Katholische Verbände und moderne Gesellschaft: Organisationsgeschichte und Vereinskultur im Bistum Münster 1918 bis 1945 by Christoph Kösters (review)
Katholische Verbande und moderne Gesellschaft: Organisationsgeschichte und Vereinskulturim Bistum Munster 1918 bis 1945. By Christoph Kosters. [Veroffentlichungen der Kommission fur Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Forschungen, Band 68.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh. 1995. Pp. 684. 98 DM.) Christoph Kosters's work, a revised version of his University of Munster dissertation, is a study of the intersection of the Church, society, and politics between 1918 and 1945,"the crisis years of classical modernism" (p. 18). Based on intensive research into primary sources, the book focuses on Catholic, male youth groups in the Diocese of Munster, the "Catholic bulwark of Northern Germany" (p. 23).The author's ambitious intellectual program includes a discussion of Catholic responses to the social and political crises of the first half of the twentieth century, and also a new evaluation of Catholic resistance to the Nazi regime in the light of his research into the social history of religion. Kosters begins with an account of the construction of a network of Catholic associations in the decades before World War I. Such groups, he notes, were part of a Catholic subculture, separate from the rest of German society, but internally divided by social class. Generally led by the clergy, the associations were nonetheless separate from parish life and diocesan structures. After the war, a growing number of Catholics felt that the old network of associations was no longer appropriate to new social and political circumstances. They sought to break out of their confessional ghetto and create new kinds of organizations, with distinct similarities to contemporary non-Catholic youth groups, that would tear down the barriers between social classes. Adherents of this course were often supporters of the eucharistic and liturgical movements, that sought a renewal of religious life by encouraging a greater and more intensive participation of laypeople in church services (the author details the scandalous occurrences of priests saying Mass while facing the congregation), a current of religious renewal ultimately culminating in the Second Vatican Council. Although the author does not particularly emphasize this point, his own evidence shows that such initiatives were the work of a distinct minority and met with relatively little success.The new Catholic youth groups formed during the Weimar Republic had a much smaller membership than the older Kolping (journeymen's) associations or the Marian Sodalities, and this apparently continued to be the case well into the Nazi era. For all their claims to overcoming class barriers, the new organizations tended to be as segregated by class as the older ones were. The bulk of the diocesan clergy showed no great enthusiasm for new liturgical practices. These caveats are important, because Kosters argues against the notion, advanced by other social historians, that the Catholic confrontation with Nazism was a clash between a traditionalist religion and a modernizing totalitarian regime. …