AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

The American Catholic Historical Association was founded by a small group of historians assembled under the leadership of Peter Guilday in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 1919. At that time there were diocesan historical societies in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and St. Paul and a state society in Illinois, all interested mainly in local history and composed mostly of amateurs, but a national society of professional historians devoted to the history of the universal Church and qualified to interact with their peers in secular and Protestant history had been lacking. The founders were advised and encouraged by J. Franklin Jameson, a former president of the American Historical Association, with which the new organization became affiliated. The association, incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia and recognized by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has its headquarters at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

From its inception the association has pursued two main objectives. One is to promote a deeper and more widespread knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church broadly considered, that is, its internal reality and its relations with civil governments, the influence of its members, individually and collectively, on the intellectual, cultural, political, and social progress of the human race. The other aim is the advancement of historical scholarship in all fields among its members. Membership is open to professional church historians, Catholics and non-Catholics in the United States and in other countries, especially Canada, as well as nonprofessional supporters and students.

The association adopted as its official organ the Catholic Historical Review, published quarterly since April 1915 by the Catholic University of America Press. The annual presidential address, the reports of the secretary and treasurer and of the several committees, and current information about the association are published in the Review. The association launched the editing of the papers of Archbishop John Carroll, which were published in three volumes for the Bicentennial of American Independence in 1976.

The association holds an annual meeting jointly with the American Historical Association and other affiliated societies, notably the American Society of Church History. Since 1972 the association has held a two-day meeting each spring.

The association annually awards two book prizes, namely, (1) the John Gilmary Shea Prize, established in 1944 to commemorate the association's 25th anniversary and first conferred in 1946, which recognizes the author, American or Canadian, whose book, published within the preceding 12-month period, is judged by a committee of scholars to be the most distinguished contribution to the history of the Catholic Church among the books entered in the competition, and (2) the Howard R. Marraro Prize, funded by a bequest of Professor Marraro of Columbia University, who died in 1972; it is given to an author whose book is considered by a separate committee to be the best of the works published during the preceding year in the field of Italian history or Italo-American history or relations. In years when it is merited, the Peter Guilday Prize is awarded to the writer of an article that has been accepted for publication in the Review and is deemed by the editors to be the most outstanding of the articles submitted in any given year by writers who have not previously published any scholarly work. In 1995 the association initiated the John Tracy Ellis Memorial Fund, which each year grants to a doctoral student an award for dissertation research.

The association is the recognized Catholic voice in the historical profession in the United States. It is one of the three constitutive societies of the American National Commission of the International Commission of Comparative Church History.

[r. trisco]