The South was the home to the first episcopal see in the United States which was organized at Baltimore in 1789. In less than fifty years, dioceses were in place in Bardstown, Kentucky, Charleston, Richmond, Mobile, Natchez, Nashville, New Orleans, and Florida. Today, this urban dimension is still present in Southern Catholicism. Most Southern Catholics are to be found in along the gulf coast of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and in major urban areas.

Dixie Catholics

Southern Catholicism has absorbed much of the ethos of the region. In the antebellum period, they confronted the issues of race and slavery in much the same way as did other Southerners. Many were loyal to Confederacy even though the Church did not divide along regional lines. They launched missions to slaves, and their work with blacks did not differ in any great degree from similar efforts on the part of Protestants, and lacked a basic respect for their target audience. Southern Catholics even had their own version of the Second Great Awakening: the parish missions and renewal movements fostered a re-commitment to Catholicism similar to that of Protestants in the wake of the Revivals. And like their Protestant co-religionists, Southern Catholics have established an impressive system of schools and colleges. Today, such writers as Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor demonstrate the degree to which Catholics have become identified with the region.

But Southern Catholics are also different--distinct from other Southerners. They--for one thing--had to endure tremendous prejudice. Nativism was particularly strong in the South, and that continues to be the case. This nativism was rooted in the fact that Catholics were viewed by many of their peers as outsiders due to their allegiance to the Pope and Rome, their highly liturgical worship, and their continued commitment to a celibate priesthood. If prejudice were not enough, Catholics in the region have had to also concern themselves with intermarriage, as well as controversies over the use of lay trustees.

The dual nature of Southern Catholicism does not end there. Their tendency to blend into the broader culture contrasts with the ultramontane tradition that governs much of continental Catholicism, and which strongly influenced the immigrants who settled large Northern cities. Instead of accenting the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, Southern Catholics have tended to blend in to the larger culture. (For an excellent essay on Southern Catholicism see your reading assignment for today: Randall M. Miller's essay in the Encyclopedia of Religion in the South.)

The Mission to the South

Catholic expansion in the South was the product of multiple missions by such groups as the Jesuits, Capuchins, Redemptorists, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Loretto, the Ursulines, and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (Kentucky). The story of this expansion, however, has not be throughly explored. Much it is yet to be widely told, and resides in obscure and inaccessible places. And that which is available often is hagiographic in nature.

The Jesuits were primarily responsible for the care of Catholics in Maryland. Not only did they provide for the large numbers of Catholics in that colony, they also took the time and energy to establish mission posts throughout the region. At first, this expansion was met with strong opposition. English Protestants in the colonies assumed that Catholics had a greater loyalty to their co-regligionists the French, than to the English crown. As a result, until the end of hostilities with France, American Catholics were viewed as a potential fifth column.

The Catholic expansion into Kentucky was also significant. Many Catholics in this region were immigrants from Maryland when it ceased to be place of religious freedom for Catholics. The establishment of the diocesan see at Bardstown in 1808, and the founding of two orders of nuns: the Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, as well as the Dominicans created a critical mass for the healthy development of Catholicism in that state. Each of these groups was important in the expansion of Catholicism, but first among equals was the Sisters of Loretto. They were primarily responsible for the spread of the faith throughout Kentucky and into Missouri and points west.

Significant Southern Catholics

Charleston's first bishop, John England, was both a regional and national leader in Catholic circles. It was England's lot, however, to deal with the pressing problem of nativism--not just in the surrounding culture--but within his own church. It was during his episcopacy that both American and Southern Catholicism were confronted with a major influx of Irish Catholics. This tidal wave of immigration not only fostered nativist sentiment within the broader culture, but within the Catholic Church in Charleston. To England's credit he worked hard to demonstrate that not only Irish Catholic immigrants Americans, but so too was the church itself. His work accomodate Catholicism to American culture did much to innoculate the church against future prejudice.

One of the most significant Southern Catholics is James Andrew Corcoran who became the foremost American Roman Catholic theologian in the nineteenth century. Most of his life was spent in Charleston, but after the Civil War he moved to Philadelphia. James Cardinal Gibbons, one of the key players in the controversy over Americanism in the church (See Religion 166: "Catholicism in Nineteenth Century America").

But perhaps the most significant Southern Catholic is one of the least well known. Edward Fitzgerald was the Bishop of the First Vatican Council in 1870. When the council took up the issue of papal infallbility--which states in essence that the Pope is infallible when speaking ex-cathedra on matters of faith and morals--there were only two dissenting votes. A number of American bishops realizing what the vote was going to be, and not willing to give their blessing to this new dogma, left before the final ballot to return home. But Fitzgerald had the courage to stay and vote "No."