Abstract

In the course of the 19th century the Archdiocese of New York became the most populous and influential diocese in the United States and a bastion of conservative Catholicism. However, in the 1860s and 1870s, Father Thomas Farrell, a local pastor, unexpectedly challenged the prevailing ecclesiastical ethos by advocating a form of liberal Catholicism that anticipated by a quarter-century the «Americanism» of the 1890s. He combined European liberal themes like opposition to the temporal power of the papacy with specifically progressive American themes like abolitionism. This article explores Farrell’s emergence as an unlikely champion of liberal Catholicism in a conservative archdiocese, his impact on Catholics and the general public, and his own fate at the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities.

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