McNamara’s Blog Celebrates Black History Month

February 1, 2019 By Pat McNamara

Although November is officially Black Catholic History Month, I didn’t return to Patheos until its end. So McNamara’s Blog will highlight the African American Catholic experience during Black History Month of 2019. As I’ve shared here before, this is a topic which has interested me for a long time. Growing up in 1980’s Queens, I assumed Catholics were either Irish, Italian, German, or Polish. Any African Americans I did know belonged to Protestant churches. Furthermore, I never saw a Black person... Read more

Love Before Fear: St. John Bosco and the Salesian Charism

January 31, 2019 By Pat McNamara

Do you want to do a good deed? Teach the young! Do you want to perform a holy act? Teach the young! Do you want to do a holy thing? Teach the young! Truly, now and for the future, among holy things, this is the holiest.—- St. John Bosco (1815-1888) Let me just say at the start that I’ve loved the spirituality of St. Francis De Sales (1567-1622), ever since reading his Introduction to the Devout Life as an undergraduate.... Read more

Making History: Dr. James McCartin, Theology Department, Fordham University

January 30, 2019 By Pat McNamara

This new column in McNamara’s Blog profiles historians and archivists who make American Catholic history come alive through their work. They are preserving, chronicling and enhancing our understanding of the American Catholic experience, and they deserve recognition for this. Our first entry, then, profiles my friend Dr. James McCartin, who teaches in the theology department at Fordham University. I’ve know Dr. McCartin for twenty years, since we were both graduate students at Collegium, an annual week-long program focusing on Catholic... Read more

“A Million Foreigners, Most of Them Papists”: The Anti-Papal Panic of the 1910’s

January 29, 2019 By Pat McNamara

The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., once called anti-Catholicism America’s most persistent prejudice. For much of the Colonial period, Catholics had no religious or civil rights. (The exception was Maryland, which was founded on the principle of religious freedom for all.) As prejudice subsided after the American Revolution, anti-Catholic laws were taken off the books. But hatred returned in the 1840’s, when immigration from Ireland and Germany increased dramatically. This time, anti-Catholicism took the form of the Know-Nothing Party, whose... Read more

St. Mary Euphrasia and the Good Shepherd Charism

January 26, 2019 By Pat McNamara

“It is not enough that you love them; they must know that you love them.”— St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier (1796-1868) To work anywhere for twenty-five years is rare today. You have to love what you do. My friend Michelle Yanche loves her work at Good Shepherd Services in New York City, where she is Associate Executive Director for Government & External Relations. Some issues she deals with include public policy, advocacy, government relations, and fundraising. Recently I had the chance to... Read more

Peace and Good at Graymoor

January 25, 2019 By Pat McNamara

Pain can be healed. Hate can be turned to love. Division can be turned to unity. The Church can and will be one. — The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement For over a century in upstate New York, the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement have helped the disadvantaged while also promoting Christian unity. As we celebrate the Church Unity Octave this week, which they instituted, it’s a good opportunity to take a look at the community and its co-founders, Mother Lurana White... Read more

Christopher Columbus and Notre Dame: A Church Historian’s Perspective

January 24, 2019 By Pat McNamara

Among institutes of higher education, Notre Dame has a storied place in American Catholic culture and life. In his 1972 book That Most Distressful Nation, Father Andrew Greeley wrote that for many American Catholics, “the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame were folk heroes of which to be proud.” For some, going to South Bend was a bigger deal than being accepted to the Ivy Leagues. When Notre Dame does something, Catholics take notice: whether it’s giving an honorary degree to... Read more

St. Joseph‘s School for the Deaf Celebrates 150 Years in the Bronx

January 24, 2019 By Pat McNamara

In the Fall of 1869, in the Bronx’s then-rural Fordham section, a girls’ academy opened under the tutelage of one Madame Victorine Boucher (1812-1883). The short-lived school’s proceeds were used to form a school for the deaf, which has lasted quite a bit longer. According to one historian, the first student was “a little fair-haired German girl.” A few months later, St. Joseph’s Institute for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes moved to a small frame house at 772 East... Read more

Who’s It Named For? Archbishop Thomas E. Molloy (1884-1956)

January 22, 2019 By Pat McNamara

He has a college, a high school, and a retreat house named named for him: Molloy College in Rockville Centre, Archbishop Molloy High School in the Briarwood section of Queens, and Bishop Molloy Retreat House in nearby Jamaica Estates. Founded in 1955, the college began as a Catholic women’s institution under the Sisters of St.Dominic. Today, it is a coeducational school with graduate programs and residence halls. The high school, under the aegis of the Marist Brothers, was founded in... Read more

Catholics in the Military: Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore (1922-2017)

January 21, 2019 By Pat McNamara

“All through my life, I’ve tried to keep in mind that our purpose is to try to qualify for life hereafter.”—General Hal Moore One of the best books ever written about the Vietnam War, in my reading experience, has been We Were Soldiers Once… And Young (1992). Co-authored by Lieutenant General Harold G. (Hal) Moore (1922-2017) and journalist Joseph Galloway, it’s a first-hand account of the first full-scale battle between Vietnamese and American troops, a New York Times best-seller. Reviewer... Read more