The Theory and Practice of Language in Scalabrinian Parishes for Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1887–1933

In 1887 Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini founded the Missionaries of Saint Charles (popularly called the Scalabrinians) to minister to Italian migrants in transit and in their new homes. He sent his first missionaries to the United States with a particular plan of pastoral action: to help Italian Catholics maintain their faith using their traditional language and culture while also integrating themselves, at least economically and politically, into societies with other languages and cultures. Between their arrival in 1888 and 1933, when the best record-keeper of this early immigrant experience died, the Scalabrinians served Italian communities from New England across New York State and south to Monongah, West Virginia. In the field, the missionaries helped the first generation of Italian Americans to plant their particular practice of the faith in the United States, developing a plan of pastoral care for the immigrants’ rapidly assimilating children, one that involved more frequent use of English and of American customs, leading to the question of whether assimilationist attempts fundamentally changed their mission.