Saints and Sinners: The American Catholic Experience Through Stories, Memoirs, Essays and Commentary

Operating from his conviction that American Catholic writers share a niche in American literature similar to Southern or New England writers, Tobin, former editor-in-chief of the Book-of-the-Month Club (now editor-in-chief of Ballantine), has compiled a ""tasting menu"" of 33 excerpts from books published since World War II. The book is divided into four sections: Politics and Protest, Witness and Dissent, Catholic Memories, Catholic Imagination. Because Tobin heavily emphasizes memoir and fiction, with smatterings of biography and sociology, the collection is a broad sample of American Catholic culture of the recent past. In and around the antilabor war of Cardinal Francis Spellman, the political trials of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and the tortured youthful conscience of writer Doris Kearns Goodwin, readers will encounter a range of perceptions, personalities and paradoxes. The ""Catholic Memories"" section includes notable reminiscences by luminaries such as Mary McCarthy, William F. Buckley and Garry Wills. Yet Tobin's anthology misses much of the turmoil of late 20th-century Catholicism. There is little more than a whiff here of Vatican II's reforms in liturgy and theology or of contemporary intra-Church battles over women's ordination, married priests and sexual ethics. Some may regret, too, the absence of poetry and the dominance of male views. Nevertheless, in addition to providing a good read, Tobin makes a significant contribution to a small but growing body of work on Catholicism as a category of American culture. (Oct.)