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Debating God’s EconomySocial Justice in America on the Eve of Vatican IICraig PrentissWhat does God sayabout the “correct” socialteaching of the CatholicChurch? Pre–Vatican IICatholics, from archbishopsand theologians toCatholic union workersand laborers on U.S. farms,argued repeatedly aboutthis in the late nineteenthand early twentiethcenturies. Debating God’sEconomy is a history ofAmerican Catholic economicdebates taking place during the generation precedingVatican II. At that time, all of society was rife withsociopolitical debates over the relative merits and dangersof Marxism, capitalism, and socialism; labor unions, classconsciousness, and economic power were the watchwordsof the day. This was a time of immense social change,and especially in the light of the monumental social andeconomic upheavals in Russia and Europe in the earlytwentieth century, Catholics found themselves taking sides.Catholic subcultures across America sought to legitimize—or, in theological parlance, “sanctify”—diverse economicsystems that were, at times, mutually exclusive. While untilnow the faithful—both scholars and nonscholars—havetypically spoken of “The Catholic Social Tradition” as ifit were a linear and monolithic prescription for curingsocial ills, Prentiss maintains that the tradition is betterunderstood as a debate grounded in a common mythologythat provides Catholics with a distinctive vocabulary andtouchstone of authority.Craig Prentiss is Associate Professor of Theology andReligious Studies at Rockhurst University in Kansas City,Missouri, and editor of Religion and the Creation of Race andEthnicity: An Introduction (2003).232 pages | 6 x 9 | Juneisbn 978-0-271-03341-9 | cloth: $55.00sReligion/HistoryNew in PaperbackFrom the Salon to the SchoolroomEducating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-CenturyFranceRebecca RogersWinner, 2007 Book Prize,the British History ofEducation Society“Rogers fills an importantgap in French women’shistory between OldRegime salons and theestablishment of universalpublic education for bothgirls and boys under theThird Republic.” —D. A. Harvey, Choice“In this lively piece ofwriting, one appreciates the interplay between generaltheoretical considerations and archival investigation.Rebecca Rogers excels in describing how the structure ofschools and their network relates to the formation of socialand individual identities.” —Alain Corbin,University of Paris, Panthéon SorbonneHow a nation educates its children tells us much aboutthe values of its people. From the Salon to the Schoolroomexamines the emerging secondary school system for girls innineteenth-century France and uncovers how that systemcontributed to the fashioning of the French bourgeoiswoman.Rebecca Rogers explores the variety of schools—religiousand lay—that existed for girls and paints portraits of thewomen who ran them and the girls who attended them.Drawing upon a wide array of public and private sources—school programs, prescriptive literature, inspection reports,diaries, and letters—she reveals the complexity of thefemale educational experience as the schoolroom graduallyreplaced the salon as the site of French women’s specialsource of influence.Rebecca Rogers is Maître de Conférences in history atthe Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg. Her first book, LesDemoiselles de la Légion d’Honneur: Les Maisons d’éducationde la Legion d’honneur au dix-neuvième siècle, was publishedin France in 1992.352 pages | 4 illustrations/3 maps | 6.125 x 9.25 | available nowisbn 978-0-271-02491-2 | paper: $25.00sHistory1-800-326-9180 | 19