Catholics and American culture1999

"While in the early years of the century Catholics in America were for the most part distrusted outsiders with respect to the dominant culture, by the 1960s the mainstream of American Catholicism was in many ways "the culture's loudest and most uncritical cheerleader." Mark Massa explores the rich irony in this postwar transition, beginning with the heresy case of Leonard Feeney, examining key figures such as Fulton Sheen, Thomas Merton, and John F. Kennedy, and concluding with a look at the University of Notre Dame and the transformed status of American Catholic higher education. He shows that the movement toward engagement with - and accommodation to - mainstream American culture was well underway long before Vatican II, with both positive and negative results."--BOOK JACKET.