The Demands of Humanity and Religion: The U.S. Catholic Church, Colonization, and the Mission to Liberia, 1842–44

The failure of the U.S. Catholic Church’s mission to Liberia in the mid-nineteenth century represented the Church’s inability to practice its idealistic teaching concerning slavery and manumission, as well as to cope with the situation of free persons of color in a culture where race and ethnicity were of the greatest significance. The mission’s lack of success can be attributed to a dearth of ecclesiastical personnel equipped to work among Americans or Africans; a predominantly Protestant environment hostile to the Catholic Church; large-scale immigration from Europe; and cultural differences between European churchmen and their American and African flocks.