America’s Catholic Colony [Ecumenical]

Catholic.com ^ | september 2009 | Matthew E. Bunson

[Salvation]

America’s Catholic Colony

By: Matthew E. Bunson

---

The history of Colonial England in America is one of great irony: The same Protestant groups who fled England in pursuit of toleration and religious liberty brought with them an utter hatred for the Church. They installed laws and customs that excluded Catholics from all aspects of public life for over a century and a half.

This reality makes the story of Catholics in the first days of Maryland all the more remarkable. From its founding, Maryland was intended to be a place where Catholics were welcomed and permitted to share in the dream of a new life which brought so many others to America. What happened to the Catholics who pursued that dream is a reminder that the freedoms we take for granted today were hard-won by those who came before us.

A Haven for Catholics

As children used to learn in American schools, the first permanent English settlement was made in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia. Other colonies soon followed along the Atlantic seaboard. In 1620, a group of Pilgrims—ardent Puritans who rejected what they considered Roman influences in the Church of England—left England to escape religious conformity. They sailed from England on the famed Mayflower, arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and set about to forge a place for themselves. These two groups, in Virginia and Massachusetts, proved the vanguard of what became the 13 colonies.

The religious toleration that was a hallmark of most of the colonies did not extend to Catholics. Most of the inhabitants of the colonies had grown up in a world filled with animosity for the Church of Rome and were conditioned to fear and despise the Catholic Church by Elizabethan propaganda and England’s struggle against the Catholic powers of Europe. Not surprisingly, then, anti-Catholic laws, disabilities, and hatred permeated almost all of the English colonies. One remarkable exception was Maryland.

Maryland is rightly honored as the one place in the colonies where Catholics could live in comparative religious freedom in America. But even there the freedoms enjoyed by Catholics proved fleeting.

Credit for the Catholic colony belongs to one man: George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore. A talented English business leader and a friend to Kings James I and Charles I, Calvert in 1624 converted to Catholicism. The decision cost him his seat in Parliament and his state office, but he resigned them willingly because he believed so firmly in the truths of the Church. His winning personality also helped him retain favor at the royal court. This proved crucial, as Calvert soon felt the harsh penal laws against Catholics and he committed himself to aiding his fellow believers. One of those ways was through a colony in the New World.

While historians are of differing opinions as to whether Calvert was concerned first and foremost with a commercial enterprise or with a sanctuary for Catholics, the idea of a colony for Catholics soon took shape. The first chosen site was in Newfoundland, but this proved financially impractical (and the winter utterly intolerable). Ironically, too, the fledgling colony was attacked by the nearby Catholic French. Virginia was the next possibility, but the furious resistance of the Protestants blocked the scheme. Undaunted, Calvert petitioned for a charter to start a colony north of Virginia, but he died in April 1632. A few months later, on June 20, 1632, a charter for the Maryland Colony was granted to his son, Caecilius (or Cecil) Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore. The colony was named in honor of Charles I’s queen, Henrietta Maria.

On March 25, 1634, two small ships, the Ark and the Dove, landed at St. Clement’s Island in southern Maryland. On board were the colony’s first settlers, led by Leonard Calvert, Cecil Calvert’s younger brother. The group consisted of 17 gentlemen, their wives, and their households. Most of the servants were Protestants. The first Catholic Mass in the colonies was said by Jesuit Fr. Andrew White; other Jesuits in the group included Fr. John Altham and Br. Thomas Gervase.

Freedom of Religion

But Maryland was not exclusively for Catholics. Calvert was a realist, and he knew that the long-term chances of the colony were better if it observed genuine religious liberty. Calvert was also not stupid. He was aware that from the start the Catholics—even in a Catholic colony—would be outnumbered by Protestants. This meant that that toleration of Catholics would always be precarious, even in a colony founded by them. Prior to their departure to America, then, the first colonists for Maryland were cautioned by Lord Cecil about how they should behave. He declared:

His lord requires his said governor and commissioners that in their voyage to Mary Land they be very careful to preserve unity and peace amongst all the passengers on ship-board, and that they suffer no scandal nor offense to be given to any of the Protestants . . . and that for that end, they cause all acts of Roman Catholic religion to be done as privately as may be, and that they instruct all the Roman Catholics to be silent upon all occasions of discourse concerning matters of religion and that the said governor and commissioners treat the Protestants with as much mildness as justice will permit.

To help insure religious peace, the decree of Calvert was used as the basic modus vivendi in the early years. In effect, before Roger Williams had even fled the intolerant atmosphere of Massachusetts and set up Rhode Island as a haven from the Puritans, Calvert had established Maryland as a place where people of all faiths were welcome.

After five years, a more formal document proved desirable, so in 1639, the Maryland Assembly decreed that "Holy churches within this province shall have all their rights and liberties." The decree was a timely one: In England the political and religious situation was fast deteriorating. Relations between King Charles I and Parliament, always strained, erupted in 1642 in bloody civil war. The grim conflict raged until 1649 when the king was deposed and beheaded, after which the rabid anti-Catholic Oliver Cromwell emerged as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658.

The colonies in America were themselves convulsed by the upheaval in England, and Calvert’s support of King Charles put Maryland at risk of attack by its Protestant neighbors. The assault came in 1645, led by a Protestant trader and tobacco dealer named Richard Ingle. After his dealings with the Catholic leaders of Maryland soured, he fled the colony and secured support from nearby Protestants and returned with a small anti-Catholic army and the less-than-subtly-named ship Reformation. Ingle attacked St. Mary’s City in 1645 and caused nearly two years of utter chaos. Jesuit priests were seized and sent in chains to England, and Catholic property was plundered and burned. Hated by Catholic and Protestant Marylanders alike, Ingle was given the title of "that ungrateful Villagine." Most Marylanders considered him nothing less than a pirate. At last, Calvert returned with an army in 1646 and restored some semblance of order.

A Diminishing Toleration

To ease the religious situation and encourage settlers to invest in rebuilding the devastated colony, in 1649 the Maryland Assembly passed the "Acts Concerning Religion," generally called the Act of Toleration. Its goal was to prevent religious strife from destroying Maryland. Its terms were fairly simple but still striking. It prohibited the molestation of anyone who professed belief in Jesus Christ and it guaranteed freedom to worship. Written in plain legal language, the decree nevertheless anticipated the principles of religious toleration that became the bedrock of the United States’ approach to religion.

Sadly, the situation in England and the colonies only grew worse in the years after the beheading of King Charles I. The Commonwealth of England that existed from 1649 to 1660 was marked by a return to severe anti-Catholicism, and the same spirit was encouraged in the colonies. In 1654, Protestants overthrew the proprietary government of Maryland. The new regime outlawed the Catholic faith and repealed the Act of Toleration of 1649. Only in 1658 was the Calvert family able to regain control and re-institute the Toleration Act. During the Restoration period and the reign of King Charles II (1661-1685), the Calverts remained in fragile control of the colony. With the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-1689 and the overthrow of the Catholic King James II, however, the Calverts’ days were numbered. Within two years, Maryland had been seized and declared a royal colony. In 1692 Anglicanism was decreed the official religion of state.

In 1704, the Assembly passed "An Act to Prevent the Growth of Popery within this Province" targeting the Jesuits in Maryland. It forbade any "Popish Bishop, Priest, or Jesuite" from proselytizing, baptizing any person other than those with "Popish Parents," or saying Mass. By another statute in 1704, Mass could be said only in private homes. Additional laws prohibited Catholics from practicing law and from teaching children. Severe taxes were imposed on hiring Irish "Papist" servants as a move to discourage Irish immigration. In 1718, Catholics were stripped of their right to vote as all voters were required to take various test oaths that included deliberately anti-Catholic declarations.

Cradle of Faith

The great Maryland experiment was at an end, and it wasn’t until the middle of the 18th century that Catholics were permitted to practice their faith openly. Still, the courage of the Maryland Catholics had planted the faith permanently in English America. In 1708, there were 2,974 Catholics in Maryland out of a total population of 40,000. By 1785, there were 15,800 Catholics, making them the largest group of Catholics anywhere in the colonies. Out of this cradle of faith emerged some of the most important and revered figures in American Catholic history, including John Carroll, the Father of the American Church and the first bishop and archbishop of Baltimore. But Catholic Maryland also pointed the way to America’s future and the legacy of religious tolerance and pluralism. John Tracy Ellis, the famed historian of American Catholicism, wrote:

For the first time in history there was a real prospect for a duly constituted government under which all Christians would possess equal rights, where all churches would be tolerated, and where none would be the agent of the government . . . to the "land of sanctuary" came Puritans fleeing persecution in Virginia and Anglicans escaping from the same threat in Massachusetts. This policy of religious tolerance has rightly been characterized as "the imperishable glory of Lord Baltimore and of the State." (American Catholicism, 24)

---

Matthew E. Bunson is a former contributing editor to This Rock and the author of more than 30 books. He is a consultant for USA Today on Catholic matters, a moderator of EWTN’s online Church history forum, and the editor of The Catholic Answer.

[Rashputin]

Thanks for the article.

Regards

[muawiyah]

it was both and all of the above.

In Brittany the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s took an entirely different course than that anywhere else ~ the people stayed Catholic, the nobility in the towns stayed Catholic, the rural nobles became Protestant.

In nearby France , the nobility in the towns became Protestant and the rural nobles stayed Catholic for the most part. The people split depending on social function with a Catholic peasantry and a Protestant mercantile class.

The quite large royal family at the top also split with d'Guise on one side and the Huguenots on the other ~ although even the wealthiest d'Guise had home chapels just like the wealthiest Huguenots.

When it came to foreign relations, the French relatives of the Spanish king (after 1598) fared well whether they were Catholic or Protestant.

Most amazingly in the last quarter of King Philippe I/II"S reign (1555 to 1598) the rural nobles in Brittany, then arguably the wealthiest nobility in Europe outside of the Spanish royal family, and totally Protestant, raised a sort of rebellion with a demand that their country (Brittany) be transferred from the French claimants to the Spanish claimants!

I"m working on that part right now because I find Breton nobles among the Spanish then living and working in the New World.

Their own families at the time were living in Sweden!

[RegulatorCountry]

Well, dealing specifically with the topic of nominally Catholic Maryland in the early colonial era, it's difficult to make a modern "discrimination" play of it all, as the partisan author of the thread topic attempts, when Cromwell ~ Cromwell! ~ was sympathetic to Calvert in Maryland and came to his aid on several occasions.

It's complicated.

While reducing it all to Protestants bashing Catholics or Catholics bashing Protestants may be satisfying to polemicists and apologists among the faithful of both sides, it's quite clear that this does not explain the matter in any way approaching accuracy.

Looking to loyalties to monarchy versus advocacy of a more Republican form of government does.

[muawiyah]

Another quite disturbing element is that the King of Spain, as the top end Hapsburg, had about 15 major kingdoms to rule ~ each with different sets of laws, religious balance, geographical problems and, lo and behold, greater or lesser adherence to the very concept of royalty.

After having studied these kings in the 1500 period I've come to the conclusion they were a lot brighter and humane than the English ever gave them credit for.

[Bigg Red]

Thank you for posting this.

As a child in a Maryland Catholic school, I learned much about the Calverts and the founding of Maryland, but don’t recall the part about an attempt at a colony in Newfoundland. Now, my curiosity is aroused on that point.

BTW, we visited St. Mary’s City last spring. They have added a lot of recreated buildings since we were there about 15 years ago. Wonderful visit. I was particularly moved by the rebuilt church, which had been constructed almost exclusively using authentic building materials and practices. Beautiful place.

[daniel1212]

I think the two things Catholics should beware of is discounting the influence of Catholicism in the settlement of America. And, in discounting the influence of Protestant theories of religious tolerance in making it possible for Catholics to live inside the King of Spain's Protestant zone of control.

Just got to this thread, and i wanted to thank you for so much interesting information here and elsewhere, and your objective tone.

We tend to be guilty of judging the forefathers anachronistically.

But despite the conflicts, America is an anomaly among the nations, and insomuch as the power of the evangelical gospel that worked to bring souls to be controlled from within then they needed not be controlled from without, and the opposite is increasingly the case today.

About which i have written some here and here .

[muawiyah]

The Portuguese had a short lived colony on the Island of Newfoundland from about 1515 to 1535. It was founded by the Carvajal family. Those familiar with Cristobal Colon recall that his best friend was a sea captain named Carvajal. Later on his family and the Carvajal family were intermarried several times and you'll find folks from a variety of lineages referring to themselves as Colon-Carvajal, and vice versa.

The Carvajal name is actually Breton and/or Cornish in origin but has been reduced to Spanish spelling conventions.

The precise reason for discontinuance of the colony at Newfoundland, or Baccalos as it was called by John Cabot (again, an Italian explorer), was simply that Spain had absorbed Portugual (again) and cut off the subsidies.

To get an idea of where this colony was in 1515 you'll want to look for St. John's ~ Bay of Conception. I'm not sure there are any actual remains ~

When looking at American history you have to keep in mind that there was a period dominated by Italian explorers. They saild for England, Scotland, Spain, France, etc. That came to a close when there were no more big discoveries to make ~ and during the middle half of the 1500s the Turks dominated the Mediterranean sufficiently that the Italians and French were up to their eyeballs in Turks. That rather slowed down their further entry into the New World.

King Philippe I/II finally gave up his Elizabethan adventures where he'd been Queen Mary's husband, and then sent several Armadas against England. He turned to the Mediterranean and founded The Catholic League. Their ships and Spain's ships were able to totally destroy Turkish presence on the Mediterranean. That gave the Mediterranean powers another century and a half of economic vitality ~ which explains the disappearance of Italian interest in the Americas!

Philippe himself didn't lose interest in America, and he may have tolerated more attempts at settlement in North America than the 1541 expedition by de'Soto, and a couple of other known ventures of questionable success.

NOTE: We know of Coligny's attempt to put a Protestant French colony in Carolana (North Carolina), but much less is known of the background of DeSoto's exploration. His financial sponsor was Europe's richest non-royal, Pizzarro, and he had more than a few connections to Spanish and French Protestant interests, including then Cardinal Carvajal (who gave up schism when Philippe let all the Catholic orders send missionaries to America)

Whatever was going on in terms of voyages to America under Philippe is not all that well known yet Old World Chickens, pigs, cows, goats, dogs and horses began showing up in great numbers. The Spanish didn't send a fleet West without a load of these animals.

There were great risks in crossing the Atlantic so most fleets left port with a wide variety of would-be adventurers abroad including more than their fair share of Protestants, Jews, Moslems, Gypsies, etc. These fellows knew to keep their mouths shut.

By the time other Europeans were officially allowed into North America (See Treaty of London ~ 1604) just all sorts of folks were already here, and everywhere they clustered too closely they were killed by the same plagues that were wiping out the Indians. However, the Spanish, or people allowed here under a Spanish flag, had actually begun moving up the Mississippi River, the Susquehanna River, the Hudson River, the Alabama River, the Red River, and a number of other rivers ~ whereupon they set up limited facilities for trade.

The big deal was gold. The Spanish found vast amounts of gold already in the hands of the Indians but not once did they ever find a gold mine ~ which suggests the Indians themselves were acquiring all their gold from limited deposits of gold flour "strained" out of vast amounts of ordinary dirt ~ but the Spanish did find lead mines, coal mines, silver deposits, and copper ~ native and in deeper deposits.

During this period ~ that of Spanish ascendancy ~ there were no significant numbers of Italians coming to America. That doesn't happen until the 20th century!

That's 4 centuries later!

I think that contributes a bit to the misunderstanding among many Catholics that America was irrationally biased against Catholics. The truth was America, all of it, started out as a Catholic domain ruled by Spain, and was carved up by Spain in the early 17th century whereupon the then King of Spain bought himself and Europe 20 years of peace (otherwise unknown in Europe for several thousand years) by carving out a Protestant enclave called Virginia, and a mixed religion enclave called New France (Quebec).

Not that Italians aren't bright guys ~ they are ~ but a lot of stuff happened from Columbus to Garibaldi's visit to my friend Boungiovanni's home in Brooklyn!

Remember Philippe I's trick of distracting the Italians with open trade opportunities in the Mediterranean, you just have to see his wisdom ~ he was truly a great man ~ he insured no Italian intrigue (no Guelphs and Ghibellines revival now that the Turkish threat was removed) would interfere with his peaceful enjoyment of his America!

I am sure everybody reading this material already has committed to heart an entirely different version ~ written by the French and English! In that story there are no Italians, no Venetians, no Turks, and best of all no Spanish! Yet, that first critical century of European entry into America is a Spanish story ~ and slowly a Hapsburgian story ~ and only at the end an English story.

[muawiyah]

The exhibition ground at St. Mary's has some of the most important early European settler artifacts on Earth. Those are the few pieces of iron not already eaten up by the highly acidic soil found East of the Mississippi.

The Indians could have been running huge steel mills and all of that would, by now, have been dissolved.

If you go back to that exhibit read all the archaeologists notes.

[Kenny Bunk]

Just FYI, Catholics in Maryland were forbidden to:
Build Churches
Assemble
Priests were not allowed to appear in public in clerical garb
had to tithe to the Episcopal Church

Maryland, "The Catholic Colony" was for a long time not a great place for English Roman Catholics. In point of fact, it was larger Irish immigration and in particular, more aggressive Irish priests who turned that around.

Although it began to abate somewhat by the Civil War, America was officially, that is legally, anti-Catholic throughout the early period.

[Bigg Red]

Thank you for that summary. You are correct; I was unaware of this “multi-cultural” influx prior to our country’s founding — even with my Boomer-era education. I shudder to think what today’s generation is learning about history. Or is it “herstory”?

[muawiyah]

One more time, at the direction of the King of Spain, who was himself a Catholic, and the richest and most powerful man in the world, the core area of what became the United States, to wit, Virginia, and then Acadia, this was a Protestant Preserve!

Catholics had the rest of the continent (including Florida).

The Brits didn't do it ~ the King of Spain forced them into signing the treaty!

[muawiyah]

There's a multivolume series of books called The National Gallery. It has images of paintings done of the Founders and early settlers in America.

There are stories that go along with them.

The oldest families with roots in the 1500s and 1600s are called The Old American Families ~ just in case you wanted to know what they were called ~ that was what it was.

As you read through the stories you discover that they are ALL multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-racial ~ ALL OF THEM!

What we now call America was from the very foundation a broad mix of people.

That set of books will take you over the breadth of the face of the Earth. But, you can look at other sources ~ even the internet. Some day look up Shodak or Shodack for a start point ~ and maybe a couple of other spellings. That is a name applied to the "county seat" of any Iroquoian or Mohican tribe. There are a dozen or so places with that name.

During a time when Jews weren't allowed in New York City a Jewish woman was shipped out from Amsterdam to New York. They wouldn't let her off the boat at the city (mostly at that time an assemblage of log storehouses) so she had to sail up the Hudson.

They'd let people off at Shodack Landing ~ which was where the Mohicans had been leaving their ancestors bones since 9500 BC.

So, she got off the boat there, and was met by a young man who instantly married her. His own father was Dutch, or maybe Spanish, or maybe some other thing, but his mother was an American Indian from a tribe then living in what is now Connecticut, or maybe the Abenaki.

That is the story of the first Jew known to live in what is now the United States ~ her own children were "whatever" ~ but they are like the stars in the sky now.

So, those bones? When they built the NYCentral line up the river the bones were used as ballast. That has subsequently been rectified.

Anyway, so much for the Jews and Indians, what about the ordinary Protestants? Well, that's where they got dropped too ~ the Dutch (Reformed) in New York in that day felt they were oversubscribed with Huguenots so they got shipped up the river as well ~ to Shodack Landing. Three Huguenot brothers arrived from France ~ they carried peas for planting with them. The fellow mentioned above, and his wife, let them have a garden plot for the peas.

If you have New York ancestors who date back to the 1600s those folks are relatives.

I simply cannot imagine how wild things were where a Jewish woman gets off a boat alone and marries the only man on the shore!

[Salvation]

Interesting tidbits. Thanks.

[Kenny Bunk]

...tidbits

Frankly, I would have to say that I have been pretty well out-tid-bitted by M on this thread! I never knew about the Spanish/English thing*.

However, check this out, the latest theory on the "Lost Colony" is that Catholics in the employ of Spain poisoned the lot of'em. M, I'll see your tid and raise you one bitt.

* as a defensive tidbitter, I shoulda said, "Of course I knew all about THAT ... I just didn't put all my odd knowledge together. BTW, in re Maryland, read "Chesapeake," by that Michener guy, who was a Meister Tidbitter.

[thecodont]

I enjoy your posts and always learn something new.

[Cronos]

excellent post

[Cronos]

America is an anomaly among the nations, and insomuch as the power of the evangelical gospel that worked to bring souls to be controlled from within then they needed not be controlled from without, and the opposite is increasingly the case today.

Nope, you could say the same about various nations in India which had the same pentecostal concept of "souls from within" -- like other aspects of hinduism

[Cronos]

Looking to loyalties to monarchy versus advocacy of a more Republican form of government does.

well, until the 1800s loyalty was to a king, not to a "nation", hence you could have Nicolas Copernicus, who most probably spoke German at home (yet wrote in Latin) who would fight against the German Teutonic Knights and support the Polish King. You could have people saying they were Polish citizens of the Ruthenian nation, Orthodox but of Jewish descent.

Nationalism changed that...

[daniel1212]

Though as are a foreigner and a Catholic you may disagree, yet regardless of imitations, it is entirely Biblical to be controlled from within, to be God controlled (so that they need not be gun controlled) by the Spirit of God and conscience in accordance with faith in the assured Word of God, for “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. “ (Romans 8:14) “Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: “ (1 Timothy 1:19)

“Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or the bayonet. (Robert Winthrop (May 12, 1809 – November 16, 1894), and Speaker of the House from 1838 to 1840, and later president of the Massachusetts Bible Society)

[muawiyah]

The secret poisoners part is always lurking about. Not long ago the speculators came up with the idea that everybody at Jamestown was dying because the colony's homosexual leadership were poisoning the straight people who came there.

In reality the 70 year period of low rainfall had not yet completed its cycle, and the drought was on. That ALWAYS brings the saltwater inland from the ocean, making life possible above the Fall line but not below it.

Jamestown colony was relocated inland up the James river where permanent fresh water was available.

This sounds like the same sort of story at Roanoke Island in Carolana.

At the time the territory was under the rule of the KIng of Spain. A POW camp was maintained in the Souv'rn part (Helena?).

The drought affected this part of the East Coast as well, so any settlement would soon find it needed to move inland to find fresh water. That would be more toward Goldsboro ~

When you are drinking salt water there's really no need for a secret poisoner, and if that's the best stuff you've got to drink, God doesn't care if you are Protestant or Catholic either ~ your time on life's clock will be pushed forward to FINISHED.