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Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public Order

Observers of the United States have sometimes wondered why the apparently flourishing Catholic Church in America, along with the huge number of Catholics in the general population — the largest single religious group in the nation — should nevertheless have so little apparent influence on contemporary American life and society generally. No one has defined as clearly as Joseph Varacalli, precisely why the American Church has been relatively ineffective in shaping American public life.