bishop Edwin V. O'Hara of Kansas City (1881-1956) orchestrated numerous initiatives that profoundly affected American Catholic life. His ceaseless activity as both priest and bishop sowed seeds that flourished long past his lifetime, from liturgical reform to Bible study, campus ministry to social justice, minimum wage legislation to founding the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. The pastoral challenges he confronted in the first half of the last century--institutional complacency; disorganization among Catholics and reluctance to openly profess their faith; ignorance of social justice principles; the defense of the Church in a sometimes hostile culture--all remain significant challenges for the American Church today.

Timothy Michael Dolan, Archbishop of New York, researched and composed this biography in the early 1990s and continues to cite O'Hara as his role model of an immensely effective bishop. In an effort to revisit the pioneering work of church leaders, this book is published for the first time in paperback and features a new preface by Archbishop Dolan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Timothy Michael Dolan was named Archbishop of New York by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 and currently serves as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Prior to that, he served as Archbishop of Milwaukee, chairman of Catholic Relief Services, and faculty member of the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

"This biography illuminates a remarkable churchman who was in the vanguard of his time. . . . Dolan contributes importantly to American Catholic historical scholarship in this critical biography."--Publishers Weekly

"Dolan has done a service to historians of American Catholicism by producing this authoritative biography establishing the importance of Edwin V. O'Hara to the twentieth-century Church."--Catholic Historical Review

"Like a talented artist at the keyboard, Dolan in this work develops the themes that [O'Hara] contributed to . . . The minimum wage law, rural life, the Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine (CCD), the revision of the catechism, the translation of the Bible, Catholic schools, race relations, inter-American affairs--the list goes on. This is the long-needed definitive life of one of the American Church's greatest leaders."--The Catholic Key