American Catholicism

Catalog description

This course will introduce the student to the history of American Catholicism from colonial days to the present. Special emphasis will be placed upon a consideration of the problems which the church faced as it tried simultaneously to be American enough to please a frequently skeptical and sometimes hostile American culture; conspicuously Catholic enough to please Rome and Catholic enough in the forms of piety and governance to please the diverse ethnic groups that comprised its membership. Topics covered will include Catholic patriotism, Americanization, the Americanist crisis, nativism and American Catholic intellectual life.