Skip to main content

University Libraries

Treasures from Our Storehouse: The U.S. Catholic Special Collection

By Stephanie Shreffler

In conjunction with the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the Department of Religious Studies’ PhD program in American Catholic Studies, the University Libraries is hosting an exhibit of materials from the U.S. Catholic Special Collection (USCSC). The USCSC was created in 1999 in order to support the research needs of the faculty and students of the PhD program. It holds books, periodicals, archival collections, and objects and ephemera about Catholicism in the United States.

The exhibit, entitled “Treasures from Our Storehouse: The U.S. Catholic Special Collection,” presents materials from three collections within the USCSC. The first, the Reverend William V. Thomas Collection on Thomas Merton, holds hundreds of books by and about Thomas Merton, the famous Cistercian monk who lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. The exhibit displays two books that were signed by Merton, in addition to a first edition copy of his spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. It also includes postcards and ephemera about Merton and the Abbey of Gethsemani. 

The exhibit also includes materials on the Pflaum Publishing Company and its long-running Catholic comic book, The Treasure Chest. The Pflaum Company was established in Dayton in 1885, and became a well-known publisher of Catholic educational materials. It began publishing The Treasure Chest in 1946, in order to offer an alternative to secular comic books for Catholic school children. Publication of Treasure Chest continued until 1972.

The exhibit also displays records from the Roman Catholic Modernism Group (RCMG) of the American Academy of Religion. The RCMG sought to provide support to scholars who studied the Modernist crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its members were well-known for the high quality of their scholarship on questions of modernism.

Other materials included in the exhibit detail the history of the USCSC and the American Catholic Studies PhD program.

The exhibit is open through Oct. 4, and can be viewed on the first floor of Roesch Library, to the left of the Hello Desk.

— Stephanie Shreffler is collections librarian/archivist for the U.S. Catholic Special Collection.

Previous Post

Book Desert Book Drive

The University Libraries Diversity and Inclusion Team is teaming up again with The Conscious Connect, and the student organization BATU (Black Action Thru Unity) to collect diverse books to end book deserts in Dayton.
Read More
Next Post

The Courage to Offend

Offensive words in a banned book surprise and challenge volunteer reader in a live, recorded reading for Banned Books Week.

Read More