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Rating: Summary: An impressive work of painstaking research Review: In Commonwealth Catholicism: A History Of The Catholic Church In Virginia, Jesuit Gerald Fogarty (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of Virginia) brings the people, places, and events that shaped the Virginia church vividly to life. He engagingly surveys the inhospitable colonial period, to the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, down through Vatican II. Here is a dynamic history of bishops, priests, nuns, politicians, advocates, enemies, and the laity. We meet such remarkable personalities as Father Matthew O'Keefe (who pulled a pair of revolvers on two men who had been sent to assassinate him) and Father William L. Lane (a black priest who worked tirelessly to create a Catholic presence among African Americans); and a host of others. Very highly recommended reading for students of American religious history in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, Commonwealth Catholicism is an impressive work of painstaking research, impeccable standards of scholarship, as well as a skilled and distinctive talent for narrative writing.
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