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Boston Catholics.-A History of The Church and Its People. By Thomas H. O'Connor. (Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 358. $28-95 .)
Writing a history of the Catholic Church in Boston is a challenge for any historian; for Thomas H. O'Connor, professor emeritus of history in Boston College, it was obviously a pleasure. The skill of the author is evident in the way he integrates the story of the Church and its people with developments in secular society on the local, national, and international levels. Preceded by a helpful introduction and followed by an insightful conclusion, the core of the work is composed of eight chapters, each of which provides an essay on secondary sources for further investigation. Illustrations are strategically placed throughout the book to make the text come alive.
The first chapter covers nearly two centuries from the founding of Boston in 1630 to the end of the episcopacy of the "civil" and "friendly"jean Lefebvre de Cheverus, Boston's first Roman Catholic bishop (1808-1823). With the focus of the chapter set by its title, 'No Catholics Need Apply," the reader sees how Catholics moved from outcasts in Boston during colonial times to being tolerated by the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Under Boston's second bishop (1825-1846), the "forthright" and "scholarly" Benedict Joseph Fenwick, Catholics were still "Strangers in the Land." Fenwick, who coped with bigotry and cared for a vast diocese which covered all of New England, was effective in having the city's school committee remove a textbook offensive to Catholics and in founding a diocesan newspaper to deal with attacks on their religion. If the burning of the Ursuline convent and boarding school in Charlestown in 1834 was Fenwick's greatest tragedy,...