Abstract
Nepstad, a sociologist of religion, takes a thematic approach to the concerns of Catholic social activists, which often pitted them against conservative church officials and the majority of ‘ordinary’ Catholics. Although there have always been progressive clerics and laypeople in the American Catholic Church, the bishops have been able to ensure that they are a small minority. Nepstad wants to demonstrate that, despite their numbers, they have had a significant influence on American society, if not the Church. In their critiques of both church and society, they were inspired primarily by Catholic social thought as set forth by popes, Vatican II and liberation theologians.
The six issues discussed in the book are: the dignity and just treatment of workers; peace, non-violence and disarmament; equality for women and Catholic feminism; Central America solidarity; compassion for immigrants and the sanctuary movement; and earth ethics and American Catholic environmentalism. She limits her treatment of progressive Catholics to laypeople while recognizing that many clerics and religious, especially nuns, have been active participants in social justice movements.
The Church’s teaching on the dignity of workers was first set forth in Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, and further developed by Pope Pius XI in his 1931 Quadragesimo Anno. The two documents promoted an economic program between the extremes of socialism, especially communism, and laissez-faire capitalism. They emphasized the dignity of workers and their labor but condemned violence and strikes as a means of achieving their goals, however justified. In 1933, two Catholic laypeople, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, founded the Catholic Worker Movement to promote and implement the papal calls for social reform. Their widely distributed newspaper, the Catholic Worker, popularized Catholic social thought for interested readers throughout the U.S. They also established houses of hospitality for the homeless and destitute, which were staffed by the movement’s volunteers. Other actions included support for striking workers; Dorothy Day was jailed for her participation in the United Farm Workers’ strike against California grape growers and their successful call for a boycott of the produce that led to recognition of the union and a settlement of the strike in 1970.
The principal papal document dealing with peace was John XXIII’s 1963 Pacem in Terris. It called into question the longstanding Catholic support of the just war doctrine, given the new reality of nuclear weapons. This document energized the Catholic peace movement, of which Dorothy Day had long been a participant. A lay organization, Pax, was formed to lobby church officials to reject the just war doctrine and support conscientious objection to military service. A new organization, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, was established in 1964 and soon began to oppose the American war in Vietnam. Its tactics included the public burning of draft cards and destruction of draft board conscription records. Another radical group, the Plowshares Movement, invaded defense production sites and military installations to damage weapons of mass destruction. Some of these activists were convicted and sent to prison. Although they were not supported by Catholic leaders, their cause was eventually taken up by the American bishops who, after a lengthy consultation period, issued in 1983 a pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace. It supported conscientious objection and disarmament, and condemned the first use of nuclear weapons.
As Catholic feminism developed in the 1960s and subsequently, alongside its secular counterpart, it received no encouragement from the official Church. Instead, feminist theologians like Sidney Callahan, Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether developed their own critique of the ecclesiastical patriarchy and its subordination of woman. The post-Vatican II popes reinforced the Church’s traditional anti-feminist outlook in statements forbidding contraception and the ordination of women to the priesthood. Rather than submit, Catholic feminists formed organizations to promote women priests (Women’s Ordination Conference), womanist liturgies (the Women-Church movement) and reproductive freedom (Catholics for Choice). The official Church has refused to make any but the most minor concessions to their concerns.
Two-thirds of the chapter on liberation theology deals with developments outside the U.S.A. As with feminist issues, the Vatican opposition to movements for social justice in Central America, in this case articulated by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, energized progressive American Catholics to counteract the support of the Church, and the American government, for repressive regimes and their death squads. In 1983, a former nun, Gail Phares, founded Project Witness for American volunteers to travel to Central America to help protect by their presence people threatened by the American Government-funded military and death squads. The project soon expanded to other faith groups and was renamed Witness for Peace. Related solidarity movements protested against American aid to repressive governments and the training of military personnel from Central America, many of whom returned to wage war against their fellow citizens.
In her chapter on immigrants and sanctuary movements, Nepstad unfortunately conflates immigrants and refugees, e.g. “Jesus’s own family members were immigrants” (129). She also mistitles a section on “Catholic Lay Responses to Refugee and Immigrant Concerns”, which deals mostly with non-Catholic activities such as the formation of the sanctuary movement. Catholics did eventually join the movement in the 1980s, and some of them spent time in jail for attempting to protect refugees from deportation. In 2007, a national interfaith New Sanctuary Movement was launched with Catholic participation to protest against the deportation of undocumented immigrants; it was very active during the Trump administration.
Nepstad’s final issue is environmentalism. Catholics were late to embrace this cause for various reasons, including the priority of human development. Following John Paul II’s discussion of environmental issues in a 1979 encyclical, some Catholics began to explore creation-centered theology, and in 1991 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops released a pastoral declaration called Renewing the Earth: An Invitation to Reflection and Action on the Environment in Light of Catholic Social Teaching. Two years later, the bishops joined the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and in 2006 they organized the Catholic Climate Coalition of 16 Catholic groups. It is unclear how active laypeople were in these groups or the coalition; the latter’s Executive Director is quoted as saying that “his movement organization [sic.] takes action based on the bishops’ directives” (171).
On other issues, according to Nepstad, the relationship between progressive lay Catholics and the church authorities is bidirectional, with the latter eventually responding to some of the concerns of the former. However, she seems to overestimate the church’s ability to change, not only its positions on the issues she discusses but also its fixation on abortion and contraception, and its alliance with wealthy capitalists and their political agents. Notably absent from the book are treatments of clericalism and American corporate capitalism, the major obstacles to justice in the Church and society, respectively.