You have to be careful what you read on Wikipedia. It’s a great resource in a lot of ways, if you know what you’re looking for. Not too long ago I found a Wikipedia entry on Edmund A. Walsh (seen here with Douglas MacArthur), who was the subject of my dissertation and my first book. Walsh did a lot of different things in his life. One of them was founding Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, the first school of its... Read more

Most people don’t realize that for over a thousand years, the Pope was a political (temporal) ruler as well as a spiritual one, complete with his own army. The Papal States covered a fairly sizeable chunk of central Italy. Temporal rule ended in 1870 as Italy was united into one nation. But the Papal States didn’t end without a fight. Charles Coloumbe’s new book The Pope’s Legion tells the story of the men in Pope Pius IX’s army who fought... Read more

Since Rolf Hocchuth’s 1963 play The Deputy, there’s been an ongoing debate regarding the alleged silence of Pope Pius XII with regard to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. On the one side, Pius is castigated for not speaking out strongly enough. Some even go so far as to suggest that he was secretly pro-Nazi, a line of argument fueled by the 1999 publication of John Cornwell’s book Hitler’s Pope. On the other side, defenders of the pontiff argue that he... Read more

Whenever I teach a course on Church History, I like to begin with the following quote from one of the all-time great historians, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). In an 1840 review of Leopold Von Ranke’s History of the Popes, he said this to say about the Catholic Church’s impact on human history. Coming from a nineteenth century English Protestant baron, I’d say it’s a pretty objective source: There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of... Read more

The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., has an Archives that is one of the best resources for any student of American Catholic History. The Archives has recently created an online resource for teachers to use in the classroom. They sum it up rather nicely in their website: The American Catholic History Classroom is a continuously-updated primary document site featuring a range of materials related to the American Catholic experience. Aimed at both educators and researchers, the Classroom currently... Read more

Thanks to Deacon Greg Kandra for alerting me to an interesting new book. It’s about a short-lived order of Native American nuns founded in the late 1800’s by a Jesuit who worked among the Sioux. They were called the Congregation of American Sisters. I thought I knew a lot about American Catholic history, but it just goes to show you– there’s still a lot of history left out there to uncover! Read more

Bushwick got its name from the Dutch, but like most New York neighborhoods, it’s had quite a few makeovers since then. Long a center of Hispanic life, in recent years it’s become home to a growing Hipster population fleeing Manhattan rent. Before either of them, Bushwick was a center of German-American life in New York City. Beginning in the late 1800’s, immigrants from Germany and Austria, Catholic and Protestant, came to the area in large numbers. For immigrants fleeing an... Read more

Deacon Greg Kandra, in his marvellous blog The Deacon’s Bench, notes that the Sisters of Mercy in Brooklyn are closing their motherhouse in Brooklyn after 146 years. This doesn’t mean the end of the Sisters’ ministry in Brooklyn, but it is a sad day in the history of their Brooklyn sojourn. That history began in 1855 when Irish-born Mother Mary Vincent Haire (left), the first Sister of Mercy professed in New York, and five other members of the congregation, opened... Read more

The year 2008 marks a number of anniversaries for the Catholic Church in the U.S. The Paulist Fathers, the first religious community of priests founded in America, celebrated their 15oth. Four archdioceses also celebrated their bicentennials: New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Louisville. The Museum of the City of New York has a great exhibit commemorating the Archdiocesan Bicentennial. New York is the only American city encompass two dioceses (Brooklyn and Queens being their own diocese), the exhibit covers all five... Read more

New blogs, like new books, must justify their existence. I see this one as a way to share my interest in all aspects of the history of the Catholic Church: local, national, and international. For me, this has both a personal and a professional aspect. Professionally speaking, I received my Ph.D. in Church History from The Catholic University of America in 2003, and from time to time I teach courses on the subject at the local seminaries. My writing has... Read more