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Catholic Church in the United States
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"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
- Socrates
SUMMARY
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The Catholic Church in the United States is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. With 20.8% of the United States population as of 2018, the Catholic Church is the country's second largest single religious group after Protestantism, but the country's largest religious denomination. The United States has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world after Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines, the largest Catholic minority population, and the largest English-speaking Catholic population. The central leadership body of the Catholic Church in the United States is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The Catholic Church's part of the history of the United States has its background in the European colonization of the Americas. The first Catholics arrived with the Spanish missions in the Americas with Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the New World in 1493. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they established missions in what are now Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Texas, and later in California. In addition to the Spanish, the French in the 17th century, via New France, began missionary work in Michigan, New York, Wisconsin. French colonization in the early 18th century saw missions established in Louisiana, St. Louis, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, the Alabamas, Natchez, Yazoo, Natchitoches, Arkansas, Illinois. St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, has the oldest continuous parish in the US. In 1789 the Archdiocese of Baltimore was the first diocese established in the newly formed United States. John Carroll, whose brother Daniel was one of five men to sign both the Articles of Confederation (1778) and the United States Constitution (1787), became the first American bishop. John McCloskey became the first American cardinal in 1875.
The number of Catholics grew from the early 19th century through immigration and the acquisition of the predominantly Catholic former possessions of France, Spain, and Mexico, followed in the mid-19th century by a rapid influx of Irish, German, Italian and Polish immigrants from Europe, making the Catholic Church the largest Christian denomination in the United States. This increase was met by widespread anti-Catholicism in the United States, prejudice and hostility, often resulting in riots and the burning of churches, convents, and seminaries. The Know Nothings, an anti-Catholic nativist movement, was founded in the mid 19th century in an attempt to restrict Catholic immigration, and was later followed by the Order of United American Mechanics, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Protective Association, and the Junior Order of United American Mechanics.
The fuller integration of Catholics into American society was hastened by the election of John F. Kennedy as President in 1960. Since then, the percentage of Americans who are Catholic has fallen slowly from about 25% to 22%, with increases in Hispanics, primarily Mexican Americans, and to a lesser degree, in more than six million former Protestants, who have balanced losses of self-identifying Catholics. In absolute numbers, Catholics have increased from 45 to 72 million. About 10% of the population as of 2010 are former Catholics or non-practicing, almost 30 million people. People have left for a number of reasons, which factors have also affected other denominations: loss of belief, disenchantment, disaffiliation for another religious group or for none, indifference. Other reasons for departure are the Church's teaching on homosexuality, women's role in the Church, abortion and birth control. The Catholic Church sexual abuse cases have had a negative effect as well, if not significant, especially in the northeast. The geographic center of US Catholicism is also shifting southward and westward; although compared with other religious groups, Catholics are fairly evenly dispersed throughout the country.As of 2018 (post- ...
