In making a case for the property rights of the American clergy, Bishop John Carroll made a revolutionary case for the nature of the American Church’s relationship with Rome. In these United States our Religious system has undergone a revolution, if possible, more extraordinary than our political one. —John Carroll, 1783 John Carroll and his fellow [...]
The very fact that American Catholics chose a bishop in 1789 was an indication of a new-found boldness in the wake of the nation’s independence. Prior to the Revolution, followers of the Roman faith had realized that it was a risky proposition to establish an episcopate in a country dominated by Protestants. In these United [...]
Bishop John Carroll’s life did much to show his Protestant neighbors that one could be a faithful Catholic as well as a patriotic republican, and by the dawn of the nineteenth century he had achieved the status of a leading citizen of the new republic. But Carroll’s optimism about America’s “extraordinary revolution” in religious toleration [...]
As the crisis between the mother country and colonies worsened, the colonists began to see a conspiracy against liberty being carried out by a secret cabal of evil ministers in the British government. In the perceived encroachments of the English government, the American revolutionaries again detected the awful twin specters of “popery” and arbitrary government. [...]