EDWIN VINCENT O'HARA: An American Prelate

A biography of the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Kansas City, this volume succeeds in giving an objective account of the bishop's life through incidents, conversations and tributes paid to him by leaders of Church and State in connection with his character and activity. Students of recent American history and of ecclesiastical history in particular, all those interested in the subject of the relation of the Catholic Church to American life and seminarians and priests, who need the inspiration of such men as Bishop O'Hara, should be urged to read this book. The author details the events of the bishop's life from his birth in 1881 and life on a farm in Minnesota, on through his seminary years, when he distinguished himself as a brilliant and scholarly student to his successive achievements in being responsible for America's first successful minimum wage law, organizing the first Catholic Rural Life Conference, playing a prominent part in the Oregon School Question, becoming Bishop of Great Falls, Montana, organizing the National Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, encouraging the work of the revision of the Baltimore Catechism and of the English New Testament, promoting the cause of English in the ritual, becoming Bishop of Kansas City and ending his days in Rome with honors and preoccupation with further activity. A great planner, organizer and administrator, he displayed the best qualities of American leadership. He was typically American also in the depth of his tolerance and the extent of his interest in practical means to assist in raising the level of the religious, social and economic life of the nation all at the same time. But more important, the author succeeds in letting emerge from his book the image of a model Catholic bishop applying his deep religious and moral character and intelligence in a liberal and progressive way to the basic problems of the present and the future. Here we have no ecclesiastical politician, no ecclesiastical financier, no reactionary authority, no misguided zealot, but a man of classical balance and integrity of Catholic thought and action.