Catholics in Antebellum America

Religion in America

French Catholicism

■ A divided church in New Orleans

Spanish Catholicism: missions

■ Mixed success in New Mexico

Small success in Texas

Franciscans in California

■ Father Junípero Serra

Floods from Europe

■ Irish potato famine, 1840s

– 1 million poor Irish Catholics to U.S.

■ Failed 1848 Revolution in Germany

– 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

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