Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century

How did Catholic colleges and universities deal with the modernization of education and the rise of research universities? In this book, Philip Gleason offers the first comprehensive study of Catholic higher education in the twentieth century, tracing the evolution of responses to an increasingly secular educational system. At the beginning of the century, Catholics accepted modernization in the organizational sphere while resisting it ideologically. Convinced of the truth of their religious and intellectual position, the restructured Catholic colleges grew rapidly after World War I, committed to educating for a "Catholic Renaissance." This spirit of militance carried over into the post-World War II era, but new currents were also stirring as Catholics began to look more favorably on modernity in its American form. Meanwhile, their colleges and universities were being transformed by continuing growth and professionalization. By the 1960's, changes in church teaching and cultural upheaval in American society reinforced the internal transformation already under way, creating an "identity crisis" which left Catholic educators uncertain of their purpose. Emphasizing the importance to American culture of the growth of education at all levels, Gleason connects the Catholic story with major national trends and historical events. By situating developments in higher education within the context of American Catholic thought, Contending with Modernity provides the fullest account available of the intellectual development of American Catholicism in the twentieth century.

Review :
"Philip Gleason has produced a magisterial interpretation of Catholic higher education in the twentieth century....[T]he most reliable and convincing comprehensive history of Catholic higher education. It is a must read for all involved in Catholic higher education and for all those interested in the intellectual and institutional history of religion and education in this country."--U.S. Catholic Historian "[A] very fine book."--Commonweal "Contending With Modernity is...an important book....[A] thorough and impressive piece of scholarship."--America "Academics, their appetites whetted by a steady stream of brilliant articles, eargerly awaited this history. They will not be disappointed. Gleason knows the material, blends it into a dramatic success story and provides some answers to the how and why questions."--National Catholic Reporter "A measured, balanced, meticulously researched, and authoritative study of a subject as important as it is vast. Reading this book is an almost unalloyed delight....The insights of Contending with Modernity fully match both the complexity and importance of its subject."--Books and Culture "Philip Gleason has written a stimulating and important book that makes a valuable contribution to understanding American Catholic intellectual culture in the first half of the twentieth century."--Catholic Historical Review "Athough the evolution of Catholic higher education in the United States ia an important and complex topic, historians, for the most part, have accorded it meager attention. This beautifully written book, based heavily on primary data, goes far to compensate for past neglect. This is a superb book and it is highly recommended."--The Journal of American History "The story he tells is fascinating....It is a quite excellent book, detailed in research, accomplished in execution, authoritative in judgement, and one which will hardly be bettered."--Labor History "[A] superb history."--The Cresset "Philip Gleason's history of American Catholic higher education in the twentieth century is masterful....[T]he most important study of the topic since Edward J. Power's History of Catholic Higher Education in the United States (1958)."--American Historical Review "Professor Gleason has provided an erudite, searching, thoroughly researched and elegantly written history of the evolution of on of these traditions....[T]he definitive study on the subject and likely to remain so for many years to come."--Studies in Education "In this massively researched and well-reasoned book, Philip Gleason brings a lifetime of learning and experience to showing how [second- and third- generation Catholic immigrants] managed [to satisfy the demand for Catholic education], how Catholic education and the Catholic intellectual revival of the interwar years advanced hand in hand, and how, in the stormy 1960s, their partnership foundered."--hurch History "As this century and millennium draw to a close, we have reason to thank Oxford University Press and Philip Gleason of Notre Dame for offering us a critical insider's history of modern Catholic higher education in the United States over the past hundred years...[L]ikely to become a classic reference work."--The Journal of Religion "[Gleason's] dense, thorough interpretation should encourage a new generation of scholars to examine not only the Catholic story but also to blend it into a historical synthesis of American higher education."--Historical Journal of Massachusetts