From an article by
Thomas Storck
It is easier to be a Catholic here than in the mixed and
busy push of the towns and cities.
-John T. Reily in 1885, commenting on
Conewago, a very early Catholic settlement near the Maryland border in
Pennsylvania.
From the nascent
community in first century Jerusalem, which held all things in common (Acts
2:42-47), to efforts of today, Catholics have very often sought to establish
explicitly Catholic communities, communities in which they could live out the
Faith by establishing a way of life that corresponded with the teaching of the
Gospel. And in some circumstances there was the additional reason that such
separate communities were made necessary by the active hostility and
persecution of surrounding society. In nineteenth-century America both the
desire to live a way of life more in keeping with the Faith as well as the
hostility of the surrounding Protestant society gave the impetus for the
founding of many Catholic communities, and in this article I will describe a
few of them. This is certainly not an exhaustive account of Catholic
colonization in the United States during the last century, but simply a brief
survey and a highlighting of some of the episodes that seem to me most interesting.
The
original European settlers of North America were, of course, Spanish Catholics,
and those coming later included the Catholic French, and the English Catholics
of Maryland. So in a sense all of their settlement could be called Catholic
colonization. Moreover, these European Catholics evangelized the Native
Americans and in many cases established Catholic communities for them. The
French, for example, in order to protect their Indian converts from the still
pagan atmosphere of their homelands, set up explicitly Catholic Indian villages
near Montreal, and in Florida Indians converted by Spanish priests dwelt in
Catholic communities.
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