The Birth of a New Movement

"At Easter the garden of the Church is abloom with beautiful blossoms, Christians newly baptized and confirmed. By Pentecost these blossom have developed and have matured into fruit, and now hang heavily upon the trees. The Gardener who tends the trees is our Savior Jesus Christ: the Sun that ripens the fruit is the Holy Spirit.”      - Dr. Pius Parsch, A Year of Grace

This past Sunday the Church celebrated the feast of Pentecost as the finale of the Easter season; yet it also marked a great beginning - the Holy Spirit's life in the Church on earth.

Pentecost was a Jewish feast, held fifty days after Passover. The celebration was two-fold: the commemoration of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai and a thanksgiving for the grain harvest. Fittingly, the Holy Spirit descended on this day to seal the giving of the New Law and initiate the harvest of souls.

Traditionally, we say the Church was born on Pentecost. This birth was witnessed and visible, not only to those directly visited by the Holy Spirit – those leaders of this new movement – but also to “outsiders.” Hearing the mighty roar, those many peoples gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast, rush to the site of the disturbance and become witnesses to the great marvel of fearful, simple and unimportant men made bold and zealously asking others to follow them on this new venture. Humanly inexplicable, yet undeniably evident.

From this point, the Church becomes a visible institution with leaders, a governing body, a mission – to proclaim Christ and his teachings to all people and all nations – and rules to assist that mission and assure the integrity of its mission. The new venture, spearheaded by a handful of twelve unremarkable men, takes firm hold in the world and becomes one of longest surviving and most influential in human history. It spreads without an Alexander the Great, a Genghis Khan, a Julius Caesar. How does this happen when every other empire or institution has needed a gifted leader, armies or vast wealth to last even a bare 200 years? We, of course, already know why from the words of the Pharisee Gamaliel, “ If this is man’s design or man’s undertaking, it will be overthrown; if it is God’s, you will have no power to overthrow it.” (Acts 5:39) The Church is a divine, yet a very human institution and therefore it is inextricably entwined with the history of the world and there is no good telling of history unless this is acknowledged. 

"The followers of Jesus and missionaries like St. Paul brought a new hope to the empires great and small, rich and poor. Life without fear was promised to all who believed in Jesus and accepted him as Lord... In light of this hope, civilization could follow paths of thought and invention not possible before. Individuals could develop ideas and practices that had not occured to anyone caught in the old worship of nature." (Light to the Nations, Part One, pg 42) Follow Catholic Textbooks via Email

Empress of the Americas - The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe

The following text is taken from our book, From Sea to Shining Sea: The Story of America.

The Bishop and the Men of Blood

Fray Juan de Zumárraga was troubled. Being a bishop is never easy, but being the bishop of New Spain (it seemed) was a task beyond the power of any man. Indeed, Fray Juan had not wanted to be bishop. For over 30 years he had lived the quiet life of a Franciscan friar. He had prayed and fasted; he had said Mass, administered the sacraments, and preached to the people. Then one fatal day, in 1527, King Charles I had stopped at the Franciscan convent in Valladolid (vah•yeh•duh•LEE), in Spain. The king was so impressed by Fray Juan, who directed the life of the convent, that he wanted him to serve as the first bishop of New Spain. Fray Juan, the son of poor parents, did not think himself worthy of that great office; but his religious superior told him that he had to obey King Charles. So it was that one year later, Fray Juan found himself in the city of Mexico, the bishop of pagans, new Christian converts, and half civilized Spanish adventurers. 

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We Stand at Armageddon - The U.S. Presidential Election of 1912

 With the November 2012 presidential elections lowering over us, we thought it would be interesting for our readers to take a look at another presidential election --- one held almost exactly 100 years ago. The 1912 election pitted three major candidates against each other: the Republican, William Howard Taft; his immediate predecessor, President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as a "third party" candidate on the Progressive (or Bull Moose) Party ticket; and the Democrat "progressive," Woodrow Wilson. Though the candidates claimed to represent very different visions for America, really, there were not many profound differences between them. Even the "conservative" (as juxtaposed to Roosevelt and Wilson) candidate, President Taft, had spent his term enacting many of the same sorts of policies that the progressive President Roosevelt had put in place when in office.

The foregoing might lead one to conclude that not much has changed between 1912 and 2012. Yet, there are some striking differences --- for instance, in how party conventions are conducted (the presidential candidate was not a foregone conclusion), the vibrancy of third parties (not just the Bull Moosers but the Socialists made a splash in 1912), and the three-dimensional personalities of the candidates. What's more, these men could speak --- no tired analogies, no chiding headed off by, "make no mistake...", no hackneyed phraseology, such as "all options are on the table." Moreover, it has been a long time since we have had such a character as Teddy Roosevelt. One may not agree with all of his policies, but who wouldn't like to spend an afternoon over beer with the man --- even if it led to a "bully" fight?

Please click here read the article. It is taken from our yet-to-be published high school history of North America, Lands of Hope and Promise.

A Rollicking Good Tale

Teaching History as Story

By Christopher Zehnder

Of the classes I can recall from high school, among the most tedious was sophomore history. History class with Mr. Faulmann (an alias) was almost invariably the same.  On an overhead projector, he would place an outline of the chapter he had assigned us to read and then proceed to read the outline aloud to us. We, the students, were required to copy the outline in our notebooks. That was all. He stuck with the book and only the book. The only variation in this routine came when Mr. Faulmann had to work on track scores (for he was the track coach.) At such times, he assigned us a chapter of our textbook to read, each to himself alone, in class.

I recall feeling a certain frustration with Mr. Faulmann’s procedure. I could not understand, having already read a chapter as homework and understood it, why I had it have it repeated to me in tedious outline form in class. But now, 30 years later, having myself taught both middle and high school history classes, I can somewhat sympathize with my erstwhile pedagogue. It is difficult to teach history, precisely because a student can simply read a good history text and understand the matter by himself. What is left for a teacher to explain in the classroom? This, of course, can make teaching history a simple affair for the pedant who is content just to “cover the material”; but for the teacher who wants history class to be something more than an exercise in the drilling in and regurgitation of facts, the teaching of history can offer a sturdy challenge.

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Catholic Colony-Making in 19th Century America

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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We Die For God- Cristero Revolution Part 7

The Uprising Rekindled

With the rebellion again in full swing, the Liga Defensora decided that the scattered Cristero forces needed coordination and military discipline. They turned thus to a retired general, Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, to take on overall command of the rebellion. Gorostieta however did not embrace the aims of the Cristeros. The mercenary general (he demanded twice the salary of a federal general) was a Liberal and a Freemason and mocked the religion for which the Cristeros died. But Gorostieta opposed Calles. His dream, it seems was to establish a truly Liberal republic that enforced separation of Church and state but did not interfere with religious belief or practice.

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We Die For God- Cristero Revolution Part 6

Revolution and Counter-revolution
Struggle of Rival Factions

The government that replaced Carranza in 1920 was able to bring some peace to Mexico. Pancho Villa was bought off by the gift of a hacienda in Durango. The zapatistas laid down their arms when the government assured them they could keep whatever lands they had taken in Morelos. President Obregón, unlike Carranza, seemed a friend to labor and radical agrarian aspirations – so much so that disgruntled businessmen in the United States soon were complaining that the president of Mexico was a “Bolshevist.”

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