A History of Catholic America
From the Columbus arrival through the Twentieth Century
"Jesus et Maria sint nobis in via."

More than five hundred years after the Columbus arrival in America, it is a good time to look back and reflect over our rich heritage. American Catholicism and the history of the United States are entwined from the earliest Spanish explorers, through the settlers and great waves of immigrants, through the wars that were fought, to the pressing social issues of our day.

This short history highlights some of the people and events that have shaped both America and the Catholic Church here. It is designed to help the reader understand the traditions that have evolved. It is a history filled with hope and vision, cruelties and fear, forward strides and occasional set backs, and much success; a history of which all Catholic Americans can be proud.

A New Discovery and Exploration
The earliest history of Catholicism in the New World is the story of what happens when cultures collide. When he reached the Western Hemisphere in 1492, Christopher Columbus, a tall, imposing, patriarchal figure with prematurely graying red hair, lifted his piercing blue eyes toward heaven and thanked his Creator for having given him and the crews of his three small ships a safe journey. A devout Catholic, he led his men in prayer every evening at sundown on the narrow decks of his ship, especially asking protection from the Mother of God, whom the seafarers referred to as the "Star of the Sea" (Stella Maris). Even though a layman, Columbus cloistered himself in his cabin each day to read the Divine Office. The Italian sea captain from Western Europe who first set foot on this "new" land was a classic representative of Roman Catholicism and an emissary of the preeminent Catholic culture, Spain.

Columbus was far from humble. He wrote the Spanish monarchs, "Their Highnesses can see that I shall give them as much gold as they want... slaves, as many as they shall order, and I shall find a thousand other things of value." Not Columbus, perhaps, but dauntless explorers and settlers who came after him would do just that, convinced that their Spanish heritage - race, culture, and religion - was superior to the cultural gifts which they found in Native societies. It was to be a violent clash of cultures.

When Cultures Collide
Spanish Catholicism had been clashing with non-Christian cultures for centuries. After more than 500 years, Spanish armies finally destroyed the Moslem communities which had flourished on Spanish soil. The Arabic-speaking culture, which had brought prosperity to many areas of Spain since the Moslems settled in Seville in 716, was finally uprooted by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, when Granada, the last Islamic community, fell to the Christian armies.

Nor were Jewish inhabitants safe from persecution in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to punish "backsliders," usually Jewish converts who held on to some of their Jewish traditions. Ironically, the same royal official who signed Columbus' authorization to sail for India, authorized the brutal deportation of the Jewish population. The day before Columbus set sail in August of 1492 was the last day Jews were allowed to remain in Spain. The harbors were chaotic with boat traffic, usually overloaded, preparing to leave. One eyewitness, a Spanish seaman aboard a ship loaded with Jewish families sailing for permanent exile, passed Columbus' ships as they sailed down the River Tinto, to leave on their historic voyage.

It was not surprising, therefore, that Spanish Catholic settlers, imbued with a strong sense of superiority, would clash with Native cultures, especially Native spirituality. Like Columbus, subsequent leaders of Spanish expeditions would bring strong Catholic sentiments to the New World. Cruel treatment of natives was commonplace. This included the requirement that natives provide food, materials and manual work. The first attempts at colonization began with Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed on what he referred to as the "island of Florida" in 1513. No priests accompanied him, but as a Catholic layman, he dedicated the "island" to God, assuming, as was typical of European explorers in that Age of Faith, that it was part of their mission to bring Catholic beliefs to the unbaptized people of newly-discovered lands.

In the same year, another intrepid Spaniard, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, braved swamps, jungles, mountainous terrain, and hostile Natives to cross the isthmus of Panama and viewed the Pacific Ocean, thus confirming what Columbus himself probably suspected, that these newly-discovered lands were far from India.

The first documented visit of Catholic priests to North America was on Ponce de Leon's later trip to Florida in 1521. He was commissioned to take possession of the land from the Natives and convert them to Christianity, although royal authorization stipulated that the indigenous peoples were to be treated well. His ships, stocked with animals, farm tools, and weapons, sailed from Puerto Rico to the Gulf Coast, but the people of the area repelled the newcomers, and their mission was aborted.

The fruits of Florida crown this window of Ponce de Leon who discovered Florida on Palm Sunday, 1513. Our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and the first Blessed Virgin Mary Shrine in the United States are also shown.

Two years later another Italian Catholic, Giovanni Verrazzano, sailed under a French commission and explored most of the eastern coast of North America, and became the first European to enter what would later become one of the most vital seaports of the United States, New York harbor. During these early years, most colonization attempts were short-lived due to unendurable hardships and the disappointment that the new lands were not teeming with the gold and silver that motivated most early settlers. Illness, exposure, starvation, loneliness, bloody conflicts among settlers themselves, and the fierce opposition by Native peoples defending their homelands and ways of life took their toll.

The first European to preach the faith in North America was not a priest, but a layman, the heroic Cabeza de Vaca and the four companions who survived an ill-fated expedition, which had originally included four hundred men, 80 horses, and four fully- equipped ships. After wandering for six years through the southern part of the country, which to them was a mosquito-infested wilderness, they were befriended by Indians with whom they remained. De Vaca became a healer and preacher and even performed some baptisms.

Many European settlers remained woefully ignorant of Native spiritual traditions and Native politics. Juan de Padilla, a courageous Franciscan who accompanied Coronado through the Great Plains, stayed on to do highly successful missionary work among the Quivira Indians in what is now Kansas. But he was ambushed and murdered by them when he moved on to preach to their enemies, an act which the Quivira viewed as traitorous by someone they had trusted as a friend.

Within a generation or two, word had spread among Native peoples that Spanish explorers brought God, guns, and an almost complete contempt for Native spirituality and ways of life. A perilous expedition by Luis Cancer de Barbastro, a Dominican, who hoped to lead an unarmed voyage to a section of Florida where the Natives had not yet been harassed by Spanish weapons, ended in disaster. The captain, disregarding his orders, landed at a Florida village which had already suffered from the brunt of Spanish violence and seethed with hatred for white intruders. The Natives feigned friendship and then murdered Barbastro and two priest companions.