This is a serviceable, topical, if sometimes conformist, guide to the US Church. Part I gives historical background.

The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism
MARGARET M. McGUINNESS and THOMAS F. RZEZNIK (eds)
(CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 386 PP, £26.99)
Tablet bookshop price £24.29 • tel 020 7799 4064

This is a serviceable, topical, if sometimes conformist, guide to the US Church. Part I gives historical background. Chapter one extends from Spanish and French footings down to provincial councils – such as Pope Francis wants – in 1829. Some bishops argue that subsidiarity necessarily foments chaos, but the US manages nicely with 50 criminal codes, including Louisiana’s Code Napoléon. Similarly topical: the original system of parish trusteeship (ordin­ary, pastor, two layfolk, with majority vote), which could save the Church, provided the layfolk weren’t those businessmen who help bishops to sell churches without informing the people of their canonical rights. Chapters two and three survey the political power of immigrants in the nineteenth century and an eventful twentieth century that begins with a casual Vatican remark, in 1908, that the US is no longer mission territory.

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