Piety and Nationalism: Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850-1895

Gerald J. Stortz is an assistant professor of history at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

In recent years, the study of Canada’s Irish Catholics has become an
industry unto itself, beginning with a rethinking of the nature of the
immigration experience, and extending to the roles played by the clergy.
However, little attention has been paid to the Catholic laity.

Piety and Nationalism (winner of the prestigious John Filman Shea prize
for best North American Catholic history) is one of the first efforts to
explore the relationship between the institutional church and the laity
in the form of organizations, such as the St. Vincent de Paul and
temperance societies, as well as the rise and changing face of certain
nationalist groups that started out firmly in control of the church, and
gradually assumed a more secular bent. Of particular interest is the
study of the groups devoted to women, which differed in virtually every
aspect from those aimed at men.

It is certainly refreshing to read an academic work written in such
clear, understandable, jargon-free prose. The book will appeal to anyone
with an interest in 19th-century Irish immigration or the development of
the Roman Catholic Church in Victorian Canada.