Book Review: Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism by Brenna Moore

Kindred Spirits, through an exploration of spiritual friendships and political activism within Catholicism during the tumultuous 1930s and 1940s, offers a rare glimpse into Catholic spirituality in the twentieth century. Drawing from the margins of the institutional church, Brenna Moore reveals the life-giving sustenance of Catholicity or all-embracing universality. Abjuring Nazism and European colonialism, the men and women depicted in Kindred Spirits portray a more humane and multicultural world. Ironically, Moore finds that their commitment to spiritual friendship avoids carnal tribalism to such an extent that familial biological ties are often disparaged. Referring to these spiritual friends in the light of Joseph Amato’s book on Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, Brenna Moore notes in the Epilogue to Kindred Spirits how