America 250 is a new special series from the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Catholic Current podcast. Released on April 14, the first episode, Catholics and the Founding, features historian Michael Breidenbach, Ph.D., in conversation with host Mara Moser. Breidenbach, the author of Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America, is Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University and coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty.
The episode offers viewers insights into Catholic life in the 13 colonies -- a subject we might not be as familiar with as we are the role of the Church in settling the South and the West. Catholics were a minority in Early America, Breidenbach notes, concentrated mainly in Maryland.
Their faith was practiced quietly, Breidenbach says:
Devotion would typically be reading the Bible, attending Mass frequently, the sacraments when you could. And the sermons, the excellent sermons we have are, for instance from Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop. ... They focus on a virtue, whether it's a natural virtue like temperance or a theological virtue like charity -- very much rooted in the scripture.
But if they were small in number and quiet in devotion, Catholics had a profound influence on the shaping of the new nation.
One way Catholics changed America, Breidenbach says, was by widening its perspective. Catholics were an international community, and as Catholics from around the world began to immigrate to the colonies, they brought the diversity that would become a hallmark of American society and the American Catholic Church.
The founding is a global phenomenon. There are people not just from England, people from Ireland, France, the German states. You know we have people from the Caribbean. We have enslaved Catholics. ... And there's literature coming from England that American Catholics are receiving. And all the European Catholics who are immigrating, those from the coming from the Caribbean, those coming from the Spanish colonies in the South, they are shaping the American Catholic Church.
Founders and framers
Perhaps the most powerful contribution of Catholics to the founding of the United States, Breidenbach believes, is the role of Catholic founders like the Carrolls in securing religious liberty as a bedrock principle. Bishop John Carroll wrote newspaper articles against having a religious test for elected officials, and Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, helped hammer out the religious liberty language of the First Amendment.
Catholics were, Breidenbach notes, originally viewed with suspicion among the largely Protestant colonists. But Catholics today can be proud of their role in building the new nation.
As we celebrate um the 250th anniversary on 4th of July, I think American Catholics should take stock not just of the incredible journey that America has gone from a colonial experiment in which people risk their lives, frankly, to come to the colonies and build teetering settlements and trying to make their way in a foreign land, the many arduous journeys from that point until today, but also of the way in which Catholics were not just almost the enemy -- the Papists as Protestants might call Catholics in early America -- but actually founders and framers, right? Not just foreigners, but founders and framers!
'We Hold These Truths'
Catholic Current's America 250 series is just one of the many resources provided by the bishops to help Catholics celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. For articles, prayer resources, and to become involved in two special action initiatives -- 250 Hours of Adoration and 250 Works of Mercy -- visit the We Hold These Truths page at the USCCB. The America 250 podcast can also be viewed from this page; watch for future episodes.
