HAWTHORNE, SPEAKING THROUGH “COVERDALE,” describes a fictionalized failed utopian community in 1840s Massachusetts. History is filled by the wreckage of good ideas shattered on the shoals of human frailty, ego, and miscalculation. But as Hawthorne suggests, important things may be learned by examining lost hopes. Perhaps a dream is resurrected. “A Missed Opportunity in the Catholic War on Poverty: Chicago's Archdiocesan Inter-Parish Movement” by Kevin Ryan offers an analysis of a failed effort in the 1960s to bring together poor inner-city parishes and affluent city and suburban ones in a movement to learn from each other while fighting poverty and racism.
But, Ryan notes, the effort came at one of the worst periods of racial tension in the city's history, as white ethnic neighborhoods sometimes reacted violently to the movement of Black citizens into their enclaves. The program's goal was to put teeth into the Catholic War on Poverty by...
