American Catholic Thought on Social Questions
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. First edition. Octavo, original blue cloth, red endpapers, original dust jacket. Mild scuffing to front board, early owner signature to free front endpaper. A near fine copy. Item #253
"THE MULTIPLYING PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE DISORDERS OF AN URBAN AND INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION THAT HAS FOUND EXPRESSION IN DEMORALIZING POVERTY AND CLASS CONFLICT"
First edition of this anthology illustrating a century-long arc of the American Catholic experience—from the "Americanization" controversies of the nineteenth century to the debates after the Second World War over the "New Pluralism." Edited by Aaron Abell (a Notre Dame historian), the 39 essays and addresses display the wide diversity of thought in the American Church. The book is divided in four sections: Part One. Conditions of Catholic Growth (including Archbishop John Hughes and Orestes Brownson), Part Two. The Emergence of Catholic Social Liberalism (featuring James Cardinal Gibbons, Edward McGlynn, and John A. Ryan), Part Three. Social Education and Organization (including Charles E. Coughlin and Dorothy Day), and Part Four. The New Pluralism (featuring John Courtney Murray and Mortimer Adler with Walter Farrell).
Abell provides a valuable Selected Bibliography, a brief note to each essay, and a lengthy Introduction (in five parts) tracing the Catholic response to "the multiplying personal and collective disorders of an urban and industrial civilization that has found expression in demoralizing poverty and class conflict. These evils encouraged many Catholics, lay and clerical, to study social maladies and to elaborate remedies." From the publisher's American Heritage Series, under the general editorship of Leonard W. Levy and Alfred F. Young, with their short Foreword and brief Acknowledgement of the sudden death of Professor Abell (shortly after completion of the manuscript in October 1965). With an extensive Index.
Price: $75.00