Patrick Brennan at Lumen Christi

Our own Patrick Brennan has the honor of presenting the Yves Simon Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, November 4th at 4:30 pm in the Swift 3rd Floor Lecture Hall at the University of Chicago. Professor Brennan's lecture is entitled "Are Catholics Unreliable from a Democratic Point of View? Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power."

 Paul Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power was originally published in 1949, and grew out of a series of articles which Blanshard had published several years earlier in The Nation.  In those articles and the book developed from them, Paul Blanshard argued that American Catholic citizens had to choose "between a church hostile to fundamentals of democracy and a state where contrary views are implicit under our Constitution." Blanshard went on to clam that "the American Catholic hierarchy has entered the political arena, and that it is becoming more and more aggressive in extending the frontiers of Catholic authority into the fields of medicine, education and foreign policy. As we shall see in this book, the Catholic hierarchy in this country has great power as a pressure group, and no editor, politician, publisher, merchant or motion-picture producer can express defiance openly - or publicize documented facts - without risking his future."  Selling over 300,000 copies, Blanshard's book set off a firestorm of controversy. And the shadow of the book and its author loomed far into the next decade: John F. Kennedy's famous speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960 was in many respects a direct result of Blanshard's power and influence.

On the sixtieth-year anniversary of American Freedom and Catholic Power, it seems fitting that we return to consider Blanshard's  thesis in light of the past several decades.  We are therefore pleased and honored to have Patrick Brennan pose Blanshard's question once again: "Are Catholics Unreliable from a Democratic Point of View?"

More here.