conscious of the paradox
involved, I could echo that statement and assert, 'Harvard made us
Catholics.' ... Harvard in the 1930's ... offered a strong possibility
of immersing oneself in the Catholic heritage of medieval and modern
Europe, and that is what occurred in my own case" (119).
Dulles was Protestant when he entered Harvard College in 1936 and became a Catholic shortly after graduating in 1940. The book as a whole was hard to put down. But I personally had purchased it primarily to probe a few narrow snippets within THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE as part of research I am doing comparing Oxford's Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801 - 1890) with Cambridge's Father Leonard Feeney, S. J. (1897 - 1978). Let me explain. Young Avery Dulles and some others had founded in 1941 Saint Benedict Center in Harvard Square, just outside a gate into the university. Through World War II the Center was an orthodox and highly creative, energetic mecca for Harvard and Radcliffe Catholics (and non-Catholics who wanted to learn more about Catholicism). Jesuit Father Feeney was appointed its chaplain, while Dulles was away serving in the U.S. Navy. In August 1945 the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan. That event was deliriously welcomed by many Americans, including Catholics. But Father Feeney and about 100 members of Saint Benedict Center were sickened by the immoral slaughter of non-combatants. Hiroshima and Nagasaki sounded a life-altering wake-up call. What was wrong with America? What had corrupted the morals and dogmas of the American Catholic Church? In their pursuit of an answer the "Feeneyites" improvised an original quasi-monastic ultra-Catholic faith-based way of life built around belief in an ancient axiom, "Outside the Church There Is No Salvation." In the judgment of most observers,they pursued their solution too far. Feeney's faculties as a priest were suspended. The Center was placed under interdict by Boston Archbishop Richard Cushing. Feeney was expelled by the Jesuits and in 1953 excommunicated by Pope Pius XII for disobedience. Nineteen years later Rome and Feeney made their peace. Saint Benedict Center eventually moved west to Harvard/Still River, Massachusetts It split into seven different groups, with most becoming reconciled to Rome. Wills's book contains nuggets from the very earliest history of the Center. This minor blip on American Catholics' assimilation into the narrow culture of Harvard/Radcliffe and into the broader U.S. secular world was given the name "The Boston Heresy Case." Jeffrey Wills's book gives useful reminiscences by some of the contemporary obervers. Wills also pulls together major sources for The Boston Heresy Case available in 1993 at page 211, note 103. -OOO- Your Tags: jeffery wills, harvard university, leonard feeney, avery dulles, roman catholicism, salvation. June 22, 2008 =-=-=-=-=-=-=- III. epinions.com Title of this review: Cambridge, Massachusetts: Once Center of a Tempest in a Catholic Teapot Reviewer's rating of THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE: * * * * * Outstanding Pros: Upbeat sketch of Catholics in Cambridge, Massachusetts keeping the peace with increasingly secular Harvard University. Cons: Focuses on one town, one denomination and one university. Could probe larger issues religion accommodating secularization across America. The Bottom Line: CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE is a model of how to remember any American town through carefully selected social aspects: church architecture, dogmatic clashes or through religious faith of students and teachers. aohcapablanca's Full Review: I can imagine a couple of thousand people who might enjoy reading Professor Jeffrey Wills's fascinating 1993 book, THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE. I am not sure, however, if many readers of epinions.com are among them. But here goes. The book links effortlessly to valuable persons and things past and present, starting with the author himself. If you are Ukrainian or interested in the successor states of the old USSR, you can now find this onetime University of Wisconsin/Madison Classics professor as Vice-Rector of the Catholic University of Ukraine in Lviv. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Catholic_University and http://www.ucu.edu.ua/eng/) Are you a student of how Christian and Jewish faiths resist the allurements of American academic secularization? Then read Wills's book for clues. It does not give the big national picture. But it does tell about two hundred years of Catholics in Cambridge, Massachusetts coming to terms with Harvard University and Radcliffe College -- and vice versa. And Harvard is a mighty big tessera in any mosaic of American intellectual and political life. The book begins with a history of Greater Boston, with emphasis on the town of Cambridge. Professor Wills and the recollections of old time participants provide memorable economic snapshots: a cigar factory, the busy docks to which the first Irish immigrants clung, a major publishing house. But mainly this is about Saint Paul's Church, an anchor of Harvard Square, within an easy golf shot of the venerable university itself. And Saint Paul's Church made and still makes its contributions to Cambridge. Through its world famous choir school, if nothing else, but also through its many tentacles supporting Catholic students at Harvard. All this is lavishly illustrated and photographed: a saloon on Palmer Street (p. 134), John F. Kennedy, Harvard, 1940 (p. 183), Jesuit poet Leonard Feeney (142), the future Pope John Paul II (203), the 1967 reunion of Radcliffe Class of 1917; Sister Mary Rosa Doyle standing out in her nun's habit (112), and on and on. This tasteful collection of photos brings to life a period and place possibly unknown to most Americans. THE CATHOLICS OF HARVARD SQUARE has provided me a few choice nuggets to use in a talk scheduled for August 2008 in Dallas about soon to be beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman. Cambridge's link to Newman begins with Avery Dulles. He is the son of Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. Converted to Roman Catholicism in 1940 after four years undergraduate work at Harvard, Dulles later became a Jesuit priest, major American theologian and now, in old age, a Cardinal. He also wrote one of the best little books on the great English cardinal, simply titled NEWMAN. In the fall of 1941 Dulles and three other lay Catholics founded Saint Benedict Center. It was set in Harvard Square at the corner of Bow and Arrow streets, about midway between Saint Paul's Church and an ornate gateway into Harvard University. It was an understudied experiment by Catholic lay men and women to probe together the intellectual riches of Catholicism, then being unwrapped by philosophers like Jacques Maritain and historians like Etienne Gilson and Christopher Dawson. Dulles went off to war as a naval officer. While he was gone, the Jesuits assigned Father Leonard Edward Feeney to be the Center's director. At war's end the Center received state accreditation to offer academic degrees and the G.I. Bill gave returning armed forces men and women resources to attend it. This combination fueled an intense three year Catholic mini-Renaissance in Harvard Square. Feeney and others at the Center were, however, in the early stages of a life-shattering reaction to the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan in 1945. While many Americans were delighted that President Truman had taken a step that shortened the war in the Pacific, Saint Benedict Center people were horrified. How could it be possibly be God's will to destroy many thousands of non-combatants? What had gone wrong with America's moral compass? Was the American Catholic Church also somehow to blame? Father Feeney, Center Co-Foundress Catherine Goddard Clarke, three faculty members at Jesuit run Boston College and about 100 other Center members decided that they had found the truth to reform both Faith and America within a quietly shelved ancient ecclesiastical dictum: "Outside the Church There is No Salvation." They accused Boston College faculty of teaching heretical notions (e.g. that maybe, just maybe, well-meaning, moral Jews, Protestants and pagans could be saved and then live forever with God in Heaven). They also told the Vatican that Boston Archbishop (future Cardinal) Richard Cushing was condoning that "liberal" heresy. Pius ruled otherwise: the road to salvation was much wider than Feeney, Clarke et al. accepted. The Center lost the battle. Feeney was ejected from the Jesuits and, in 1953, personally excommunicated by Pope Pius XII. Not for 19 years would he be formally reconciled to Rome. Meanwhile he and a little band of lay followers moved west to a farm at Still River, Massachusetts where they created a unique ultra-Catholic experiment in semi-monastic living, complete with 12 married couples and 39 children. They took private vows of obedience to Feeney. Ultimately all the married couples convinced a reluctant Feeney and Clarke that God wanted them to take vows of celibacy. Their children were then raised, after age three, apart from their parents and educated at the reconstituted Center. Jeffrey Wills does not focus on Feeney's "Boston Heresy Case," as it came to be known. But he and contemporary observers do shed light on some of the moments in the movement's beginnings. In the 1950s Feeney was vilified by American Catholics, his previously popular poems and best selling books such as FISH ON FRIDAY and his life of SAINT ELIZABETH SETON being "banned in Boston." Today Father Feeney, Catherine Goddard Clarke and other Saint Benedict Center pioneers are heroes to a small but growing band of American and overseas Catholics who long for a lost Golden Age of the Mass in Latin and priests wearing birettas. And many of them pray that popes create Cardinals less liberal than Saint Benedict Center co-founder Avery Dulles! -OOO- Recommended: Yes http://www99.epinions.com/The_Catholics_of_Harvard_Square _edited_by_Jeffrey_Wills/skp_~1/search_string_ ~the%2520catholics%2520of%2520harvard%2520square Black Mt., NC 06/22/2008 |