Pilgrims to the Northland: The Archdiocese of St. Paul, 1840-1962.
Williams, Peter W.
Pilgrims to the Northland: The Archdiocese of St. Paul, 1840-1962.
By Marvin R. O'Connell. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2009. xiii+643. $70.00 cloth.
The genre of (arch)diocesan history is of hoary provenance, and
often consists of chronicles evocative of edification and yawns. Marvin
O'Connell, a prolific historian of American Catholicism now retired
from Notre Dame, here provides a welcome exception. This massive
narrative escapes the status of mere chronicle through its spirited
style, its perceptive appraisal of its cast of (frequently episcopal)
characters, and its sense of the rootedness of ecclesiastical in social
history.
The story of what is now the Archdiocese of St. Paul starts with
the career of Louis Hennepin, the seventeenth century French Recollet
missionary, but begins in earnest with the appointment of the first
Roman Catholic priest to the new state in 1840 and continues to the eve
of Vatican II. The early years are those of missionary endeavor with
native peoples and immigrants in vast stretches of wilderness that
rendered any sort of religious planting arduous. Bishops, beginning with
Joseph Cretin in 1851, had to deal not only with severely limited
resources but also with exasperating clerical scalawags, misfit vagi prone to troubles with alcohol and women whose stories make lively if
sometimes painful reading.
Much of the narrative is generically similar to that of most
Catholic dioceses in the era following the Civil War. This is especially
true for those in the Great Lakes region where the problem of ethnic
conflict created problems, particularly between Irish and Germans.
Conflicts between religious orders and hierarchs, especially when gender
and language were involved, also play a prominent part here. Archbishop
John Ireland, of course, is an exceptional figure in American religious
history, and his involvements in issues such as temperance, education,
and colonization are given their due, as well as the Vatican
machinations that surrounded them. O'Connell has written of Ireland
more extensively elsewhere, but he inevitably becomes the centerpiece of
the St. Paul story. Other distinctive figures whose influence extended
beyond Minnesota include John A. Ryan, whose origins lay here; Dom
Virgil Michel of the liturgical movement; and Louis A. Gales, the
founder of the Catholic Digest.
Some particularly interesting interludes in this story concern the
interactions of archbishops with wealthy lay donors. Robber baron James
J. Hill, for example, was married to a Catholic, and his wife and son
were active collaborators in such of Ireland's enterprises as the
building of a new and splendid cathedral. One of Ireland's
successors, John G. Murray, enjoyed a similarly cordial relationship
with Nicholas and Genevieve Brady, and the three became involved in a
complex relationship of ecclesiastical polities involving Francis
Spellman, Fulton Sheen, and Pius XII, that borders on the gossipy. These
stories are among the few places where laity specifically enter the
story, and their stories are both intriguing and illuminating. Other
discussions of lay piety feel rather generic and canned, since few
individuals figure in them.
This volume could probably have been shortened somewhat without
serious loss, and a narrative constrained by the conventions of
institutional history must almost inevitably be centered on clergy and
especially bishops. Nevertheless, O'Connell demonstrates that this
kind of writing, when carried out with grace, with sensitivity to social
context, and without undue obeisance, still has a place in the
historiography of American religion.
doi: 10.1017/S0009640710000405
Peter W. Williams
Miami University
