Roman Catholicism in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Roman Catholicism in the United States has flourished since its colonial era, previous to the establishment of the nation. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States is the largest Christian denomination in the nation, with 65.2 million people professing the faith in 2003. Approximately 23 percent of the American population, it is four times the size of the next largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Church's governing body in the United States is the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, made up of the hierarchy of bishops and archbishops of the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands, although each bishop is independent in his own diocese, answerable only to the Pope.
No primate for Catholics exists in the United States. The Archdiocese of Baltimore, the first diocese established in the country, received Prerogative of Place in the 1850s, which confers to its archbishop a subset of the leadership responsibilities granted to primates in other countries.
Statistics
Over 19,000 parishes exist in 195 dioceses or archdioceses:
- 32 Latin Catholic Archdioceses
- 146 Latin Catholic Dioceses
- 2 Eastern Catholic Archdioceses or Archeparchies
- 15 Eastern Catholic Dioceses or Eparchies
The Church has over 30,000 diocesan priests, and over 15,000 priests vowed to a specific order; also over 30,000 lay ministers, 13,000 deacons, 75,000 sisters, and 5,600 brothers.
150,000 Catholic school teachers operate in the United States, teaching 2.7 million students.
History
Roman Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States with the Spanish explorers and settlers in present-day Florida (1513) and the southwest. The first Christian worship service held in the current United States was a Catholic Mass celebrated in St. Augustine, Florida. The influence of the Alta California missions (1769 and onwards) forms a lasting memorial to part of this heritage.
Catholicism received a boost with the settling of Maryland (1634): this colony offered a rare example of the Catholic-oriented religious toleration in a fairly intolerant age, particularly amongst other English plantations which frequently exhibited a quite militant Protestantism. (See the Maryland Toleration Act, and note the pre-eminence of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in Catholic circles.) However, at the time of the American Revolution, Catholics formed less than 1 percent of the population of the thirteen colonies.
Subsequent mass-immigration -- especially of Catholics from Ireland, Germany, southern Europe (Italy, Portugal), Poland, the Philippines, and Latin America -- has impacted the flavor of Catholicism in the United States. Some anti-immigrant movements, like the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan, have also been anti-Catholic.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the first attempt at standardizing discipline in the American Church occurred with the convocation of the Plenary Councils of Baltimore.
