Principal Mark McGowan, Edward Jackman OP, and Msgr Robert Trisco chat about the sessions at the conference dinner.
The University of St Michael’s College at the University of Toronto sponsored the Second Joint Meeting of the Canadian and American Historical Associations on April 15-16, 2011. The first Joint Meeting had been convened at the University of St Michael’s College in 2001. The organizing and program committee in 2011 consisted of Terence Fay
SJ, Edward Jackman OP, Peter Meehan, Mark McGowan, and Elizabeth Smyth. Eighty-five persons participated in the second meeting. Americans and Canadians participated in the twenty-two sessions in equal numbers. Archbishop Thomas Collins said the Mass for the academic assembly in the Cardinal Flahiff Chapel at 95 St Joseph Street on campus. At the reception and dinner following the Mass, CCHA President-General Peter Meehan welcomed the sixty-five diners and invited CCHA President Jacqueline Gresko to greet the American participants. ACHA President Larissa Juliet Taylor expressed words of appreciation for the welcome. Archbishop Thomas Collins gave benediction over the table.
Gabriela Pawlus Kasprzak examined Religion and Nationalism in Canada.
Forty-eight papers were given at twenty-two sessions, and from this number two sessions focused on Canada, and two were on the United States. The first session on Canada was chaired by Michael Gauvreau of McMaster University on The New Perspectives on Quebec Catholicism in which Ollivier Hubert of Université de Montréal talked aboutPrivate Catholic Schools and Social Domination in Quebec: A Long Perspective, and Jean Philippe Warren of Concordia University reviewed The Concept of Pillarization and Catholic Religious Decline in Quebec, and Michael Gauvreau spoke on Quebec’s Religious Crisis: Catholic Intellectuals and the Problem of Dechristianization, 1950-1970. A second session on Canada which was chaired by Elizabeth McGahan of the University of New Brunswick dealt with Christian Identity and Politics in Twentieth Century Canada in which Gordon Heath of McMaster University spoke of Protestants and the Conscription Crisis in Canada, 1917-1918 and Gabriela Pawlus Kasprzak of University of Saint Michael’s College talked on Redefining Religion and Nationalism with Polish Organizational Life in Interwar Canada.
President of the ACHA, Larissa Juliet Taylor, thanked the CCHA for sponsoring the Spring conference in Toronto.
The first session on the United States was chaired by Charles Strauss of the University of Notre Dame and focused on Education and Religion: Theory Meets Theological Practice in which Erin Bartram of the University of Connecticut discussed A Catholic Education: Elite 19th Century American Converts and Structures of Church Authority and Rosa Bruno-Jofre of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario and Gonzalo Jover of Universidad Complutense de Madrid considered The Pedagogical Creeds of the End of the XIX Century in the United States: The Transatlantic Movement of Ideas and the Readings of John Dewey’s Creed in its Intersection with Catholicism. The second session on the United States chaired by Robert Hurteau of Loyola-Marymount University wasPreconciliar American Catholics and Mission within the Mystical Body and included Katharine Harmon of University of Notre Dame speaking on Art, Immigrants, and the Liturgical Life: Ellen Gates Starr and the Social Implications of the Liturgy, Catherine Osborne of Fordham University on Adaptation: Darwin’s Finches and American Catholic Views on Mission Architecture, 1920-1960, and Charles Strauss of the University of Notre Dame on Reawakening A Glory that Is Gone: Anglo-American Catholics Encounter Latin America in the 1940s and 1950s.
Catholic diplomacy throughout the world occupied four sessions. Paul Robichaud CSP Executive Secretary of the ACHA chaired the International Perspectives on World War II Catholicism in which Douglas Slawson of the National University, San Diego spoke onThe National Catholic Welfare Conference and the American Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 and Uyilawa Usuanlele of State University of New York at Oswego NY discussedBenin City Catholic Church Crisis (Nigeria): Irish Catholic Clergy versus African Nationalism. Adrian Ciani of the University of Western Ontario chaired the Vatican Perspectives on International Collaborations in Peace and War including papers by Carlos Parra of the University of Toronto on Catholics at the Dawn of the Modern Global Interfaith Movement and Dennis Castillo of Christ King Seminary, East Aurora NY onAcross the Battle Lines: The Vatican and Malta in World War II, 1940-43. Cold War Catholicism was chaired by Roy Domenico of the University of Scranton in which Charles Gallagher SJ of Boston College considered The Rosenberg File of Pope Pius XII: Espionage, AntiSemitism, & the Theological Politics of Capital Punishment, Andrea DiStefano, Senior Researcher of Italian Holocaust Museum, From Truman to Eisenhower: The Involution of US Vatican Relations at the Beginning of the Cold War, and Adrian Ciani of University of Western Ontario Twentieth Century Papal Diplomacy in the Middle East. The final diplomatic session was chaired by Jacqueline Gresko of Corpus Christi College in Vancouver which included Jennifer Cote of Saint Joseph College, CT speaking on“Habits of Vice:” The House of the Good Shepherd and the Gendering of Crime and Reform in Early Twentieth Century Hartford and James Felak of the University of Washington discussing John Paul II’s Use of Saints During His Historic 1979 and 1983 Pilgrimages to Poland.
Brian Hogan, Valerie Burke, and Paul Laverdure enjoy the conference sessions.
Seven sessions were devoted to topics geographically outside Canada and the United States. Richard Lebrun of the University of Manitoba chaired the session Counter Enlightenment from New Perspectives with papers by Ethan Alexander-Davey of University of Wisconsin on Burke and Maistre on the Origin of Our Rights, Carolina Armentos of University of Groningen, the Netherlands on The Historical Thought of Joseph de Maistre, and by Richard Lebrun on Joseph de Maistre and Jansenism. German Catholicism and National Socialism was moderated by Suzanne Brown-Fleming of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC and included Martin Menke, River College, New Hampshire and his paper on The Tenuous Relationship between Msgr Ludwig Kaas and the Reichstag Deputies of the German Center Party, Spring 1933, Kevin Spicer CSC, Stonehill College, Massachusetts on German Catholic Clergy and the Rescue of Individual Jews, and Beth Griech-Polelle, Bowling Green State University, Ohio onFighting Communism: German Catholics and the Spanish Civil War. The session onRegulating Bodies in Counter Reformation Italy was chaired by Mark McGowan of the University of Toronto and included papers by Sarah Loose of the University of Toronto on Regulating Charity in Siena: The Medici and the Ospedale de Santa Maria della Scala in the Late Sixteenth Century, Vanessa McCarthy of the University of Toronto on Paying the Patriarchal Bargain? Social Discipline and the Regulation of Prostitutes in Bologna After the Council of Trent, and John Christopoulos of the University of Toronto on Abortion in the Confessional.
Papers on topics outside Canada and the United States continued as Robert Carbonneau CP of Passionist Historical Archives, Union City NJ chaired the session on Anti-Communism in Central Europe before and after the Second World War in which Marla Stone of Occidental College, California presented Anti-Communism Meets Anti-Semitism in Fascist Wartime Propaganda in Italy, Sean Brennan of the University of Scranton Reviving Christian Europe: Catholic Missions in Occupied Germany and Austria,and Roy Domenico, University of Scranton was the commentator. Peter Cajka of Boston College chaired The Christian Commitment in Scotland as Daniel MacLeod of University of Guelph presented ‘Reiking’ in the Scottish Reformation: A Comparison of Martyrdoms in Early Modern Scotland. Peter Bernardi SJ of Loyola University in Chicago moderated Progressive French Catholicism from Marc
Sangnier to the Fourth Republic which included papers by Gearóid Barry, National University of Galway on“A Tributary of the Great River of Apostacy” (Pope Pius X, 1910): Centenary of a Papal Letter on Marc Sangnier, Modernism and Transnational Social Catholicism, by Oscar Cole-Arnal, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary on New Wine in Old Wineskins: The Radical Renovation of French Catholic Parishes, 1940-1960, and by Peter Farrugia of Wilfrid Laurier University on Au Milieu de la mêlée: Marc Sangier and the Limits of Cooperation in Inter-War France. Terence Fay SJ of the University of St Michael’s College chaired Adaption and Secular Authority, and Colin Rose of the University of Toronto presented Jurisdictions of Mercy: Petitions to Secular Authorities by Ecclesiastical Supplicants in Early Modern Parma and Piacenza, 1630-1727.
Canadian-American Religion and Missions was a popular topic and attracted much attention. Sarah Nytroe of DeSales University and Peter Meehan of Seneca College at York University chaired Peter S. Cajka of Boston College speaking on The Making of A Modern American Pilgrimage: Holy Hill Shrine, 1880-1906 and Frances Swyripa of the University of Alberta on Saints and Saintliness in Western Canada: the Intersection of Faith, Ethnicity, and Politics. Social Action and Worship was chaired by Indre Cuplinskas of St Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta and included papers by Nicholas Rademacher of Cabrini College on Aiding Immigrants, Serving the Poor, Combating Communists: Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s Friendship House Apostolate in Toronto, Sarah Jardine of St Paul University in Ottawa on Women of the Catholic Women’s League of Canada Versus Atheistic Communism, and Robert Hurteau of Loyola Marymount University on Seamy Charity? John Considine, Ivan Illich, and an Appraisal of the North American Catholic Mission to Latin America in the 1960s. R. Bentley Anderson SJ of Fordham University chaired Communities, Power and Religion which included Benjamin Looker of St Louis University presenting A Theology of Neighborhood? City Spaces, the New Ethnicity and Postconciliar Catholic Communalism and Phyllis LeBlanc of the Université de Moncton onThe Weight of Tradition or a Simple Power Struggle? Conflict and Tradition within the Catholic Church of North America: A Comparative Study of Louisiana and the Maritime Provinces. Paul G. Monson of Marquette University chaired Communicating Identities Across Borders and Centuries which included papers presented by Markus Faltermier of the University of Munich on The Central Verein and Social Thought: The Struggle for a German-American Voice in the American Catholic Discourse on Social Issues in the Early 20th Century, Molly Burns Gallaher of the University of New Hampshire on Faith without Boundaries: The Intermarriage of Catholic English and French-Speakers on the 19thCentury Maine-New Brunswick Border, and Paul G. Monson on In Search of Cluny: Benedictines in the New World, 1846-1892. Dennis Castillo of Christ the King Seminary at East Aurora NY chaired the session Catholicism in North America which Carolee Pollock of Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton presented A Pragmatic and Conservative Measure: Catholic Toleration in Quebec After the Treaty of Paris and David Kingma of Gonzaga University Spinning the Jesuit Alaska Mission, 1886-89. Father Dan Donovan concluded the program by offering a tour on religious art in the Odette Building.
Terence J. Fay SJ, University of St Michael’s College