19th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In 1800 the Catholics were a small minority everywhere except Maryland. Immigration from Ireland and Germany gave them millions of adherents from the 1840s to the 1880s. Then came millions more from Italy, Poland and Eastern Europe, as well as French Canada. Large numbers of priests and nuns came from Ireland and France. The Irish soon dominated the clergy church, with a great majority of bishops by 1900. As the immigrants arrived new parishes and diocese were created. Rebuffed in efforts to obtain government funds for schools, the Catholics set up a parochial school system largely staffed with nuns. It reached about a third of the children. They also set up colleges. There were few Catholics in the South, apart from Louisiana. However they were well represented in the nation's cities, mill towns and mining centers. Anti-Catholic politics flared briefly in the 1850s, but the Catholic voters surged into the Democratic Party and Irish Catholic politicians played increasingly dominant roles in Democratic machines in Boston, New York, and other major cities. Devotional practices included daily rosary prayers, regular attendance at Sunday Mass, and special roles for devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and favorite saints.