WHY STUDY HISTORY

Nothing is more dangerous to the survival of a free Western society than the increasing neglect of history in our teaching and our interests. Dictators always attempt to distort or abolish history. Nowhere has the rewriting and the manipulation of history been more avidly pursued than in Soviet Russia.

In our free society we are abolishing the past, not by rewriting it or forcefully suppressing it but simply by losing all interest in it. This is as latal for a society as it is for a man to lose his memory.^{1}

These words of Barbara Ward, one of the wisest commentators on world society, are as pertinent as the day she wrote them a generation ago. True, there are certain hopeful signs of a return of respect for history, for example, Paul Gagnon's leading article in the November 1988 issue of the Atlantic Monthly whose title I appropriated for this introductory essay. I can think of no recent pronouncement on the subject, 'Why Study History?' more arresting and relevant than that of this distinguished professor of history in the University of Massachusetts in Boston. If secular history has suffered a woeful decline in the United States since the 1950s, the history of the Catholic Church has in general fared no better. Numerous examples can be cited. Let me limit myself to one or two instances. Some years ago a professor asked one of his students, a seminarian, who had the greatest influence in shaping the mind of Saint Augustine, to which the seminarian replied, "Erasmus," just a cold thousand years after Augustin's lifetime! I often recall the student who in an examination in one of my courses a decade ago spoke of "the Dark Ages which some call the Renaissance." One could easily multiply these sad evidences of the pathetic ignorance of the past both within and without the Catholic community. This ignorance is especially painful when one thinks of how often Catholic writers are found priding themselves on their Church being an institution with a particular emphasis on tradition and a long and rich historical foundation.

Thus every step taken to remedy this situation is welcome, and one form of correction is to awaken and sustain interest in Catholic history on the local level.

5	Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture

If one begins his or her study of church history on the level of the parish or the diocese it should normally lead to a quickening of interest on a broader spectrum, namely, the nation or the world. Were I asked what pitfalls or handicaps an effort of this kind should be on the alert to avoid I should without hesitation reply: Beware of parochialism, that is, confining your interest solely to your own area or neighborhood. Remind yourself constantly that you belong to a worldwide institution, the Universal Church. No local institution or effort can furnish the richness of the global expansion of Catholicism: for example, Latin America where the current interest in liberation theology cannot be properly understood without a knowledge of the more than four hundred years of history that have marked the time since Columbus's voyage of 1492.

That having been said, I would suggest that Texas, the largest metropolitan province of the Church in this country, should provide ample materials for research and study both in the archives of the fourteen Texas dioceses and the archives of the religious communities of men and women who have made significant contributions to the spread of the fitith in the vast expanse of the state's counties, cities, towns, and countryside. True, the missionary activities of the earliest Spanish friars in Texas were less than successful in winning the native Indians, but it was with these men and their secular counterparts that Texas first experienced contact with the outside world, and from the 1530s on those contacts--at intervals--multiplied and in some cases led to permanent settlements. How many, I wonder, of contemporary Texan Catholics have a knowledge of the scholarly works of that distinguished historian, Carlos E. Casta�eda, whom I had the privilege of knowing and admiring? This new journal can bring those of this late twentieth century abreast of Casta�eda's contribution and, incidentally, reveal the discrimination practiced against this fine scholar because of his Mexican blood and background. Yet he won through in the end to a full professorship in the University of Texas and to recognition of his scholarship when he was elected president, in 1939, of the American Catholic Historical Association, to name only one of his several well-merited honors.

The editors of this new journal will, it is to be hoped, be freed from censure and condemnation on the score of their open and candid revelation of the lacts necessary to understand the Catholic history of Texas. For, while there are ample materials for a positive approach to the state's Catholic past, certain negative matters may need honest explanation, for human nature is no different in Texas from what it is elsewhere in this quite imperfect world. In that regard I have more than once quoted a letter of Jean-Baptiste Lacordaire, O.P, to the abb� Henri Perreyve, professor of church history in the Sorbonne. Lacordaire there stated:

Ought history to hide the laults of men and Orders? It was not in this sense that Baronius understood his duty as an historian of the Church. It was not after this hishion that the Saints laid open the scandals of their times. Truth, when discreetly told, is an inestimable boon to mankind, and to suppress it, especially in history, is an act of cowardice unworthy of a Christian. Timidity is the lault of our age, and truth is concealed under pretense of respect for holy things. God indeed has conferred upon His Church the prerogative of infallibility, but to none of her members has He granted immunity from sin. Peter was a sinner and a renegade, and God has been at pains to have the fact recorded in the Gospels{2}

"Timidity" is anything but a dominant characteristic of our present age, and, happily, genuine progress has been made in driving out from Catholic circles what John Henry Newman once called the "perennial fidget" of giving scandal. Catholics' contribution to history has made marked progress in other ways. A quarter century ago Henry F May of the University of California, Berkeley, in a noteworthy essay remarked, "the groups that recently seem to have contributed least are opposites: atheists and Roman Catholics?"{3} That judgment cannot in lairness be made today in regard to Catholics. To cite a single example to the contrary I would name the six volumes published in November of 1988 by Macmillan, Makers of the Catholic Community, the Bicentennial History of the Catholic Church in America authorized by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and edited by the distinguished scholar, Christopher I Kauffman.

Were I to be asked by the editors of The Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture to give my conception of the goals they might well set for themselves, I should be inclined to say that they should aim at broadening and deepening the knowledge and understanding of their readers' religious roots and acquainting those same readers with the achievements of the outstanding personalities in the Texas Catholic story. In addition, they should bring to light wherever possible the relationship--both positive and negative--of the Catholic and non-Catholic communities of Texas and the Southwest. They must deal with the contributions not only of bishops and priests but also of the laity and with the latter's role in their local communities. Last, they must keep ever in mind the mise en scene of the various local state communities in order to avoid telling the Catholic story in a vacuum.

Notes

*. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis is Professorial Lecturer in Church History at the Catholic University of America. Dean of American Catholic historians, Father Ellis is author of numerous books, essays, articles, and reference works on American Catholic history.

1. Barbara Ward, "The Battleground is Here;' New York Times Magazine, 27 January 1952, 7.

2. Henri Lacordaire, O.P., to Henri Perreyve, 2 Apri1 1855, in Joseph T. Foisset, Vie du P�re Lacordaire (Paris: Lecofl're, 1870) 2:532.

3. Henry F. May, "The Recovery of American Religious History;" American Historical Review, 70 (October 1964): 90.

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