Holy Cross on West Forty-Second and the Transformation of New York City’s Irish American Catholicism

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-164
Author(s):  
Michael J. Pfeifer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Times Square ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Urban America ◽  
Irish Catholics ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Ethnic And Racial Diversity ◽  
American Society

Archbishop John Hughes created Manhattan’s Holy Cross Parish in 1852 to serve the thousands of Irish Catholics moving north of Lower Manhattan into what became known as Longacre Square (later Times Square) and the developing neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. Holy Cross maintained a strong Irish American identity into the mid-twentieth century, and its path charted the transformation of the disciplined folk piety created by the “devotional revolution” in Ireland in the nineteenth century into an American Catholicism dominated by Irish American clergy who sought to defend communalistic Catholic distinctiveness amid the rapid urban growth and burgeoning individualistic capitalism of a historically Protestant nation. In the early twentieth century, clergy and laity at Holy Cross converted Irish Catholic longing for an independent Irish nation and ambivalence about American society into a powerful synthesis of Irish American culture and American patriotism. In subsequent decades, Irish American Catholics at Holy Cross also participated in an emergent reactionary critique of the changing sexual mores and increasing ethnic and racial diversity of urban America. The white ethnic Catholic stance on American social change would become a key rhetorical and ideological element of resurgent American conservatism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

Progressive Catholicism in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Common ◽  
American Society

American Catholicism has long adapted to US liberal institutions. Progressive Catholicism has taken the liberal values of democratic participation and human rights and made them central to its interpretation of Catholic social teaching. This chapter explores in detail the thought of David Hollenbach, S.J., a leading representative of progressive Catholicism. Hollenbach has proposed an ethical framework for an economy aimed at the common good, ensuring that the basic needs of all are met and that all are able to participate in economic life. The chapter also looks at the US Catholic bishops’ 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, which emphasizes similar themes while also promoting collaboration between the different sectors of American society for the sake of the common good.

Hotelkeepers Organize in Twentieth Century to Legitimize and Advance Profession in American Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 109634802110109
Author(s):  
Stephen B. Shiring ◽  
Elizabeth J. Shiring
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Simple Structure ◽  
American Society

Evolving from the simple structure of a colonial inn to a grandiose city hotel by the 20th century, the innkeeper likewise professionally transformed into a hotel keeper. Assisting in this growth was the emerging hotel associations. Hotel associations provided collective member strength on issues, offered fellowship, and legitimized and professionalized their positions in American society.

Disposing of Modernity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Graff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Mineral Water ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Frank Lloyd Wright ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Urban America ◽  
World's Columbian Exposition ◽  
Columbian Exposition

Through archaeological and archival research from sites associated with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Disposing of Modernity explores the changing world of urban America at the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring excavations of trash deposited during the fair, Rebecca Graff’s first-of-its kind study reveals changing consumer patterns, notions of domesticity and progress, and anxieties about the modernization of society. Graff examines artifacts, architecture, and written records from the 1893 fair’s Ohio Building, which was used as a clubhouse for fairgoers in Jackson Park, and the Charnley-Persky House, an aesthetically modern city residence designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Many of the items she uncovers were products that first debuted at world’s fairs, and materials such as mineral water bottles, cheese containers, dentures, and dinnerware illustrate how fairs created markets for new goods and influenced consumer practices. Graff discusses how the fair’s ephemeral nature gave it transformative power in Chicago society, and she connects its accompanying “conspicuous disposal” habits to today’s waste disposal regimes. Reflecting on the planning of the Obama Presidential Center at the site of the Chicago World’s Fair, she draws attention to the ways the historical trends documented here continue in the present.

Organizing Diversity: Scales of Demographic Change and Neighborhood Organizing in St Paul, MN

2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 1091-1112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah G Martin ◽  
Steven R Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Inner City ◽  
Demographic Change ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
District Council ◽  
Ethnic And Racial Diversity

Neighborhood involvement in urban governance remains a pressing goal in an era of globalization. Cities have instituted a variety of structures to facilitate this involvement, including quasi-formal neighborhood or district councils. At the same time, urban populations are changing rapidly because of multiple dynamics operating at multiple scales. Immigration, for example, continues to transform inner-city neighborhoods despite the emergence of suburban immigrant enclaves. Existing research inadequately addresses the interaction between efforts to organize neighborhood political involvement and the dynamic nature of urban populations. We examine St Paul, Minnesota—a locale with a well-established neighborhood district-council system and a vibrant and rapidly growing immigrant community. Indeed, immigrants from Southeast Asia and East Africa are moving into neighborhoods that up until the early 1990s were predominantly white. Using a multimethod empirical analysis, we argue that the district-council system, while recognizing and empowering local-level organization, fails to provide adequate resources for neighborhoods to address social dynamics that operate at much broader scales. An index of ethnic and racial diversity computed with census data shows that St Paul experienced a significant overall increase in diversity during the 1990s. Although inner-city neighborhoods remained the most diverse, residential areas developed after World War 2 also diversified considerably. Interviews with neighborhood organizers based in part on tabular and cartographic displays revealed a wide variety of strategies and responses to changing ethnic and racial diversity. Predominant, however, was a mismatch between the scale at which demographic change occurs, and the scale of ‘neighborhood’ action embedded within the district-council system.

The Woman or the Egg?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Reproductive Medicine ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Egg Donor ◽  
Egg Donors ◽  
Scientific Discourses ◽  
American Society ◽  
Scientific Debates

This chapter contextualizes the shifting popular and scientific discourses of race since the mid-twentieth century by analyzing databases of egg donors and surrogates created by agencies to connect intended parents with the women who provide these services. Selected from a list curated by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, agencies are contrasted based on their representation of traits like the race and ethnicity of surrogates and egg donors. Reproductive technologies demonstrate that despite scientific debates, race-based medicines continue to promote and reflect a popular understanding of distinct biological races. Thus, the egg donor and surrogacy databases built by ART clinics reflect often-unspoken assumptions about race and heritability.

Managing Race in the American Workplace

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.

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