{"title":"Communal Living with the Saints: A Late Nineteenth-Century Devotional Aesthetic at Immaculate Conception Academy, Oldenburg, Indiana","authors":"Annie Huey","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Devotional aesthetics involve an embodied, sensory encounter between sacred and earthly subjects through objects and rituals. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the regnant devotional aesthetic among U.S. Catholics fully embraced the bodily and sensory, welcoming the sacred into daily life. This led to communal living among heavenly and earthly figures and encouraged a blending of the sacred and mundane. Such a devotional aesthetic is revealed through an examination of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century student portfolios from Immaculate Conception Academy in Oldenburg, Indiana, an all-girls boarding school conducted by the Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis. Though not all of the writings are expressly religious in nature, the portfolios are filled with stories of holy objects and figures and the many ways in which these objects and figures were gently woven into and consecrated the students' daily lives.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122936912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Symbol or Presence? Archaeology and the Materiality of Catholic Devotions","authors":"Laura E. Masur","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Catholic devotional objects are rare but persistent finds at archaeological sites in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. These largely personal, private objects—from medals depicting saints to rosaries and reliquaries—illustrate the vibrant spiritual world inhabited by residents of the seventeenth- through twentieth-century Middle Atlantic region. Contextual analysis of undisturbed artifacts reveals that they were treated with reverence, although not always in ways reflecting orthodox Catholicism. Moreover, analysis shows that the social context of their use among people of European, African, and Native American descent was unmistakably different. These objects of metal, wood, bone, clay, glass, and stone played pivotal roles in the way that American Catholics connected with the supernatural. Through sacramental objects, the archaeological record is populated with angels, saints, and materials used to connect with Christ and the Virgin Mary. In particular, the materials from which these objects were made—and not simply their symbolism—gave them power. Considering relationships among humans, sacramental objects, and supernatural powers provides new opportunities to interpret how these objects were used and, ultimately, how and why they ended up in the ground.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"3 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113962577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Plain Catholics of the North\": Martin Van Buren and the Politics of Religion, 1807–1836","authors":"Jason K. Duncan","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Historians generally agree that by 1850 Catholics were strongly aligned with the Democratic Party, significantly impacting American politics. Martin Van Buren's role in this story is lacking in the historical literature on Jacksonian America. Catholicism had been outlawed in New York during the colonial era but liberated by the American Revolution. Political barriers were erected against Catholics in the 1780s but overturned by Republicans in the early nineteenth century, led by DeWitt Clinton. Martin Van Buren, Clinton's primary rival in New York, built on his legacy, forging an alliance with Catholics from their common support for the U.S. effort in the War of 1812. As Van Buren sought to renew the Republican Party, he and his \"Albany Regency\" promoted support for Catholic political equality in the United States and in Ireland. In 1836, Van Buren was charged with being pro-Catholic and even Catholic himself; but with support of Catholics in the key state of New York and elsewhere, he was nonetheless elected president.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131243258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"It will serve to destroy those calumnies that Catholics are not faithful subjects\": The McElroy-Rey Mission and the Limits of Patriotism in the Mexican-American War","authors":"R. Curran","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Shortly after declaring war against Mexico in May of 1846, President James K. Polk appointed Jesuits John McElroy and Anthony Rey as chaplains for the U.S. invasion force. This appointment reflected two concerns of Polk: maintaining the morale of the Catholics who constituted a sizable portion of the regular army, and sending a signal that, in waging war against a Catholic country, the U.S. was not conducting an anti-Catholic crusade. Ironically, it was the U.S. Protestant establishment that viewed the appointments as a signal of Polk's collaboration in a papist conspiracy to undermine the American Republic, while McElroy and Rey conscientiously sought to exercise their ministry to the troops and serve as agents of good will. McElroy's age and inability to travel on horseback confined his ministry to the American base at Matamoros, while Rey accompanied the army as it made its way into Mexico's interior. With a virtual monopoly on ministry within the American forces, the two Jesuits assisted the ill and wounded, leading to scores of conversions among the largely Protestant volunteers. Within a few months, McElroy had serious doubts about their ability to fulfill Polk's charge of shaping public opinion, while the more youthful Rey retained an optimism that proved lethal. In the end, the McElroy-Rey mission had mixed results.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"166 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121424187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"John Leamy's Atlantic Worlds: Trade, Religion, and Imperial Transformations in the Spanish Empire and Early Republican Philadelphia","authors":"L. K. Salvucci","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:John Leamy (1757–1839) accumulated a substantial fortune through trade with the Spanish Empire following the American Revolution. This immigrant from Ireland, via southern Spain, was the key player in establishing Philadelphia's dominant role in Cuban markets during the 1790s. Unlike his Protestant competitors, as a high-profile Catholic, Leamy nurtured successful personal and commercial relationships with those Spanish imperial bureaucrats charged with regulating the trade. In the new century, as the Spanish Empire destabilized, Leamy adjusted both his business strategies and religious practices. With his Catholic loyalties in flux, he led the lay trustees of St. Mary's during the Hogan Schism and moved towards Episcopalianism. John Leamy's actions throw into relief how republicanism emboldened challenges to ecclesiastical authority and encouraged denominational flexibility, even as he maneuvered to rekindle his ties with Spain in the 1820s and 1830s.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131356017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fighting the Philistines: Bishop John Purcell, the Catholic Disruption of the 1830s, and the Making of Memory","authors":"L. Przybyszewski","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The national dispute that came to be called the Bible War erupted in 1869 when the Cincinnati school board voted to end Bible reading in its schools. The opening salvos of the war, however, began not in the 1860s, but in the 1830s. The Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers championed the public-school movement in the West from 1831 to 1840 when Catholic Bishop John Baptist Purcell disrupted the organization's Protestant hegemony. While struggles in New York City and Philadelphia during the 1840s overshadow Cincinnati historiographically, the College of Teachers' meetings set the pattern for later sectarian disputes over public education in the Old Northwest. Protestant belief in the priestly monopoly over the Bible and in Catholicism as a threat to civil and religious liberty and education undermined the legitimacy of Catholic challenges to Protestant Bibles in the schools. These sectarian beliefs drew on, and became part of, a mythic history already existent and still on display during the Bible War when Rev. Benjamin P. Aydelott recounted his dispute with Purcell as a dramatic struggle over the fate of the nation. Sectarian myth made the Protestant Bible essential to American educational progress in popular and legal memory.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116121712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Crisis of American Authority: The Antebellum Conversion of Levi Silliman Ives","authors":"Adam L. Tate","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In December 1852, Levi Silliman Ives, bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina, having caused tremendous controversy in his diocese because of his attachment to the Oxford Movement, converted to Catholicism in Rome. His conversion unleashed a vicious rhetorical war in the newspapers, evidencing the depths of anti-Catholicism in the American South. Upon his return to the United States, Ives framed his decision as a search for religious authority, highlighting his discontent with the religious individualism of nineteenth-century America. Ives's conversion demonstrated how American Catholics struggled to understand themselves and their religion in a region increasingly characterized by Protestant understandings of Christianity.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115762867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"A Promise of Obedience\": The Oblates of Providence and the Catholic Hierarchy","authors":"Elizabeth C. Davis","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Oblates of Providence were the first congregation of black women religious in the United States. While their racial identity defined their marginalized place within the Catholic community, the intersections of their racial and gendered identities as black women religious influenced their daily interactions with the clergy. By examining the Oblates' governance and approbation process, this article argues that the Oblates' success within the antebellum Catholic Church depended on them navigating the complicated racial and gendered relationships they developed with the male hierarchy.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130789175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"About This Issue","authors":"David J. Endres","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127770042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Edward Fenwick: First Bishop of Cincinnati and Slaveholder","authors":"C. W. Gollar","doi":"10.1353/cht.2020.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cht.2020.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Maryland-born Dominican Father Edward Fenwick (1768–1832), a descendant of wealthy American Catholics, used inherited and acquired slaves to establish St. Rose Priory in Springfield, Kentucky, the first Dominican house in the United States. Fenwick's ministry extended beyond the South into the free state of Ohio, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. By the time he was consecrated the first bishop of Cincinnati in 1822, Fenwick had little contact with slaves. When he opened St. Francis Xavier Seminary in 1829 and the College of the Athenaeum in 1831, Fenwick was no longer a slaveholder. As a result, biographies of Fenwick largely downplay, if not ignore, his slaveholding experience. Careful research into his life, however, reveals that the institution of slavery influenced his ecclesiastical career.","PeriodicalId":388614,"journal":{"name":"U.S. Catholic Historian","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130363215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}