\n\t\tCite this Article\n\t<\/h5>\n\t
Carl C. Creason, “Review: Catholics’ Lost Cause,”\u00a0Journal of Southern Religion<\/em> (22) (2020): jsreligion.org\/vol22\/creason.<\/p>\n Adam L. Tate. Catholics\u2019 Lost Cause: South Carolina Catholics and the American South, 1820-1861<\/i>. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. 296pp. 978-0-26810-417-7.<\/p>\n Publisher’s Website<\/a><\/p>\n\t Adam L. Tate\u2019s Catholics\u2019 Lost Cause: South Carolina Catholics and the American South, 1820-1861<\/em>, shows how Roman Catholic clerical leaders in the Diocese of Charleston \u201ccultivated an affinity with non-Catholic southerners\u201d (3).\u00a0 The clergy helped \u201cresolve the pesky problem of cultural accommodation,\u201d Tate argues, paving the way for Catholics to found institutions throughout the Carolinas (3).\u00a0 Yet, despite Catholic success, Tate\u2019s story ends tragically.\u00a0 The Civil War quickly halted Catholic development in the region, leading to the Church\u2019s \u201cown version of the Lost Cause\u201d (11).\u00a0 The Church\u2019s affinity with the Confederacy sealed its fate, as the war reduced the Catholic presence in the South and overturned its earlier progress.<\/p>\n Tate engages a variety of scholarly conversations.\u00a0 His central thesis addresses the work of southern historians who have argued for an innate or natural compatibility between Catholicism and southern culture.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Other scholars have contended that Catholics fully embraced life in the Old South, often surrendering to the cultural standards of the region.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Tate\u2019s monograph challenges both interpretations.\u00a0\u00a0 He adopts the position of literary scholars who have claimed that twentieth-century southern Catholic writers\u2014Flannery O\u2019Conner, for example\u2014purposely crafted an affinity between their religion and region \u201cto serve polemical purposes\u201d (2).\u00a0 Similarly, Tate disproves both a nineteenth-century natural affinity with southern culture and Catholic capitulation to the Protestant majority.\u00a0 Rather, according to Tate, the efforts of Church leaders helped integrate Catholics\u2014on their own terms\u2014among the South\u2019s \u201cassemblage of peoples\u201d (5).<\/p>\n Tate examines how Catholics cultivated an affinity with southerners and analyzes how their faith-based commitments complicated the Church\u2019s acceptance in the region.\u00a0 In particular, the writings of the three antebellum bishops of Charleston\u2014John England, Ignatius Reynolds, and Patrick Lynch\u2014and articles from the United States Catholic Miscellany<\/em>, the diocesan newspaper edited by Fr. James Corcoran, constitute the main source base of his study.<\/p>\n The Miscellany<\/em> provided a platform for the Church to deliver its message of belonging.\u00a0 Tate argues that Fr. Corcoran used the Miscellany<\/em> to frame debates between Catholics and Protestants as \u201caffair[s] of honor\u201d (100).\u00a0 By publicly challenging critics and defending the Church, Catholics appealed to southern honor culture and showed that \u201cthey were part of the \u2018people\u2019 of [South Carolina]\u201d (100).\u00a0 This analysis underscores how place or region shaped the Church\u2019s relationship with non-Catholic neighbors. In the northeast or mid-Atlantic regions, anti-Catholicism remained a central element of mainstream Protestant culture and apologetics often triggered waves of nativism and xenophobia.\u00a0 Contrarily, however, defending the faith in the Carolinas generated respect for the Church and its clergy.<\/p>\n Bishop England figures most prominently in Catholics\u2019 Lost Cause<\/em>.\u00a0 In particular, Tate shows how England championed a Jeffersonian conception of the union that allowed for cultural heterogeneity.\u00a0 As long as Catholics demonstrated a commitment to republicanism, the minority religious group could claim belonging in a \u201cunion of sentiment\u201d (4).\u00a0 Of all the prelates, England spoke most directly on the themes of republicanism, nationalism, and the union. Tate may over-focus on England\u2019s words and actions, neglecting to supply the same degree of evidence for his successors, Reynolds and Lynch.<\/p>\n Tate underscores key philosophical differences between the bishops.\u00a0 In the final chapter on slavery, he draws a clear distinction between England\u2014who charted an \u201cindependent course\u201d on the issue, attacking abolitionists and challenging the proslavery factions\u2014and Lynch\u2014who \u201cdefended slavery as a necessary system of racial control\u201d (182, 200).\u00a0 Tate contends that England offered a sophisticated appraisal of slavery that combined Catholic teachings and southern mores, while Lynch simply adopted the conventional proslavery position of the 1860s.\u00a0 This chapter best illustrates Tate\u2019s imbalanced treatment.\u00a0 He explains England\u2019s position in over twenty pages, but dispenses with Lynch\u2019s in only four, relying exclusively on one pamphlet from 1864 to represent the latter\u2019s ideas about slavery.\u00a0 Yet, a recent biography of Lynch suggests that the bishop held more nuanced views on slavery than revealed in the contents of one tract.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n While Catholics\u2019 Lost Cause<\/em> is primarily a top-down examination of religion in the antebellum South, the fourth chapter incorporates the activities of lay Catholics.\u00a0 Tate\u2019s study of three St. Patrick\u2019s Day celebrations \u201cemphasizes how Charleston\u2019s Irish Catholics promoted their ethnic identity while demonstrating their devotion to South Carolina\u201d (104).\u00a0 The laity proved that they could be both Catholics and \u201cgood citizen[s]\u201d by echoing the sentiments of Bishop England in public toasts and demonstrations (105).\u00a0 Though Tate shows how the laity helped cultivate affinity, one wonders about their relationships with Protestants in contexts other than parades and how those interactions affected the Church\u2019s reputation in the South.\u00a0 Indeed, Tate also raises a number of questions about the role of religious orders and parish priests in the story of southern Catholicism.\u00a0 Overall, Catholics\u2019 Lost Cause<\/em> helps fill an important void in the scholarship on southern religion and U.S. Catholic history.\u00a0 Yet we clearly still need studies that examine the experiences and contributions of lay Catholics, parish priests, and religious orders in the Old South.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> For the best examples, see Eugene Genovese, The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994) and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders\u2019 Worldview<\/em> (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).\u00a0 For a work that examines the congenial relationship between Catholics and Protestants in the antebellum South, see Andrew H. M. Stern, Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross: Catholic-Protestant Relations in the Old South<\/em> (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012).<\/p>\n\n\t\tOpen-access license\n\t<\/h5>\n\tThis work is licensed CC-BY<\/a>. You are encouraged to make free use of this publication<\/a>.
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