CATHOLIC ORGANIZATIONS PROMOTING NEGRO-WHITE RACE RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES. By Thomas J. Harte. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University Press, 1947. 173 pp. $2.00

This book is an ethnography of millennial-generation Catholic missionaries. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) began hiring young adults to evangelize students on college campuses in 1998. Since then, FOCUS missionaries have developed a style of Catholic evangelization that navigates between strict and savvy interpretations of Catholic teaching in contemporary US youth culture. The Catholicism that FOCUS missionaries embrace and promote grew up with them and amid their middle-class American norms—missionaries own iPhones, drink craft beer, and create March Madness brackets. Born in the 1990s, millennial missionaries in their skinny jeans and devotional tattoos, large-framed glasses and scapulars embody an attractive style of Catholicism. They love saints and have memorized the “Tantum Ergo,” are fluent in college-student slang, but reject hook-up culture in favor of gender essentialism dictated by papal teachings. Missionaries rely on their social capital to make Catholicism cool. Many of their peers have been characterized as defectors from religious institutions. Yet, underneath the rise of “nones” is a story of increased religious piety. This book studies religion in the United States from the perspective of proud Catholic millennials. As they navigate their Catholic and US identities, these missionaries propose Catholicism as uniquely able to overcome perceived threats of secularism, relativism, and modernity. How, why, and with what implications is this Catholicism enacted? These questions, which point to power struggles between US culture and religious identity, drive this book. Through their prayers and evangelization efforts, missionaries are reshaping Catholic identity and shifting the religious landscape of the United States.

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Migration for Mission

10.1093/oso/9780190933098.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mary Johnson ◽

Patricia Wittberg ◽

Mary Gautier ◽

Thu Do

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

The United States ◽

National Study ◽

Catholic Sisters ◽

Long Line ◽

Catholic Organizations ◽

To Come ◽

Washington University ◽

The Trinity

This book presents quantitative and qualitative data from the first-ever national study of international Catholic sisters in the United States, the Trinity Washington University/CARA Study. International sisters are defined as those born outside the United States and currently ministering, studying, or in residence in this country. The book begins with a chapter that locates current international sisters in the long line of sisters who have come to this country since the eighteenth century. The book identifies the sisters of today, describes the pathways they used to come here, their levels of satisfaction, their concerns and contributions, the issue of immigration status, the challenges of sister students, and the role and mission of Catholic organizations assisting immigrants in general, and international sisters in particular. The book ends with implications of the research and recommendations regarding resources, ministries, and structures of support for international sisters.

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