About This Issue
American Catholic Studies is pleased to present you with our final issue of 2010. We think you will be interested in the articles and reviews found within these pages.
Douglas J. Slawson (National University, San Diego), in his essay entitled "The Vincentian Experience of the Civil War in Missouri," examines the impact the war had on seminaries administered by the Congregation of the Mission in a border state. Although priests and seminarians viewed the conflict from diverse perspectives and faced great hardship, they remained committed to their ministries in Missouri.
"Immanence and Transcendence: John Cardinal Dearden's Church of Tomorrow," by Samuel J. Thomas (Michigan State University), focuses on the Detroit archbishop's ecclesiology as explicated in three addresses delivered during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Professor Thomas notes that these talks "encapsulate [Dearden's] vision of church forged through consensus and governed through the collaborative efforts of laity, religious, priests, and essentially pastoral bishops."
Todd Scribner (Ph.D. candidate, The Catholic University of America) reminds us that debates over immigration reform were as heated in the 1960s as they are today. In "Negotiating Priorities: The National Catholic Welfare Conference and United States Migration Policy in a Post-World War II World, 1948-1952," readers will learn of the role of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (now USCC/NCCB) in the debates over immigration in the years following the Second World War.
<>In addition to eight book reviews, we are pleased to publish a review symposium of James P. McCartin's Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics. We thank Richard Gribble, CSC, Catherine Looker, SSJ, Cecilia Moore, and Joseph Chinnici, OFM, for their thoughtful comments – and their willingness to work with a deadline!
We hope you enjoy this issue of American Catholic Studies, and we wish all of our readers a happy and healthy 2011.
Margaret M. McGuinness, co-editor