Emergence of The American Catholic Church
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church experienced unique difficulties within America. “Unlike all Protestant churches in America, the Roman Catholic church depended for its identity upon keeping doctrinal and administrative unity with a European-based authority." The papacy was cautious of the freedom found in America as it showed similarities to the attitudes behind the French Revolution. The papacy wanted to preserve the hierarchy of the church in America. At this time, Catholics were chiefly located in Pennsylvania and Maryland and were greatly influenced by their Protestant neighbors. They, too, wanted a church that empowered the laity. In 1788 Charles Carroll was elected the first American Bishop. He struggled to balance the desires of the American trustees to adapt and empower the laity and hold church property with the requests of the bishops and hierarchy oversees to preserve the doctrine. This controversy ran from approximately 1780 to 1850. In the end, the power and authority were too differential and the bishops won. This marked the creation of the “American Catholic Church with the laity subordinate to priest and bishop.” This system remained until the mid-20th century.
Read more about this topic: Catholic Church And The Age Of Discovery
Famous quotes containing the words catholic church, emergence of, emergence, american, catholic and/or church:
“Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”
—George Marshall (1880–1959)
“Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let “born again” patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“When the Church of Jesus
Shuts its outer door,
Lest the roar of traffic
Drown the voice of prayer:
May our prayers, Lord, make us
Ten times more aware
That the world we banish
Is our Christian care.”
—Frederick Pratt Green (b. 1903)