"American Catholic" is a comprehensive exploration of the history and evolution of Catholicism in the United States. While the book offers an extensive account of the Catholic Church's presence in America, it leaves room for some cautious reflection.

The author delves into the rich traditions, influential figures, and significant milestones that have shaped American Catholicism. The narrative touches upon the Church's role in shaping social and political landscapes, as well as its contributions to education, healthcare, and charitable endeavors. The book provides valuable insights into the diverse experiences and challenges faced by Catholics throughout American history.

However, it is important to approach "American Catholic" with some reservations. The author's perspective may lean towards a predominantly positive portrayal of the Church, which might overlook certain controversies or critical aspects. The book might not delve deep enough into complex topics such as the Church's response to social justice issues, its handling of abuse scandals, or its stance on controversial topics like reproductive rights or LGBTQ+ rights.

Additionally, "American Catholic" might not fully capture the experiences and perspectives of marginalized communities within the Catholic Church. It is crucial to recognize the limitations of any single account and seek a broader range of perspectives to develop a more comprehensive understanding.

While "American Catholic" offers valuable historical insights, readers should approach it with a critical eye, seeking additional sources and diverse viewpoints to develop a well-rounded understanding of the complexities surrounding the American Catholic experience.

Found the beginning very dry and unengaging, but this improved. Overall a fairly enjoyable book. The subject matter is interesting and it’s very well researched.

DG Hart's scholarly exploration of the Cold War battles within American Catholicism can at times get lost in the weeds, but is an extremely well-read resource for anyone interested in the political and theological divides in Rome, DC, and New York City. Anyone interested in the contemporary debates between David French and Sohrab Ahmari would be well suited to see how the same debates were had - in a more erudite form - by American Catholics such as Bill Buckley, Garry Willis, and Brent Bozell. The latter chapters feel like they could have been separated off into their own book rather than tacked onto the discussion, but if you are interested in American Catholicism and its relationship to both small-l liberalism and the conservative movement, you will get your money's worth.

I will admit, I didn’t expect the scope of this work to be narrowed down to the Cold War alone. I was hoping for a bit more sociological analysis, but the suthor certainly knows his topic. I’m not one for religious or theological analyses, so I was not much of a committed reader in this case. However, a decent work and well researched.

This book is a helpful history of Catholics in America during the last century. Hart discusses the key tension for American Catholics: trying to reconcile the American ideals of democracy and religious liberty with traditional Catholic teaching on submitting to church hierarchy. Catholic teaching on submission to the pope seems to contradict the American political system of people voting for leaders.

The primary example of this American Catholic tension is John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic American president. Imagine this scenario: If the Pope gave JFK a direct command, does JFK have to submit to the Pope? This question does not just apply to the president, it also applies to every American Catholic. What do they do if the Pope commands something? Every American Catholic has to answer this question in some way. From this, we see that American Catholics have to live in tension with a political system that cuts against the grain of Catholic teaching.

Hart does a good job in working through JFK's presidency and the Catholic tensions there. This material was wonderful. JFK was a key turning point in American history. One historian described it as the end of "Protestant America." Hart discusses the issues around JFK’s funeral service which was a traditional Catholic service in Latin. This ceremony was rather strange for much of Protestant America. At one point in the funeral, Jackie Kennedy genuflected before Cardinal Cushing and kissed his hand. While this action was a common Catholic practice, some were rather offended at it. What did this genuflecting mean? Was the President less than a Catholic Cardinal? What about separation of Church and State?

I think Hart is at his best when he is working through specific historical moments, like these around JFK’s funeral.

The middle section of the book was slow and it seemed to wonder a bit. In the middle part, Hart focused on the ideas of various writers rather than specific historical events. The history of ideas is important but it wasn’t always clear why these ideas were being discussed. If Hart had grounded the ideas in specific moments in American history, that would have helped draw out the tensions he was highlighting.

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As a young congressional campaign worker I was asked by my political director to arrange a meeting with a priest so that he could become educated on the beliefs and concerns of Catholics to help inform the campaign. The priest made a claim which I have subsequently heard repeated by many more: “Catholics don’t vote as a block anymore because they consider their primary identity to be as Americans, secondarily as belonging to a political party and their identity as a Catholic is tertiary.” What a shock this would have been up to the mid/late twentieth century when the defensive cry of Catholics in response to allegations that they would be politically compromised as democratic citizens was: “There is no contradiction between being a Catholic and being an American.”

D.G. Hart of Hillsdale College examines how the post-War period of American history served as a catalyst for a reassessment of Catholic political involvement in the United States, particularly through the lens of the Conservative movement. This work is both narrower and broader than one would expect. It is narrower in the sense that it follows a small group of Roman Catholic political commentators and academics rather than surveying more general trends or diversifying attention. Those treated are primarily William F. Buckley, Jr., L. Brent Bozell, Garry Wills, Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel. It is of particular interest that while the 1960s are seen as a time of liberal revolution, they were also a time of conservative revolution. Also that conservatives can be as prone to enter into conflict with Church teaching as liberals.

The book is broader in that it delves more deeply than expected into theological and ecclesiastical debates around the Church’s sociopolitical theology and the levels of teaching authority in the Church. The efforts of Fr. John Courtney Murray in defending Catholicism against attacks from the outside and navigating internal politics within is well treated. Additionally, the author treats seriously the papal encyclicals of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI which laid some of the groundwork for the Second Vatican Council. Hart also draws out important points about development of doctrine, prudential judgements as compared to doctrine and the historical conditioning of some sociopolitical pronouncements by the Church. The author could have elaborated more on how terms such as liberalism, democracy and religious toleration were practically experienced and interpreted by a Church which felt it was under violent attack in the name of those ideas during the 18th/19th centuries (within a European context) – and to compare that with the refining of those terms and the leveling out of those experiences coupled with the rise of totalitarian atheism. This would help explain the Catholic movement he treats more fully (and how Catholics would make sense of and attempt to resolve the apparent contradiction).

Hart does an admirable job of highlighting the discrimination and skepticism which Catholics faced, the experience of the average Catholic, the efforts of thinkers to reconcile the Church-state balance and the role of Catholics in the public sphere since the World Wars. This book is timely because the pendulum continues to swing, as does the sense of identity and relationships Catholic, whether conservative or liberal, have to the Church-state issue.

D. G. Hart, an associate professor of history at Hillsdale College, draws on published primary sources and secondary sources to examine the rise of conservatism in the United States against the backdrop of growing US Catholic political involvement in the postwar era. Specifically, he focuses on how US Catholics, whose patriotism at the beginning of the century was considered suspect because of papal authority, became an integral part of movement conservatism. To this end, he delves into debates within the Catholic Church on Americanism and modernism as well as into the writings of prominent conservative Catholics, such as William F. Buckley, L. Brent Bozell, Michael Novak, and George Weigel. Although the arguments of these conservative Catholics were by no means identical, they each saw Catholicism as having an important role to play in the moral and political rejuvenation of the country under conservative auspices.

The book offers an excellent overview of anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States and how two Catholic political presidential nominees -- Al Smith and John F. Kennedy-- fought to overcome American prejudices about papal influence. Similarly, the author's discussion of the Church's condemnation of Americanism, that is, accommodating the church's teachings to freedom, democracy and popular sovereignty, and how Vatican II overturned this condemnation is very thorough.

That said, there are some noticeable gaps in the discussion of postwar politics. For example, although the author acknowledges how the emergence of identity politics in the 1960s and 1970s confounded and disoriented conservatives whose focus had been on anti-Communism and limited government, he devotes very little space to the social issues that became politicized with this turn, that is, women's rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. The author's minimalist approach to these topics is surprising given how important these issues have become for religious conservatives today (often serving as the litmus test for political candidates and for judicial appointments) and given how deeply these issues divided Catholics in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. the mass flight of American nuns from the Church, the founding of Catholics for Choice in 1973, the establishing of DignityUSA, a ministry for LGBTQ Catholics in 1969).