Title: Education and Transformation: Marianist Ministries in America since 1849 (review)
Abstract:Since the publication of Tamers of Death: The History of the Alexian Brothers (1973), Professor Christopher J. Kauffman of the Catholic University of America has demonstrated a wonderful excellence in...Since the publication of Tamers of Death: The History of the Alexian Brothers (1973), Professor Christopher J. Kauffman of the Catholic University of America has demonstrated a wonderful excellence in relating the histories of American Catholic religious communities and their service to the Church. This most recent book addition with its focus on the Marianist ministries in this country since 1849 reveals his most robust and full-fledged demonstration of, what may be called, the emerging integrative pattern for American Catholic institutional historiography. Building on eleven archival visits here and in Rome, Kauffman powerfully integrates appropriate thematic discussions of the national context, the founder of the community and his spirituality, the growth of community, various apostolic directions and episcopal negotiating, the broadening ecclesial contextualism relating to the community's assimilation of American customs and ever increasing interest by Vatican authorities, and most recent responses to the Second Vatican Council. In other words, this work is an excellent interpretive model for the very demanding task of appropriately accounting for the external and internal forces that shape the history of a religious community. The Reverend Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M., in his praiseworthy foreword puts this task for the historian very well: a project that "points to an understanding of a religious group as a mediating institution in the context of church and society" (p. xv). Echoing Cardinal Newman's famous ecciesiological realpolitik on the university's role as a way station between the Church and the world, Chinnici's historical clarity of the community's journey and Kauffman's superb retelling offer the knowledgeable reader a delightful intellectual treatise.Read More
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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