{"id":1710,"date":"2017-01-16T11:45:05","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T15:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=1710"},"modified":"2026-07-06T13:47:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:47:18","slug":"exhibit-opens-catholics-in-early-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/exhibit-opens-catholics-in-early-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibit Opens &#8211; \u201cPreserving the Steadfastness of Your Faith\u201d: Catholics in the Early American Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cUnder these distressful feelings, one consideration alone relieved me . . . and that was, the hope of vindicating your religion to your own selves at least, and preserving the steadfastness of your faith.\u201d<\/em> \u2014 John Carroll, <a href=\"https:\/\/findit.library.nd.edu\/Record\/000047177\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With these words, John Carroll, head of the fledgling Catholic Church in the United States and future bishop, encouraged his fellow Catholics in 1784. Catholics held a precarious position in the Early Republic despite having gained more freedom to practice their religion after the Revolution. By the 1840s, in the face of increasing sectarian-driven violence, Catholicism had taken firm institutional root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/digital-exhibits.library.nd.edu\/04f477d5b4\/preserving-the-steadfastness-of-your-faith\">This exhibition<\/a> displays examples of American Catholicism expressed through (mostly) printed texts from 1783 through the early 1840s. They include the earliest Catholic bibles published by Mathew Carey, and editions of Thomas \u00e0 Kempis\u2019 <em>The Imitation of Christ<\/em> used and produced in the United States; polemical pamphlets with sexual and political subtexts that flew back and forth across the Atlantic; no-holds-barred dueling sectarian newspapers; books and pamphlets created in reaction to mob violence against the Ursuline convent school near Boston; and official reports that mapped the Church\u2019s growth and growing pains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This exhibition is curated by <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.library.nd.edu\/directory\/employees\/rbohlman\">Rachel Bohlmann<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.library.nd.edu\/directory\/employees\/jmcmanu1\">Jean McManus<\/a> and is open to the public through August 11, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cUnder these distressful feelings, one consideration alone relieved me . . . and that was, the hope of vindicating your religion to your own selves at least, and preserving the steadfastness of your faith.\u201d \u2014 John Carroll, An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America With these words, John Carroll, head &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/exhibit-opens-catholics-in-early-america\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Exhibit Opens &#8211; \u201cPreserving the Steadfastness of Your Faith\u201d: Catholics in the Early American Republic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1936,"featured_media":1715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77927,75050,12646,75052],"tags":[77938,156,77931],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-catholic-studies","category-exhibits","category-miscellaneous","category-us-history-culture","tag-book","tag-news","tag-printed-ephemera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11968,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/11968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}