This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper delivered at the American Catholic Historical Association meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, January 6, 1996. I would like to thank the following people for their comments and criticisms on the paper and/or the article: Patrick Allitt, Una Cadegan, Thomas Greene, Sally Griffith, Jackson Lears, David J. O'Brien, and Christopher Shannon.

1. Fisher, James Terence, The Catholic Counterculture in America, 1933-1962 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).Google Scholar This inattention has become all the more glaring in the face of exemplary studies of American Catholic literary culture and conservatism. See Sparr, Arnold, To Promote, Defend, and Redeem: The Catholic Literary Revival and the Cultural Transformation of American Catholicism, 1920-1960 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Allitt, Patrick, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-1985 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2. Furfey is an oft-mentioned but little-studied figure in the history of twentieth-century American Catholicism. The most extended discussion of his work can be found in Curran, Charles, “Paul Hanly Furfey: Theorist of American Catholic Radicalism,” American Ecclesiastical Review 166 (December 1972): 651-77Google Scholar; and Curran, Charles, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth-Century Approaches (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 130-71.Google Scholar See also O'Brien, David J., American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 185-90Google Scholar; and Piehl, Mel, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 126-28.Google Scholar Furfey's own auto-biographical reflections are strewn throughout his work, but see in particular Furfey, Paul Hanly, “From Catholic Liberalism to Catholic Radicalism,” American Ecclesiastical Review 166 (December 1972): 678-87Google Scholar; Furfey, Paul Hanly, The Morality Gap (New York: Macmillan, 1968)Google Scholar; and Furfey, Paul Hanly, Love and the Urban Ghetto (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Press, 1978).Google Scholar On the professional-managerial class, see Barbara, and Ehrenreich, John, “The Professional-Managerial Class,” in Between Labor and Capital, ed. Walker, Pat (Boston: South End Press, 1979), 5–45.Google Scholar

3. Furfey, , Love and the Urban Ghetto, vii.Google Scholar

4. Kane, Paula M., Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 10.Google Scholar

5. Furfey, , Love and the Urban Ghetto, ix Google Scholar; see also Furfey, , The Morality Gap, 99 Google Scholar. On the Knights of Columbus, see Kauffman, Christopher J., Faith and Fraternalism: The History of the Knights of Columbus, 1882-1982 (New York: Harper and Row, 1982).Google Scholar

6. Kerby, William J., The Social Mission of Charity: A Study of Points of View in Catholic Charities (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 139, 168Google Scholar; Ryan, John, “Social Service as a Profession,” in The Church and Socialism and Other Essays (Washington, D. C.: University Press, 1919), 246.Google Scholar See also Husslein, Joseph, Work, Wealth and Wages (Chicago: Matre and Co., 1921)Google Scholar, esp. 215-18. On the bishops’ program, see McShane, Joseph M., S.J., Sufficiently Radical: Catholicism, Progressivism, and the Bishops' Program of 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; on the National Catholic Welfare Council, see McKeown, Elizabeth, War and Welfare: American Catholics and World War I (New York: Garland Press, 1988)Google Scholar; on Ryan, see Broderick, Francis L., Right Reverend New Dealer: John A. Ryan (New York: Macmillan, 1963).Google Scholar For a discussion of Catholic social professionalism in the 1920's, see Robert M. Preston, “Toward a Better World: The Christian Moralist as Scientific Reformer” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University, 1969).

7. On critical discourse, see Gouldner, Alvin, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York: Seabury Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the Separation of theology and the social sciences in the 1920's, see Moore, R. Laurence, “Secularization: Religion and the Social Sciences,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960, ed. Hutchison, William R. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 236-39.Google Scholar

8. Furfey, “From Catholic Liberalism to Catholic Radicalism,” 680- 81; Furfey, , Love in the Urban Ghetto, ix Google Scholar; Furfey, , The Morality Gap, 101.Google Scholar Furfey's study of urban gangs is in Furfey, Paul Hanly, The Gang Age: A Study of the Preadolescent Boy and His Recreational Needs (New York: Macmillan, 1928).Google Scholar

9. Furfey, Paul Hanly, This Way to Heaven (Silver Spring, Md.: Preservation Press, 1939), ix–x Google Scholar; Furfey, “From Catholic Liberalism to Catholic Radicalism,” 683.

10. Furfey, , Love in the Urban Ghetto, x–xi Google Scholar; Furfey, “From Catholic Liberalism to Catholic Radicalism,” 683; Furfey, , The Morality Gap, 99.Google Scholar On Weimar culture's challenge to faith in progress, see Peukert, Detlev, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 178-90.Google Scholar

11. Furfey, , The Morality Gap, 100 Google Scholar; Furfey, , Love in the Urban Ghetto, 113-15Google Scholar. On Michel, see Marx, Paul, Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1957)Google Scholar; and Franklin, R. W. and Spaeth, Robert L., Virgil Michel: American Catholic (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1988).Google Scholar

12. Furfey, , The Morality Gap, 102-5.Google Scholar Mary Elizabeth Walsh also collaborated with Furfey on a textbook for Catholic social workers, American Social Problems (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1942), and authored a study of nineteenth-century Catholic poverty relief, The Saints and Social Work (Silver Spring, Md.: Preservation Press, 1936). On the French personalists, see Hellman, John, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left in France, 1930-1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981).Google Scholar

13. For the texts of the papal encyclicals, see Corrigan, Joseph M., ed., Two Basic Social Encyclicals: On the Condition of Workers, Leo XIII, and Forty Years After, On Reconstructing the Social Order, Pius XI (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1943).Google Scholar On neo-scholasticism, see Gleason, Philip, “In Search of Unity: American Catholic Thought, 1920-1960,” Catholic Historical Review 65 (April 1979): 185–205 Google Scholar; Gleason, Philip, “Neoscholasticism as Preconciliar Ideology,” U.S. Catholic Historian 7 (Fall 1988): 401-11Google Scholar; and Halsey, William M., The Survival of American Innocence: Catholicism in an Era of Disillusionment, 1920-1940 (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 138-68.Google Scholar On the idea of “tradition” in the 1930's, see Susman, Warren I., Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 176-79, 207 (quote).Google Scholar

14. Furfey, Paul Hanly, Fire on the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 39–40 Google Scholar; Furfey, Paul Hanly, Three Theories of Society (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 232, 235, 240.Google Scholar See also Furfey, Paul Hanly, “Why a Supernatural Sociology?” American Catholic Sociological Review 1 (Spring 1940): 161-71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 8–10, 27.Google Scholar

16. Muste, A. J., Non-Violence in an Aggressive World, 2d ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940), 176-89Google Scholar, refers to Christianity as composed of “cells” forming an “Internationale.” H. Richard Niebuhr uses the language of “cells” and “permanent revolution” throughout his work of the 1930's and early 1940's. See Niebuhr, H. Richard, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” Christian Century 49 (March 23, 1932): 378-79Google Scholar; The Church against the World (Chicago: Willett and Clark, 1935), co-authored with Miller, Francis and Pauck, Wilhelm; The Kingdom of God in America (Chicago: Willett and Clark, 1937)Google Scholar; and The Meaning ofRevelation (New York: Macmillan, 1941). Day refers to the Catholic Worker movement as a “permanent revolution” in Day, Dorothy, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (New York: Harper, 1952), 186.Google Scholar For European cousins of “supernatural sociology,” see Reckitt, Maurice, Faith and Society (London: Faber and Faber, 1932)Google Scholar; Fanfani, Amintore, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism (London: Sheed and Ward, 1936)Google Scholar; and Sturzo, Luigi, The True Life: Sociology of the Supernatural (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1943).Google Scholar There are two contemporary theologians whose work closely resembles Furfey's: Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); and Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar

17. Furfey, , Three Theories of Society, 3–16 (quote on 15).Google Scholar

18. Ibid., 57-61; Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 68–70.Google Scholar

19. Graebner, William, The Engineering of Consent: Democracy and Authority in Twentieth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).Google Scholar For a deft analysis of Dewey's impact on social science in the 1930's, see Kuklick, Bruce, “John Dewey, American Theology, and Scientific Politics,” in Religion and Twentieth-Century American Intellectual Life, ed. Lacey, Michael J. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 87–93 Google Scholar. Dewey articulated his conception of a democratic “common faith” in A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934). On Robert S. Lynd as technocrat, see Fox, Richard Wightman, “Epitaph for Middletown: Robert S. Lynd and the Analysis of Consumer Culture,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980, ed. Fox, Richard Wightman and Lears, T. J. Jackson (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 103-41.Google Scholar

20. Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 92–95 (quote on 92).Google Scholar

21. Furfey, , Three Theories of Society, 184, 222Google Scholar; see also Furfey, Paul Hanly, “Liturgy and the Social Problem,” National Liturgical Week, 1941 (Newark, N.J.: Benedictine Liturgical Conference, 1942), 181-86.Google Scholar

22. Allen Tate, “Notes on the Southern Religion,” in Twelve Southerners, I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, intro. by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977 [1930]), 175. For examples of “sacramental radicalism,” see Michel, Virgil, “The Liturgy the Basis of Social Reconstruction,” Orate Fratres 9 (November 2, 1935)Google Scholar: 542; and Griff, John J. in, “The Liturgical Economy and Social Reconstruction,” Orate Fratres 11 (December 27, 1936): 73.Google Scholar I discuss “sacramental radicalism” in greater detail in McCarraher, Eugene B., “American Gothic: Sacramental Radicalism and the Neo-Medievalist Cultural Gospel, 1928-1948,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 105 (Spring-Summer 1995): 3–23.Google Scholar

23. Furfey, , Three Theories of Society, 206 Google Scholar; see also Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 49–59 Google Scholar, and Furfey, Paul Hanly, “The Positive Society,” Commonweal 25 (January 22, 1937): 353-54.Google Scholar

24. The best introduction to Antonio Gramsci is Gramsci, Antonio, An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-1935, ed. Forgacs, David (New York: Schocken, 1988).Google Scholar The clearest examination of “hegemony” is Femia, Joseph V., Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), esp. 130-64, from which the quote is taken (138).Google Scholar

25. Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, vii, 152-53.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 107-8; Furfey, , Three Theories of Society, 227.Google Scholar See also Furfey, Paul Hanly, “Art and the Machine,” Catholic Art Quarterly 1 (Pentecost 1944): 1–6.Google Scholar

27. On the Catholic social gospel in the 1930's, see O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, passim; on the ACTU, see Seaton, Douglas P., Catholics and Radicals: The American Catholic Trade Unionists and the American Labor Movement, from Depression to Cold War (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; on the Young Christian Workers, see Mary Zotti, Irene, A Time of Awakening: The Young Christian Worker Story in the United States, 1938-1970 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; on the Liturgical Arts Society, see White, Susan J., Art, Architecture, and Liturgical Reform: The Liturgical Arts Society, 1928-1972 (New York: Pueblo Publishing, 1990)Google Scholar; on the Catholic literary revival in the 1930's, see Sparr, , To Promote, Defend, and Redeem, 99–121.Google Scholar The Catholic Art Association and its Journal, the Catholic Art Quarterly (formerly the Christian Social Art Quarterly), both merit further study

28. On the “agronomic universities,” see Day, The Long Loneliness, 225 Google Scholar; on the “roundtable discussions,” see Piehl, , Breaking Bread, 74–75.Google Scholar Day relates that, after reading one of Pius XII's Christmas messages in which he distinguished between “the masses” and “the people,” she wished she had named her paper The People (The Long Loneliness, 221).

29. Ryan, quoted in Broderick, Right Reverend New Dealer, 242-43.

30. Furfey, Paul Hanly, “The New Social Catholicism,” Christian Front 1 (December 1936): 182-83Google Scholar; Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 76–77.Google Scholar

31. While Furfey did not flatly oppose American participation in the war, he did condemn unrestricted aerial bombardment and the use of atomic weapons. See Furfey, Paul Hanly, “Bombing of Noncombatants Is Murder,” Catholic C.O. 2 (July-September 1945), 3–4.Google Scholar On changes in the social and cultural composition of the industrial working class, see Fraser, Steve, “The Labor Question,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, ed. Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), esp. 72–78.Google Scholar On Philip Murray and the “industry Council” plan endorsed by Catholic liberals, see Lichtenstein, Nelson, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, ed. Fraser, and Gerstle, , 125-26.Google Scholar Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 323-68Google Scholar, illuminates the significance of mass culture in the shift from ethnicity and religion to class and consumption as the foci of working-class political consciousness.

32. Fisher, , The Catholic Counterculture in America, 71–99 Google Scholar (quote on 99).

33. On the utopian dimensions of advertising and mass culture and their yoking to managerial interests, see Lears, T. J. Jackson, Fahles of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994), esp. 17–258.Google Scholar On “non-participation,” see Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 117-36Google Scholar; and Furfey, Paul Hanly, The Mystery of Iniquity (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1944), 168-79.Google Scholar On the “theology of culture,” see Tillich, Paul, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

34. Day, Dorothy, editorial in Catholic Worker 14 (March 1948): 1 Google Scholar; Weil, Simone, Oppression and Liberty, trans. Wills, Arthur and Petrie, John (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), esp. 56–124 Google Scholar; Gill, Eric, Work and Leisure (London: Faber and Faber, 1935), esp. 11–55 Google Scholar; Cort, John C., “Reform Begins at the Plant Level,” Commonweal 48 (October 1, 1948): 597 Google Scholar; Cort, John C., “Is Christian Industrialism Possible?” Commonweal 49 (October 29, 1948): 60–62.Google Scholar

35. A representative Statement of this argument is Piehl, Mel, “The Politics of Free Obedience,” in A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker, ed. Coy, Patrick G. (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1988), 213 Google Scholar: “The Catholic Worker itself has been remarkably indifferent to how ‘successful’ it has been in conventional terms, preferring to focus on the question of how faithful it has been to the gospel and its ethical implications.” Craig, Robert H., Religion and Radical Politics: An Alternative Christian Tradition in the United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 224 Google Scholar, asserts in a more secular idiom that Catholic Workers “were more concerned about empowering others than engaging in a politics of power.” See also Forest, Jim, Love Is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day (New York: Paulist Press, 1986).Google Scholar

36. Piehl, , Breaking Bread, 125-26Google Scholar; Day, , The Long Loneliness, 214.Google Scholar

37. Furfey, Paul Hanly, “There Are Two Kinds of Agrarians,” Catholic Worker 7 (October 1939): 1, 8 Google Scholar; Furfey, , Three Theories of Society, 15 Google Scholar; Furfey, , The Mystery of Iniquity, 117, 124.Google Scholar

38. Fisher, , The Catholic Counterculture in America, 38 Google Scholar; Susman, , Culture as History, 179 Google Scholar; Furfey, , Fire on the Earth, 15–16 Google Scholar; see also Furfey, , The Mystery of Iniquity, 30–54.Google Scholar It is worth remembering that, with her College education, literary talent, and highbrow reading tastes, Day also retained a good deal of the middle-class intellectual.

39. Niebuhr, H. Richard, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper, 1951), 193-94.Google Scholar Catholic radicalism would appear to exemplify the “Christ against culture” type discussed by Niebuhr (45-88).

40. Furfey, Paul Hanly, “The Sociologist and Scientific Objectivity,” American Catholic Sociological Review 6 (March 1945): 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Mundie, Paul J., “Introduction,” American Catholic Sociological Review 1 (Winter 1940): 1 Google Scholar; Furfey, , The Mystery of Iniquity, 98.Google Scholar

42. Marciniak, Ed, “Catholics and Labor-Management Relations,” in The American Apostolate: American Catholics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Ward, Leo R. (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1952), 81 Google Scholar; for a similar view, see Maritain, Jacques, Reflections on America (New York: Scribner, 1958), 108-9.Google Scholar On family and marriage counseling, see Burns, Jeffrey M., American Catholics and the Family Crisis, 1930-1962: An Ideological and Organizational Response (New York: Garland Press, 1988), esp. 103-6.Google Scholar Reiss's remarks can be found in Reiss, Paul, Sociological Analysis 25 (Spring 1964): 1.Google Scholar On the assimilation of Catholic sociologists to more secularized professional currents, see Kivisto, Peter, “The Brief Career of Catholic Sociology,” Sociological Analysis 50 (Winter 1989): 351-61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Ong, Walter J., Frontiers in American Catholicism: Essays on Ideology and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 30, 32Google Scholar; Ellis, John Tracy, American Catholics and the Intellectual Life (Chicago: Heritage Foundation, 1956), 43 Google Scholar; Murray, John Courtney, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), 103, and see also 117-22.Google Scholar

44. On the “priestly” and “prophetic” modes of sociology, see Friedrichs, Robert W., A Sociology of Sociology (New York: Free Press, 1970).Google Scholar On the sociological profession after World War II, see Ball, Terence, “The Politics of Social Science in Postwar America,” in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. May, Lary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 76–92.Google Scholar

45. Merton, Thomas, Seeds of Contemplation (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1949), 26, 28Google Scholar; Merton, Thomas, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Garden City Books, 1948), 349-50Google Scholar; Merton, Thomas, The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1959), 188, 195.Google Scholar

46. Merton, , Seeds of Contemplation, 26, 106-7Google Scholar; Merton, Thomas, Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1960), 155, 179Google Scholar; Merton, Thomas, Seeds of Destruction (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1964), 24.Google Scholar

47. Thomas Merton, letter to Catherine de Hueck, September 18, 1958, cited in Fisher, , The Catholic Counterculture in America, 244 Google Scholar; Thomas Merton, quoted in Rice, Edward, The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Good Times and the Hard Life of Thomas Merton (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 96 Google Scholar; Merton, Thomas, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), 32 Google Scholar; Thomas Merton, letter to Daniel Berrigan, June 30, 1964, cited in Mott, Michael, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 564.Google Scholar

48. Furfey, “From Catholic Liberalism to Catholic Radicalism,” 685-86.

49. On the “Catholic left,” see Meconis, Charles A., With Clumsy Grace: The American Catholic Left, 1961-1975 (New York: Seabury Press, 1979).Google Scholar Miller, James, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 326 Google Scholar, neatly summarizes these shortcomings of the New Left, but nothing compares to Lasch, Christopher, The Agony of the American Left (New York: Knopf, 1969), 180-88.Google Scholar

50. O'Brien, David J., The Renewal of American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 228, 230.Google Scholar O'Brien's book contains some of the most thoughtful and passionate analysis of Catholic radicalism from the 1930's to the 1960's. The “Slant” group merits further attention from historians of Catholicism in the 1960's. See, for example, Wicker, Brian and others, Slant Manifesto: Catholics and the Left (Springfield, Ill.: Templegate Publishers, 1966)Google Scholar; Wicker, Brian, Culture and Liturgy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963)Google Scholar; and Wicker, Brian, Toward a Contemporary Christianity (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), esp. 222-78.Google Scholar

51. Furfey, Paul Hanly, The Respectable Murderers: Social Evil and Christian Conscience (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 105 Google Scholar; Furfey, , Love and the Urban Ghetto, 131-51.Google Scholar

52. Furfey, , Love and the Urban Ghetto, 158-63.Google Scholar

53. Walzer, Michael, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 148.Google Scholar Marc H. Ellis, “Peter Maurin: To Bring the Social Order to Christ,” in Revolution of the Heart, ed. Coy, 43, relates the Catholic Worker to Third World “basic Christian communities.”