Synopses & Reviews
"Being Right is a significant book and a good read for anyone seriously interested in contemporary American religion." --Nova Religio
"It will be very useful to historians, challenging to theologians and indispensable to anyone trying to make sense of the bewildering variety of Catholic presence in the contemporary United States." --American Catholic Studies Newsletter
"Being Right maps the mental universe of this internally diverse group and offers basic insight into how they see things... " --The Reader's Review
"Editors Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby and their collaborators immerse us in a roiling sea of contested assertion and testimony." --First Things
"An in-depth look at these groups, both as they see themselves and as they appear to trained scholars." --David J. O'Brien, College of Holy Cross
"Compliments must be given to Weaver and Appleby... who were able to recruit a distinguished, yet impassioned, group of essayists for this work." --Journal of Church and State
Whether they focus their criticism on pro-choice rhetoric and artificial birth control or the removal of religious symbols from public squares, the Catholics profiled in this book agree that the contemporary church is in crisis.
About the Author
MARY JO WEAVER is Professor of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at Indiana University. Among her books are Springs of Water in a Dry Land: Spiritual Survival for Catholic Women Today and New Catholic Women. R. SCOTT APPLEBY is the Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His books include "Church and Age Unite!": The Modernist Impulse in American Catholicism, and he has co-edited five volumes of the Fundamentalism Project with Martin E. Marty.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface: Working on being Right
Introduction by Mary Jo Weaver
Part I: Contexts
1. Interpreting the Council and the Para-Council: Catholic Attitudes Towards Vatican II by Joseph A. Komonchak
2. The Triumph of Americanism: Common ground for U.S. Catholics in the Twentieth Century by R. Scott Appleby
3. The Loss of Theological Unity: Pluralism, Thomism, and Catholic Morality by Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.
4. "A Pox on Both your Houses': A View of Catholic Conservative-Liberal Polarities from the Hispanic Margin by Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J.
Part II: Insider Perspectives
5. Catholics United for the Faith: Dissent and the Laity by James A. Sullivan
6. The Neo-Conservative Difference: A Proposal for the Renewal of Church and Society by George Weigel
7. Women for Faith and Family: Catholic Women Affirming Catholic Teaching by Helen Hull Hitchcock
8. The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars: Bowing Out of the New Class by James Hitchcock
Part III: Outside Perspectives
9. The Marian Revival in American Catholicism: Focal Points and Features of the New Marian Enthusiasm by Sandra Zimdars-Swartz
10. "We Are What You Were': Roman Catholic Traditionalism in America by William D. Dinges
11. Life Battles: The Rise of Catholic Militancy Within the American Pro-Life Movement by Michael W. Cuneo
12. Self-Consciously Counter Cultural: Alternative Catholic Colleges by Mary Jo Weaver
Epilogue: What Difference Do They Make? by R. Scott Appleby
Appendix I: Conservative Catholic Periodicals by John H. Haas