Roman Catholicism

Catholicism is the largest of the world's Christian denominations, with nearly a billion members entering the millennium. Derived from the Greek word for "universal," "catholic" has long been considered a defining characteristic of Christianity. The adjective "Roman" initially came into use during the Reformation as a deprecatory term for loyalty to the papacy. "Roman" is properly used to describe Catholics of the former Latin rite, as distinct from the various language traditions of other Catholic traditions. Thus, for instance, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, also called "Uniate," professes loyalty to the papacy but uses a liturgy that is not based on Latin. The common usage, which refers to Christianity linked to the papacy, is followed here.

Contemporary Catholicism is considered older than Protestantism because after the sixteenth-century Reformation, Catholicism preserved many of the institutions of medieval Christianity such as the mendicant orders, Marian devotions, and belief in Purgatory. Most of these owe their modern survival to approval by Church authorities. At the time of Francis of Assisi, for example, the mendicant orders emerged from among various movements urging return to evangelical poverty and popularizing lay preaching. But approval by the hierarchy allowed Franciscans, rather than Waldensians, to prosper. Although not found in Scripture, belief in Purgatory was derived from a theological premise that anyone not fully perfect in the faith would escape eternal punishment in Hell but still required purification to enter Heaven. As attested by Dante's epic poem, this was an important element in medieval Christian piety. Continuity with medieval Christendom is not absolute, however, because Catholicism allows for modification of institutions and beliefs to reflect social change. As a result, Purgatory is not as central to contemporary Catholic piety as it was when fear of punishment was generalized throughout society.

Catholicism in the United States

Roman Catholicism was the first Christianity brought to the Americas, in 1493. Puerto Rico, presently under U.S. rule, had its diocese of San Juan established in 1511, and the first bishop to take possession of his diocese in what is now the United States was Alonso Manso in 1513. Catholicism was established in Florida in 1526, and the parish at St. Augustine (1565) is the oldest continuous Christian congregation in the fifty states. The Catholic faith entered New Mexico in 1598, radiating from there to other parts of the Southwest, Texas, and California.

English-speaking Catholics came to America under the leadership of Cecil Calvert, second lord of Baltimore, who founded the colony of Maryland in 1634. However, England's antagonism against Catholicism carried over to the American colonies, and prohibitions against the establishment of Catholic churches was a key facet of the prejudice against Catholics that characterized the colonial period. The 1776 War of Independence and the enactment of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 brought greater tolerance for Catholics. The vitality of this postrevolutionary American Catholicism counted among its members a convert, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and notable clerical immigrants, such as St. John Neumann and Blessed Felix Varela.

Expansion into Louisiana after 1803 and the settlement of territories beyond the Alleghenies brought the U.S. church jurisdiction over the preexisting Catholicism of parishes and mission churches that had been established by the Spanish and the French. The large number of incoming Protestant and English-speaking settlers reduced the original Catholic population of these conquered areas into minorities, who were inclined to conform to a subordinate role in a predominantly Protestant country.

A steady stream of Catholic immigrants pushed the church in the United States to develop new institutions of service, such as Catholic schools, and new attitudes toward religious practice in a pluralistic society that imparted a recognizable character as uniquely American. The mass immigration of Irish Catholics during the potato famines (1846–1848) and the expansion westward after the conquests of Texas (1838) and Mexico (1848) were events that ushered in a new era for the church that increased its membership and material resources. This influence became national, particularly after the Civil War.

Gains in social power came at a price for Catholics. The U.S. church faced a virulent anti-Catholicism during the nativist movement and the Know-Nothing riots (1844) that projected Protestantism as the only truly "American" religion. There were also doubts as to the loyalty of Catholic soldiers in U.S. armies who would have to fight Mexican Catholics in 1848, a fear expressed fifty years later in the 1898 war against Spain. Following the model previously used to incorporate Florida, Indiana, and Louisiana, the English-speaking Catholic bishops, most of whom were U.S. citizens, emphasized their commitment to the United States and its form of government. This embrace of the United States meant that Catholicism rejected a role as irridentist defender of the natives in the conquered Mexican Catholic areas of Texas, the Southwest, and California. Unlike Poland and Ireland, where Catholicism became a nationalist religion in resistance to foreign invasion, the U.S. Catholic Church fostered the assimilation of the resident peoples to the newcomers. Named "pious colonialism," this policy harmonized concern for ministry toward the conquered peoples with maintenance of their social and cultural subordination to the foreign invader, the United States. Although Catholicism did not totally ignore its preexistent Spanish heritage—as, for instance, in the adoption of a Spanish colonial architectural style for church buildings—Spanish-speaking Catholics were often treated as if they were newly arrived "immigrants" to come to the United States, rather than the inhabitants of a conquered land.

Catholicism and Americanization

Throughout its history, the U.S. Catholic Church has wrestled with its identification as an institution of immigrants. Outspoken nineteenth-century intellectuals such as Orestes Brownson and ecclesiastics such as John Ireland, archbishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul, considered the survival of cultural traits from the homeland as detriments to full assimilation of immigrants into American society. On the other hand, many bishops feared that the loss of immigrant culture would lead to the loss of the Catholic faith. Both sides came together, however, to repudiate the suggestion in 1891 of Peter Paul Cahensly, a German layman, that called for the creation of multiple ethnic parishes under ethnic bishops in the United States. On the premise that once English was learned, ethnic differences would disappear, bishops preferred to funnel immigrants into scattered national parishes that celebrated Mass and offered services in the native tongue of immigrants. The Vatican saw dangers in conforming Catholicism too closely to loyalty to the government and in 1899 issued Testem Benevolentiae, condemning an ill-defined tendency called "Americanism" as a distortion of Catholic faith in the United States.

Catholics prospered in early twentieth-century America and built an impressive network of churches, universities, schools, hospitals, and social services in major U.S. cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. Immigrant leaders often spearheaded these efforts, such as St. Frances Cabrini, helping preserve traditional loyalty to Catholicism in a new land. The Depression added the ferment of a Catholic radicalism in the person of Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement, and the New Deal reflected many of the premises of Catholic social teaching as embodied in papal encyclicals. In the 1950s the television show Life Is Worth Living, with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, brought the clarity of Catholic doctrine into the consciousness of mainstream U.S. society. As the fault lines of ethnic neighborhoods collapsed, frictions among groups such as the Irish, Italians, and Polish diminished, Catholics entered late into the civil rights movement, but they entered it nonetheless, although faced with the difficult task of educating their own members to oppose the de facto segregation of many northern cities.

Restructuring of American Catholicism

The Cuban Revolution and the election of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, ushered in the 1960s, and the decade closed with U.S. society deeply divided about the Vietnam War, civil protest, the War on Poverty, race, and ethnicity. Catholicism worldwide undertook a critical restructuring of its organization, rituals, and doctrines in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1964). By redefining the church's relationship to the modern world, the council molded a new way of thinking about the mission of Catholicism. Ecclesiastical authority was challenged when it attempted to control debate about matters such as birth control and abortion. Vatican II also mandated the creation of national councils of Catholic bishops to mediate between the papacy and local needs, thus establishing a greater degree of local autonomy in every country. Today various activist groups, such as Pax Christi on the political left and Catholics United for the Faith on the right, address contemporary social issues by appealing to Catholic teaching. But although differing in the interpretation of Catholic teachings, each professes loyalty to the church.

In the United States, Vatican II had a profound impact on the number of men and women dedicating themselves to church service as priests and brothers, nuns and sisters. Between 1970 and 1990 the number of priests and sisters in the United States dropped precipitously. This loss of personnel produced a severe problem in Catholic agencies, particularly Catholic schools. Faced with rising tuition to accommodate the salaries of lay teachers replacing the free labor of sisters, many parochial schools were forced to close because they had become too expensive for the parish members.

These social factors produced a pragmatic need to reshape many of the institutions of U.S. Catholicism and to legitimate changes with theological arguments. There is organized support for the restoration of a married clergy in the Roman rite and for the ordination of women to the priesthood. The Theology of Liberation, which began in Latin America, introduced Marxist terminology into the analysis of church responsibility, thus reinforcing the responsibility of church leaders to frame policy by reference to global issues of injustice. The National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) has advocated a government-run universal health care system and has produced several significant documents that articulate church teaching on issues of particular importance in the United States. Economic justice, racism, and homosexuality have been addressed as matters for pastoral concern. The Catholic Church has been an outspoken opponent of anti-immigrant legislation and government measures designed to rob the poor of needed assistance.

The reforms of Vatican II have radically altered the style of Catholic worship. When required to provide services in "the language of the people," the NCCB decided to develop one official liturgy in English and another in Spanish, each fitting the linguistic uses common in the United States. Because this decision virtually coincided with a radical change in immigration law, the introduction of bilingual education, and the creation of political power for the Spanish-speaking people of the United States through the War on Poverty, the way was cleared for a Latino religious resurgence. In fewer than two decades, Latino militancy within the church and rapid demographic growth have made U.S. Catholicism into a bilingual, bicultural church. Of the estimated 61 million Catholics in the country in 1998, an estimated 23 million (38 percent) were Latinos. In some cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Antonio, Latinos are the majority of Catholics. Demographic projections suggest that within twenty years a majority of U.S. Catholics will be Latinos, marking a change as significant as the Irish immigration of the nineteenth century.

The Catholic Church in the United States entered 1998 with 19,677 parishes and 3,051 missions. Catholics run 590 hospitals, 17,165 elementary schools, 1,357 high schools, and 241 colleges and universities. Church-affiliated social service centers treat 24 million clients annually. Although prosperous, Catholicism has not ceased to be an immigrant church in the United States. Current trends include outreach to new and diverse ethnic groups and a return by second- and third-generation Catholics to elements of a lost, preconciliar piety. The church has undertaken the professional training of large numbers of lay Catholics to assume ministerial roles in Bible study, charismatic prayer, the pursuit of social justice, and a permanent diaconate for married men. The future holds the prospect for a U.S. Catholicism that is clergy-poor and lay ministry–rich, with strong attachment to material aspects of religion and a rootedness in social justice concerns, characteristics long exhibited by Latino Catholicism. The challenge will be to mesh the interests of different Catholic constituencies within the same national institution.

See alsoBelonging, Religious; Catholic Worker; Celibacy; Church and State; Ecumenical Movement; Encyclical; Freedom of Religion; Mestizo Worship; Papacy; Religious Communities; Religious Persecution; Rome; Sociology of Religion; Vatican; Vatican Ii.

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