American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey Through Catholic Life in a New World by Christopher Shannon (review)

Reviewed by: American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey Through Catholic Life in a New World by Christopher Shannon Michael F. Lombardo American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey Through Catholic Life in a New World. By Christopher Shannon. Greenwood Village, CO: Augustine Institute—Ignatius Press, 2022. 560pp. 34. 95. To anyone passingly familiar with his work, pilgrimage is a theme that historian Christopher Shannon takes seriously. It is perhaps no surprise that the theme again serves as a central motif in his latest work, American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey Through Catholic Life in a New World. Tracing the history of the American Catholic Church is no small task. "I stand on the shoulders of giants, " Shannon writes when noting other "comprehensive histories" of American Catholicism that "remain worth reading for their own sake" (6). However, Shannon quickly concedes that he writes "with a different purpose" (6). Critical of professional academic histories originating "from a detached, scholarly perspective officially neutral with respect to the truth claims of the Church" but frequently serving "as a cover for End Page 76 promoting various ideologies. . . and often directed against the Church, " Shannon instead offers a narrative that "draws on the best of modern scholarship while still trying to think with the Church" (6). What does thinking with the Church mean? Shannon takes as his model Augustine's The City of God, which offers a vision of history in which the primary "struggle takes place not simply between the Church and the world but within the Church itself and within each individual soul" (6). Offering no mere triumphalism, Shannon is not afraid to explore the failure of individuals and the ideas and practices they espoused. Here is a history of the church in the United States living—like the church of late antiquity—through a "troubled time" but journeying forward with hope, knowing that "while empires rise and fall, the Church endures" (7). Shannon's story begins with the most famous pilgrimage site in the Americas, Our Lady of Guadalupe, just outside Mexico City. Our Lady of Guadalupe "appeared at a turning point in the history of the Church" (2) and as such, serves as a prophetic lens through which the major themes of American Catholic life may be interpreted. "The trajectory of salvation history, " Shannon writes, "was pointing toward a new beginning, announced by Guadalupe" (3). From Our Lady's "preferential option for the poor of that time" one may glean hints of "the Church's impending poverty in the modern world, " especially the "dispossession" of the church that would occur as a result of the myriad political and economic changes that occurred in Europe during the Early Modern period and would come to impact American Catholic immigrants contending with an American culture deeply imbued with anti-Catholic sensibilities (another prominent theme). The organizational structure of American Pilgrimage reflects this model of cultural engagement and exchange. Eschewing typical historical categorizations, Shannon uses the metaphorical image of growth to divide the book into three parts. The first part, "Seeds" offers a broad overview of the evangelical efforts of the three primary colonial powers in the New World—Spain, France, and England—as they encountered, conquered, and eventually eradicated, the indigenous populations they met upon arrival. The second part, "Fruits, " again tackles the question of enculturation as the Irish-dominated church in the United States struggled to accommodate an influx of European Catholic immigrants, while American Catholics themselves simultaneously struggled against the anti-Catholic "Walls" (Chapter 5) built by nativists who accused them of having "divided loyalties" and therefore of being incapable of being good Americans (319) ; the following chapter, "Bridges, " explores the gradual assimilation of American Catholics into the mainstream, culminating with the bittersweet election of John F. Kennedy, who represents a "high-water mark for Catholic bridge building" but in practice "could have been any other upper-middle-class white American" (381). End Page 77 The third and final section of the book, "Seasons, " offers a liturgically structured examination of the post-World War II period that moves from "Lent" (Chapter 7), which explores the dissolution of the urban Catholic subculture, suburban dissent around birth control, and the sex abuse crisis, through "Ordinary Time" (Chapter 8), which. . .