Pioneer Priests and Makeshift Altars A History of Catholicism in the Thirteen Colonies / Fr. Charles Connor

In this comprehensive history, Fr. Charles Connor details the life of Catholics in the American Colonies. It’s a tale that begins with the flight of English Catholics to religious freedom in Maryland in 1634, and continues through the post-Revolutionary period, by which time the constitutions of all but four of the first 13 states contained harsh anti-Catholic provisions.

Catholic readers will be proud to learn from that despite almost two centuries of ever-more-intense religious persecutions and even harsher legal prohibitions, American Catholics in the colonies simply refused to abandon the Catholic Faith.

This is an indispensable reading for souls interested in the deep roots of Catholicism in America, and in the holy courage of scores of Catholics who kept remorseless forces from driving Catholicism out of America. Among other things, you’ll learn:

• The tale of The Ark and The Dove that carried the first settlers to Maryland
• The surprisingly harsh anti-Catholic sentiments of most of the Founding Fathers
• The Quaker/Catholic alliance that promoted both religions
• The role of persecuted Catholics in the Revolutionary War
• Why, in that War, many Catholics favored the anti-Catholic British
• The French Jesuits who evangelized New York and its frontier areas, and the saints who were martyred there
• The years in which, throughout the colonies, Catholics became an endangered species