In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council enacted the most sweeping changes the Catholic Church had seen in centuries. In readable and compelling prose, Mark S. Massa tells the story of the cultural war these changes ignited in the United States - a war that is still being waged today. Suddenly, one Sunday, the mass as the faithful had always known it was different, and so was the Church they had believed was timeless and unchanging. Once the Church opened the door to change, Massa argues, it could not be closed again. Skirmishes broke out over the proper way to worship. Soon, Catholics were bitterly divided over birth control, abortion, celibacy, female priests, and the authority of the Church itself. As he narrates these turbulent events, Massa takes us beyond stereotypes of liberals and conservatives, offering new insights into the last fifty years of American Catholicism.

Farrelly uses America's early history of anti-Catholicism to reveal contemporary American understandings of freedom, government, God, the individual, and the community.

For most of the eighteenth century, British protestantism was driven neither by the primacy of denominations nor by fundamental discord between them. Instead, it thrived as part of a complex transatlantic system that bound religious institutions to imperial politics. As Katherine Carte argues, British imperial protestantism proved remarkably effective in advancing both the interests of empire and the cause of religion until the war for American independence disrupted it. That Revolution forced a reassessment of the role of religion in public life on both sides of the Atlantic. Religious communities struggled to reorganize within and across new national borders. Religious leaders recalibrated their relationships to government. If these shifts were more pronounced in the United States than in Britain, the loss of a shared system nonetheless mattered to both nations. Sweeping and explicitly transatlantic, Religion and the American Revolution demonstrates that if religion helped set the terms through which Anglo-Americans encountered the imperial crisis and the violence of war, it likewise set the terms through which both nations could imagine the possibilities of a new world.

How early American Catholics justified secularism and overcame suspicions of disloyalty, transforming ideas of religious liberty in the process. In colonial America, Catholics were presumed dangerous until proven loyal. Yet Catholics went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped to finalize the First Amendment to the Constitution. What explains this remarkable transformation? Michael Breidenbach shows how Catholic leaders emphasized their churchÕs own traditionsÑrather than Enlightenment liberalismÑto secure the religious liberty that enabled their incorporation in American life. Catholics responded to charges of disloyalty by denying papal infallibility and the popeÕs authority to intervene in civil affairs. Rome staunchly rejected such dissent, but reform-minded Catholics justified their stance by looking to conciliarism, an intellectual tradition rooted in medieval Catholic thought yet compatible with a republican view of temporal independence and church-state separation. Drawing on new archival material, Breidenbach finds that early American Catholic leaders, including Maryland founder Cecil Calvert and members of the prominent Carroll family, relied on the conciliarist tradition to help institute religious toleration, including the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649. The critical role of Catholics in establishing American churchÐstate separation enjoins us to revise not only our sense of who the American founders were, but also our understanding of the sources of secularism. ChurchÐstate separation in America, generally understood as the product of a Protestant-driven Enlightenment, was in key respects derived from Catholic thinking. Our Dear-Bought Liberty therefore offers a dramatic departure from received wisdom, suggesting that religious liberty in America was not bestowed by liberal consensus but partly defined through the ingenuity of a persecuted minority.

This book looks at the ways Roman Catholic leaders tried to influence U.S. political leaders in regard to Mexico's postrevolutionary government.

Charles Carroll was one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. This wealthy young landowner not only played a key role in founding the United States of America, but a surprising one. He was Catholic. In Maryland, laws prohibited Catholics from all aspects of public life including public worship, schooling, and the right to vote or hold a seat in the House of Burgesses. However, Charles was uniquely prepared by the best of European educations, both religious and secular, to understand and help form the new nation that considered freedom to be a fundamental principle. Though staunchly patriotic, it wasn’t until 1769—when the governor enacted an oppressive policy that would affect all Marylanders—that the young planter began to speak out publicly. Adopting the pen name “First Citizen,” Charles used his well-sharpened reasoning to begin a series of essays in the Maryland Gazette, championing the rights of the people. The author, Milton Lomask, focuses on the early events of Charles’ career in statesmanship. By using lively dialog based in part on Carroll’s own letters, he succeeds in bringing to life not only the character of a man who helped to establish and shape the United States of America, but also the times in which he lived. Includes a useful Author’s Note Historical Insight by Daria Sockey

This book explores the complex relationship between anti-Catholicism, or anti-popery to use the contemporary term, and the American Revolution in New England. Anti-Catholicism was among the most common themes in colonial New England culture. Nonetheless, New Englanders entered into an alliance with French Catholics against Protestant Britons during the American Revolution. As New Englanders traditionally associated Catholicism with tyranny and oppression, they were able to extend these feelings to the popish British upon the passage of the Quebec Act. As a consequence, anti-popery helped enable New Englanders to make the intellectual transition that war with Britain required. During the Revolution, anti-popery became less popular as the American rebels relied on Catholic France for aid. By the end of the revolutionary era, Catholics were extended legal toleration in all of the New England states. The book's conclusion explores the change in religious tolerance and the decline of anti-popery with a study of New England's first Catholic parish.

Examines the experiences of Catholics during the period when England was ruled by Puritan Protestants.

American Catholic places the rise of the United States' political conservatism in the context of ferment within the Roman Catholic Church. How did Roman Catholics shift from being perceived as un-American to emerging as the most vocal defenders of the United States as the standard bearer in world history for political liberty and economic prosperity? D. G. Hart charts the development of the complex relationship between Roman Catholicism and American conservatism, and shows how these two seemingly antagonistic ideological groups became intertwined in advancing a certain brand of domestic and international politics. Contrary to the standard narrative, Roman Catholics were some of the most assertive political conservatives directly after World War II, and their brand of politics became one of the most influential means by which Roman Catholicism came to terms with American secular society. It did so precisely as bishops determined the church needed to update its teaching about its place in the modern world. Catholics grappled with political conservatism long before the supposed rightward turn at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Hart follows the course of political conservatism from John F. Kennedy, the first and only Roman Catholic president of the United States, to George W. Bush, and describes the evolution of the church and its influence on American politics. By tracing the roots of Roman Catholic politicism in American culture, Hart argues that Roman Catholicism's adaptation to the modern world, whether in the United States or worldwide, was as remarkable as its achievement remains uncertain. In the case of Roman Catholicism, the effects of religion on American politics and political conservatism are indisputable.

This is the fascinating story of Catholic heroes who, despite discrimination and persecution, saw the promise of America and sought to fight for its independence. Some of these Catholic heroes were Americans, like the three Carroll brothersmof Maryland who included Charles, the longest-lived signer of the Declaration of Independence, John, America's first bishop, and John Barry, one of the founders of the U.S. Navy. Other heroes were foreign-born: Frenchmen like legendary generals the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau, as well as Polish soldiers such as Casimir Pulaski, the founder of the U.S. Calvary, and the daring Thaddeus Kosciuszko. All were inspired by their Catholic faith to join the Revolution and its call for human freedom and dignity. For all who are passionate about the Catholic Faith and the American experiment, Dan LeRoy's Liberty's Lions is a book you won't be able to put down.