American Catholic History

Mark Twain considered Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc his best, and his favorite work. He spent twelve years researching for it, and then two years writing. The book was originally published under a pseudonym in serial in Harper's Weekly. His fans and the general public were shocked and confused when they found out that this beautiful, serious, and deeply Catholic book was written by Twain. Twain was not Catholic — he wasn't even Christian — and he had a great animosity toward the Catholic Church. But in Joan of Arc he found the greatest human person he'd ever encountered.

A legend of the Wild West, John Henry "Doc" Holliday was born in Georgia to Presbyterian and Methodist parents. But his sweetheart growing up was Catholic — and his first cousin — Martha Ann "Mattie" Holliday. After an excellent education and becoming a dentist, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. To survive he had to move to a more arid climate, like west Texas, and parts of the desert and great plains states. Eventually he had to stop being a dentist, and he became a professional gambler and gunslinger. He befriended the Earp brothers, especially Wyatt, and was involved in many adventures with the Earps, including the famous shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Eventually the tuberculosis worsened and he died at 36 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. But he had maintained a correspondence with his beloved Mattie. She had become a nun, and her influence led to Doc summoning a priest and becoming Catholic shortly before he died. The romance between Doc and Mattie was later captured in the 1939 movie Gone With The Wind, because the author of the book, Margaret Mitchell, was a second cousin, once removed of Mattie Holliday.

Saints Bonosa and Magnus were martyred in Rome in either the third or fourth century. Their bones rested peacefully in the catacombs until 1700, when they were given to the Cistercian sisters in Anagni, a town near Rome, for veneration in their chapel. When the Kingdom of Italy conquered the Papal States in the late 19th century, Pope Leo XIII needed a new place to keep these old relics safe. Fortunately, the pastor of St. Martin of Tours parish in Louisville, Kentucky had written to Rome requesting relics. Pope Leo XIII sent the skeletons of Bonosa and Magnus, and since 1901, these two Roman martyrs have been venerated safely and peacefully in Louisville. Learn more about the parish of St. Martin of Tours, and how anti-Catholicism almost destroyed that church when it was only two years old. 

Father Mulcahy, Army chaplain of the M*A*S*H 4077, was perhaps the most important priest on network television not named Fulton Sheen. He was a fictional character, and the actor who played him, William Christopher, was Methodist. But Father Mulcahy was an integral part of what made M*A*S*H one of the best television series of all time. He was a humble, real man, with his own struggles with pride, but who managed to be a steady and humanizing presence in that TV depiction of hell on earth.

(Note: this is a re-release of a previously released episode.) Saint Teresa of Calcutta, known in life as Mother Teresa, visited the United States a number of times, usually to open new houses of her order, the Missionaries of Charity. She gave a number of addresses in the U.S., speaking of the duty we all have toward our fellow man to aid one another, singling out abortion as the "greatest destroyer of love and peace." On one occasion, in 1985, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and addressed the National Right to Life Convention. In 1994 she addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, and spoke strongly against abortion and contraception with President Bill Clinton, his wife, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore and his wife, Tipper Gore, in attendance. In 1996 she was made an honorary citizen of the U.S., only the fifth person to receive this honor.

In 1862, Clara Barton got some of the experience which would lead to her founding the Red Cross. That year, St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax Station, Virginia, became a field hospital during the Second Battle of Bull Run — or Second Manassas, if you’re from the South. The church was only about a year old. The pews were pulled out to be used for beds around the grounds as thousands of wounded and dying were brought to the church grounds, which were only about one quarter mile from the new railroad depot for Fairfax. During the battle, Clara Barton came out to held nurse the wounded. She served admirably, and remained at the work until the last wounded soldier was loaded on a train bound for a hospital in Alexandria or Washington, DC. After the war, all but one of the many dead who were buried in the Church grounds were exhumed and relocated to Arlington National Cemetery. In the 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant ordered that new pews be provided for St. Mary, as the one original ones had been destroyed during their usage as hospital beds and firewood.

St. Junipero Serra is considered the Father of California. He founded the missions that first brought the Catholic faith and modern agriculture and industrial techniques to California. He was a man of strict penitential practices. He expected much of those whom he evangelized, and had no patience for those who mistreated the natives for their own gain. Originally from Mallorca, off the coast of Spain, he was a brilliant scholar, but rather than an academic career he chose the mission field. He spent decades working in central Mexico, then Baja and Alta California. And due to an insect bite when he first arrived in Mexico, he did his missionary work — which he did mostly on foot — with a diseased and ulcerous leg. He was canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, and a statue of him holding a cross aloft is included in the U.S. Capitol as one of two from the state of California.

In 1587 Spanish settlers in St. Augustine, Florida established a shrine to Our Lady of La Leche. This was the first shrine to Our Lady, the Blessed Mother Mary, established in what is now the United States. This devotion to the Blessed Mother has roots that go back to the Roman catacombs. It was a favored image of King Philip II of Spain. “La Leche,” Spanish for “The Milk,” depicts the Blessed Mother nursing the infant Jesus. The first chapel dedicated to Our Lady of La Leche was erected in 1609. The chapel currently standing in the Mission of the Name of God in St. Augustine was built in 1914. Many miracles have been attributed to this image and shrine over the centuries. In the 21st century the shrine was named a National Shrine, and the Pope granted the image a canonical coronation.

The first mass movement of Catholics within the new United States from the eastern seaboard across the Appalachian Mountains happened in the 1780s and 1790s. Sixty families, led by Basil Hayden, Sr., moved together from St. Mary City, Maryland, to what was then Kentucky County, Virginia. They settled near the growing city of Bardstown. Their hope was that since they moved in such a concentration, the Church would be compelled to establish a parish there and assign a permanent priest to minister to them. This scheme worked, as the first diocese west of the Appalachians was established in Bardstown in 1808. But something else was happening in Bardstown at the time these Catholic families moved to the region: the beginnings of bourbon whiskey. Local farmers had begun to make this corn-heavy spirit just a few years before Hayden and the Catholics arrived. The Catholic families, who also were mostly farmers, adopted this new type of whiskey and became good at making it. To this day many of the great bourbon makers still trace their roots to this influx of Catholic families: Jim Beam, Willett, Wathen, Medley, J.W. Dant, and others. The Hayden family hasn't made bourbon for a long time, but the legacy of Basil Hayden, Sr. lives on in bourbons made today by the Jim Beam Company: Old Grandad and the series of Basil Hayden whiskeys they make.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, more commonly known as “The Baltimore Basilica,” was the first cathedral built in the United States. Archbishop John Carroll conceived of the idea of building a grand cathedral in Baltimore in 1792, but his plans didn’t come to fruition until the early 1800s. And in spite of being a poor diocese, Carroll believed this cathedral was important to build because of “Amplitude.” To make sure it was a building that would be respected by all, Carroll secured the services of the most respected and important architect of the time, Henry Latrobe. Latrobe is considered the father of American architecture. At the time he worked on this new cathedral his other major project was the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Listen to learn more about this important house of worship.