The multi-talented Fr. Andrew Greeley has turned his energies to the interpretation of American Catholic history. In [The Catholic Experience] he gives a series of intellectual biographies of the men who have tried to adapt the Catholic Church to the political and social life of the United States…. Fr. Greeley has a definite interpretation that he wants to get across: the struggle between Americanizers and those conservatives who did not want to make Catholicism a fully American Church.

The book is a combination of summarized secondary-source history and interpretation of the efforts to accommodate Catholicism to American life. The history is well told, interesting and informative to readers who do not know of the life of John Carroll, the controversies of the 1890's and the social doctrine of John A. Ryan. The interpretation is valuable because it brings the insights of a liberal of the present to the...