Habits of Devotion - (Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century Am) by James M O'Toole (Hardcover)

About the Book

In Habits of Devotion, four senior scholars take the measure of the central religious practices and devotions that by the middle of the twentieth century defined the "ordinary, week-to-week religion" of the majority of American Catholics.

Book Synopsis

"For generations, American Catholics... lived out their faith through countless unremarkable routines. Deep questions of theology usually meant little to them, but parishioners clung to deeply ingrained habits of devotion, both public and private. Particular devotions changed over time, waxing or waning in popularity, but the habits endured: going to mass on Sunday, saying prayers privately and teaching their children to do the same, filling their homes with crucifixes and other religious images, participating in special services, blending the church's calendar of feast and fast days with the secular cycles of work and citizenship, negotiating their conformity (or not) to the church's demands regarding sexual behavior and even diet.... It was religious practice, carried out in daily and weekly observance, that embodied their faith, more than any abstract set of dogmas."--from the Introduction

In Habits of Devotion, four senior scholars take the measure of the central religious practices and devotions that by the middle of the twentieth century defined the "ordinary, week-to-week religion" of the majority of American Catholics. Their essays investigate prayer, devotion to Mary, confession, and the Eucharist as practiced by Catholics in the United States before and shortly after the Second Vatican Council.

Contributors: Joseph P. Chinnic, O.F.M., Franciscan School of Theology; Paula M. Kane, University of Pittsburgh; Margaret M. McGuinness, Cabrini College; James M. O'Toole, Boston College

Review Quotes

Habits of Devotion is a significant contribution to the historiography of lay Roman Catholics in the United States.

Everyday American Catholicism in the last century centered on ritual prayers, devotion to Mary, frequent confession, and regular reception of the Eucharist. This pattern changed drastically after Vatican II.... This volume deals with the practice of private devotion in a series of related essays by relying on letters, newspapers, memoirs, and church publications. Strongly encouraged in America during the first half of the century as a form of Catholic identity in a largely non-Catholic country, private devotion reached its peak during the 1940s and 1950s and declined rapidly thereafter.... The reasons for this dramatic shift are complex, and the contributors pass no judgments, seeking only to present evidence, but they do offer a fascinating glimpse into Catholicism as it once was and some speculations about where it may be going. For all libraries.

For those who think they remember what it meant to practice the Catholic faith on a day-to-day (or week-to-week) basis in the middle of the 20th century, Habits of Devotion provides a bracingly detailed jog (or challenge) to the memory. For those too young to remember, it offers ready access to the world of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.

This important book focuses on religious practice in the mid-20th century (mid-1920s to mid-1970s), the decades before and after the pivotal Second Vatican Council. The essays in the book look at religious historical periods in terms of before-and-after, and do it very well. Catholic historians want to claim a usable past so that contemporary believers may ground their religious identity in living traditions. Confession is one of four practices of ordinary Catholics explored in Habits of Devotion, the others being prayer, Communion, and Marian devotion. The book is a long-view historical study written by four leading Catholic scholars and drawn from a rich array of private diaries and archival records kept by priests in New York, Boston, Milwaukee, and other major Catholic strongholds where the Irish, German, and Italians practiced their faith.... Habits of Devotion is a most readable and interesting book.

About the Author

James M. O'Toole is Professor of History at Boston College. He is the author of Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820-1920 and Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1859-1944. He is also coeditor of Boston's Histories: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. O'Connor.