The little-known story of Catholics in Colonial America
When America’s Founding Fathers declared independence from the British crown 250 years ago, Catholicism represented a very small portion of the population — accounting for less than 2% of the people. The story of how these Catholics endured restrictions and eventually gained the freedom to exercise their faith is little-known but fascinating.
The primary hub for American Catholicism in 1776 was Maryland, which was created as a safe haven for Catholics and home to the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence: Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
Yet, more than one-third of Catholics lived outside Maryland in the late 1700s. Archbishop John Carroll — the first bishop in the United States — reported the Catholic population to the Holy See in 1785: about 15,800 in Maryland, at least 7,000 in Pennsylvania, at least 1,500 in New York, and no more than 200 in Virginia. There were a few hundred scattered elsewhere.
The primary reason for the low numbers was restrictive laws, some of which outright banned Catholicism and priests from colonies. Even in Maryland, after the 1689 Protestant Revolution, Catholics faced severe restrictions, including a ban on voting and openly celebrating Mass.
Repressive laws in the colonies
“[The laws were] definitely repressive,” said Seth Smith, a history professor at The Catholic University of America with expertise in American Catholicism.
“But Catholics in the colonies had more freedom to practice their faith than they would have in Britain,” Smith told EWTN News.
“On the books, virtually everywhere except Rhode Island and (informally) Pennsylvania, Catholics faced disenfranchisement, exclusion from office, land restrictions, and bans on public worship, Catholic schools, and priests,” he said. “These laws escalated throughout the colonial period.”
For example, Massachusetts had a law permitting executions of priests but “actual executions of priests for simply being priests essentially didn’t happen in the 13 colonies,” Smith said.
“[These laws] had the effect of limiting Catholic migration to British North America,” he said. “… The practical reality was that there were so few Catholics that enforcement was often moot.”
Catholicism in Pennsylvania
As the Catholic hub in Maryland faced legal restrictions in the late 1600s into the 1700s, Jesuits in Maryland sought to extend their reach into the colonies and found the friendliest colony to be Pennsylvania, founded by a Quaker strong advocate for religious freedom, William Penn.
Father Joseph Greaton, an English Catholic who moved to Maryland in 1719, was assigned to Pennsylvania, where he established the colony’s first Catholic parish in Philadelphia — Old St. Joseph’s Church, founded in 1733.
Although the colony and city tolerated Catholics legally, Greaton still took precautions because of anti-Catholic sentiment, designing the church to look more like a residential building rather than appearing outwardly like a Catholic church.
When reached for comment, the current pastor referred EWTN News to Stephen Paesani, a parishioner deeply involved in the parish, to speak about its history.
Paesani said the chapel was designed that way “so it wouldn’t draw attention to itself.” When it was created, it was the “only place in the British empire where Mass was celebrated legally and publicly” because the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly — the governing body — determined British anti-Catholic laws did not apply.
To enter the church, Paesani said, “you had to come in through the alley and go through the courtyard.” He said “if you didn’t know the church was there, you would never know.”
A small and scattered Catholic presence
Catholics were a small minority in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania more broadly. Paesani said treatment of Catholics was “a mixed bag.” There were “clearly incidents of anti-Catholicism” in colonial Philadelphia, but the priests were involved in the community and generally had support from public officials, he said.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Catholic Founding Father, sometimes worshipped there. Another prominent parishioner was John Barry, an Irish Catholic naval officer who fought in the American Revolution and was appointed to lead the U.S. Navy post-Revolution.
Greaton established other churches throughout Pennsylvania to serve Catholics and would travel from town to town administering the sacraments to the faithful. One parish that’s still standing is Most Blessed Sacrament in Bally, which was home to a small number of German Catholics, founded in 1741.
Michael Miller, the museum director at Most Blessed Sacrament, told EWTN News the parish only served “a few families,” with the closest being the Kuhn family. John Kuhn — a German Catholic — informed the Jesuits that land there was for sale, previously owned by Mennonites.
“[Greaton] would travel to other Mass houses [throughout Pennsylvania],” Miller said.
When asked whether the German Catholics faced discrimination, he said “not around here.” In that part of Pennsylvania, he said most people, regardless of religion, were either iron workers or farmers, and the Protestant majorities were “good neighbors.”
“There were so few Catholics in the immediate area, when they got around to building the chapel, they had Mennonite workers,” he said.
Other locations he traveled to included Ivy Mills, where Mass was celebrated in the home of Thomas Willcox in the early 1700s until Catholics established the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle. Another was the Conewago Chapel in Hanover (now the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), established in 1730.
Catholicism outside Maryland and Pennsylvania
Outside of Maryland and Pennsylvania, Smith said “mostly what existed were scattered gentry families like the Brents in Virginia (who had ties to Maryland) and Catholics with diplomatic and mercantile roles in port cities.”
This contributed to the small number of Catholics present in New York City and Charleston, South Carolina, even though Catholicism was illegal in both cities for most of colonial times. Catholicism was only briefly legal in colonial New York when Irish Catholic Thomas Dongan was appointed governor from 1683 to 1688.
“The reason that there was any Catholic presence in these cities (or any port cities in British North America) was due to commerce,” Smith said. “Port cities pulled sailors, merchants, etc., from around the world. Some level of religious tolerance was good for business, though tolerance generally meant that Catholics could practice their faith out of sight.”
After the revolution and when the United States adopted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which guaranteed a right to “the free exercise” of religion, Catholicism was tolerated — at least legally. This led to a greater influx of Catholic immigration in the 1800s.
A letter from President Washington
In 1790, President George Washington wrote to Archbishop John Carroll while lawmakers were still in the process of adopting the Bill of Rights.
Washington assured the archbishop that Catholics would enjoy the same rights as Protestants under the new government. He said “your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took” in the revolutionary war and the establishment of the government. He also noted the support received from the Catholic country of France.
“May the members of your society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity,” Washington wrote.
This article was written by Tyler Arnold for EWTN News.
Featured image: St. Francis Xavier Church, built in 1731, is the oldest Catholic church in continuous operation from the original 13 English colonies. (Photo by Lawrence OP / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
