Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice.

Thomas Bokenkotter. New York: Image Books of Doubleday, 1998. x+580pp. $15.95 (paper).

Ideas do not float above history. They arise from concrete social contexts and in turn intersect with historical realities. In order to be effective, ideas usually require some type of institutionalization, such as when a political theory or ideology comes to serve as the basis for a political party or reform program. In the complex confluence of events, competing loyalties, compromises, and personalities, it becomes impossible to predict the actual outcomes inspired by a given set of ideas.

In the field of Catholic social ethics, there is a woeful dearth of scholarly works that take the above insights fully into account. Even if we can discern an integral unity in the social teachings of the Catholic church, we should not expect to be able to draw a straight line from theological commitments to public policy recommendations, much less enactments. The exigencies of history have a way of presenting detours and roadblocks to the political implementation of the moral wisdom contained in papal encyclicals and similar church social documents.

The strength of Bokenkotter's Church and Revolution lies in its implicit acknowledgment of these considerations. This work presents a series of case studies illustrating how Catholics in the past two centuries have acted as forces for liberalism, democracy, and social justice. There are chapters on Daniel O'Connell, Frederick Ozanam, Cardinal Manning, Albert de Mun, Don Luigi Sturzo, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Dorothy Day, Konrad Adenauer, Oscar Romero, and Lech Walesa, as well as several lesser figures.

Improbable lists such as this naturally raise the question: what do these figures have in common? Bokenkotter struggles unsuccessfully to respond in a coherent fashion, not even venturing to supply a conclusion at the end of this sprawling volume. Presumably, the individuals highlighted function somewhat as "carriers" (in the Weberian sense of the word) of Catholic social teaching, but little explicit attention is given to their conscious motivation in this regard. The beginning of the book does alert us of some of the critical issues in evaluating the ambiguous term "social Catholicism," but it provides no template for making sense of what follows. Neither the book's title nor its subtitle ultimately provide much guidance. An emphasis on responses to the French Revolution in the early chapters quickly becomes a lost thread, and it is not clear that much agreement about the meaning of democracy would be forged among the lead figures in the book's sixteen chapters even if we could somehow convene them in executive session.

Because the book is disappointingly less than the sum of its parts, it is tempting to imagine an improved version. Perhaps the author could repackage his considerable research under another rubric, such as religious responses to industrialization or totalitarianism. Perhaps he could select a subset of his figures and draw out a typology of modes in which official Catholic social teaching has been appropriated in various contexts. To borrow a credo of many dieters, inside every thick entity (person or volume) resides a thin one yearning to break free.

What Bokenkotter lacks in conceptual coherence, he nearly makes up in charm, wit, and engaging writing style. While the individual chapters often seem to have little to do with each other, they nevertheless may be likened to a string of pearls, for each has its own luster. Colorful anecdotes from the careers and private lives of these inspiring figures abound, and nearly every chapter contains some item of human interest or folly which will tempt the reader to chuckle. The account of the friendship of Maritain and Saul Alinsky (373-75) adds texture and insight to one chapter, and the description of Adenauer's heroic personal resistance to the Nazis (466-70) illustrates much about the wider struggle against oppression. This makes it easy to excuse Bokenkotter's occasional lapses into sentimentality (the pathos of Romero's assassination is overdone) and shameless cheerleading (Walesa seems fit for canonization according to the portrayal here).

Bokenkotter, who teaches at Xavier University in Cincinnati, is to be commended for eschewing plodding chronologies of the march of events in favor of a felicitous blending of ideas and actions. In the course of each profile, the reader is gently exposed to the intellectual commitments of a given character and the historical struggles in which he or she was engaged. Because the text reads so well, instructors (especially on the undergraduate level) may wish to assign certain chapters to illustrate the political and economic challenges present in various historical contexts in modern societies.

This last proposal is the best your reviewer can do in suggesting an appropriate readership for this volume. While Bokenkotter presents a treasure of information in an agreeable style, it is hard to recommend this book to a serious academic audience. Too many of the sources cited are unimpressive secondary literature, much of it quite dated. Some chapters have the feel of awkward pastiches of other writings, with little originality except the desire to shoe-horn these diverse figures into the rubric of social Catholicism. A more perceptive work would add at least the following: (1) a more explicit identification of what is "Catholic" in the reforms enacted or proposed by these figures; (2) an unbundling of the "Catholic element" from the influence of such forces as nationalism, economic progressivism, and democratic impulses; (3) more consistent attention to the concrete frameworks within which church and state relate to each other in the context of each case study; (4) more insightful analysis of the division of labor (as achieved and as desirable) between lay Catholic leaders and their clerical counterparts; and (5) a more thorough appreciation of the contribution of women (besides individuals like Dorothy Day, also religious orders and organizations of lay women) to causes of religiously inspired social reform.

Bokenkotter does us a modest service in bringing these figures together within a single volume, but the task of demonstrating precisely how Catholic social principles have been institutionalized within key historical contexts still awaits a more perceptive analysis.

THOMAS MASSARO