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The Catholic presence in America was small until the nineteenth century. Today, largely due to heavy immigration from Catholic countries in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nearly one-third of the U.S. population is Roman Catholic.
Catholic hierarchy
The ultimate leadership over Catholic churches of all nations is the
Vatican, the headquarters of the church based in the independent citystate of Vatican City, which is located within the city of Rome, Italy.
From the Vatican, the pope, the head of the Catholic Church, rules
Catholics throughout the world. To administer the churches in the various countries, the pope appoints national church leaders, particularly
archbishops and bishops, who are subject to his rule.
In 2007, the United States had forty-five archbishops, the highestranking bishops who head large Catholic districts called archdioceses.
Bishops are priests who teach church doctrine, but who also minister
church government. The United States has 290 active bishops. The
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, founded in 1966, is the
official governing body of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church. It is subject to the authority of the pope.
Origins of American Catholicism
The earliest Catholicism in the United States arrived with the Spanish
missionaries who founded a mission in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565.
Through the nineteenth century, Spain continued to found missions in
the present-day southeastern United States, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and California in their efforts to convert the native people to
the Roman Catholic faith. (See Spanish Missions.) France sent Catholic
missionaries to North America in the seventeenth century, establishing
missions in Canada, and later bringing Catholicism to the vast French
territory called Louisiana.
At the time of New World settlement, England was a Protestant nation, but it had a significant Catholic population. (See Protestantism.)
In 1632, an English Catholic, Caecilius Calvert, Baron of Baltimore
(1605–1675), founded Maryland, the first British Catholic colony. The
Catholic presence in the American colonies remained fairly small
throughout the colonial era.
The first bishops
In 1789, American Catholics numbered only about thirty thousand and
were concentrated in Maryland and Kentucky. That year, John Carroll
(1735–1815) was elected the first U.S. Catholic bishop, and he would
later become archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland. Carroll’s vision of the
church was greatly influenced by the spirit of American democracy. He
supported the lay trustee system of church government, in which elected
laymen (people who are not members of the clergy) worked with the clergy to govern the local parish community. A
parish is a district, or neighborhood, with its
own church.
Carroll wanted Catholicism in the United
States to be free from foreign influence. Seeking
to train a clergy that would be familiar with
what he described as “the American way of
life,” he founded Georgetown Academy (later
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.)
and St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. Carroll
was a strong supporter of religious freedom and
of separation of church and state, as established in the First Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.
Carroll died in 1815 and French cleric
Ambrose Maréchal (1764–1828) was named
archbishop of Baltimore. Maréchal’s vision
of Catholicism was entirely different from
Carroll’s. In his view, the clergy, not the laymen,
ruled; he strongly opposed any notion of
democracy in the church. These two differing
understandings of Catholicism—Carroll’s democratic vision and Maréchal’s more authoritarian
approach—have remained a source of conflict within the U.S. Catholic
Church.
Catholic immigration
Irish immigration began on a large scale in the 1830s and swelled in the
1840s, along with a surge in German immigration. Between 1830 and
1860, this increased the Roman Catholic population in the United States
considerably: from 318,000 to more than 3 million. Nearly 2 million
Catholics in 1860 were immigrants. Other Catholic immigrants began
arriving in large numbers later in the century.
Although Catholic communities developed in the farming areas of
the Midwest, the vast majority of immigrating Catholics settled in cities,
where there were manufacturing jobs. By the end of the nineteenth century, as many as twenty-eight different language groups claimed membership in the Catholic Church. The Irish and Germans were the most numerous national groups, and Polish and Italian immigrants were not
far behind.
Anti-Catholicism
The influx of large numbers of Catholics in what previously had been a
primarily English Protestant society unleashed hostilities among some
native-born Americans, particularly in the cities of the northeast. As
early as the 1830s, shocking anti-Catholic popular literature began to
circulate. Stories and pamphlets depicted sexual orgies behind the walls
of Catholic convents, inflaming suspicion and prejudice. The first largescale anti-Catholic violence in the United States occurred in
Charlestown, Massachusetts, in August 1834, where a mob burned
down a convent after a rumor spread that priests there were confining a
nun against her will.
Continued conflict between Catholics and Protestants arose over
city school systems. In most schools, students recited Protestant hymns
and prayers and read the Protestant King James Bible; even the textbooks
had anti-Catholic biases. Catholic leaders asked that the schools stop
using the Protestant Bible and eliminate Protestant hymns and prayers.
Some Catholic leaders went further, asking that the state finance
Catholic parochial (parish) schools. Their wishes infuriated antiCatholic groups. Anger mounted, resulting in a riot in New York City in
1842 and a bloody three-day riot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in
1844 in which Protestants destroyed two Catholic churches.
In the 1850s, the Know-Nothing Party (or American Party), whose
motto was “Americans must rule America,” rose to political prominence.
Antiforeign and anti-Catholic party members took an oath that they
would not vote for any foreigners, Roman Catholics in particular. By
1854, the Know-Nothing Party had over one million members and had
elected governors, mayors, and congressmen. Former U.S. president
Millard Fillmore (1800–1874; served 1850–53) ran as the party’s presidential nominee in the 1856 election, but lost. The controversial issue
of slavery soon split the party, and its decline was as rapid as its rise.
Nonetheless, the Know-Nothings made Catholics feel that they were not
welcome in the United States. Catholic immigrants gathered together in
their own neighborhoods, creating a world set apart from the rest of
American society.
The national parish
Traditionally, Catholic people worshiped in a neighborhood church; nationality had little to do with church membership. In the immigrant
neighborhoods of urban America, though, immigrant Catholics wanted
to worship in a church where services and sermons were in their native
language and where they could continue the traditions and customs of
the Old World. Thus, the key institution of the American Catholic
world in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was the national
parish, with specific churches for each immigrant nationality.
National parishes were more than places to worship. In immigrant
neighborhoods, they were the center of community life. In addition to
the church, parishes often included a school, a convent for the nuns, or
sisters, who worked in the parish, a home for the parish clergy, a hall for
social and recreational events, and often a high school or orphanage.
In 1884, American bishops urged that all parishes build a Catholic
parochial school. Although that did not happen, 37 percent of Catholic
parishes supported a school by 1900. Essential to the development of the
parochial schools were the sisters who taught in them. Sisters were also
involved in founding hospitals and orphanages and performing a variety
of social welfare tasks.
Changes in the church
In the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of American Catholics were fairly recent immigrants. The church remained traditional, as it had been in Europe. It was a stern overseer of
community life and personal morality and a preserver of ancient traditions that made sure its members knew their place. Services were conducted in Latin, rather than the native language, and Catholic education
tended to stifle intellectual questioning. Many American Catholic leaders ardently denounced modern life, especially condemning birth control, divorce, and morally suspect entertainment, such as the movies.
By the 1950s, however, the Catholic immigrant population was taking its place in the American middle class. Part of the reason for their
prosperity was that trade unions were forcing businesses to grant higher
wages and benefits to workers. Two-thirds of all unionized workers were
Catholics, and so American Catholicism was strongly tied to labor
unions. (See Labor Movement.) A labor union is an organization that
serves its members’ collective interests with regard to wages and working
conditions. Catholic trade-union leaders convinced church fathers to
take up the plight of the poor.
At the same time, Catholic journalist and social reformer Dorothy
Day (1897–1890) began social justice campaigns in the Catholic Worker
Movement, opening houses of hospitality where the poor and unemployed could find food and shelter. Day and other Catholic reformers
tried to live according to Catholic precepts, forming a progressive
Catholic counterculture that attracted Catholics and drew many converts to the faith.
Vatican II
In 1959, the newly elected pope, John XXIII (1881–1963), summoned a
council to bring the Catholic Church up-to-date. The Vatican II council
was conducted in four sessions between 1962 and 1965. Among its many
rulings, the council gave bishops more freedom, proclaimed that other religions besides Catholicism were of value, supported religious freedom,
rejected anti-Semitism, and promoted a more active social role for the
church. Vatican II decreed that the Catholic Mass was to be conducted in
the country’s native language. Laypeople were to acquire a larger role in
determining the affairs of the church. The United States Conference of
Bishops was created as the ruling body of the church within the United
States. It, too, gave laypeople a role in the workings of the church.
Conservative Catholics objected to the changes. Some found the
drift from authority to individual choice disturbing. On the other hand,
progressive Catholics were disappointed that Vatican II had not taken
bolder steps to bring the church into step with modern times. From the
1960s to the 1980s, many American Catholics stopped following some
of the strict Catholic teachings, increasing friction between them and the
leaders of the traditional church.
Contraception, abortion, and women’s rights
After Vatican II, many American Catholics felt that issues of contraception, abortion, and sexuality were personal matters that could be handled
without the church’s interference. But in 1968, Pope Paul VI
(1897–1978) reasserted the church’s traditional ban on artificial birth
control. American Catholics, particularly women, responded with disappointment and anger. By the end of the 1960s, many surveys indicated
that nearly three-quarters of Catholic women were privately using artificial birth control. Many members of the Catholic clergy were openly—
and bitterly—opposed to the pope’s ruling. The Church’s position on
birth control remains the same in the twenty-first century.
The issue of abortion came into the forefront of heated debate in the
1970s. The Vatican had labeled abortion an unspeakable crime, and it
urged church leaders to act against it. American Catholics for the most
part believed that abortion was wrong, but many did not believe it was
a mortal sin, or an act of murder. An increasing number of American
Catholics felt that women had the right to decide the fate of their own
bodies and that abortion was not a decision to be made by a male-dominated church. The National Coalition of American Nuns helped to
sponsor a pro-choice advertisement in 1984, but the official stance of the
church today, supported by Pope Benedict XVI (1927–), still forbids
abortion in Catholic society.
American Catholics also led the battle for equality of the sexes in the
Catholic Church, demanding a larger, more visible role for women in the
church. In 1985, Gallup polls found that 47 percent of American
Catholics were in favor of women priests. In 1988, U.S. Catholic bishops, realizing the need for some new official statement on women’s role
in the church, published the “Partners in the Mystery of Redemption.”
The church condemned sexism as a sin; yet it still did not favor women
priests, contraception, or abortion.
Sexual abuse scandals of the 2000s
Beginning in late 2001 and early 2002, the Catholic Church in the
United States repeatedly made national headlines due to a series of sexual
abuse accusations made against its priests. Many were accusations of child
molestation. In 2004, the church’s review board issued a report on the molestation problem from 1950 to 2002, recording 10,667 abuse claims over
those fifty-two years. In this report, about forty-three hundred priests, or
4 percent of U.S. priests, had been accused of sexual abuse. However,
many observers point out that these numbers include only those who reported abuse. The actual numbers are probably significantly higher.
American Catholics were most angered that the church had covered
for the abusers, in some cases allowing them to continue the abuse in
other parishes. Authorities blamed the continuing pattern of abuse on church leaders who protected abusive priests rather than risk scandal by
revealing the truth. Belatedly, steps were taken to end the pattern. At its
June 2002 general meeting in Dallas, Texas, the Catholic bishops of the
United States adopted a “one strike, you’re out” policy that removes from
active ministry any priest who has sexually abused a minor, whether that
abuse occurred forty years ago or occurs tomorrow.
The lawsuits against the church continued. By 2005, Catholic dioceses across the United States were paying millions of dollars in damages
to victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of priests. As a result, the
Catholic Church faced devastating financial problems. Churches were
forced to lay off employees, close offices, and shut down schools and
seminaries to pay the high price of lengthy legal battles.
By the end of 2007, there were nearly sixty-eight million Catholics
in the United States. According to a 2004 poll, 60 percent of Catholics
were non-Hispanic whites, or Caucasians; 31 percent were Hispanic; 4
percent were African American; and 5 percent were of other ethnicity.