James P. McCartin – Catholicism in America, 1500-Present
Catholicism in America, 1500-Present
James P. McCartin
Department of History
Seton Hall University
Introduction and Statement of Course Goals
This course is a comprehensive undergraduate introduction to the history of Catholicism in America from the early settlement of European Catholics in North and South America to the contemporary U.S. Catholicism. Students will be introduced to “specifically-Catholic” aspects of church history, such as theological and institutional developments; but they will also study ways in which the history of Catholicism has connected to broad developments and trends in modern cultural, social, political, and intellectual life.
Questions we will engage throughout the semester include: What does it mean to be “Catholic,” and how has the understanding of “being Catholic” changed? What has been the role of church institutions in shaping the lives of Catholics and others in colonial North America and in the modern United States? How have church institutions and church teachings changed or developed over time? In what ways has Catholicism resembled and affirmed aspects of American life and culture, and in what ways has Catholicism challenged aspects of American life and culture? How does Catholic prayer and spirituality relate to themes in American cultural history? How have non-Catholics viewed Americans, and to what extent were their views justified? Has Catholicism become “modernized,” and what do we mean by the term “modern Catholicism”?
Upon completion of the course, students should: 1.) be able to discuss several key developments in the history of Catholicism since 1500 and relate them to major events in European and American history; 2.) have a working knowledge of the key theological and institutional changes that have taken place in modern Catholicism; and 3.) be able to engage intelligently in discussions about modern Catholicism.
Assignments and Grading
Essay #1 (5 pages)………….……15%
Essay #2 (5 pages)……….………15%
Essay #3 (5 pages)……….………15%
Essay #4 (10 pages)……….………35%
Class Participation………….…….20%
Students will submit a total of four essays during this course the grades for which will constitute a total of 80% of the final grade. Topics for the essays are listed below along with their due dates. Essays will be judged on the strength of their arguments, the use of supporting sources, and the quality of writing. Class participation constitutes 20% of the final course grade. Students are expected to attend each class meeting and to come prepared: that is, they are expected to have completed the assigned readings and be capable of discussing them in class. Each class meeting will be designed as a mix of lecture and discussion.
Students should note that this course is focused on improving the skills of written and oral argumentation; therefore, noticeable progress in these areas will be taken into account in tabulating the final course grade. Students are encouraged to consult the instructor about individual strategies for improving writing skills and oral communication.
Course Readings and Films
Books
Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (2006)
Nancy L. Schultz, Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 (2000)
Bernadette McCauley, Who Shall Take Care of Our Sick?: Roman Catholic Sisters and the
Development of Catholic Hospitals in New York (2005)
Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in
Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (1985)
John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the
Twentieth-Century Urban North (1996)
Patricia Hampl, Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life (1992)
Articles and Selections
R. Po-Chia Hsia, “The Triumphant Church” and “The Martyred Church” in
Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770 (1998), 42-59, 80-91.
Selections, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. & ed. Louis J. Puhl (1951).
Inga Clendinnen, “Disciplining the Indians: Franciscan Ideology and Missionary Violence in
Sixteenth-Century Yucatán,” Past and Present (Feb. 1982): 28-48.
Excerpt, Bartolomé de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, ed. Stafford Poole, (1992)
Excerpt, Jason Duncan, Citizen or Papist?: The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New York, 1685-1821
(2005).
Excerpts, Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos/On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism (1832).
“John England: Catholic Constitutionalism,” in Patrick W. Carey, ed. American Catholic
Religious Thought (1987), 73-83.
Emmet Larkin, “The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-1875,” American Historical
Review (Jun. 1972): 625-52.
Patricia Byrne, “American Ultramontanism,” Theological Studies (Jun. 1995): 301-26.
R. Scott Appleby, “Exposing Darwin’s ‘Hidden Agenda’: Roman Catholic Responses to
Evolution, 1875-1925,” in Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse, eds., Dissseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender (2000), 173-207.
“John A. Ryan: Advocate of Social Justice,” in Carey, ed., 242-49.
Joseph A. Komochak, “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac,”
Theological Studies (1990): 353-85.
Selection, Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker Movement and the Origin of
Catholic Radicalism in the United States (1982), 25-56.
Selections, Avery Dulles, A Testimonial to Grace (1946).
Robert A. Orsi, “‘Mildred, Is It Fun to Be a Cripple?’: The Culture of Suffering in Mid-Twentieth-
Century American Catholicism,” in Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious World People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005), 19-47.
Excerpts, Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican II: Constitutions, Decrees, and Declarations (1992).
Avery Dulles, “The Basic Teachings of Vatican II,” in The Reshaping of Catholicism:
Current Challenges in the Theology of the Church (1988), 19-33.
Joseph Bernardin, “The Public Life and Witness of the Church,” America (Oct. 5, 1996): 15-25.
Andrew Sullivan, “Virtually Normal,” in in Thomas J. Ferraro, ed., Catholic Lives, Contemporary
America (1997), 171-86.
Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Catholic Ethics, Women, and the Real World,” America (Nov. 27, 1999):
7-9.
Roberto Goizueta, “The Symbolic Realism of U.S. Latino/a Popular Catholicism,”
Theological Studies (June 2004): 255-74.
John T. McGreevy, “Catholics, Catholicism, and the Humanities since World War II,” in The
Humanities and the Dynamics of Inclusion since World War II, ed. David Hollinger (2006), 189-216.
André Dubus, “Sacraments,” in Thomas Grady and Paula Huston, eds., Signatures of Grace:
Catholic Writers on the Sacraments (2000), 220-32.
Lara Medina, “The Challenges and Consequences of Being Latina, Catholic, and Political ,” in
Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States, ed. Gaston Espinosa, et al., (2005),
97-111.
George Weigel, “How the Crisis Happened,” in Weigel, The Courage to Be Catholic (2002), 57-85.
Michael Sean Winters, “The Betrayal: How to Save the Catholic Church,” The New Republic
(May 6, 2002):
Philip Jenkins, “The Next Christianity,” The Atlantic Monthly (Oct. 2002): 53-68.
Films
Black Robe (Bruce Beresford, 1991)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
Pecker (John Waters, 1997)
Course Schedule
Week 1: Prologue
Meeting 1: Introduction – What is modern? Who is Catholic?
Week 2: Background
Meeting 2: Reform, Protestant and Catholic
Reading: Hsia
Meeting 3: The Church in the Early Modern World:
Theological Views and Institutional Structures
Reading: Selections, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola
Week 3: Sinking Roots
Meeting 1: Iberian Inroads and French Foundations among Native Americans
Reading: Clendinnen
Meeting 2: The Church and the Natives: “Inculturation,” Slavery,
and In Defense of the Indians
Reading: Greer
Las Casas
**Evening showing of the film Black Robe
Week 3: After the Conquest
Meeting 1: The Peopling and Churching of Colonial North America
Reading: Duncan
Meeting 2: Maryland Catholicism: The Enlightenment and the
Emergence of Religious Toleration
**Essay #1 due today: New-World Catholic missionaries: “heroes” or “tyrants”? In supporting your argument, cite at least three of the following: Clendinnen, Greer, Las Casas, and Black Robe.
Week 4: 1776-1870
Meeting 1: The Church in a Revolutionary Age
Reading: Schultz
Carey, ed. “John England…”
Excerpts, Gregory XVI
Meeting 2: Immigration, Growth, Leadership/A Devotional Revolution and
the Church of Pio Nono
Reading: Larkin
Byrne
Week 5: At Home in America?
Meeting 1: Anticatholicism
Meeting 2: Structures of Religious Life
Reading: McCauley
Week 6: “Americanism”/Modernism
Meeting 1: The Victorian Crisis of Belief
Reading: Appleby
Meeting 2: Prayer
**Essay #2 due today: Was nineteenth-century anticatholicism irrational? In
supporting your argument, cite at least three of the following: Schultz, Carey,
Gregory, XVI, Larkin, Byrne, and McCauley.
Week 7: In the Shadow of the Factory
Meeting 1: The Church and the World of the Industrial City
Reading: Orsi, Madonna
Meeting 2: Justice
Reading: Piehl
Carey, ed., “John A. Ryan”
Week 8: At Home in America
Meeting 1: Pitching In: War and Depression and War
Reading: Selections, Dulles, Testimonial to Grace
Meeting 2: An Inquiry into Thomism and Its Triumph
Reading: Orsi, “Mildred…”
**Evening showing of the film On the Waterfront
Week 9: Roots of Reform, 1920-1960
Meeting 1: American Society/Catholic Institutions and Movements
Reading: McGreevy, Parish Boundaries, 1-132
Meeting 2: The “New Theology”
Reading: Komonchak
Week 10: Reform, 1960-1980
Meeting 1: Aggiornamento
Reading: Selections, Flannery, ed.
Meeting 2: The Long 1960s/Birth Control, Democracy, Authority
Reading: McGreevy, Parish Boundaries,155-266
Week 11: Post-Conciliar America
Meeting 1: Theology in an Age of Liberation
**Essay #3 due today: Vatican II: “Revolution” or “Evolution”? In supporting your
argument, cite at least four of the following: Piehl, Dulles, Orsi, McGreevy,
Komonchak, and Flannery.
Meeting 2: Social Teaching in the Reagan Era
Reading: Bernardin
Week 12: Catholicism in the “Postmodern” World I
Meeting 1: Trends: Politics, Culture, Ministry
Reading: Sullivan
Cahill
Goizueta
Meeting 2: Catholic Intellectual Life
Reading: McGreevy, “Catholics…and the Humanities”
Week 13: Catholicism in the “Postmodern” World II
Meeting 1: The Rise of “Sacramentality”
Reading: Dubus
Meeting 2: Skepticism and Experience: Enduring Legacies of the Enlightenment
Reading: Hampl
**Evening showing of the film Pecker
Week 14: The Latino/a Church and The Restoration
Meeting 1: The New Immigrant Church
Reading: Medina
Meeting 2: John Paul’s Church
Reading: Weigel
Week 15: Crisis/Quo Vadis?
Meeting 1: Sex, Scandal, Authority, Institution
Reading: Winters
Meeting 2: Semper Reformanda
Reading: Jenkins
**Final essay due today: Essay question TBA
Week 11: Post-Conciliar America
Meeting 1: Theology in an Age of Liberation
**Essay #3 due today: Vatican II: “Revolution” or “Evolution”?
Meeting 2: Social Teaching in the Reagan Era
Reading: Bernardin
Week 12: Catholicism in the “Postmodern” World I
Meeting 1: Trends: Politics, Culture, Ministry
Reading: Sullivan
Cahill
Goizueta
Meeting 2: Catholic Intellectual Life
Reading: McGreevy, “Catholics…and the Humanities”
Week 13: Catholicism in the “Postmodern” World II
Meeting 1: The Rise of “Sacramentality”
Reading: Dubus
Meeting 2: Skepticism and Experience: Enduring Legacies of the Enlightenment
Reading: Hampl
**Evening showing of the film Pecker
Week 14: The Latino/a Church and The Restoration
Meeting 1: The New Immigrant Church
Reading: Medina
Meeting 2: John Paul’s Church
Reading: Weigel
Week 15: Crisis/Quo Vadis?
Meeting 1: Sex, Scandal, Authority, Institution
Reading: Winters
Meeting 2: Semper Reformanda
Reading: Jenkins
**Final essay due today: Essay question TBA
Week 11: Post-Conciliar America
Meeting 1: Theology in an Age of Liberation
**Essay #3 due today: Vatican II: “Revolution” or “Evolution”?
Meeting 2: Social Teaching in the Reagan Era
Reading: Bernardin
Week 12: Catholicism in the “Postmodern” World I
Meeting 1: Trends: Politics, Culture, Ministry
Reading: Sullivan
Cahill
Goizueta
Meeting 2: Catholic Intellectual Life
Reading: McGreevy, “Catholics…and the Humanities”
Week 13: Catholicism in the “Postmodern” World II
Meeting 1: The Rise of “Sacramentality”
Reading: Dubus
Meeting 2: Skepticism and Experience: Enduring Legacies of the Enlightenment
Reading: Hampl
**Evening showing of the film Pecker
Week 14: The Latino/a Church and The Restoration
Meeting 1: The New Immigrant Church
Reading: Medina
Meeting 2: John Paul’s Church
Reading: Weigel
Week 15: Crisis/Quo Vadis?
Meeting 1: Sex, Scandal, Authority, Institution
Reading: Winters
Meeting 2: Semper Reformanda
Reading: Jenkins
**Final essay due today: Essay question TBA
