“If There Were One People”: Francis Weninger and the Segregation of American Catholicism

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-246
Author(s):  
David Komline
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
German Immigrants ◽  
Mission Strategy ◽  
American Catholic

AbstractThis article uses the career of Francis Weninger—an Austrian Jesuit who traversed the United States preaching mostly to German audiences—to trace the development of Roman Catholic approaches to African American missions from the end of the Civil War to the rise of Jim Crow. The study proceeds in two parts, each of which addresses three themes. The first half treats Weninger's work among American Germans, examining the historical context, mission strategy, and revivalistic activity involved in Weninger’s work among his fellow immigrants. The second half details Weninger's evangelistic efforts among African Americans, reversing the order of these themes: first, it describes his activity, then, his strategy and motivation, and, finally, how Weninger's work fits into the broader context of Catholic race relations. The paper shows that the activism of Francis Weninger, the most significant Catholic advocate of missions to African Americans during the key time period in which the American Catholic church adopted an official policy of racial segregation, helped both to stimulate and to define later Roman Catholic initiatives to evangelize African Americans. Weninger modeled his approach to evangelizing African Americans directly on his work among German immigrants, encouraging both groups to establish their own ethnically and racially segregated parishes.

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.

The Scalabrini Fathers, the Italian Emigrant Church, and Ethnic Nationalism in America

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter R. D'Agostino
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Ethnic Nationalism ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
Generational Transition

Philip Gleason has observed that the Roman Catholic church in the United States has been an “institutional immigrant” for much of its history. The idea of an “institutional immigrant,” posed in the Singular and distinguished from “the immigrant peoples who comprised the Catholic population,” presupposes a basic if undefined unity to American Catholicism. The nature of that unity has always been a highly contested issue. Gleason's formulation also suggests that the experience of the Catholic church is illuminated by considering its history in light of the processes that have occupied students of immigration—Americanization, generational transition, assimilation, the invention of ethnicity, and the like. The nature of these processes has also given rise to debates as Americans grapple to understand their cultural identity. In short, Gleason's idea lends itself to debate about the normative significance of American Catholicism, American culture, and their relationship to one another. In the interest of enriching this debate, I would suggest that the Roman Catholic church in the United States has also been an institutional emigrant.

Catholic Politics in the United States: Challenges in the Past, Present, and Future

The Forum ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted G. Jelen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Church ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Catholic

AbstractThroughout the history of the US, the Catholic Church has occupied a variety of political roles. This essay identifies three distinctive periods of Catholic politics: An era in which US Catholicism represented a primarily “immigrant” church (approximately from the mid-19th century to World War II), a period of assimilation and acculturation (roughly 1945–1980), and a period of integration into the dominant partisan and ideological cleavages of American politics (approximately 1980 to the present). Each of these eras was characterized by a distinctive pattern of interaction among the American Catholic laity, the organized Roman Catholic hierarchy in the US, and the Vatican.

West of Jim Crow

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
White Schools ◽  
Black Bodies

This book follows California’s history of segregation from statehood to the beginning of the long civil rights movement, arguing that the state innovated methods to control and contain African Americans and other people of color. While celebrated in popular discourse for its forward-thinking culture, politics, and science, California also pioneered new ways to keep citizenship white. Schools, streetcars, restaurants, theaters, parks, beaches, and pools were places of contestation where the presence of black bodies elicited forceful responses from segregationists. Black Californians employed innovative measures to dismantle segregation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they borrowed some tactics from race rebels in the South, others they improvised. West of Jim Crow uses California to highlight the significance of African American resistance to racial restrictions in places often deemed marginal to mainstream civil rights histories. Examining segregation in the state sheds light on the primacy of gender and sexuality in the minds of segregationists and the significance of black women, black bodies, and racial science, in the years preceding the modern civil rights struggle. California has much to teach us about the lives of African Americans who crossed the color line and the variety of tactics and strategies employed by freedom fighters across the United States.

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.

scholarly journals Superior–Subordinate Aggressive Communication Among Catholic Priests and Sisters in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Chory ◽  
Sean M. Horan ◽  
Peter J. C. Raposo
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Commitment ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Verbal Aggressiveness ◽  
Job Motivation ◽  
Aggressive Communication ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Diocesan Priests

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the world’s largest and oldest organizations, yet communication among its members serving in ecclesiastical occupations (e.g., priests) remains relatively unexplored. The present study addresses this paucity of research by examining the relationship between 145 U.S. priests’ and sisters’ perceptions of their religious superiors’ aggressive communication and perceptions of the superiors’ credibility, as well as their own experiences of job and vocational satisfaction, motivation, and organizational commitment. Results indicated that superior verbal aggressiveness was associated with priests’ and sisters’ job motivation, organizational commitment, and perceptions of superior credibility, whereas superior argumentativeness only predicted perceptions of superior competence. The pattern of findings also suggests that superior aggressive communication functions differently across the ecclesiastical occupations studied, with diocesan priests appearing to be most influenced by their superiors’ aggressive communication and sisters seemingly the least influenced. Implications for management and organizational communication research and the Catholic Church are discussed.

Exhibiting a New South Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Cardon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
New South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Clerical Staff ◽  
Technical Schools ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
International Exposition

Chapter 4 argues that the Jim Crow modernity at the fairs foreshadowed a Jim Crow empire after 1898. The Cotton States and International Exposition and Tennessee Centennial Exposition presented arguments for a distinctly southern imperial expansion. The Negro Buildings coupled with African American participation provided a blueprint for the incorporation of nonwhite colonial natives into the United States. By solving the supposed problems of a multiracial society by including the labor of African Americans while denying them the rights of citizenship, the South presented a framework for empire. At the same time, the exhibits and conferences held at the Negro Buildings often embraced the civilizing language of imperialism. Rhetoric about “primitive” and “heathen” Africans and the need for technical schools in Africa placed the southern African American professional and clerical staff within and alongside American expansionism.

American Catholics and “The Use and Abuse of Reading,” 1865–1873

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-64
Author(s):  
Erin Bartram
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Order ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Individual ◽  
American Catholic

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker launched several publishing ventures to advance his dream of a Catholic America, but he and his partners soon found themselves embroiled in a debate with other American Catholics, notably his friend and fellow convert Orestes Brownson, over the “use and abuse of reading.” Although the debate was certainly part of a contemporary conversation about the compatibility of Catholicism and American culture, this essay argues that it was equally rooted in a moment of American anxiety over a shifting social order, a moment when antebellum faith in the individual was being tested by the rights claims of women and Americans of color. Tacitly accepting and internalizing historical claims of intrinsic and through-going Catholic “difference,” claims offered both by American Protestants and American Catholics like Brownson, scholars often presume that debates within American Catholicism reflect “Catholic” concerns first and foremost, qualifying their utility as sources of “American” cultural history. By examining American Catholic discussions of reading, individual liberty, social order, and gender in the 1860s and 1870s, this essay argues that Brownson's arguments against the compatibility of American and Catholic life were in fact far more representative of ascendant ideas in American culture than Hecker's hopeful visions of a Catholic American future made manifest through the power of reading. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that American Catholicism can be a valuable and complex site for studying the broader history of religion and culture in the United States.

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