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PRESIDENT’S REPORT

2012 was a challenging year for the ACHA. For the first time in ninety years the administration of the Association moved away from The Catholic University of America. Basically, after more than forty years under the leadership of Msgr. Robert Trisco, two years of effectively interim directors, and then three years under Fr. Paul Robichaud, no one at CUA stepped forward to lead us. At the Executive Council meeting in Boston in 2010 it was unanimously voted to pass the offices of Executive Director and Treasurer to Bentley Anderson SJ, of Fordham University. Accordingly, over the course of 2011, Bentley assumed these important and onerous tasks. One critical consequence of this transition was that the “home office” moved to Fordham University.

Although Bentley began settling in during the last half of 2011, it was only during the course of 2012 that the issues confronting our Association came into full view. Broadly speaking, our challenges were financial and they were occasioned by three different factors. We can all take great comfort and satisfaction from the fact that all three challenges have been effectively addressed.

First, our membership records were in a state of disarray. We were told in Boston that our membership numbered around 800 but on subsequent scrutiny we discovered that the real number was closer to 500. The transition from mail to electronic renewal had some impact. Honest errors in record keeping accounted for other discrepancies. But the big problem was that a large number of lapsed members were still being counted as full members. In so far as our annual budget has to be reckoned on the number of dues-paying members, this was a serious problem. As president, I charged Bentley to address this critical issue and I am delighted to report that he and his staff have recovered a significant number of members. At the end of 2012 our effective membership numbered about 670. In fairness, members do “lapse.” People die and we do not always get timely information. People retire and drop professional memberships. People join to present at an annual meeting and never renew. Graduate student join and then for various reasons do not continue. Still, the gap between lapsed an actual members was too large and I applaud Bentley’s efforts to recapture members. Our trajectory looks good.

Second, the Association’s investment policies were less coherent and effective than they ought to have been. Without in the slightest suggesting incompetence or inattention, I can say that the portfolio was too diverse and too conservatively invested. Working with our financial adviser we have consolidated and more coherently invested our endowment. To be sure, the “Great Recession” hurt us as it did all investors. Nevertheless, we are today better placed to receive more favorable annual pay-outs than we have ever been. Of course, since late 2011 the market has been more robust than in years past but it is reasonable to assume that our endowment will henceforth play a more positive role in our annual budgeting. Several members of our elected Executive Council are engaged with issues pertaining to our investment strategies and budget priorities and there will be further reports on this critical subject in 2013.

Third, our annual subvention of the Catholic Historical Review was proving to be a dramatic drain on the Association’s financial resources. This proved to be a deeply complicated issue. Bentley and I assumed office believing that the CHR was “our” journal. We learned that it was not; the journal belongs to the CUA press. The director of the Press. Dr. Trevor Lipscombe, offered us a significant reduction in our annual subvention. We accepted, but while we were still trying to ascertain ownership and control of the journal, we tried to press for an even more advantageous arrangement. In the end, we learned that the press had pressing and legitimate interests and the press came to understand out concerns. We believe that there will be very positive news on the relationship between the press and the ACHA in early 2013. Needless to say, continuing to get our financial house in order, respecting the interests of our long-time publisher, and maintaining the historic relationship between the ACHA and the CHR, will be something in which we can all take great satisfaction.

So much for the “hard stuff.” We had a splendid Spring Meeting in New Orleans, hosted jointly by Tulane University and Loyola University. Attendance was robust, the number of sessions was impressive, the participants were actively engaged, and the archbishop joined us for lunch. In January, as I was handing the gavel to Maggie McGuinness, we assembled again in New Orleans. We had a rich program, a splendid lunch at Antione’s arranged by Bentley—a native of New Orleans, and a wonderful reception in the historic Ursuline Convent—again arranged by Bentley. Your humble scribe delivered the Presidential Address “Why Pope Joan?” to the largest luncheon assemblage in many years (people came for the venue and the food, not for the talk!).

It has been my privilege to serve as your president this year. I ask you to join me in offering prayers and best wishes for Maggie McGuinness, her fellow officers, and the Executive Council, as they prepare to lead our beloved Association in 2013.

Warmest regards.
Tom Noble

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REPORT OF THE SECRETARY AND TREASURER

Membership

At the end of 2012, the Association had 667 active members, of whom 435 were ordinary members, 87 were retired members, 80 were student members, and 65 were lifetime members (individuals and institutions). This was an increase of 108 over the past year when total membership stood at 579.

Web Site

This past year we used the Association’s web site to disseminate information, promote various programs, and advertise non-ACHA events. For the first time, the annual reports of the Association were posted on the web site in 2012; and again this year, officer elections were conducted on-line, the 2012 annual program was posted on the web site, the Chicago meeting and the New Orleans spring meeting registrations were handled on-line, and the 2012 ACHA awardees were announced via the web. Because the ACHA entered into a two-year contract with our web provider, we have saved $2500 in software updates, and this coming year we hope to have in place an automated system for accepting paper proposals for the 2014 meeting.

New Initiatives

Grants. Next year, as part of the Executive Secretary-Treasurer initiative, we will offer three new grant awards in 2013: Graduate Student Research Grant, Junior Faculty Research Grant, and Institutional Challenge Grant. While these grants will be offered on a year-to-year basis, they are the kinds of scholarly initiatives the ACHA should be funding and promoting on an annual basis.

Finances

Based on our membership and its various categories, dues generated $26,680 this year. This figure is based on 344 regular members paying $60 a year ($20,640), 94 retired members contributing $40 ($3,760), and 76 students, $30 ($2,280). As of January 2, 2013, the endowment, which is overseen by David Canham of Deutsche Bank, stood at $900,000. The portfolio appreciated $100K this past calendar; but like everyone else with investments, we are subject to the vagaries of the Market.

2012 Budget

	BUDGETED	SPENT
Catholic Historical Review (2602 copies @ $7.50 ea. plus back issues)	$27,800	$19,664.50
ES/T stipend	$12,000	$12,000
Webmaster expense	$9,000	$9,000
Annual Meeting	$3,750	$1,875
Software	$2,500	$0
Postage/printing	$2,500	$250
Accounting	$2,500	$0
Misc.	$2,000	$0
Presidential travel grants	$2,000	$0
ES/T travel stipend	$1,500	$1,500
Ellis Award	$1,200	$1,200
Plaques	$1,000	$530
Marraro Book Award	$750	$750
Shea Book Prize	$750	$750
Voting	$650	$650
Guilday Award	$100	$100
Special Projects	$0	$8,500
TOTALS	$70,000	$58,769.50

Regarding the 2012 budget, we are under budget by $11K. This is in part due to the following developments. We did not hire a CPA to file the IRS 990 form (non-profit); the reporting was done in-house and the IRS was satisfied with our filing. We saved $2,500 on software development now that we have a regular contract with Andy Metzger, our web master. We saved $2,250 on printing and postage. The annual meeting will cost us approximately $2000 as Archbishop Aymond is hosting the Social, and Loyola University is providing the musical entertainment. The plaques for our honorees are half the cost budgeted. The other savings came in the reduced price the CUA Press charged our members to receive the CHR from $48 to $30 a year. This saved us $8,135.

Regarding the 2013 budget, I have listed all the non-CHR expenses and budgeted accordingly. I am requesting that the EC approve a $39K Operating Budget for this coming year. To offset two expenses, the $3000 in grant monies and $1500 for this year’s luncheon, we have secured a $5500 donation, which means our budget will come in at $34,500.

Proposed budget for 2013:

ES/T stipent	$12,000
Web	$9,000
Lifetime members ($60 x 65 CHR)	$3,900
Grants	$3,000
Annual Meeting	$2,500
Presidential travel	$2,000
ES/T travel	$1,500
Ellis Award	$1,200
Shea Prize	$750
Marraro Award	$750
Plaques	$750
Voting software	$650
Postage/printing	$500
Guilday Award	$100
Misc.	$400

 

Looking to the future, I believe we need to set our dues at rates that will cover our Operating Expenses plus a 3% draw down from the portfolio, which I hope remains above $800K for the foreseeable future.

Annual Meeting

The Program for our Annual Meeting in New Orleans was posted on the ACHA web site [PDF download] and is available to all.

Spring Meeting

Our 2012 Spring meeting was held in New Orleans under the joint sponsorship of Tulane University and Loyola University New Orleans. A special note of thanks should be given to the Program Chairs, Dr. Thomas Luongo of Tulane and Dr. David Moore of Loyola as well as President Kevin Wildes of LUNO, who underwrote two Social events.

Printing, Publishing, Postage, and Taxes

Beginning in 2012, members, who requested to receive official ACHA happens via the USPS, were required to pay a $10 to cover the costs associated with printing and mailing this material. Again this year, the Annual Program has been posted on the Association’s web site. Because we are using the web site and internet to communicate with the membership, the Association has saved $2250 in expenses this year. We are also filing our own IRS990 form for tax exempt status, saving us another $2500.

Constitutional Changes

The Executive Council approved Constitutional changes during its annual meeting on Thursday, January 3, 2012, which were then presented to the full membership at the General meeting on Friday, January 4, 2013. The EC and the General Membership approved electronic voting in order to increase membership participation in ACHA governance. These changes will allow the EC to conduct business as needed and will allow the full membership to decide policy, rather than the few who attend the annual meeting. The revised Constitution can be found on the official ACHA web site at www.achahistory.org/about/constitution

Report of the Elections Board

The 2012 elections were conducted under the newly implemented Constitutional changes, which established an Elections Board. The slate of candidates was developed from a list of nominated and self-nominated members. This was the first time in the history of the ACHA that an individual could nominate herself or himself for office; the prior system had a panel select candidates.

The new nominating process produced a rich and varied list of candidates, thus allowing the Association to broaden and diversify its Executive Council  by region, discipline, gender, and institutional affiliation. The slate of candidates represented the southern U.S. in the candidacy of Catherine Higgs, University of Tennessee; the Far West with Stefania Tutino, UC-Santa Barbara; the Midwest, Anthony Burke Smith, University of Dayton; and the Atlantic seaboard, Charles J.T. Talar, St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore. Our vice presidential candidates came with a wealth of experience as Daniel Bornstein, Washington University at St. Louis, and Roy Domenico, University of Scranton, both have Executive Council experience. Secular and religious institutions of higher learning were represented on an equal footing as half the nominees are professors from faith-based institution and half are not. A variety of fields of study were represented (e.g., Africa, Early Modern Europe, and the U.S.), and the gender balance was near parity.

Balloting was held on-line for the second year in a row from September 15 to 29, with mail-in ballots accepted until the 29th as well. The results of this year’s election are as follows: Stefania Tutino and Anthony Burke Smith were elected to the Executive Council for the 2012-2015 term, and Daniel Bornstein assumes the vice presidency in 2013, the presidency in 2014.

––Una Cadegan, chair

Report of the John Gilmary Shea Prize Committee for 2012

As in previous years, the members of the John Gilmary Shea Prize Committee faced the difficult task of choosing one book among some two dozen impressive entries. They voted unanimously to award the prize for 2012 to John Connelly for From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

In the crowded field of Holocaust studies, Professor Connelly has made a unique contribution with his original and thoroughly researched study of how and why the Holocaust changed the attitude of the Catholic Church to the Jewish people and resulted in Nostra Aetate, the Declaration of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that revolutionized the relationship between Catholics and Jews. He demonstrates that this change was due not only to popular revulsion at the horror of the Holocaust, but was also rooted in the groundwork laid by Catholic scholars in 1930s who were pioneers in combating anti-Judaism within the Catholic Church. He reveals that most of these scholars were converts to the Catholic Church, some Protestants but mostly Jewish, and included at least one Catholic priest who was executed by the Nazis.

Prior to the Holocaust even the most vociferous Catholic critics of anti-Judaism, including Jewish converts to Catholicism, actively advocated the conversion of Jews to Christianity as their only way to salvation The Holocaust made that position untenable, since it was unthinkable to suggest that Nazi genocide was divine retribution for Jewish infidelity. “Without converts,” says Connelly, “the Catholic Church would not have found a new language to speak to the Jews after the Holocaust.” Catholics found that language in the long-neglected words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans that were quoted in Nostra Aetate that “God holds the Jews most dear . . . and does not repent of the gifts He makes or the calls He issues.”

Professor Connelly’s book is noteworthy not only for the range and thoroughness of his research and the clarity of his presentation, but also for his dispassionate and non-polemical approach to a highly controversial topic.

––Thomas J. Shelley, chair; John Monfasani; Charles H. Parker

Report of the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Committee

Committee members reviewed the applications. All agreed that the proposal that best met the goals of the Ellis Prize was prepared by Benjamin Reed, a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). Mr. Hill intends to use his award to travel to the Archivo General de la Nacion (AGN) in Mexico City to study documents relating to the history of the Congregation of the Oratory in colonial Mexico.

The committee agreed that Mr. Reed’s research on the Oratorians was of exceptional significance. The Oratorians, as he explained, contributed to “modernizing the role of priests” during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries at a time when modern Catholicism was experiencing major changes due to the Council of Trent, the Reformation movements, and the increasing European involvement in the Americas. His innovative work will provide “the first in-depth history of [one of the] Congregations of the Oratory in the Spanish Empire.” Mr. Reed’s proposal demonstrated several strengths. His project is thoughtful and well-conceived. He has already completed a significant amount of research and he communicates his findings clearly and precisely. The project requires considerable methodological sophistication, which is reflected in work already completed. As historians begin to study the effects of Vatican II, Mr. Reed’s study of an earlier reform movement will be of considerable interest.

––Anne Klejment, chair; Richard Janet; Mary Sommar

Report on the Peter Guilday Prize

The Peter Guilday Prize is awarded annually for an article published in the Association’s official organ, The Catholic Historical Review, which is the author’s first scholarly publication and is considered by the editors to be the best of the articles published in a given year. For 2012 the Prize is conferred on Julia G. Young, assistant professor of history in the Catholic University of America, for her article “Cristero Diaspora: Mexican Immigrants, the U.S. Catholic Church, and Mexico’s Cristero War, 1926-29,” which appeared in the April issue. Drawing on a remarkable array of primary sources, Dr. Young skillfully links research on the Cristero rebellion and Mexican immigration to the United States. Previous historians had not serious studied the effect of the armed resistance on the emigrants; the broader literature on such movement of people in the later 1920s largely ignored religion as a factor influencing the exodus of Mexican Catholics and their religious activity in their new country. Thus the author has made a substantial contribution to our knowledge and understanding of an important subject. Her article is also timely in the year in which the motion picture For Greater Glory has been widely viewed in the United States

––Nelson Minnich, Editor (on sabbatical level); Robert Trisco, Acting Editor.

Distinguished Awardees

During the Presidential luncheon held at Antoine’s restaurant in the French Quarter, New Orleans, newly installed ACHA president Maggie McGuinness presented the annual Distinguished Scholar, Teacher, and Service awards to Marvin R. O’Connell, Cyprian Davis, and Norman Francis. The citations for each recipient follows:

The Reverend Marvin R. O’Connell (professor emeritus of history, University of Notre Dame) was selected for the Distinguished Scholar Award, in recognition of his achievements as a master historian of people, movements, and institutions stretching from Rome to St. Paul and from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century. He launched his scholarly career in 1964 when Yale University Press published his book Thomas Stapleton and the Counter Reformation. Displaying the remarkable range and versatility that would be the hallmarks of his scholarly career, O’Connell turned next to The Oxford Conspirators: A History of the Oxford Movement, 1833–1845 (New York, 1969). Five years later, he contributed The Counter Reformation, 1559–1610 (New York, 1974) to the famous “Rise of Modern Europe” series. Turning next to the American Church and his own Minnesota, O’Connell published John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St.Paul, MN, 1988). Returning to intellectual history and largely to European concerns, he next published Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (Washington, DC, 1994) and Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (Grand Rapids, MI, 1997).

In his retirement, O’Connell has published two manuscripts to date: a complete study of Notre Dame’s founder Edward Sorin (Edward Sorin, Notre Dame, 2001) and Pilgrims to the Northland: The Archdiocese of St. Paul, 1840–1962 (Notre Dame, 2009).

The Reverend Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. (professor of church history, St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, as well as history instructor, Institute of Black Catholic Studies, Xavier University of Louisiana) was presented with the Distinguished Teaching Award.

In nominating him for this teaching award, one of his students wrote that “[w]hat distinguishes Fr. Cyprian Davis’s teaching technique is his unique ability to teach history through storytelling in a manner that invites students to enter into and experience the story. ”Another nominator echoed those sentiments, commenting that “[w]hat remains etched in my memory and spirit is how he would place the class in the proper perspective each day,” allowing students to focus on that which was important: God working in and through history and time. Yet another student summed up for the nominating committee the reason for selecting Davis for this honor: “His work has been sheer grace for our Catholic community.”

Dr. Norman C. Francis, president, Xavier University of Louisiana, was given the Distinguished Service to Catholic Studies Award for his leadership in fostering the study of the history of Catholicism. This fall, Francis will mark his 45th year as Xavier University president, making him the longest serving president of a U.S. postsecondary institution. Since the mid-1970s Francis and members of the Xavier University community have made a significant contribution to the study of Roman Catholic history within the African American context with the founding and nurturing of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies (IBCS). For approximately forty years, the IBCS has been a center for the study of the black Catholic experience as well as the locus for preparing laymen and laywomen, religious, and members of the clergy for more meaningful and effective ministry within the black Catholic community. In 2006, Francis received the Medal of Freedom by then-President George W. Bush for his efforts in the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.