Washington and Rome: Catholicism in American Culture
- List Price: $35.00
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
- Publish date: 01/01/2000
Zoller traces the progress of Catholicism in the New World from the earliest European settlements through the "Great Crisis" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to its acceptance in the mainstream of modern America. He tells how, despite the anti-Catholic sentiments of the founding fathers and Americans' deep suspicion of institutions, the Catholic Church has fared better in this religiously neutral republic than in the so-called Catholic countries where it was both privileged and persecuted. Because American Catholicism was preoccupied for so long with having to justify itself in both Rome and Washington while fighting internally for a proper balance between these loyalties, it acquired characteristics that had never been necessary in the countries where it first flourished.