Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, Father Peter Paul Cooney traveled across the United States collecting material about Catholic religious who, like himself, served in the U.S. Civil War. One of his colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, Father William Corby, provided another look at consecrated life during conflict in Memoirs of Chaplain Life [1894]. Over a century later, Father Robert Miller continues the tradition of a priest chronicling the Catholic Civil War chaplaincy in a book published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Miller believes that Cooney, Corby, and over one hundred other Catholic chaplains—Union and Confederate—“were the concrete and immediate face of Catholicism, the ‘contact point’ with God and eternity for both Catholics and non-Catholics as well” (xii).
Faith of the Fathers, as Miller’s book is entitled, contributes to a slowly growing body of scholarship on the Civil War chaplaincy. While previous studies have defined chaplains’ duties or presented individual biographies, Miller expands this work by updating the list of known priest-chaplains, offering “collective biographical portraits” of some notable examples and explaining the unique challenges faced by Catholic clergy in the service (xv). In this way, he synthesizes many recent methodological trends through the lens of a particular denomination (xv).
Perhaps Miller’s most significant contribution is his expanded list of Catholic chaplains. Whereas the largest previous inventory of Catholic Civil War chaplains tallied seventy-nine names, Miller identifies at least 126 priests who served in the role. The discrepancy in numbers stems from the fact that the chaplaincy “is consistently not clearly defined nor clarified” (58). Miller addresses the issue by offering a nuanced categorization. “Official” chaplains were those “recognized and approved in some formal way by a legitimate government authority,” while “unofficial” ones ministered without such approval (28). Miller further distinguishes between “full-time” chaplains, who served for years, and “part-time/occasional” ones, who served only a few months. These distinctions allow Miller to structure his inquiry and broaden the scope of who qualifies as a Civil War chaplain.
Beyond this categorization, Miller examines the experiences of chaplains before, during, and after the war. Chaplains faced “resistance, conflict, and challenge from the outset,” which included rampant anti-Catholicism, clerical shortages, and the many dangers wrought by army life (3). In an age before government regulations of the chaplaincy, most of these men determined the responsibilities they needed to fulfill. Providing sacraments made up the “bulk of their ministry,” but many also took to preaching and assisting the men with their material needs (60). These men’s adaptive ministry continued after their wartime service. Examining postwar lives is a valuable tool that many scholars overlook.
Biographical sketches comprise most of Faith of the Fathers (xv). Miller begins by examining these men by religious order, starting with the Holy Cross priests from Notre Dame (including Corby and Cooney), then the Jesuits, followed by other, smaller orders before concluding with the men who answered directly to diocesan bishops. Other categories include hospital chaplains, ministers to predominantly Irish units, men who served in the Far West, and finally those “who depart from the ‘usual’ wartime chaplain’s service” (269). When applicable, Miller divides these categories between Union and Confederate chaplains. These groupings are useful to readers familiar with the nuances of Catholicism and religious history. For the more traditional Civil War student concerned about various operational theaters, the work may be less intuitive. Miller assists in navigation by cross-referencing sections within the book, which is a useful, if not flawless way of connecting repeated accounts.
Informing Miller’s findings are a combination of mostly secondary and published primary sources. That said, his notes include references to a few documents in the National Archives, Notre Dame’s Archives, and Georgetown University’s Special Collections. Desiring that his book serve in part as a “reference work…for future research,” he calls for scholars to make “deep dive[s] into archival materials” to answer some of the questions he did not have space for (xiv; 357). He also stresses that the 126 number is likely a minimum, and that “the list of occasional chaplains is not intended to be comprehensive or complete in any way” (381n5). Therefore, the book’s subtitle–The Comprehensive History of Catholic Chaplains in the Civil War—overstates an already impressive work that Miller envisions as the start of scholarship, rather than its final word.
If, as Miller rightly concludes, the Civil War chaplaincy requires a better scholarly description, his book would have done well to consider the experiences of different denominations. A focused look at Catholic priests is permissible and even appropriate, but his claim that they were “the vanguard, the elite of all Civil War chaplains of both sides” warrants more evidence than the statistics and mostly Catholic testimony that he provides (337). With only a couple of exceptions tucked away in the middle of Chapter 12, Miller does not sufficiently consider how chaplains of different denominations viewed one another. More attention in this area would help to contextualize the priests’ place within the wider chaplain corps.
These limitations notwithstanding, Faith of the Fathers is a valuable addition to scholarship on the chaplaincy, Civil War-era religion, and American Catholicism. Miller’s reevaluation of the number and experiences of Union and Confederate priest-chaplains offers the casual reader an expansive overview of an overlooked topic while offering scholars a useful source for future research. More than just recounting the story of men like Fathers Corby and Cooney, Robert J. Miller suitably carries on their inquisitive legacy.
Danny Brennan is a PhD student in the Department of History at West Virginia University. Broadly interested in the social and cultural history of the Union army, his dissertation will focus on Northern chaplains and their contributions to Civil War memory.
Related topics: religion
