Project MUSE®: U.S. Catholic Historian - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in U.S. Catholic Historian.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 25 (2007) through current issueLatest Articles: U.S. Catholic HistorianTWOProject MUSE®U.S. Catholic Historian1947-82240735-8318Latest articles in U.S. Catholic Historian. Feed provided by Project MUSE®About This Issue
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988117
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We continue to mark the nation's semiquincentennial with the second of a four-part series. This issue focuses on the nineteenth century and the era of immigration and expansion for the U.S. Church. We are grateful for our contributors. C. Walker Gollar is a professor of theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Max Longley is an independent scholar in Durham, North Carolina. Ned Berghausen is a permanent deacon and high school theology teacher in the Archdiocese of Louisville. He directs the Unmarked Grave Project at St. Louis Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. James A. Gutowski is Director of Academic Services at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills, Ohio. Elisabeth C. Davis is an assistant professor and instructional
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmallAbout This Issue2026-04-16text/htmlen-USAbout This Issue2026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®20462026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16Martyrs of Charity: Cincinnati Bishop Edward Fenwick's Encounter with Native Americans
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988118
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In the fall of 1828, Cincinnati's first Catholic bishop, Edward Dominic Fenwick, sent one of his priests, Englishman John Augustine Hill, to a remote community at Sandusky Bay on the southern banks of Lake Erie in northern Ohio. Hill baptized numerous people, including "an Indian or two," before falling ill and dying. Fenwick eulogized Hill a "martyr of charity," an imprecise expression used by Catholics throughout history to suggest that a person had died from caring for those in need.1 Fenwick passed away in this fashion as well in 1832, dying of cholera during a visitation of Catholics in Wooster, Ohio.Prior to the establishment of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in 1874, the U.S. Catholic Church did not
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmallMartyrs of Charity: Cincinnati Bishop Edward Fenwick's Encounter with Native Americans2026-04-16text/htmlen-USMartyrs of Charity: Cincinnati Bishop Edward Fenwick's Encounter with Native Americans2026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®1209492026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16Two American Catholic Holy Warriors: John de Barth Walbach and John P. J. O'Brien at the Intersection of Faith and Freedom
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988119
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By the early 1840s, the soldiers stationed at Fort Monroe, near Hampton, Virginia, were pressured—and at times even required—to attend Sunday services. The Episcopal minister Mark Chevers, a War of 1812 veteran and the Rector of nearby St. John's Church, had been appointed by Congress to serve there and would remain Fort Monroe's chaplain until his death in 1875.1 The fort's commander, John de Barth Walbach (1766–1857), a Catholic, issued an order early in 1843 that each Sunday an officer would accompany the soldiers to the chapel because some soldiers were disrupting worship by frequently entering and exiting the chapel. Though a Catholic, Walbach considered the order important for "good order." But not all agreed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmallTwo American Catholic Holy Warriors: John de Barth Walbach and John P. J. O'Brien at the Intersection of Faith and Freedom2026-04-16text/htmlen-USTwo American Catholic Holy Warriors: John de Barth Walbach and John P. J. O'Brien at the Intersection of Faith and Freedom2026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®1349722026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16Stationmasters of the Central Line: Black Catholic Faith and Resistance in the Ohio Valley Borderlands
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988120
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"Two slaves had run away and were hiding at Smith's place." So wrote Indiana resident O. B. Knapp in his 1929 memoir, recounting a bid for freedom that two enslaved Black Kentuckians made in 1858.1 The freedom seekers took refuge at the eighty-acre farm of a Black Catholic couple, James Madison Smith (1799–1883) and Catherine "Kitty" Smith (1815–1900), who were formerly enslaved Kentuckians. The Smiths had lived near Queensville, an unincorporated town in Jennings County, Indiana, since 1851. When they offered sanctuary to the two refugees, Madison was fifty-nine years old,
Gravestone of James Madison Smith and Catherine "Kitty" Smith, St. Louis Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky (Courtesy of the author).
and Kitty
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmallStationmasters of the Central Line: Black Catholic Faith and Resistance in the Ohio Valley Borderlands2026-04-16text/htmlen-USStationmasters of the Central Line: Black Catholic Faith and Resistance in the Ohio Valley Borderlands2026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®1051102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16Old School Meets New World: Hyacinth Epp and the Founding of the Capuchin Province of St. Augustine
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988121
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On much of its merchandise, the Free State Brewing Company of Lawrence, Kansas, features an inscription purportedly from the diary of a Capuchin "Brother Epp" of Munjor, Kansas, proclaiming that "without beer, things do not seem to go as well." The author of the quote is actually Father Hyacinth Epp, founder of the Capuchin Province of St. Augustine. He would have known the town as Obermonjou (before the simplification to Munjor) and his notation, in addition to being clever marketing, represents a significant concession in his efforts to meld American culture with the Capuchin-Franciscan tradition.The relationship between popular culture and communal life in a religious foundation is often symbiotic. Popular
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmallOld School Meets New World: Hyacinth Epp and the Founding of the Capuchin Province of St. Augustine2026-04-16text/htmlen-USOld School Meets New World: Hyacinth Epp and the Founding of the Capuchin Province of St. Augustine2026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®802202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16"What a great grace to have died in the Church": A Case Study in Death Culture and Ars Moriendi at a Native American Catholic Boarding School
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988122
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In early 1889, an Ojibwe girl, identified only as Bertha, died at the Academy of the Holy Child in Avoca, Minnesota, a boarding school run by the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus (SHCJs). A few days later, her classmate, identified as Mary Xavier, passed away also. The bodies of the two girls were placed in coffins in a communal area, where their fellow classmates gathered to mourn. The SHCJs' annals reported that students found comfort in these deaths, for "how great a thing it is, and what a great grace they have received to die in the Catholic Church."1 The deaths of the two girls were more than just a sorrowful occurrence in the daily lives of those at the Native American boarding school; it became a moment in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmall"What a great grace to have died in the Church": A Case Study in Death Culture and Ars Moriendi at a Native American Catholic Boarding School2026-04-16text/htmlen-US"What a great grace to have died in the Church": A Case Study in Death Culture and Ars Moriendi at a Native American Catholic Boarding School2026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®1053802026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16St. Raphael's, Queens: From a Rural to an Urban Parish, 1868–1930
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988123
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A one-hundred-foot red brick church steeple looming over the Long Island Expressway shortly out of the Queens end of the Midtown tunnel viscerally signifies New York City's outer boroughs' Catholic history to thousands of daily commuters and out-of-town visitors making their way from Manhattan to JFK airport. The steeple of St. Raphael, Queens' oldest extant Catholic Church, publicly marks Catholicism upon this highly urban and industrial landscape adjoining Calvary Cemetery and Newtown Creek, polluted by nearly two centuries of industrial activity, separating Queens from Brooklyn. At the church itself on a weekday morning, the impatient cacophony of honking horns and the foundation-shaking rattle of trucks
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/446/image/coversmallSt. Raphael's, Queens: From a Rural to an Urban Parish, 1868–19302026-04-16text/htmlen-USSt. Raphael's, Queens: From a Rural to an Urban Parish, 1868–19302026-04-162026TWOProject MUSE®953792026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-16