"Everything That Rises Must Converge:" Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor and American Catholic Identity in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Abstract
This thesis uses the public careers of Bishop Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and Flannery O'Connor to examine American Catholic identity in the years between World War II and Vatican II. Clearly, all three had different approaches: Sheen was the star of one of the most popular television programs of the 1950s; Day was a radical activist; O'Connor was a writer confined to her family's home in Georgia. Despite these different approaches, this study demonstrates that all three operated within the same coherent philosophical framework: orthodox Catholicism. At this time, Pope Leo XIII's emphasis on social justice and the Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas defined American understanding of orthodoxy. French theology and the pre-Vatican II predilection for the veneration of saints influenced them as well. The study concludes by placing these three figures in an historical context, focusing on the social issues facing the American Catholic Church at the time.
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- OSU Theses [15752]