Early American Catholics

Sources

People Set Apart. There were few Roman Catholics in the early United States, perhaps twenty-five thousand of a total population of almost four million in 1783. Like the Jews, American Catholics felt themselves to be a people set apart from Protestant Americans by their distinctive beliefs and rituals. Catholics suffered the added problem of a persistent anti-Catholic animus which had roots in the Protestant Reformation and had been reawakened in the controversy over Britain’s treatment of French Catholics in Quebec in 1763. Many Protestant Americans considered the British too generous to the Catholics. American Catholics were just as engaged as Protestants in shaping the character of the new country’s citizens. They eagerly embraced the republicanism of the new nation and worked hard in the 1780s to establish an American version of the Roman church. Father John Carroll wrote his Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America in 1784, which explained to Catholics the advantages to them of American religious freedom. Carroll attempted to assure Protestants that Catholics were firmly committed to American ways.

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

Church membership grew rapidly over the decades following American independence. Most historians consider 1780 to mark a low point in church affiliation. Probably no more than 10 percent of Americans formally claimed church membership in 1780, although many more attended church regularly. By 1820 that figure had probably at least doubled. Almost all religious groups flourished, but some grew more rapidly than others, as shown in this chart of the number of congregations in each major denomination:

For the Baptists and Methodists growth was spectacular. The Baptists claimed 35, 000 members in 1784 and more than 170, 000 in 1810. The Methodists counted fewer than 15, 000 members in 1784 and almost 200, 000 in 1810.

Sources: Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 25;

Edwin S. Gaustad, Historical Atlas of Religion in America, revised edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 43;

Russell E. Richey, Early American Metbodism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 50.

A Struggling Church. With few members, and those scattered across the new nation (the only significant concentration of Catholics was in Maryland), the church turned its attention to recruiting new members and supporting them with strong institutions. A crucial early step was the 1784 appointment by the Pope of John Carroll to lead American Catholics as “prefect apostolic and superior of the missions” in the United States. Carroll’s dynamic leadership was crucial in establishing American Catholicism on a sound footing. The American character of the church soon emerged, as Carroll’s fellow priests elected him to be their bishop in 1789, an election to which the Pope agreed. There were limits to this republican Catholicism, however, which complicated the story of the church’s growth. The democratic practice of electing bishops lasted only until 1808, after which they were appointed by the Pope in Rome. Carroll’s effort to promote the church was a constant struggle to accommodate the European Catholic tradition of centralized authority with the realities of American life and republican ideas. For example, Carroll was forced to rely heavily on lay help because of the shortage of priests and the conditions of the growing nation. Some lay people asserted their authority in their parishes more than Carroll would have liked, just as their Protestant neighbors were doing in their churches. This was the case in Saint Peter’s Church in New York, where Carroll was caught up in a controversy with the parishioners in 1785 over which of two Irish priests should be the pastor.

Ethnic Tensions . An important part of this and other similar disputes was not only the desire of lay people to have control over their own religious lives, but also to have priests of their own national origin since the Catholic Church throughout the 1800s was largely an immigrant church. In Boston tensions ran deep between French and Irish Catholics. The French preferred to be buried with Protestants rather than the Irish, and there were arguments over what language the priests should use for services. A French and an English priest carried their personal disputes into the press, making matters worse. Carroll resolved the issue in 1792 by replacing both priests with Francis Matignon, a capable Frenchman. The community grew slowly, becoming a diocese in 1808 under the leadership of another French priest, Jean de Cheverus. Worldly figures such as Matignon and Cheverus improved the public image of American Catholics in part by mingling easily with the liberal Protestant elite of Boston, but they were also devoted to the service of poor Irish parishioners. Carroll and his successors (mostly of English Catholic origin) all faced the problem of forging a unified American church from a collection of often intensely localist parishes, many with strong ties to Europe. These difficulties were made worse in 1803 when the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase, with its French Catholic roots. Carroll persevered, however, organizing dioceses and recruiting priests in Europe and America to meet the needs of a frontier church, just as the Methodists and Baptists were doing. His efforts were successful. There were 195, 000 Catholics by 1820, even before the great waves of Irish and German immigration that would make the Catholics the largest denomination in America by 1865.

Education . If the revival tent was the characteristic structure of evangelical Protestantism, the parish school filled that role for Catholicism. Catholics became preoccupied with the task of education in this period, and it soon became a central feature of Catholic institutional

life, as well as a form of devotional practice. Catholics shared this with Protestants, who were also experimenting with education in the early national era, but the Catholic experience was distinctive. Catholics supported education partly because of the pressing need for priests, which led to the founding of the first American seminary, Saint Mary’s, in Baltimore in 1791. Before that date the few Catholic priests in America had come from Europe, like the French priests who founded Saint Mary’s, or were at least trained and ordained there, as was John Carroll. Education was needed by others besides priests, however, and the same year saw the founding of Georgetown Academy, Maryland, later one of the most prestigious American Catholic colleges. These schools were restricted to men, of course, but the education of women by women soon became just as important to Catholics. An Irish laywoman, Alice Lalor, led the way by founding a Catholic women’s school in Philadelphia in 1797. By 1816 Lalor had moved her school to Georgetown and founded a convent for the training of nuns to staff her schools and others like it. Even before this, in 1809, Elizabeth Ann Seton had founded the first women’s religious order in America, the Sisters of Charity. These women, and those in the other religious orders that followed, devoted their lives to serving God and their church through education, health care, and other endeavors. They quickly founded schools across the

country, and Seton, later canonized as a saint, became known as the founder of the parochial school system that is still one of the most important parts of Catholic life in many parishes. In these schools devotional practice merged with the work of education since faith was taught to children as well as reading and arithmetic. The schools performed an essential function in bringing Catholic students, increasingly the children of immigrants, into American life. Yet the firm commitment to Catholic religious instruction set these schools off from the public schools beginning to form in the early 1800s. Many Catholics succeeded socially and economically with the help of these schools, but success never fully erased the persistence of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant bigotry. Catholics embraced American religious freedom to their institutional and devotional advantage, but their distinctive presence in early America would long remain a thorn in the side of many Protestants.

Sources

Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985);

John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism, revised edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969);

Oscar Handlin, Bostons Immigrants, 1790–1880 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).