Transition to a New Era

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gleason
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
New Era ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
A Minor

We have already noted among the crosscurrents of the postwar decade assimilative tendencies that ran counter to a key impulse of the Catholic Revival— the drive to build a distinctive Catholic culture and thereby “to redeem all things in Christ.” Here we look more systematically at the most significant of those countervailing tendencies from the late 1940s, when they were still a minor theme, to the early 1960s when they merged with the forces unleashed by the Second Vatican Council. We begin with a development in American Catholic historical scholarship—research devoted to the Americanist controversy of the 1890s. The results of this research began to appear during the war; over the next fifteen years, books and articles on the subject assumed the proportions of a small flood. Taken as a whole, the new scholarship reinforced midcentury Catholic liberalism and helped prepare the way for the deeper changes of the 1960s. At bottom, the late nineteenth-century controversy arose from policy differences over how the Catholic church should respond to social and intellectual changes accompanying the onset of what we have been calling modernity. As pointed out in the Introduction, the Catholic University of America was a storm center of conflict; moreover, papal condemnations of Americanism in 1899 and of Modernism in 1907 played a crucial role in establishing the ideological framework within which Catholic higher education developed in the twentieth century. That framework involved a firm rejection of modernity, but the historical recovery of the Americanist episode indirectly nurtured a more positive attitude toward the modern world. The fact that Catholic historians of the generation immediately following the controversy studiously avoided investigating it shows how sensitive the issues remained for almost half a century. Theodore Maynard, who devoted a chapter to “The American Heresy” in his popular Story of American Catholicism (1941), observed that few Catholics had ever heard of such a thing and those who tried to learn more about it would soon find themselves at a dead end.

Dean Lings's Church: The Success of Ethnic Catholicism in Yonkers in the 1890s

1996 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-41
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
American Catholic Church

From the period after the Revolutionary War, when Philadelphia and New York merchants first replaced Maryland planters as the lay elite, American Catholicism has been predominantly urban. This became especially noticeable in the late nineteenth century when large numbers of European immigrants swelled the Catholic ranks in many cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The astonishing ethnic variety of the newcomers made the American Catholic Church more “catholic” than ever before, which was a boon to Catholic apologists, but a nightmare for the American bishops. To their credit, they responded to this pastoral challenge imaginatively and effectively by creating an extensive network of “national parishes” for virtually every sizable ethnic group.

scholarly journals LATINO MIGRATION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S.A. CATHOLICISM: FRAMING THE QUESTION

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (128) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Allan Figueroa Deck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Youth Ministry ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Dynamic Vision ◽  
Latino Migration

Este ensaio estuda a relação entre a migração latino-americana em direção ao Norte e as mudanças que estão tendo lugar no catolicismo estadunidense. A parte principal do artigo concentra-se na profunda e histórica experiência religiosa que os latinos trazem à Igreja nos Estados Unidos, herança marcadamente diferente da anglo-americana. Ao pano de fundo colonial, entretanto, devem ser acrescentadas as profundas mudanças que aconteceram no catolicismo latino-americano no período posterior ao Concilio Vaticano II. Os latinos têm sido um canal para comunicar a visão dinâmica de Medellín e Aparecida à Igreja católica estadunidense mais focada na conservação que na missão. A seção final trata das contribuições específicas do catolicismo latino à vida da Igreja estadunidense contemporânea através dos métodos pastorais renovados, da opção pelos pobres e da teologia da libertação, assim como no âmbito da oração, do culto e da espiritualidade, a preocupação pela justiça social, a religiosidade popular e a pastoral juvenil – para mencionar apenas algumas poucas. A eleição do Papa Francisco, o primeiro papa latino-americano, destaca a influência emergente do catolicismo latino-americano na cena mundial e não apenas nos Estados Unidos.ABSTRACT: This essay explores the link between Latin American migration northward and changes taking place in U.S. Catholicism. A major part of the article focuses on the deep and historic religious background that Latinos bring to the Church in the United States, a heritage markedly different from that of Anglo America. To the colonial background, however, must be added the profound changes that have taken place in Latin American Catholicism in the period after the Second Vatican Council. Latinos have been a conduit for communicating the dynamic vision of Medellín and Aparecida to a U.S. Catholic Church focused more on maintenance than mission. A final section looks at specific contributions of Latino Catholicism to the U.S. Church’s contemporary life through renewed pastoral methods, the option for the poor, and Liberation Theology as well as in the area of prayer, worship and spirituality, concern for social justice, popular piety, and youth ministry—to name just a few. The election of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, highlights the emerging influence of Latin American Catholicism on the world stage and not only in the United States.

John F. O. Fernandez: Enlightened Lay Catholic Reformer, 1815–1820

1981 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Patrick W. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
American Catholic Church ◽  
The Church

The American republican form of government and the effects of the Enlightenment upon the European Catholic church provided fertile ground for theological reflection and ecclesiastical adaptation in early nineteenth-century American Catholicism. A number of immigrant Catholic laymen were influenced by their previous European Catholic experiences and by the American enthusiasm for republicanism to reform their understanding of the laity's role in the American Catholic church and to adapt ecclesiastical structures to American political institutions. In light of these experiences, some of these laymen began to reflect upon the Christian Scriptures and tradition, and to formulate a democratic conception of the layman's role within the church.

Catholic (Non)Feminism

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-104
Author(s):  
Mary J. Henold
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
National Council ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Catholic Women ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In this chapter, the history of the National Council of Catholic Women in the 1960s and 1970s – the years during and following Vatican II – is reassessed. The NCCW has been commonly perceived as a powerful anti-feminist organization for Catholic laywomen that was controlled by the Catholic hierarchy, but its archives reveal a sustained effort to engage with feminist ideas after the Second Vatican Council. Although most of the NCCW’s leadership did not self-identify as feminist, the group espoused many feminist beliefs, particularly about women’s leadership, opportunity, challenging ideas about women’s vocation, and women’s right to participate fully in the life of the Catholic church. The NCCW, under the leadership of Margaret Mealey, developed new organizational structures, educational programs, and publications to educate their membership about changing gender roles and the need to press the church for greater inclusion. Comparison to the international organization the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations (WUCWO), reveals the limitations of their feminism, however. Whereas WUCWO was willing to openly embrace feminism and feminist activism, NCCW was divided and preferred not to self-identify as feminist.

(Un)Making Christianity

2020 ◽  
pp. 100-119
Author(s):  
Rachel Sarah O'Toole
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Black People ◽  
Modern World ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Church Structures

This chapter argues that although colonial authorities and church officials in the Iberian Americas limited Afro-Latin American participation in Catholic religious practices, men and women of the African Diaspora shaped colonial Latin American Catholicism. The Iberian Crowns, as well as early modern colonial clerics, profited from the transatlantic slave trade and the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. As a major financial and political institution of the early modern world, the Catholic Church participated in and developed the idea that black people could be sold and purchased because of their racial identity. Furthermore, early modern clerics, as well as the Spanish Crown, engaged in a Foucauldian governmentality of incorporation and control that included Afro-Latin Americans, enslaved and free, as Catholic subjects. Nevertheless, men and women of the African Diaspora in colonial Latin America employed Church structures to organize their communities. Africans and their descendants placed the worship of black saints at the center of colonial municipal celebrations and called on Iberian ecclesiastical courts to defend their families against the definitions of property by slaveholders. As a result, Afro-Latin Americans played a central role in the formation and development of Latin American Catholicism.

scholarly journals INTRODUCTION

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
Charles De Gaulle ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Pope John Xxiii ◽  
The Church

Charles de Gaulle famously called the Second Vatican Council the most important event in modern history. Many commentators at the time saw the Council as nothing short of revolutionary, and the later judgements of historians have upheld this view. The astonishing enterprise of a man who became, quite unexpectedly, Pope John XXIII in 1958, this purposeful aggiornamento of the Roman Catholic Church was almost at once a leviathan of papers, committees, commissions, and meetings. Scholars have been left to confront no less than twelve volumes of ‘ante-preparatory’ papers, seven volumes of preparatory papers, and thirty-two volumes of documents generated by the Council itself. A lasting impression of the impressiveness of the affair is often conveyed by photographs of the 2,200-odd bishops of the Church, drawn from around the world, sitting in the basilica of St Peter, a vast, orchestrated theatre of ecclesiastical intent. For this was the council to bring the Church into a new relationship with the modern world, one that was more creative and less defiant; a council to reconsider much – if not quite all – of the theological, liturgical, and ethical infrastructure in which Catholicism lived and breathed and had its being.

Catholic Feminist Theology

2016 ◽  
pp. 832-849
Author(s):  
Danielle Nussberger
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter charts the history of Catholicism’s feminist theology. It begins with an overview of contexts that contributed to the development of Catholic feminist theology, with particular emphasis on the role of the Second Vatican Council (1963–1965) in the surge of feminist theological dialogue that began in the Catholic Church in the 1960s and 1970s. It then considers various feminist theories that differed in their strategies for overcoming injustice against women, especially the first-, second-, and third-wave feminisms. It also examines Catholic feminist theology’s viewpoints on the methodological concerns of hermeneutics, language, and praxis, along with its interpretation of Scripture and Christian history, what language we should be using to name and call upon the God in whom we believe, Jesus’ redemption of humanity from sin; Mary and the saints; Trinity; and creation.

Catholicism and Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Pasquier
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Black And White ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Historical Accounts

Historical accounts of American Catholicism are not complete without some recognition of the racial contours of life in the United States. As a people both racist and racialized, American Catholics have lived along a spectrum of racial identification, both reinforcing and confounding the black-and-white boundaries that so dominate American racial ideology. European Catholic colonizers introduced race-based notions of slavery to North America as early as the fifteenth century. Some Catholics of African descent challenged the institutionalization of white supremacy in the American Catholic Church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the same time that many white Protestant Americans categorized Catholic immigrants of Europe as dark-skinned outsiders. The immigration of people from Latin America and Asia has only added to the racial diversification of American Catholicism in the twenty-first century, further reinforcing the importance of race to the study of Catholicism in American history.

Parish

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia Colleen Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Institutional Control ◽  
Early American ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Institutional Church

This chapter unpacks the meaning of “parish” and significance of canonical parish status in the Catholic Church. Institutional authority matters for defining parish in ways unlike other forms of congregation. This chapter explores the role of territory in defining parish historically, along with exceptions to this rule that proliferated in early American Catholicism. National parishes challenged the institutional Church to clarify bishops’ authority over local religious organizing. Changes to canon law in 1917 reasserted institutional control over parish establishment, once again prioritizing territorial boundaries. The Second Vatican Council and subsequent reforms to canon law in 1983 made room for communities of purpose alongside territory. Bishops found greater discretion to establish purpose-based parishes in their dioceses. This chapter specifies the canonical privileges that accompany parish status. It also profiles the characteristics of personal parishes appearing in the United States today.

Roman Catholic Contacts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurjen A. Zeilstra
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 8 deals with Visser ’t Hooft’s lengthy campaign to have the Roman Catholic Church join the World Council of Churches. It traces developments from the beginning when Protestant ecumenicity was firmly rejected, to the later history from the 1960s onwards. It explores Visser ’t Hooft’s contacts with the Dutch Roman Catholics Jo Willibrands and Frans Thijssen and early attempts at rapprochement, including the creation of the Joint Working Group. The chapter discusses the difference in agendas, and developments during and arising from the Second Vatican Council. It then relates the history of ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church in connection with the Roman Catholic movement under successive popes away from membership of the World Council.

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