Catholics in Antebellum America

Religion in America

French Catholicism

            A divided church in New Orleans

Spanish Catholicism: missions

            Mixed success in New Mexico

Zuñi Pueblo Mission

Small success in Texas

San Francisco de la Espada,
San Antonio

Franciscans in California

            Father Junípero Serra

Mission at Loreto, California

San Carlos mission, Carmel, California

Floods from Europe

            Irish potato famine, 1840s

            1 million poor Irish Catholics to U.S.

            Failed 1848 Revolution in Germany

            German Protestant & Catholic middle-class

 

Catholic Growing Pains

            Phenomenal growth of Catholic Church

            Number of churches up 885% 1820-50

            Largest denomination by 1860

            Huge ethnic diversity and tensions

            Discrimination strengthens Catholic identity

            Tension between Germans & Irish & others

Anti-Catholicism returns

            Effects of Second Great Awakening

            The cross: “outward emblem of Popery”

            1854: mob attacks chapel, burns cross

            Schools: Battleground

            Requirements of Bible & prayer in schools

            Catholic Church protests

            Separate public schools?

             Protestants: separation of church and state!

            Catholics set up parochial school system

Anti-Catholic riots

            1834 Ursaline Convent burned, Boston

Anti-Catholic books

1844 “Bible riots” in Philadelphia

            Mob burns two
Catholic churches

St. Augustine’s Church burned, 1844

Know-Nothing Party, 1850s

 

Catholic conspiracy against America?

 

Effects on Protestants

            Cultural effects: teaching Americans to have fun

            Halloween, Christmas

            Saloons and urban lower-class entertainments

            Salacious and sensationalist books and cheap newspapers

            “Ritual envy”

            Worry about attraction of Catholicism’s “superstitions”

            The cross: Recapture a central Christian symbol

            The Gothic revival