With our American Philosophy and Religion series, Applewood reissues many primary sources published throughout American history. Through these books, scholars, interpreters, students, and non-academics alike can see the thoughts and beliefs of Americans who came before us.

This work brings together in one place primary material dealing with the issue of American Catholics and slavery. The anthology is organized in three parts. Each part is preceded by an introduction offering an overview of the section and each of the one hundred documents. Part I contains documents which established the Roman Catholic position on the morality of slave and slave-holding. Part II focuses on the context of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries in which the Roman church existed. Part III presents documents generated by Catholics themselves specifically relating to slavery. Contents: Introduction; PART ONE: THE CATHOLIC TRADITION ON SLAVERY; The Hebrew Scriptures; The New Testament: The Letters of Paul; Church Fathers and Theologians; Church Councils; A Slave Code of a Catholic King; Papal Encyclicals; PART TWO: THE CONTEXT: 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY AMERICA; An Overview; Slavery: The Socio-Political Setting; Abolition and Abolitionists: Uniquely a Minority Protestant View; American Colonization Society; Papal Statements on the Evils of the Age: A Catholic World View; Nativism and Anti-Catholicism: Attack and Response; Friendly Observations of Catholics by Southerners; PART THREE: CATHOLICS ON SLAVERY: 1789-1866; Observers of Catholics and Slavery; The Catholic Press on the Subject of Slavery; The Work of Religious Among the Blacks; Catholics as Slave Buyers, Sellers and Masters; Statements of Former Slaves of Catholics; Baptism Registers; Statements of Catholic Priests; Theologizing on Slavery; Bishops' Pastoral Letters on Slavery; Personal Letters on Slavery; Personal Letters of Catholic Bishops; A Civil War Diary; The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore; Notes; Index.

Confession is a history of penance as a virtue and a sacrament in the United States from about 1634, when Catholicism arrived in Maryland, to 2015, fifty years after the major theological and disciplinary changes initiated by the Second Vatican Council. Patrick W. Carey argues that the Catholic theology and practice of penance, so much opposed by the inheritors of the Protestant Reformation, kept alive the biblical penitential language in the United States at least until the mid-1960s when Catholic penitential discipline changed. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American Catholics created institutions that emphasized, in opposition to Protestant culture, confession to a priest as the normal and almost exclusive means of obtaining forgiveness. Preaching, teaching, catechesis, and parish revival-type missions stressed sacramental confession and the practice became a widespread routine in American Catholic life. After the Second Vatican Council, the practice of sacramental confession declined suddenly. The post-Vatican II history of penance, influenced by the Council's reforms and by changing American moral and cultural values, reveals a major shift in penitential theology; moving from an emphasis on confession to emphasis on reconciliation. Catholics make up about a quarter of the American population, and thus changes in the practice of penance had an impact on the wider society. In the fifty years since the Council, penitential language has been overshadowed increasingly by the language of conflict and controversy. In today's social and political climate, Confession may help Americans understand how far their society has departed from the penitential language of the earlier American tradition, and consider the advantages and disadvantages of such a departure.