Militant and Triumphant - by James M O'Toole (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Militant and Triumphant fills a major gap in the historical record of American Catholicism by presenting a vivid, objective portrait of Cardinal William Henry O'Connell and his significance in the church and his times. Focusing on both the triumphs and controversies of O'Connell's career, James M. O'Toole chronicles the history of the Catholic Church in Boston in the first half of the twentieth century.

The biography begins with a lively discussion of O'Connell's Irish immigrant youth and education and his early positions as rector of the American College in Rome and bishop of Portland, Maine. O'Toole convincingly demonstrates that as bishop, O'Connell actively built his own public image while ambitiously campaigning for the position of archbishop of Boston. The most enduring success, O'Toole argues, of O'Connell's 37-year tenure as archbishop of Boston--despite a sexual and financial scandal surrounding his nephew, the archdiocesan chancellor--was his elaboration of "a personal style of leadership that was different from that of earlier bishops, changing the expectations for Catholic bishops in America by thrusting on them the role of public figures they have generally south to play since."

Throughout, the book examines O'Connell's cultural and symbolic leadership of New England's Catholic population, and describes O'Connell's role in defining American Catholicism as both "militant and triumphant" asserting its cultural vision beyond narrow denominational boundaries into broad areas of public morality, and confident of its eventual triumph over secular standards.

Review Quotes

". . . a page turner, galvanized by a classic immigrant success story that traces O'Connell's quick rise from obscure origins in immigrant Lowell to the rectorship of an American seminary in Rome, and then to the Portland and Boston bishops' offices." --The Boston Globe

"... a lucid biography of one of the least attractive figures in U.S. Catholic history, Boston's Cardinal William Henry O'Connell. While Boston's Catholics have long stated that O'Connell gave them a sense of pride, there was another side to his story and that is the one O'Toole tells so well." --America

"Anyone who grows misty-eyed with romantic nostalgia over the good old, pre-Vatican II days of the American church is fated to have his/her eyes blink open with surprise on reading this book. Had Edwin O'Connor known but half the story of the good cardinal that this biography reveals, his Last Hurrah would still be required reading as a cautionary tale in every rectory." --Commonweal

"James O'Toole's biography of O'Connell is one of the finest ever to be written on an American Roman Catholic bishop. Few biographers have drawn as compelling a portrait of their subject." --Church History

"O'Toole's biography tells O'Connell's story with dispassionate judiciousness, but also with a sharp eye on the story's significance for the disheartening tour that the Catholic Church has taken in the twentieth century." --The Atlantic Monthly

"The story of O'Connell, archbishop of Boston and one of the most powerful men in the city from 1907 until his death in 1944, is magnificently told by James M. O'Toole. . . . a wry and thorough account of one of America's most important prelates." --Boston Magazine

About the Author

James M. O'Toole is a professor and the Clough Millennium chair in history at Boston College.