Joseph Varacalli just wrote me a note about a new book of his. I want to take this occasion, however, to post notes about a couple of his books that I find especially significant. But before that, a word about Varacalli himself.Joseph A. Varacalli is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Nassau Community College-SUNY. He was co-founder of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, first Editor-in-Chief of the Catholic Social Science Review, twice a Board of Directors Member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars -- whose meetings are truly enjoyable affairs -- and the 12th recipient of the Pope Pius XI Award for the furthering of a true Catholic social science as called for in Quadragesimo Anno.
In Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public Order 
(Lexington Books, 2000), Varacalli describes how and why Catholic America has essentially failed to shape the American Republic in any significant way. American society has never experienced a "Catholic moment" -- the closest it came was during the immediate post-World War II era -- nor is it now close to approximating one. Varacalli identifies as the cause of the current situation the "failed community" of Catholic America: an ineffective and dissent-ridden set of organizational arrangements that has not succeeded in adequately communicating the social doctrine of the Church to Catholic Americans or to the key idea-generating sectors of American life.The "bright promise" of Catholic America lies in the long and still developing tradition of social Catholicism. With a revitalized, orthodox, sophisticated community to serve as the carrier of Catholic social doctrine, Varacalli sees trends of thought that would propose viable alternatives to philosophies and ideologies that currently dominate the American public sphere-ones that would thus have a formidable impact on American society.
The Catholic Experience in America (Greenwood Press, 2005) is the latest book of Varacalli's -- the one about which he wrote me. It was published in the American Religious Experience series and chronicles the history and present situation of the Catholic Church and the American Catholic subculture in the United States. Catholics have had a long history in America, and they have often had conflicting demands --should they remain loyal to the authority of the pope in Rome, or should they become more accommodating to American culture and society? The Catholic Experience in America combines historical, sociological, philosophical, and theological and religious scholarship to provide the reader with an overview of the general trends of American Catholic history, without over-simplifying the complex nature of that history. Donald J. D'Elia says about this book:If someone were to tell me that he had time to read only one one book, and wanted the best, about the history of Catholicism in America, without fear of exaggeration I would tell him to read Joseph A.Varacalli's masterly The Catholic Experience in AmericaOther books by Joseph A. Varacalli:
- Models and Images of Italian Americana: Academy and Society
- Toward the Establishment of Liberal Catholicism in America
- The Catholic and politics in post-World War II America: A sociological analysis
- The Saints in the Lives of Italian Americans
- The New Racism in Europe: A Sicilian Ethnography / States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration: IMR : An article from: The International Migration Review [HTML]
- Ethnic politics in Jersey City: The changing nature of Irish-Italian relations, l9l7-1983
- The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia
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