精东影业

Research Interests

For the past decade my research interest has focused on the Catholic experience in the United States since World War II.聽Catholics and American Culture聽sought to provide a non-鈥渕aster narrative鈥� approach to understanding how Catholics left their secure ghetto after 1945 to enter the verdant pastures of middle class affluence, with somewhat mixed results. And precisely because of those mixed results, I utilized Reinhold Niebuhr鈥檚 rich category of 鈥渢heological irony" to tell my tale.聽Anti-Catholicism in America聽mined David Tracy鈥檚 protean distinction between 鈥渁nalogical鈥� and 鈥渄ialectical鈥� pre-conceptual languages to explain how and why Catholics and other Americans actually do see the world differently, a difference that has contributed significantly to 鈥減rejudice鈥� against Catholics in the U.S. And I use that term in neutral sense (and not in its more usual pejorative) sense: prejudice comes from two Latin words that mean 鈥減rejudgment.鈥澛� I thus attempted an ideologically neutral approach to anti-Catholic 鈥減rejudice.鈥� My latest book,聽The American Catholic Revolution聽(Oxford 2010) examines what happened after Vatican II when historical consciousness (i.e., the awareness that everything in history changes) was let loose in the American Catholic community. The book starts with Vatican II, and examines the reception of聽Humanae Vitae, the "Catonsville Nine" anti-Vietnam War protest, the reform of women's religious orders, and Avery Dulles' classic work, Models of the Church.