The Look of Catholics

Emily Clark

Last month, Paul asked me to review Anthony Burke Smith's recent book The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War. This is an enjoyable book and a really fun read. In particular, for those who teach courses on Catholicism in the US, this book would be a good option for undergraduates since it uses the familiar medium of popular culture.

According to Smith, American popular culture had “gone Catholic crazy at midcentury.” For Smith, popular culture matters because looking at representations by Catholics and of Catholics during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, elucidates “the cultural struggle over national definition.” At first, this may read as yet another rehash of an oversimplified interpretation of Will Herberg’s famous Protestant, Catholic, Jew, but Smith’s book goes deeper than that. Rather than argue that Catholics were merely integrated into the realm of acceptable identity, Smith’s foray into popular culture illustrates how a new American identity was fashioned from the Great Depression to the Cold War and that Catholicism played a significant and formative role in this development. The visual depiction of Catholics offered an embodiment of American values, patriotism, and anxieties. During the 1930s, Catholics represented the necessity of reform pluralism, and afterwards they characterized the conservative focus on religion, home, and family. Catholicism went from symbol of a “socially reformist vision of America” through “Catholic communalism” to “more conservative visions of the nation” through “images of Catholic community and authority,” and this development shows the malleability and flexibility of Catholic identity and imagination in the development of a new national identity.

In the 1930s, the urban parish priest represented the urban, ethnic, working-class Catholic population, and this population was the center of reform politics. Urban savvy and crime fighting, the priests in films like Angels with Dirty Faces reflected Catholicism’s ability to be a voice of moral authority and social reform. However, this image of the priest as “the cultural twin” of “the famed ethnic mobster,” changed with Bing Crosby’s depiction of a youthful and modern parish priest who is also “the hip denizen of the wider world” in 1944’s Going My Way. Father O’Malley is a “cool” priest, accessible and popular because he reflected a changed, modernized, revitalized Catholicism that can relate with outsiders, adversity, youth, and all social challenges and changes. The image of the priest changed again with the popularity of Fulton Sheen’s media shows like television’s Life is Worth Living. Sheen’s appeal came from his ability to connect with the post-immigrant generation searching for their own cultural identity apart from their parents’ enclave (much like the “immigrants’ daughters” in Orsi’s Thank You St. Jude). Sheen highlighted the traditional American values of family and home more generally, and, more specifically “the anti-modern Catholic romance of spiritual rejuvenation and moral adventure.” Anti-communism certainly played a role in Sheen’s message for America was a symbol of virtue, and the soul of the nation was at stake with the epic battle between America and communism. Though these priest examples range from movie characters to an actual auxiliary bishop, they elucidate the evolving “look” of the Catholic clergy in America and how their support of reformist and then consensual visions of America developed alongside the rest of the nation.

Along with this transformation in the depiction of priests, Smith tracks the changing focus of Catholic movie directors. Directors like Leo McCarey and John Ford also illuminate the changing “look” of Catholics from more liberal interests in social reform in the 1930s to traditional consensus in postwar America. The book’s middle chapter focuses on the portrayal of Catholics in Life magazine from that of odd, alien outsiders who practice an exotic religion to a symbol of patriotism, community, and moral strength. In Smith’s words, “voyeuristic treatment of Catholicism in the thirties thus gave way to patriotic and affirmative imagery during the forties.”

Smith’s work raises some interesting questions. The Look of Catholics illustrates how Catholics were portrayed in the products of popular culture, but I still have questions regarding the consumption of that popular culture. Going My Way was a very popular and successful movie, but did it really change the way the general American populace felt about priests? Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life encourages us to focus on the actions of the consumers – what they do with the products they take from the society around them. Though de Certeau largely viewed popular culture through his theoretical lens of strategies and tactics, this focus on how the consumer uses popular culture (as opposed to the notion that they passively receive it) raises questions about the everyday reception of Smith’s movie, television, magazine, and radio examples. His analysis of the way Catholics were portrayed is fascinating and the relationship of their “look” to developing notions of American political identity is illuminating, but what about the everyday non-Catholic consumer of these products? In 1946, one disgruntled Protestant movie go-er asked the Motion Pictures Producers’ Association “How much longer do we have to tolerant Catholic pictures?” Smith uses this letter and the existence of others like it to note “the cultural significance of popular Catholic films,” and while some complained, “many moviegoers liked Hollywood’s Catholics.” Clearly, the success of these films proves that many Americans – Catholic or otherwise – enjoyed them, but I kept wanting Smith to go one step deeper in their reception and consumption.

I also couldn’t help but wonder about American Catholic support for fascism in the 1930s and how that would affect their portrayals in popular culture. Peter D’Agostino’s Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism counters the progressively assimilationist narrative of American Catholicism by providing a history of “the Roman Question,” or American Catholics’ concern over the loss of the pope’s temporal and geographic sovereignty of the Papal States. When Mussolini supported Catholicism and joined the pope in his struggle against Liberal Italy, he secured Vatican City for the pope and resolved the Roman Question. This encouraged both large sectors of Italian-American Catholics and the Catholic population in general to begin “preaching fascism.” In fact, D’Agostino identifies the anti-Fascist Catholic spokesmen of the 1930s as “lonely.” Smith argues that the “look” of Catholics in popular culture reflected larger issues in national identity and political conflict, but Catholic concerns of papal sovereignty and their support of Fascist Italy – perhaps the most politically pressing issue in American Catholicism for D’Agostino – never surface among Smith’s popular culture sources. Maybe fascism was there, maybe it wasn't, but if D'Agostino is correct, fascism should be part of any conversation regarding national definition, politics, and Catholics in this time period.

Though D’Agostino’s work may ask questions of Smith’s book, the two narratives together provide a new way to look at Catholics and consensus at midcentury. According to D’Agostino, after World War II many Catholics were quick to say that they had always been anti-Fascist. Concurrently, popular culture increasingly portrayed Catholics as the epitome of national identity – an ethnically and religiously plural society that together extolled family, religion, moral character, personal faith, and national pride. In both books, the idea of American identity did not just slowly encapsulate Catholics in an inevitable progressive fashion; rather, the creation of consensus and the inclusion of Catholics in it was a more active process, which Catholics took part in, and in doing so, they helped remake American identity.

Review: Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game

Art Remillard

Michael Zogry first learned of the Cherokee precursor to lacrosse, called “anetso,” in a class with Raymond Fogelson of the University of Chicago. The dearth of scholarship on the game surprised Zogry, who saw it as a fascinating blend of athletics and religious ritual. He read carefully the two major treatments of anetso—Fogelson’s 1962 dissertation and James Mooney’s 1890 article “Cherokee Ball Play”—and realized that there was more to the story. So when Zogry began his doctoral work, he aspired to offer a new perspective. This culminated in his innovative, compelling, and thoroughly researched, Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game: At the Center of Ceremony and Identity.

Zogry spent four years studying anetso before seeing it in person in 1997. He arrived at the fairgrounds in Cherokee, North Carolina armed with a video camera and an intellectual suitcase stuffed with names like Bourdieu, Bell, Grimes, Geertz, Lévi-Strauss, Smith, Turner, and others. Theories raced through Zogry’s head, when suddenly reality struck—literally. As the game progressed, Zogry watched the tiny white ball float toward him and the players following closely behind. Unable to evade the rush, Zogry was knocked to the ground. This collision, the author recalls, “has continued to assert itself as a strong memory. I now think of it as a metaphor for describing my process of grappling with the relevant issues, and frankly, the limitations of my scholarly perspective to apprehend even this bit of culture in anything but a fleeting way” (15).

Specifically, Zogry came to realize that he needed a new vocabulary to discuss this game, which is more than “just a game.” In The Savage Mind, Lévi-Strauss said that a game has a set of rules and ends when one side prevails. In contrast, a ritual, which bears resemblance to a game, aims to produce, in Lévi-Strauss’s words, “a particular type of equilibrium between two sides.” While perhaps a useful point of departure, and certainly still influential, Zogry insists that anetso does not fit neatly within this conceptual framework. It is a game, to be sure. But Zogry demonstrates that anetso connects to the most significant dimensions of Cherokee religious identity. As a result, the game "resists and problematizes" the classifications of Lévi-Strauss and the likeminded (1).

Zogry starts by looking at anetso’s relation to Cherokee cultural narratives. Among the stories he retells is one of a pre-human contest between the birds and animals, where, interestingly enough, two small animals approach the bird team and request to join their side. The team captain, an eagle, accepts the defectors and fits them with wings, making one a bat and the other a flying squirrel. When the game begins, the retrofitted rodents lead the birds to victory. According to Zogry, the Cherokee still recount this narrative, particularly to the youth, to warn against boastfulness and to emphasize the importance of “inclusiveness” and “adaptability” (48). This sense of tribal solidarity was essential during the “Era of Great Change” (1799-1838). Then, missionaries criticized the game for its perceived “heathenish” underpinnings, and calls for removal became louder and louder. Meanwhile, Zogry shows how the Cherokee defiantly played anetso, using it as “a vehicle for expression of Cherokee identity” (105).

In addition to detailing the broad narrative and social meanings of anetso, Zogry also examines rituals directly associated with the game. Preparation begins weeks in advance with public and private rituals. Ball teams hire conjurers, who enlist assistance from “other-than-human persons.” Players avoid sexual contact, while abiding by a strict dietary code that prohibits consumption of young birds, small animals, or frogs. Zogry finds that most of these traditions have carried into contemporary performances of anetso. And while most players are active Christians, few see any conflict between their Cherokee and Christian practices. This is a perspective that has developed with time, just as anetso has changed over the ages. But Zogry insists that the game is still vital, despite claims from informants that it's not. “The ethic of participation,” he retorts, “the way the players carry themselves and acquit themselves on the field, the honor of performing to the best of their ability in a contest that their ancestors once played on the same land, these remain meaningful reasons to participate for Cherokee adults and teenagers” (145).

In the book's closing pages, Zogry considers the broader implications of his findings. For example, he takes aim at Allen Guttmann, who in From Ritual to Record, argues that in the modern sporting world “the attachment to the realm of the transcendent has been severed.” Guttmann maintains that a priest or minister at a football game does not serve the same function as a shaman at an Indian ball game. Without the minister, the football game will go on. Without the shaman, there is no ball game. Zogry is unconvinced. “Football, like anetso, provides a cultural locus for a range of activities, some that can be termed ‘ritual’ and some ‘religious.’ Preliminary and postgame activities, propitiatory activities, community involvement, even gambling serve to weave the experience of this game into the social lives of players and spectators” (221). To be clear, Zogry does not advocate collapsing religion and sports. Rather, he seems comfortable with ambiguity and open to “rethinking the categories in a manner that hopefully is more accurate” (235).

Specialists in Cherokee religion, ritual studies, and religion and sports will appreciate this book. Zorgy uses an impressive array of sources, from his own fieldwork, to newspapers, manuscripts, personal journals, and travel accounts. The book is thoroughly interdisciplinary, drawing insights from historians, anthropologists, and theorists of religion, ritual, sports, and culture. Additionally, Zogry hints at possibilities for more study. He mentions that women presently play anetso, a new development in the game’s history and “a fruitful area of future research” (184). I hope that Zogry explores this "fruitful" terrain, perhaps making it part of a broader treatment of Native American women and sports. I wonder how female performances of anetso would compare with the Navajo and Apache “Sunrise Ceremony.” In this rite-of-passage ceremony, young women arise early in the morning and run out toward the rising sun and back, thereby recreating the myth of the “White Painted Woman,” a deity who reversed the aging process by moving toward the sun and melding with her younger self. The ritualized running also emphasizes strength and health, in contrast to tribal plagues such as alcoholism and type-2 diabetes. Zogry has done the intellectual work to examine this and other religious/athletic performances, and I'm eager to see where he takes us next.