Sklar: Integrate Catholic experience
By KIFLIN TURNER
News Writer
The integration of Catholic history in American history is essential to understanding American history as complete work, said Kathryn Sklar, from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Her talk leads off a lecture series focusing on Catholicism in America, the culmination of three years of research by more than 40 scholars.
"[The study] offers a well-developed plan to promote the integration of Catholic history into American history to provide a fruitful intersection," Sklar said.
Sklar said she regards the mission to widen the scope of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic experience in America as "a project that is making history in the history of writing."
The message of Sklar's presentation centered on integrating the Catholic experience into mainstream society. She attributed the clear lack of integration of Catholic history in American history as a result of "Protestant dominated movements" which held the belief that "God's providence is guiding the nation towards providential goals."
Beginning in the 17th century, Sklar said, this prevalent Protestant ethic created an "idealistic version of American history and one of many interpretations." She further declared Protestant domination as "the dancer and the dance." Sklar urged scholars and historians alike to create their own history in which a new way of viewing established history will bring about change and increase Catholic inclusion in society.
Recent trends, however, reveal a growing acceptance and inclusion of Catholic history, Sklar reported, that now runs in "parallel riverbeds that flows into the mainstream."
"If we could imagine American historians embracing Catholic history, it would be a great change," she said.
There are two main factors behind the growing acceptance of Catholic history, Sklar said.
One is "a distinctive tradition and its minority, or our outside status in American history," she said. The other is history's label of Catholicism as "otherness."
"This tension between America and minorities kept [Catholicism's] identity in the mainstream," she said.
The tension mainstream American and other minorities narrowed the differences in Catholic and American history.
The women's movement, especially among Protestants, is a main focus of Sklar's research. She attributed the success of the "U.S. women's movement by its separateness of its identity." Likewise, Sklar maintains that the "same inclusion is occurring in the recent integration of Catholic history." She said the women's movement exemplified "good history" and that "good history is relatively easy to recognize [making it] hard to keep outsiders out."
Saying "anti-Catholicism [is] alive and well," Sklar pointed to four tactics to improve acceptance: First, Sklar urged the scholars "to continue with Cushwa's plan in integrating Catholic history into American history." Second, she challenged modern reformers.
"Don't be shy," she said. "Use the perspective of Catholic history to make big claims on American history."
She also said that these reformers should "subvert or critique the dominant paradigm of providential history" whenever possible and to write about all angles of our national experience.
By redefining the way in which history is written, "future Catholicism might create new mainstreams [that] will gain the wide audience that it deserves."
Together with the support of the Lily Endowment and the Notre Dame, the Cushwa project founded by Charles and Margaret Paul Cushwa, plans to continue its endeavors towards the increased inclusion of Catholic history with the assistance of theologians and scholars.
Sklar received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1969 and has published numerous articles and reviews, earning both Ford and Guggenheim endowments.
Sklar is best known for her scholarly accounts of Kathryn Beecher and Florence Kelley, both of which earned her the Berkshire-Price Award.
All News Stories for Friday, March 10, 2000
