Maura Jane Farrelly, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity

Rome, Catholicism, and the nation‐state in America: Re‐centering a debate?

“…To be sure, while many Catholics, especially among the laity, were virtually ignorant of or unconcerned with the philosophical tension between Catholic and American propositions, some of their co‐religionists did outspokenly pursue the reconciliation of their faith with democratic and republican values. This tradition of liberal American Catholicism counts among his most illustrious champions the first US bishop, Jesuit John Carroll of Baltimore (1735–1815), bishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota, (1838–1918), and Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray (1904–1967), and it still elicits a lively historiographical interest (e.g., Breidenbach, 2021; Farrelly, 2012).…”