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The situation of the Catholic Church in the Thirteen Colonies was characterized by an extensive religious persecution originating from Protestant sects, which would barely allow religious toleration to Catholics living on American territory. Nonetheless, Catholics were a part of colonial history from the beginning, especially in Maryland, a ...
"Unlike all Protestant churches in America, the Roman Catholic church depended for its identity upon keeping doctrinal and administrative unity with a European-based authority." [ 40 ] The papacy was cautious of the freedom found in the United States as it showed similarities to the attitudes behind the French Revolution.
San Miguel Mission, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, established in 1610, is the oldest church in the United States.. The Catholic Church in the United States began in the colonial era, but by the mid-1800s, most of the Spanish, French, and Mexican influences had demographically faded in importance, with Protestant Americans moving west and taking over many formerly Catholic regions.
In Catholic Europe, convents were heavily endowed over the centuries, and were sponsored by the aristocracy. But there were very few rich American Catholics, and no aristocrats. Religious orders were founded by entrepreneurial women who saw a need and an opportunity, and were staffed by devout women from poor families.
Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the 17th century by men and women, who, in the face of European religious persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions (largely stemming from the Protestant Reformation which began c. 1517) and fled Europe.
In the American colonies the First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Christianity. It resulted from preaching that deeply affected listeners (already church members) with a sense of personal guilt and salvation by ...
The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America (2008) Thomas, J. Douglas. "A Century of American Catholic History." US Catholic Historian (1987): 25–49. in JSTOR; Woods, James M. A History of the Catholic Church in the American South, 1513-1900 (University Press of Florida, 2011); 512 pp. ISBN 978-0-8130-3532-1.
The Catholic Church has been the driving force behind some of the major events of world history including the Christianization of Western and Central Europe and Latin America, the spreading of literacy and the foundation of the universities, hospitals, the Western tradition of monasticism, the development of art and music, literature ...