As future historians map out the contours of the emergence of American Catholic theology, William L. Portier's contribution as a historical theologian will loom large. His work on the modernist and Americanist calculus in particular is well known across Catholic scholarship circles.
Edited by two students who were part of his doctoral seminar, Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry brings together scholarly insight into Catholicism in America via fifteen innovative and interpretive essays. The collection by former students, colleagues, and friends is arranged in three parts: “Reflecting on the Word of God,” “Inculturating the Catholic Tradition,” and “Exploring Faith and Reason in the Body Politic.” The essays represent interdisciplinary perspectives and engage central themes in Portier's work through the likes of Catholic historical stalwarts such as Orestes Brownson, Issac Hecker, John Courtney Murray, Henri de Lubac, and Maurice Blondel. They also address multiple issues related to making sense out of the current state of the post–Vatican II church in America. A thorough bibliography and enumeration of Portier's writings are also included.
The essays in this collection are, with an exception or two, coherently related to Portier's overall project of ressourcement of American Catholic life and thought. They articulate his long-standing interest in the relationship between faith and reason, between history and theology, the cultural construction of the latter, the ecclesial and theological impact of distorted power relationships, the “constructive retrieval” of the Catholic tradition, and the public presence of Catholicism. These themes appear throughout the essays, as does commentary on Portier's insights into the reception of Vatican II and the current state of the church, especially in consequence of the economic and educational changes of World War II and its aftermath, the dissolution of the pre–Vatican II Catholic subculture—about which Portier was one of the earliest voices—and the emergence of “evangelical Catholics” in response to this demise. Portier's argument about the greater continuity between Americanism and modernism, along with his criticism of “superficial historiography,” which posits an uncritical accommodation to American cultural norms as the ideal, is also skillfully weighed in several essays.
As is the nature of the Festschrift genre, readers will find various essays more or less compelling relative to their own interests and passions. In this reader's case, part 2 (“Inculturating the Catholic Tradition”) proved especially stimulating. Essays by David J. O'Brien, Michael F. Lombardo, Benjamin T. Peters, and Susan K. Sack offer rich insight into the opportunities and travails of the Catholic engagement of the Christ and culture nexus in the American context, and by way of some of Portier's insights in this regard, notably concerning the emerging “evangelical Catholics” phenomenon. O'Brien is particularly perceptive in his high-energy discussion of the Americanizing/Americanization dynamics of the Catholic situation in relation to Portier's thought.
It is hardly a secret in these days of a weakened Catholic subculture—and with the exception of the Hispanic/Asian realities of the church in America—that Catholic identity has become more porous, unstable, and increasingly deinstitutionalized. As some of Portier's more recent work amply illustrates, how and why this has happened, along with speculation about the long-term consequences, will continue to play out in contemporary Catholic scholarship and in various church-related culture-war platforms. Portier's voice and the collegial scholarship he has stimulated is a helpful directive in all of this even as a number of noteworthy questions inevitably arise. Will, for example, the subgroup of American Catholics that Portier, O'Brien, and others classify as “evangelical Catholics” prove a viable and enduring church-like “new pluralism” response to the situation—or simply be the harbinger of another sect-like fragmenting dynamic similar to those attending Protestantism's engagement with modernity? As the authors in this salutary collection note in one complimentary manner or another, Portier's keen sensibilities surrounding the creative engagement of personal faith with the wholesome integration of theology and history are well worth heeding in confronting these contemporary challenges and opportunities.
