The Strange Career of New Orleans Catholicism

Abstract

This chapter closely traces the history of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish from its founding in 1905 through its closing after Hurricane Katrina in 2006 as a window into the evolution of New Orleans Catholicism from the nineteenth century through the twentieth, with a particular focus on the evolving significance of race and the role of transnational identities. An analytical microhistory of Lourdes Parish in the context of the lengthy history of New Orleans Catholicism reveals that racism and racial identity divided New Orleans Catholics through segregation, desegregation, and integration, even as a common Catholic culture posited a shared religious identity that transcended racial divisions. Throughout the experience of Lourdes Parish, and arguably in New Orleans Catholicism more broadly in the twentieth century, the particularities of white supremacism and racial identity interacted in dynamic tension with the universalistic claims of a common Catholic culture embracing all believers even as the New Orleans Church belatedly Americanized from its Gallic roots. One product of this tension was the distinct black Catholic culture that emerged at black-majority Catholic parishes in the Crescent City as black Catholics struggled against racism in the Church.