Catholic Church in the United States
The Catholic Church in the United States is part of the worldwide Latin Church and the wider Catholic Communion, in communion with the Pope. With between 19 percent to 22% of the adult United States' population as of 2024, the Catholic Church is the country's second-largest religious grouping after Protestantism. The United States has the fourth-largest Catholic population in the world, after Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines.
History
Catholicism has had a significant cultural, social, and political impact on the United States.Early colonial period
Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States by way of Spanish colonists in the present-day Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and the southwest. The first known Catholic Mass held in what would become the United States was in 1526 by Dominican friars Antonio de Montesinos and Anthony de Cervantes, who ministered to the San Miguel de Gualdape colonists for the 3 months the colony existed. The influence of the Alta California missions forms a lasting memorial to part of this heritage. Until the 19th century, the Franciscans and other religious orders had to operate their missions under the Spanish and Portuguese governments and military.One of the Thirteen Colonies of British America, the Province of Maryland, "a Catholic Proprietary", was founded with an explicitly English Catholic identity in the 17th century, contrasting itself with the neighboring Protestant-dominated Massachusetts Bay Colony and Colony of Virginia. It was named after the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I of England. Politically, it was under the influence of Catholic colonial families of Maryland such as the Calvert Baron Baltimore and the Carroll family, the latter of Irish origin.
Much of the religious situation in the Thirteen Colonies reflected the sectarian divisions of the English Civil War. This predicament was especially precarious for Catholics. For this reason, Calvert wanted to provide "a refuge for his fellow Catholics" who were "harassed in England by the Protestant majority." King Charles I, as a "Catholic sympathizer", favored and facilitated Calvert's plan if only to make evident that a "policy of religious toleration could permit Catholics and Protestants to live together in harmony."
The Province of Pennsylvania, which was given to Quaker William Penn by the last Catholic King of England, James II, advocated religious toleration as a principle and some Catholics lived there. There were also some Catholics in the Province of New York, named after King James II.
In 1785, the estimated number of Catholics was at 25,000; 15,800 in Maryland, 7,000 in Pennsylvania and 1,500 in New York. There were only 25 priests serving the nation's Catholics. This was less than 2% of the total population in the Thirteen Colonies.
In 1776, after the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted and issued the United States Declaration of Independence and the Continental Army prevailed over the British in the American Revolutionary War, the United States came to incorporate into itself territories with a pre-existing Catholic history under their previous governance by New France and New Spain, the two premier European Catholic powers active in North America. The territorial evolution of the United States since 1776 has meant that today more areas that are now part of the United States were Catholic in colonial times before they were Protestant.
Founding of the United States
Anti-Catholicism was the policy for the English who first settled the New England colonies, and it persisted in the face of warfare with the French in New France, now part of Canada. Maryland was founded by a Catholic, Lord Baltimore, as the first 'non-denominational' colony and was the first to accommodate Catholics. A charter was issued to him in 1632.In 1650, the Puritans in the colony rebelled and repealed the Act of Toleration. Catholicism was outlawed and Catholic priests were hunted and exiled. By 1658, the Act of Toleration was reinstated and Maryland became the center of Catholicism into the mid-19th century. In 1689, Puritans rebelled and again repealed the Maryland Toleration Act. These rebels cooperated with the colonial assembly "dominated by Anglicans to endow the Church of England with tax support and to bar Catholics from holding public office." New York proved more tolerant with its Catholic governor, Thomas Dongan, and other Catholic officials. Freedom of religion returned with the American Revolution.
In 1756, a Maryland Catholic official estimated seven thousand practicing Catholics in Maryland and three thousand in Pennsylvania. The Williamsburg Foundation estimates in 1765 Maryland Catholics at 20,000 and 6,000 in Pennsylvania. The population of these colonies at the time was approximately 180,000 and 200,000, respectively. By the time the American War for Independence started in 1776, Catholics formed 1.6%, or 40,000 persons of the 2.5 million population of the 13 colonies. Another estimate is 35,000 in 1789, 60% in Maryland with not many more than 30 priests. John Carroll, first Catholic Bishop, in 1785, two years after the Treaty of Paris, reported 24,000 registered communicants in the new country, of whom 90% were in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
After the Revolution, Rome made entirely new arrangements for the creation of an American diocese under American bishops. Numerous Catholics served in the American army and the new nation had very close ties with Catholic France. General George Washington insisted on toleration; for example, he issued strict orders in 1775 that "Pope's Day", the colonial equivalent of Guy Fawkes Night, was not to be celebrated. European Catholics played major military roles, especially Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, Charles Hector, comte d'Estaing, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko. Irish-born Commodore John Barry from Co Wexford, Ireland, often credited as "the Father of the American Navy", also played an important military role. In a letter to Bishop Carroll, Washington acknowledged this unique contribution of French Catholics as well as the patriotic contribution of Carroll himself: "And I promise that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishments of their Revolution, and the establishment of their government; nor the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic religion is professed."
Beginning in approximately 1780 there was a struggle between lay trustees and bishops over the ownership of church property, with the trustees losing control following the 1852 Plenary Councils of Baltimore.
Historian Jay Dolan, writing on the colonial era in 2011, said:
President Washington promoted religious tolerance by proclamations and by publicly attending services in various Protestant and Catholic churches. The old colonial laws imposing restrictions on Catholics were gradually abolished by the states, and were prohibited in the new federal constitution.
In 1787, two Catholics, Daniel Carroll of the Irish O'Carrolls and Irish born Thomas Fitzsimons, helped draft the new United States Constitution. John Carroll was appointed by the Vatican as Prefect Apostolic, making him superior of the missionary church in the thirteen states. He formulated the first plans for Georgetown University and became the first American bishop in 1789.
19th century
In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase saw vast territories in French Louisiana transferred over from the First French Republic, areas that would become the following states; Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Minnesota, Louisiana, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, half of Colorado, parts of New Mexico, Texas, and North Dakota. The French named a number of their settlements after Catholic saints, such as St. Louis, Sault Ste. Marie, St. Ignace, St. Charles and others. The Catholic, culturally French population of Americans, descended from this colony are today known as the Louisiana Creole and Cajun people.During the 19th century, territories previously belonging to the Catholic Spanish Empire became part of the United States, starting with Florida in the 1820s. Most of the Spanish American territories with a Catholic heritage became independent during the early 19th century, this included Mexico on the border of the United States. The United States subsequently annexed parts of Mexico, starting with Texas in the 1840s and after the end of the Mexican–American War an area known as the Mexican Cession, including what would become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, the rest of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. To an even greater extent than the French, the Spanish had named many settlements in the colonial period after Catholic saints or in reference to Catholic religious symbolism, names that they would retain after becoming part of the United States, especially in California, as well as Texas, New Mexico and Florida. In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, the United States took control of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, and Cuba for a time, all of which had several centuries of Spanish Catholic colonial history, though they were not made into states.
The number of Catholics surged starting in the 1840s as German, Irish, and other European Catholics came in large numbers. After 1890, Italians and Poles formed the largest numbers of new Catholics, but many countries in Europe contributed, as did Quebec. By 1850, Catholics had become the country's largest single denomination. Between 1860 and 1890, their population tripled to seven million.
Catholic revival
Historian John McGreevy identifies a major Catholic revival that swept across Europe, North America, and South America in the early 19th century. It was nurtured in the world of Catholic urban neighborhoods, parishes, schools, and associations, whose members understood themselves as arrayed against, and morally superior to the wider American society. The Catholic Revival is called "Ultramontanism". It included a new emphasis on Thomistic theology for intellectuals. For parishioners it meant a much deeper piety that emphasized miracles, saints, and new devotions such as, compulsory Sunday attendance, regular confession and communion, praying the rosary, a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and meatless Fridays. There was a deeper respect for bishops, and especially the Pope, with more direct control by the Vatican over selecting bishops and less autonomy for local parishes. There was a sharp increase in Mass attendance, religious vocations soared, especially among women. Catholics set up a parochial school system using the newly available nuns, and funding from the more religious parents. Intermarriage with Protestants was strongly discouraged. It was tolerated only if the children were brought up Catholics. The parochial schools effectively promoted marriage inside the faith. By the late 19th century dioceses were building foreign language elementary schools in parishes that catered to Germans and other non-English speaking groups. They raised large sums to build English-only diocesan high schools, which had the effect of increasing ethnic intermarriage and diluting ethnic nationalism. Leadership was increasingly in the hands of the Irish. The Irish bishops worked closely with the Vatican and promoted Vatican supremacy that culminated in Papal infallibility proclaimed in 1870.The bishops began standardizing discipline in the American Church with the convocation of the Plenary Councils of Baltimore in 1852, 1866 and 1884. These councils resulted in the promulgation of the Baltimore Catechism and the establishment of the Catholic University of America.
Jesuit priests who had been expelled from Europe found a new base in the U.S. They founded numerous secondary schools and 28 colleges and universities, including Georgetown University, St. Louis University, Boston College, the College of Holy Cross, the University of Santa Clara, and several Loyola Colleges. Many other religious communities like the Dominicans, Congregation of Holy Cross, and Franciscans followed suit.
In the 1890s, the Americanism controversy roiled senior officials. The Vatican suspected there was too much liberalism in the American Church, and the result was a turn to conservative theology as the Irish bishops increasingly demonstrated their total loyalty to the Pope, and traces of liberal thought in the Catholic colleges were suppressed. As part of this controversy, the founder of the Paulist Fathers, Isaac Hecker, was accused by the French cleric of subjectivism and crypto-Protestantism. Additionally some who sympathized with Hecker in France were accused of Americanism.