"The Catholic Church during the Revolutionary Era"

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The Catholic Church during the Revolutionary Era

By P.R. Eaton




The story of English Catholics in the new colonies established in North America was one of oppression save for the new colony established in Maryland. The original members of the English colonies established on the East coast of America were primarily Protestants of English and some European stock. Catholics, although numerous among the Irish minorities, were primarily associated with the French colony on Quebec. As such, the Catholics were “oppressed by laws copied from the appalling penal code of England.”[1]

            English Catholics, although oppressed across England, feared leaving and pursuing the unknown in the Americas would prohibit their growth and squander what riches they had accrued in their toils. But ambition and duty would compel a number of Catholics to enjoin the efforts underway in the New World. English Catholics would establish settlements in the colonies and several tried to set up encampments in Virginia. The powerful Virginia Company would indeed, deny any such agreement with the Catholics and “Catholics avoided Massachusetts during the colonial period; especially after laws passed in 1647 and 1700 forbade Catholic priests to reside in the colony under pain of imprisonment and execution.”[2]

            The major figure to lead English Catholics in the colonies established across the North Atlantic coast of America was Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore was successful in obtaining land grants north of Virginia rather than in Virginia itself. Charles I, ordered a Charter and patent for land “north of the Potomac to the fortieth degree.”[3]

            Ultimately, the conditions the English Catholics found themselves in the colonies was one of danger, constant fear, and competition from anti-Catholic Protestants in New England to the North and Virginia to the South. The great “Catholic experiment” that was Maryland, would experience moments of freedom and oppression, until the break with England proper during the American revolutionary war. Only then, would religious tolerance become the law of the land.

 

 

 


[1] John Gilmary Shea, The Catholic Church In Colonial Days, (New York: E.O. Jenkins' Son, 1886), 14.

 

[2] T.H. O’Conner and W.L. Lucey, “Catholic Church in Massachusetts,” New Catholic Encyclopedia,

January 1, 2003, https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-3407707255.html.

 

[3] John Gilmary Shea, The Catholic Church In Colonial Days, (New York: E.O. Jenkins' Son, 1886), 55.

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