In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council enacted the most sweeping changes the Catholic Church had seen in centuries. In readable and compelling prose, Mark S. Massa tells the story of the cultural war these changes ignited in the United States - a war that is still being waged today. Suddenly, one Sunday, the mass as the faithful had always known it was different, and so was the Church they had believed was timeless and unchanging. Once the Church opened the door to change, Massa argues, it could not be closed again. Skirmishes broke out over the proper way to worship. Soon, Catholics were bitterly divided over birth control, abortion, celibacy, female priests, and the authority of the Church itself. As he narrates these turbulent events, Massa takes us beyond stereotypes of liberals and conservatives, offering new insights into the last fifty years of American Catholicism.

Concerned that American Catholic theology has struggled to find its own voice for much of its history, William Portier has spent virtually his entire scholarly career recovering a usable past for Catholics on the U.S. landscape. This work of ressourcement has stood at the intersection of several disciplines and has unlocked the beauty of American Catholic life and thought. These essays, which are offered in honor of Portier's life and work, emerge from his vision for American Catholicism, where Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are distinct, but interwoven and inextricably linked with one another. As this volume details, such a path is not merely about scholarly endeavors but involves the pursuit of holiness in the "real" world.

Examines how secular transformations of religious ideas have helped to shape the style and substance of works by American writers, filmmakers and artists from Catholic backgrounds.

Originally published in 1988. The new-found freedom and changing attitudes towards Catholics after the American Revolution presented the Catholic Church with its first real opportunity to prosper in the English speaking "new world". But the Catholic Church could not take advantage of this opportunity unless it shook off some of its "old world" characteristics and became accustomed to the American environment. This study attempts to analyse the very nature of American Catholicism by investigating the impact of the American environment on the development of the Catholic Church in American during the episcopacy of John Carroll. This title will be of interest to students of history and religious studies.

"A cracking good story with a wonderful cast of rogues, ruffians and some remarkably holy and sensible people." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Before the potato famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, the Roman Catholic Church was barely a thread in the American cloth. Twenty years later, New York City was home to more Irish Catholics than Dublin. Today, the United States boasts some sixty million members of the Catholic Church, which has become one of this country's most influential cultural forces. In American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, Charles R. Morris recounts the rich story of the rise of the Catholic Church in America, bringing to life the personalities that transformed an urban Irish subculture into a dominant presence nationwide. Here are the stories of rogues and ruffians, heroes and martyrs--from Dorothy Day, a convert from Greenwich Village Marxism who opened shelters for thousands, to Cardinal William O'Connell, who ran the Church in Boston from a Renaissance palazzo, complete with golf course. Morris also reveals the Church's continuing struggle to come to terms with secular, pluralist America and the theological, sexual, authority, and gender issues that keep tearing it apart. As comprehensive as it is provocative, American Catholic is a tour de force, a fascinating cultural history that will engage and inform both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. "The best one-volume history of the last hundred years of American Catholicism that it has ever been my pleasure to read. What's appealing in this remarkable book is its delicate sense of balance and its soundly grounded judgments." --Andrew Greeley

"This is a book about change and about people changing. It is a book abaout women, American Catholic sisters, in passage. It tells of the radical transformation that has been underway among sisters for the past four decades, redefining their identities and their way of life." [Preface].

This work is the second volume in the Melville Studies in Church History. Kupke focuses on the piety of the Catholics in the Anglo-American colonies in the eighteenth century, specifically around the time of John Carroll, the founder of the American Catholic hierarchy. Through the exploration of sermons of eighteenth century Jesuit missionaries in Maryland, the author analyzes the spirituality of the Catholics in this time period. Kupke's work is a valuable and interesting contribution to the study of the roots of the Catholic church in America. A must read for all those interested in American preaching, spirituality, Jesuit history, and Maryland colonial history as well. Co-published with the Department of Church History at the Catholic University of America.

Faherty presents a lively history of the American Catholic Church from colonial days to the present. He appraises Vatican II, especially in terms of changes that council brought to the pursuit of religious liberty. Will Catholics ever build a truly America Catholic Church? Can the Church constructively influence a nation threatened by moral decline? American Catholic Heritage gives the historical context that will shape the answers to these questions.