Title: Parish Boundaries
First published: 1996
Description: Steeples topped by crosses still dominate neighborhood skylines in many American cities, silent markers of local worlds rarely examined by historians. In Parish Boundaries, John McGreevy chronicles the history of these Catholic parishes and connects their unique place in the urban landscape to the course of American race relations in the twentieth century.

In vivid portraits of parish life in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, McGreevy examines the contacts and conflicts between Euro-American Catholics and their African-American neighbors. He demonstrates how the territorial nature of the parish - more bound by geography than Protestant or Jewish congregations - kept Catholics in their neighborhoods, and how this commitment to place complicated efforts to integrate urban neighborhoods.

He also shows how the church responded to the growing number of African-American parishioners by condemning racism, and how this teaching was received in communities rocked by racial strife. Taking the story through the Second Vatican Council and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, McGreevy demonstrates how debates about community and racial justice helped trigger a more general reevaluation of the character of American Catholicism.
Subjects: African Americans, Catholic Church, Community, Discrimination in housing, History, Northeastern States, Parishes, Race relations, Religious aspects, Religious aspects of Race relations, Social conditions, Communities, Noirs américains, Paroisses, Communauté, Aspect religieux, Nordstaaten, Stadt, Steden, Ethnische Beziehungen, Discrimination dans le logement, Negers, Histoire, Rooms-katholicisme, Conditions sociales, Relations raciales, Église catholique, Katholische Kirche, Church and social problems, catholic church, Race relations, religious aspects, christianity, Inner cities, Catholic church, united states, Northern ireland, social conditions, Race relations, religious aspects, Catholics, united states, United states, race relations, United states, history, 20th century, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Discrimination & Race Relations, Minority Studies
Places: Northeastern States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: E185.912 .M38 1996