Women in American Catholic History

Horizons ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-340
Author(s):  
Arlene Swidler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Catholic Women ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
The One ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Women’S History

Considering that History and Religious Studies are two of the areas in which feminist scholars have been most active, it is surprising how very little information is compiled in the area of American Catholic Women's History. Catholic Church historians, of course, have never found the laity of great interest, and the contemporary feminist movement has been strongly secular. Protestant and Jewish materials are more easily available, and even those books which purport to address women in American religion in general give only brief attention to Catholicisim, often by dealing solely with women in religious orders. So work on American Catholic women remains to be done.The one exception is books dealing with individual religious orders, partly because of the accessibility of the materials, though I have been gently admonished not to overestimate the order in convent archives. Studies moving wider to focus on sisters in general are still very few, and attempts to integrate these materials with lay women's history have barely begun. People interested in this field will find help in Elizabeth Kolmer, A.S.C., “Catholic Women Religious and Women's History: A Survey of the Literature,” American Quarterly 30 (1978), 639-51, and in the forthcoming book by Evangeline Thomas, C.S.J., Women Religious History Sources: A Guide to Archives (New York: Bowker).

REINHABITING RELIGION: GREEN SISTERS, ECOLOGICAL RENEWAL, AND THE BIOGEOGRAPHY OF RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah McFarland Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Women Religious ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Catholic Women ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Religious Understanding

AbstractThis article explores the growing movement of environmentally activist Roman Catholic women religious in North America and the implications of this movement for theorizing new directions in religion and culture. Sisters' creative efforts to conserve traditional religious and cultural forms while opening up these forms to "greener" (ecologically-minded) interpretations reveals the very protean process of religious meaning-making. It also subsequently challenges more static and conventional theoretical models of religion. In particular, the author documents and analyzes the intertwining of bioregional philosophies of "reinhabitation," expressions of American Catholic religious life, and manifestations of "green culture." Integrating geographic, ethnographic, and historical methodologies, the author argues that when researchers approach the study of religion as "biogeographers," they discover complex levels of religious understanding and expression that are otherwise overlooked. Significantly, it is these frequently-missed dimensions of the religious landscape that more accurately reflect the "living and lived" quality of religion.

A CHURCH DIVIDED: ROMAN CATHOLICISM, AMERICANIZATION, AND THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Wetzel
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
American Nation ◽  
Do So

AbstractStandard accounts of American Catholic history generally note in passing that American Catholics supported the Spanish-American War but do not examine what reasons provoked them to do so. At the same time, recent literature on the war itself has described various factors that motivated American support, but few of these studies have noted the central role that religion played in Americans' interpretations of the conflict. This article brings these two historiographies together by showing the importance of the war for the Catholic Church in America as well as the significance of religious belief for how many Americans understood the conflict. In particular, providentialist interpretations of the war held by a large number of Catholics reveal a crucial moment in the church's process of Americanization. Yet more importantly, this article focuses on the significant number of Catholics who steadfastly opposed the war, demonstrating the contested nature of the Americanization process. Ultimately, this article maintains that skepticism concerning the righteousness of the American nation motivated antiwar Catholics' resistance to prevalent American attitudes. By integrating American Catholics into our understanding of the Spanish-American War, this article sheds new light on the development of fin de siècle American Catholicism and on the war itself.

From Advent to Easter: Catholic Preaching in New York City, 1808–1809.

1994 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-377
Author(s):  
James M. O'toole
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
White House ◽  
White Males ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Catholic History ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Scholarly Discourse

The recent interest in reconstructing the history of spirituality and religious belief is nowhere more welcome than in the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States. From the very point of its emergence as a recognizable subdiscipline at the turn of the century and lasting into very recent scholarship, American Catholic history has been a relentlessly “topdown”affair. It focused on the leaders of the church—almost all of them white males—and on official church institutions. Episcopal biography was the preferred form and, as often as not, “progress” was the theme: the hierarchy established itself steadily along the advancing frontier; populations of clergy, religious, and laity all increased heroically; immigrants once despised were transformed into the American mainstream. There was even an inspirational final chapter to the tale, as one American Catholic finally grasped the brass ring of acceptance and moved into the White House. The story was a deliberately edifying one, but it was a story primarily for insiders. Perhaps for that reason alone, American Catholic history seemed to remain, as Leslie Tender has recently observed, “on the margins” of serious scholarly discourse.

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