Catholics in America

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the majority of immigrants before and during the Civil War (1861 to 1865), mostly poor and uneducated Catholics, having suffered terribly from discrimination and bigotry in their countries of origin, faced again in the United States extreme prejudice, bigotry, and religious discrimination, which highly affected their overall social, political, and economic lives. The author states that, in the U.S., anti-Catholic bigotry rose with the increased immigration because the English-speaking Protestant majority was afraid that the Catholics would take their jobs. The paper relates that the Catholic Church responded to the crucial needs of immigrant Catholics by creating social reform and support organizations. Mother Frances Cabrini, an Italian immigrant, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to teach Italians in the parochial schools, to care for the thousands of homeless children who lived in the streets because of the deaths of their parents, and to place nurses in hospitals.

From the Paper:

"During the period in American history just before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the United States was experiencing great change in its social, political and economic arenas, due mostly to the continuing expansion westward beyond the Mississippi River. This new territory was already inhabited by thousands of Catholics, mainly of Mexican descent, but much of the territory was completely unsettled and wild and was peopled by Native American Indian tribes. With new immigrants coming into the United States "at a rate of some two million every ten years from countries such as Ireland, France, Spain, Italy and Central Europe, the Catholic population exploded and was to serve as the basis for much social and political trouble in the future.""

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