Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle (1896-1987) is largely remembered as the
controversial leader of the Archdiocese of Washington during its
first, formative quarter century. Combining considerable foresight
about the Church's social concerns with a stubborn resistance to
innovation, he countered opposition from those who reviled his
progressive stand, especially his steadfast demand for racial
equality and support of organized labor. At the same time he earned
the opprobrium of those who resisted his firm support of the
magisterium, in particular his controversial defense of the pope's
ban on artificial birth control and his rejection of liturgical
experimentation in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Often
overlooked is the fact that O'Boyle's Washington years followed a
quarter-century participation in the modernization of the American
Church's charity apparatus and the organization of its
international relief effort. Such assignments placed him at the
epicenter of the debate over the proper roles of church and state
in providing social services. A product of the Catholic
ghettoization of the early twentieth century, he was expected to
lead his Church into fruitful partnerships with government and
other organizations in support of society's most needy. This
engaging biography seeks to explain O'Boyle's apparent
contradictions by placing special emphasis on his formative years
as the only child in an immigrant, staunchly pro-labor family in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his training as a seminarian and curate
in the rigidly traditional Church of his adopted New York. These
influences, combined with his subsequent work with the poor and
orphaned, instilled in him a progressive economic and social
outlook as well as a lifetime sympathy for society's neglected. At
the same time they strengthened an unquestioned obedience and
loyalty to those in authority that figured so prominently in his
later Washington years, where he came to embody the paradox of
simple faith and complex humanity. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Morris J.
MacGregor is the author of several books, including A Parish for
the Federal City: St. Patrick's in Washington, 1794-1994 and The
Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine's in
Washington. FROM THE BOOK: ""Today there are poor people--too many
people--who are really poor, miserably poor. . . . To a great
extent poverty resulted from injustice in the past and it continues
to exist because of injustices we have not yet taken the trouble to
end. . . . More important than money are the lives salvaged, the
homes and families preserved, the young given a chance, the aged
sheltered and cared for.""--Cardinal O'Boyle PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
""Steadfast in the Faith is a detailed and accurate picture of a
complicated man, placed in the context of his times. It is both
excellent biography and history. Kudos to Morris J. MacGregor for
his faithful stewardship of both disciplines!""--Tracy Dowling,
Catholic Standard ""This biography presents a fair, balanced
picture of a key bishop at a critical time in the Church who
founded a new diocese, fought for civil rights, responded to
Vatican II, and faced dissent over Humanae vitae. It should be in
every Catholic library.""--John Shewmaker, Catholic Library World
""This volume, an important addition to any serious library of
United States church history, provides an important window through
which to gain an understanding of the many significant transitions
which took place in the national Catholic experience during the
twentieth century, an insight into the episcopal world of that
time, and much information on the foundational period of the
Archdiocese of Washington. . . . [H]istorians will be grateful to
MacGregor for providing us with this biography.""--James Garneau,
American Catholic Studies ""[A] very readab
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