{"id":3302,"date":"2010-07-23T12:50:10","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T17:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=3302"},"modified":"2010-12-25T22:59:32","modified_gmt":"2010-12-26T04:59:32","slug":"how-american-catholics-pray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/23\/how-american-catholics-pray\/","title":{"rendered":"How American Catholics Pray"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u201cWhat We\u2019re Reading Wednesday\u201d last week, I mentioned James McCartin\u2019s new book, Prayers of the Faithful<\/em> (Harvard University Press, 2010). I\u2019ve just finished reading it, and thought that a few comments about the book might be a good starting point for some discussion here on PrayTell about the spiritual life of American Catholics.<\/p>\n

Let me say first of all that I thought Prayers of the Faithful<\/em> was an excellent, intelligent study of an important topic, and quite accessible to a broad readership. The scholarly apparatus is thorough but not intrusive; the book is a good read. It certainly helped me to systematize my knowledge of an important area that doesn\u2019t get enough attention\u2014the history of spirituality among American Catholics. The author\u2019s research brought to light many important facts and highlighted developments helpful to understanding how American spirituality has changed over time.<\/p>\n

I found myself surprised by some of what I read. For instance, he has quite a write up on Father Peyton\u2019s Rosary Crusade and his work as the \u201cHollywood priest.\u201d I never knew that \u201cpraying the family rosary\u201d was an international movement started by an American, much less a door-to-door project. I also did not know that it was a group of Catholic laity who convinced Jerry Falwell to start the Moral Majority. I was\u00a0surprised to learn that a majority of Latino Catholics currently self-identify as charismatics. The sections on devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Little Flower are a must-read. These were a big part of my grandmother\u2019s generation, but not so much\u00a0my own. Also a must-read is McCartin\u2019s account of the curious history of the post-conciliar charismatic renewal.<\/p>\n

The basic idea of the book\u2014that there has been an evolution in spiritual practices among Catholics from the immigrant church to 21st<\/sup> Century Catholicism\u2014is sound. He makes it real, with vivid examples and quotes you couldn\u2019t make up. It also seems to me that he avoids silly caricatures that would suggest either that we\u2019ve \u201cgone to hell in a handbasket\u201d or that we\u2019ve \u201cleft behind sterile practices\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n

What seems to me a little dubious is the premise that the immigrant church relied so much on the mediation of hierarchical authority figures in its devotional life. Hasn\u2019t popular piety always flourished as a sort of antipode to clerical control? If there is a sizable population of Catholics today who feel themselves to be far from Catholicism\u2019s approved leaders, yet who hold fast to their own spiritual practices (and I don\u2019t doubt there is), we\u2019d benefit from knowing more about precedents for this.<\/p>\n

I applaud McCartin\u2019s effort to manage a huge amount of material. Charting the history of spirituality, as seen from the ground, is a massive undertaking. Thus it feels a little churlish to complain about what the book doesn\u2019t cover. Still, I think a couple of lacunae are worth mentioning.<\/p>\n

First, McCartin is really good about telling the stories of individual lay women. But it seems to me that women religious, whose contributions to American Catholic spirituality are substantial, don\u2019t get the coverage they deserve. Second, liturgical changes brought about as a result of Vatican II are discussed, but the spotlight did not dwell enough on how these changes have affected how Catholics pray. I especially would have liked to see some reckoning with the effects of the restoration of Holy Week and the catechumenate. It seems to me these essentially liturgical developments have powerfully affected the religious imagination of Catholics in the latter part of the twentieth century, and thus influenced the way they pray. It is no accident that the photo on the cover of the book is taken from an Easter Vigil service of light. (And, if I\u2019m not mistaken, the people pictured are participants in the RCIA.)<\/p>\n

OK, James McCartin, for your next<\/em> book\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a review of James P. McCartin’s book Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics (Harvard University Press, 2010). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[872,871],"class_list":["post-3302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions-and-sacramentals","category-recently-published-books","tag-james-mccartin","tag-rosary"],"yoast_head":"\nHow American Catholics Pray - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/23\/how-american-catholics-pray\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How American Catholics Pray - Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a review of James P. 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